Playstation 3 owners should be pleased to hear today that beloved franchise (and rightly so) Uncharted will sport a three player online co-op mission with the upcoming release of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves!
Joystiq and Shacknews both have impressive rundowns of the gameplay, which we've disected and posted after the "Read More" link. Gaming news outlest have no doubt been chomping at the bit, so we encourage you to check the sources in full. In the meantime, check out our favorite excerpts, and keep a drool bucket handy!
Joystiq (Randy Nelson):
Three-player co-op? Yeah, we were surprised, too. Having tried it with two other honest-to-goodness live humans, we can report that it not only works, but -- so far -- works very well. The combination of smart A.I. opponents, platforming elements and teamwork-based objectives seems a perfect fit for Uncharted 2.
It turned out that Uncharted 2's co-op has a little bit in common with Left 4 Dead. In this case, we realized that if we stayed in one place for too long the game would send another wave of enemies our way. It really forced us to make every moment of silence count and definitely upped the intensity.
We remember another game that threw waves of enemies at us, and it wasn't quite as amusing. Hopefully -- no, likely -- Naughty Dog will not follow suit.
There's a..."cry for help" when any of the three players get grabbed by an enemy -- just as you can move around behind them and grab hold, so can they. In this case, a blue icon appears and players must rush to their partner's aid before it's too late.
That sounds like a page taken from Resident Evil 5...good news, in our opinion.
Shacknews (Greg Mueller):
In co-op, you can team up with two friends to complete missions, all the while shooting bad guys, climbing around, and working together to take part in typical team-building exercises like moving large objects and boosting one another up to otherwise unreachable areas
I easily settled into the controls, which remain unchanged from the previous game--the shooting feels exactly as it did in the first Uncharted. You can hold L1 and use the left analog stick to aim, while moving with the right stick. Taking cover is imperative to your survival, and thankfully there are plenty of columns, short walls, and other sturdy objects throughout the map that make for convenient bullet shields.
One of the few gripes I had with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was the abundance of enemies that seemed to absorb ridiculous amounts of damage without dying. It's an issue that I encountered many times while playing through the co-op portion of the Uncharted 2 demo as well. Often it seemed as though I had to empty an entire clip into an enemy and, if I survived long enough to reload, a good portion of my next clip as well.
If you do get gunned down in co-op mode, the screen goes black and white and your character goes down to one knee and becomes immobilized. You don't die instantly though. Instead your partners are given several seconds to come to your aid and revive you. If you're not revived within about 10 seconds, you die and respawn.
Scattered throughout the map are large red circles that indicate where you can team up with your allies to accomplish a given task. You stand in the red circle, hold triangle, and hope that your friends get the hint and come join you and do the same to complete the action. Standing in one of the circles under a ladder caused my character to boost the others up to reach a ladder and climb a building.
While the co-op mode seems to be fully-fleshed and incredibly fun, it appears that it will be online only -- no splitscreen support. Also, the co-op mission is reportedly only "a couple of hours" long, although future DLC has been hinted at.
Uncharted 2's co-op has apparently taken hints from the plethora of 2008 and 2009 co-op action games, which is a good thing. Army of Two: The 40th Day was similarly lauded in our co-op preview earlier this month...so now we're excited for both. (Did I really need to be that obvious? Probably not, but hey...I'm giddy.)
So far a release date has not been confirmed, but when it goes public, expect a gaggle of new Playstation 3 owners. To say that this news tempts me to buy one myself is a huge understatement.
Keep it here for more co-op news as it develops, and once again we encourage you to check out all of the goodies being posted today on the interwebs. In fact, if there's something we missed, throw it up on the forums!