Do you know what Nathan Drake is most afraid of? How about why, when, and where he first met Elena Fisher? Uncover these truths and much more via Drake’s first two critically acclaimed PS3 adventures when they arrive as digital downloads on the PS Store. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Game of the Year Edition will land on the PS Store in the downloadable PS3 game section on 27th June.

In Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a 400-year-old clue in the coffin of explorer Sir Francis Drake leads Nathan Drake on a wild adventure to a forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Here Drake hunts for the fabled treasure of El Dorado. Learn the backstory of the colourful cast of Uncharted characters and the ancient secrets El Dorado hides.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Game of the Year Edition is the winner of over 200 Game of the Year awards, and one of the most highly acclaimed video games of all time. In this sequel, Drake is drawn back into the treacherous world of thieves and treasure-seekers. A mystery artefact propels him to undertake an expedition to the legendary Himalayan valley of Shambhala where he finds himself embroiled in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse against a fugitive war criminal. Pushed to his limits, Drake is forced to risk everything.

Soon you can have two of Drake’s most epic adventures waiting on your PS3′s XMB, available at the tap of a button! Look for them on PlayStation Store 27th June.

Uncharted fans in the US might have noticed that all playable DLC for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is available for free. While they popped the cork a bit early in the States, this is indeed a celebration of the pending arrival of both of Drake’s adventures as downloadable digital titles. When the PS Store updates today, everyone worldwide will be able to download the following DLC content for Uncharted 2 absolutely free of charge:

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Drake’s Fortune MP Pack
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Golden Guns
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – PlayStation Heroes Skin Pack
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Sidekick Skin Pack
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Siege Expansion Pack

This free Uncharted 2 DLC program will run until the digital launch of the two titles on 27th June. Once the PS Store updates on 27th June, all this DLC will only be available via purchase on the PS Store or when you buy the digital version of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Game of the Year Edition. Mark your calendar for 27th June and be sure to practice your witty comebacks, daring leaps, and fortune hunting tactics as Nathan Drake’s first two blockbuster hits will be just a download and a button press away!

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By now you’ve probably read the full details of what you’ll get with UNCHARTED 3‘s upcoming multiplayer beta. Now, in our new video interview, Naughty Dog‘s top developers reveal just how deep this rabbit hole goes. At a glance, UNCHARTED 3′s most obvious multiplayer enhancement lies in its sweeping character customization options in the form of weapon loadouts, gun mods and a wide selection of ability-enhancing Boosters. You’ll be able to modify your character’s appearance in almost every way, whether you want to slap some aviators on Nathan Drake or cobble together a custom hero or villain from scratch. “There are hundreds and hundreds of parts and every part has a customizable color,” Game Director Justin Richmond tells us. “You can look the way you want to look. We want it to feel personal.”

“Personal” is a theme that permeates every yawning nook and cavernous cranny of UNCHARTED 3‘s redesigned multiplayer experience. Underneath the ultra-polished shooting mechanics and well-balanced arsenal of weapons lies a social media platform that is positively thrumming with potential. With UNCHARTED 3, community is finally a two-way street: You can tap into your Facebook friend list to recruit a Buddy, then fight by his side while earning rewards for coordinated kills — with a bonus for landing the obligatory post-kill high-five. Afterwards, you can upload your favorite video clips to Facebook and YouTube for sharing. Or, if you prefer, you can watch streaming community clips via UNCHARTED TV while you wait for the next match to begin.

You’ll get your hands on UNCHARTED 3‘s new multiplayer modes when the beta begins on June 28th for PlayStation Plus subscribers and owners of specially marked copies of inFAMOUS 2; full access follows on July 5th for all PSN users. Watch the video and read on for more excerpts from our interview with Game Director Justin Richmond and Game Designer Roger Cogburn. And chime in with any questions in the comments!

You’ve already contributed to UNCHARTED 3′s multiplayer mode by playing The Lab.

