If you’ve read MyGaming’s Uncharted 3 review (and weighed in your position on the 10/10 for visuals) you’ll recall we mentioned the multiplayer needing its own feature.
Well this is that feature.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is an epic single-player game that is a succession of astounding events that keep you captivated from beginning to end.
But that’s only where the fun begins – once you tap into the game’s multiplayer, you see why you’ll find that hours of your time drain away as you battle it out with or against your mates.
Multiplayer modes
Uncharted 3 offers a whole bunch of multiplayer and co-op modes for you to enjoy:
You have your tried-and-true free-for-alls (one-man army, really), team deathmatches (two teams of five) and capture the flag (or in this case, treasure – in a mode called “Plunder”) – with some variants like three-team deathmatch (three teams of two) and objective-based rounds.
On the co-op side, you have a horde-mode called Arena, where you and a buddy need to survive waves of enemies a la Gears of War; and Hunter Arena – which pits two teams up against each other as one team tries to hunt down treasures and the other team tries to kill them.
The Co-op Adventure mode strikes some similarities to Uncharted 2’s Objective mode – where you’re required to fulfill certain goals during the level – except on a much grander scale.
This mode is made up of 5 chapters that tell a mini-self-contained story, involving characters from both Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3, with dialogue and set pieces and everything – it’s like a game within a game!
And serious fun, to boot.
The Buddy system Naughty Dog set up allows you to essentially tag a friend or teammate as your buddy, and you share rewards, treasures and even get the benefit of spawning them near you to make things easier. I unfortunately didn’t get to explore the system too much, as I was too busy constantly dying – and my buddy failed on an equal level to me.
Best of all – all game modes – bar free-for-all – can be played locally with split-screen; all you need is another PSN account, and both accounts operate independently as they would over the internet.
But wait, there’s more
Uncharted 3’s multiplayer also features a whole bunch of modifiers.
You can fully customise your character, making it entirely unique to you – and you then progress and level him (or her) up, unlocking new weapon mods like more ammo capacity or better scopes.
The boosters from Uncharted 2 are also back – these bonuses give you the edge during matches and can be leveled up. Boosters do pretty much what their name implies – they boost your character by increasing their abilities – like moving faster or being able to detect enemies over larger distances – so that you can work more efficiently.
And if you accrue enough medals (gained by making kills and using skills etc), you can access once-off “paid” boosters during the match, too, called “Kickbacks” – these are more powerful boosters, or even weapons, for you to use during that specific round.
Of course, if the scales are tipped a little bit too much in one team’s favour – power plays kick in.
Power plays are mini-modifiers that balance out the round by giving the losing team extra points for accomplishing certain tasks – like in one round, our losing team’s damage got doubled, making kills a lot quicker.
The down side for the losers is that the winning team gets added rewards for surviving the losing team’s attempts at gaining on them.
If things are too close to call at the end, apparently overtime kicks in, followed by Sudden Death (last man standing) – but we never really got to that point seeing as we sucked, big time.
It goes on and on and on
Uncharted 3’s multiplayer takes all the best bits from Uncharted 2’s venture and adds so much more to it. After playing through the epic single-player story, it’s amazing that you’ve still got so much to do.
It will be a little lost to those who would rather not go through the hassle of gathering 8 people to play a free-for-all murder-fest – but if you and your friends play online regularly, then there is plenty here to keep you going.
The mechanics operate the same as the main game, and the visuals remain 10/10 astounding – there’s just so much here to extend the time you’ll be spending with Drake’s Deception.
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Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Review (PS3 Exclusive)
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