Opinionation: Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Beta/Demo

While some very lucky press individuals have received full copies of the game early, the rest of us looking forward to the return of Nathan Drake must wait just a little bit longer. Thankfully, the fine folks over at Sony and Naughty Dog have seen fit to provide PS3 players with a multiplayer beta of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The multilanguage sample maybe not provide any single player content, you'll get a tasty trailer and access to some of the multiplayer content that we should be expecting when the game launches in next week.

To be honest, I didn't have high hopes going into this beta. No offense meant to anyone, but I enjoyed the first Uncharted as a single player experience and at no point during it did I wish I could engage in a round of deathmatch multiplayer. But just taking a moment to explore all of the online multiplayer options and modes it's obvious that Naughty Dog set out with some lofty goals for their sequel. However, the more I played with what was provided here, the more I felt as if I had played this all before.

Now don't get me wrong. What's seen here is polished, refined, and played smoothly, but I didn't see anything in this beta that I haven't seen elsewhere. Be it the Call of Duty-lite ranking system, its brand of Gears of War's Horde mode, or renamed FPS staples, it's clear that the game isn't trying to reinvent the wheel as much as it is attempting to bring together the best pieces of every online shooter in the best four years. This may not be a bad thing depending on your viewpoint. PS3-only gamer without Gears hasn't played this content before and neither has someone intimidated by CoD's possibly too competitive online community. It all suddenly made sense when I realized this. Naughty Dog isn't intending to use this game to take the online experience to new hardcore-focused heights, but rather to make an experience that could be as welcoming to as many people as possible. With this in mind, a lot of the design choices seen here started making a lot more sense to me and I can see this being a worthwhile addition to the game for a certain set of people even if I've not exactly included in that group.

At the end of the day, I understand why Uncharted 2's multiplayer is the way it is, but it still didn't leave me all that thrilled. Luckily there's a little thing called "Story Mode" that will probably make its purchase more than worth it, but I can't say that this beta helped or hindered my decision of when or if I'll be picking up Nathan's latest adventure.

As always with the Opinionation segments here, I'm always interested in hear other opinions and voices. If you have played the beta yourself, why don't you share some of your thoughts with the rest of the class?