“We’ve been running The Lab sessions for UNCHARTED 2,” UNCHARTED 3 Game Director Justin Richmond explained, “and we used that feedback to help design UNCHARTED 3.” With The Lab, Naughty Dog‘s designers experimented with new modes using UNCHARTED 2′s sizeable multiplayer audience. “Plunder Pistols ended up being super popular,” Richmond said, “We knew it was fun internally, but being able to test it with the fans in The Lab verified that we thought was cool. We want to do even more of that with UNCHARTED 3. We have the ability to get feedback from the fans, and we want to maintain that dialog.”

UNCHARTED 3′s 3D technique paved the way for split-screen multiplayer support.

“There are a number of ways to implement 3D; some are more ‘fake’ than others,” Richmond explained. “We committed to using 3D early on, and we wanted to do it as real as possible because it allowed for splitscreen. 3D and splitscreen are kind of the same thing because the game is basically rendering each frame twice. As soon as we figured out how to do that with 3D, we knew we could handle splitscreen. Now, I am grossly oversimplifying that — the programmers would kill me for saying it was that easy! But basically, our 3D implementation allowed for splitscreen support.”

UNCHARTED 3′s splitscreen multiplayer enables dual PSN logins.
“You don’t have to be on some guest account,” Richmond said. “You and your friend can sit down in splitscreen and level up both of your characters. We support two different PSN ID logins.”

The dynamic multiplayer events were inspired by UNCHARTED 2.

“UNCHARTED 2‘s Trainwreck multiplayer level that had an event where a cargo train fell down and revealed an RPG,” Game Designer Robert Cogburn explained. “We were surprised by how that resonated with people, so with UNCHARTED 3 we decided to swing for the fences and go as epic as we can.” Every level includes some sort of dynamic event: Airstrip’s opening truck chase ends in a finale at the airport; Chateau’s spreading fire slowly consumes the central floor and reveals a new area and weapons.

You’ll collect random loot in order to unlock new gear.

Fallen foes will occasionally drop randomized Treasures, and you’ll want to collect every piece you find. “The Treasures add a bit of an RPG element,” Cogburn said. “Every Treasure piece has a varying level of scarcity, and they fit into sets. Once a set is fully completed, you’ll earn an item: a gun, a custom part, an emblem, and so on.” What’s more, if you’re battling with a buddy, he or she can run over and grab Treasure for you. “We can update the Treasures dynamically, too,” Cogburn teased, “so we can add more later if we want to.”

You’re no longer helpless while climbing.

Back in UNCHARTED 2′s multiplayer, climbing left you high and dry — especially if you encountered another enemy. “It came down to who could hit the ground first and get his gun out,” Richmond said. “It kind of sucked — you could only climb or drop down.” Not so with UNCHARTED 3. “Now it’s more like a chess match. Should I edge over and try to kick him? Should I drop? Should I climb? If I do, will the other guy pull me down? It adds an extra dimension to the combat.”

UNCHARTED TV support supports uploads and downloads for YouTube and Facebook.

Plenty of games enable you to capture multiplayer footage and show it to your friends, but UNCHARTED 3 is transforming its multiplayer component into a full-blown video publishing platform. “We can not only upload your video clips to YouTube and Facebook, we can stream videos into the engine,” Richmond said. That means you’ll be able to watch Clips of the Week and community clips while you wait for that next multiplayer level to start. “And we will constantly update that content,” Richmond promised.

UNCHARTED 3 will give high-level players much, much more do.

“With UNCHARTED 2, high-level players would hit a point where they didn’t have anything to spend money on,” Cogburn said. “UNCHARTED 3 is much deeper.” Boosters, which enhance player abilities, can now be leveled up with use. And if the competition gets really tough, you can even buy pricey-but-potent Paid Boosters to temporarily even the odds. “The ranking system plays into that because the higher your rank, the more Paid Boosters will appear. It’s a far more interesting ranking system than in UNCHARTED 2.”

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Hope everyone is well; the guys at Naughty Dog have done it again with some cool downloadable content (DLC) available on the store next week. Here are a few words from Naughty Dog’s Arne Meyer.

If you have any feedback for the guys then please let me know.

While this may not come as a surprise for some of you – as part of Naughty Dog’s continuing support of our multiplayer community, we’re glad to say we’ve got some new UNCHARTED 2 DLC on the way real soon.

Like, next week soon.

On Wednesday, 18 August, the UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Sidekick Skins pack will be available for purchase from PlayStation Store. After the last two sets of multiplayer skins we released, we heard that you wanted more Sully, more Chloe and more Elena (among many, many other things) – and that’s exactly what we put into the pack. Not to neglect the villains team, we also threw in two enemy characters from UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune – Dillon and Mac – who complete the set we started with Blain and Dutch.

The UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Sidekick Skins Pack includes the following multiplayer characters:

• Heist Chloe
• Borneo Chloe
• Borneo Sullivan
• UDF Sullivan
• Winter Sullivan
• Wetsuit Elena
• Dillon
• Mac

On the same day, we’re also releasing an UNCHARTED 2 Dynamic Theme for your PS3. As you can see from the screenshots and the embedded video below, the Dynamic Theme features a scene from Chapter 15 – Train Wrecked, when a critically injured Nathan Drake is high up in the mountains, stumbling through the snow away from the train wreck he survived to recover the Phurba Dagger.

The UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Sidekick Skin Pack will be released on the PlayStation Store on 18 August for only €2.99 / £2.39 for the 8 skins. The UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Dynamic Theme will be released on the same day €1.99 / £1.59 as well.

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UPDATE: New videos added.

The day is nearly here for our UNCHARTED fans and the multitudes who have been awaiting a new co-op game type — The UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Siege Expansion Pack will be on sale when the PlayStation Network Store updates on Thursday, April 22nd, and will set you back only $5.99.

Look for the PlayStation Store Update blog post on Thursday to know when The Siege Expansion Pack is available for purchase.

As we announced just two weeks ago, the Siege Expansion Pack is our biggest DLC release to date: two new maps, six new multiplayer skins, one new co-op game type and 11 new online-only Trophies.

Do yourself a favor and read the full rundown of what’s included in the pack, check out the screenshots, and watch the gameplay and map fly-through videos. You won’t be disappointed.

The most significant portion to the Siege Expansion Pack is the new Siege co-op game type. You can read impressions of Siege from these IGN and GameSpot reviews of the Siege Expansion Pack. Since we started testing Siege internally, up through last week’s sessions with reviewers, I’ve really enjoyed the complexities of Siege. It’s not as simple as defending pre-defined locations against waves of NPCs: Between the different vulnerabilities of each new location and the lack (or abundance) of weapon pickups, you’ll find yourself testing out interesting new strategies to maximize your points and cash.

(more…)

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Hi everyone,

Hope you all had a great Easter break and managed to pack in some quality gaming time.

Naughty Dog has updated me with some great news for the multiple award winning Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I’m pleased to announce the guys have pulled out all the stops to deliver more downloadable content for all you fans out there!

The ‘Siege Expansion’ pack will be hitting PSN later this month (RRP €5.99 / £4.79) So what can you look forward to this time?

The pack includes 6 character skins, a new co-op game mode for 2-3 players, 2 new maps and 11 additional Trophies (10 Bronze and 1 Silver).

Trophies:
Bronze

• You Can’t Break Me – Complete All 3 Co-op Objective Maps on Crushing
• Under Siege – Finish Wave 10 in 1 Siege Game
• Speedy – Get 10 First! Medals
• I’ll Cover You – Get 50 Defender Medals
• Fallen Angel – Get 50 Afterlife Medals
• Not So Fast – Get 20 Shut’em Down Medals
• Jack Of All Trades – Get 15 Triple Threat Medals
• You Run, I’ll Shoot – Get 10 Protectorate Medals
• Back At Ya – Get 50 Retaliation Medals
• Kneel Before Z.. – Get 5 Put’em Down Medals

Silver

• Rock a Rhyme – Get 100 Tricky Medals

The 6 character skins are: Wetsuit Drake, Baseball Shirt Drake, Prakoso, Platzor, Glowzor and Dead Explorer.

The new co-operative “Siege” game mode is for 2-3 players, and can be enjoyed on 9 multiplayer maps, with 2 new ones included in this pack: The Museum and The Highrise.

And finally team up and fight your way through 10 rounds, battling the clock and waves of progressively tougher enemies as you locate and defend a series of Capture Points

Check out the screenshots below

I look forward to answering any questions you may have and stay tuned for further updates.

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