Ladies (are there any in GIantBomb? I've yet to interact with one here) and gentlemen I have spent a tedious hour trying to play this beta. And I can only applaud the people at Naughtydog for hiring more than a million beta testers with no pay and no benefits included.
 
My first interaction was of course to start the beta and try to connect to the servers, a task that proved impossible in the first ten minutes ("Error initializing session manager."). When I was finally able to connect I started customizing my character (we only have Sully & Drake skins for heroes and two nameless pirates for villains [I WANT MY HELENA SKIN FROM UNCHARTED 2!]) only for the framerate to drop to around 10 fps (I'm guessing, but it was pretty low) locking up my PS3. After a hard reboot I went back in to try to get into a match only to find that if my connection is slightly being used by something else the gameplay will be reduced to a crawl, sometimes crashing the PS3 again... after quitting and getting kicked out of several games (be it framerate issues, slow connection making the game sluggish, or PS3 crashing) and receiving the message "You were kicked out for killing teammates" (all a lie because I couldn't even move in some instances) several times I finally got into a match.
 
In the Airfield map (thank the gods that the connection was stable) you starts with the plane going down a runway being chased by bad guys in trucks, initially it's pretty slow since the other team has to go from the trucks to the plane in order to have a decent firefight, after I fell down from the plane (and got a few kills in the process, yay!) a couple of times, the plane lifts off and we go into another section of the map, this time we appear inside a hangar where the two teams can square off in a better way... But unfortunately for me after five minutes more or less the game crashed on me again, after a reboot I managed to see the end of one of the matches.
 
After this I decided to take a break and go write here for the first time about what the hell just happened.
 
So, impressions, impressions... The game, just like the last Uncharted looks amazing, the lightning is better (Airfields second part is at sundown and it looks pretty darn good), animations do look more fluent and the overall aspect of the game is good but not drastically better than the last game. I did not like the sounds for the weapons (they sounded like peashooters). The ability to join a match in progress, customize characters' clothes (colors and types), unlock new weapons while leveling up and the use of special skills when getting a given number of medals (a little too Call of Duty for my taste but I guess it's not bad to take a little inspiration from the most played game right now) are good added things to give the multiplayer experience a little more life. The added cinematography for the levels (in the end of the Airfield match if the good guys win they actually lock up the villains in a crate) is kind of an added bonus (at least it's not just a bunch of people trying to kill each other mindlessly anymore) and it gives the deathmatch type a little more of a "story" if so to speak.
 
On the other hand I found nothing new to the game that wasn't in Uncharted 2, it's just the same game but with some minor tweaks and detailing (everything I mentioned in the last paragraph). I still liked it a lot but the hard lockups, slow framerate (in some instances) and connection issues where a bit too much for my patience, I never had any issues like this in the Bad Company 2 or Uncharted 2 betas and here's hoping that the experience is more stable in the days to come (after all it is still a BETA).
 
As a side-note I still want to see something more similar to the horde mode that we had in Gears of War 2 and that is coming to Gears of War 3; survival and siege in Uncharted 2 are too impractical and unpolished, there are no team tactics to playing those modes besides avoid getting killed.
 
Gooodbye readers? And I hope you have a good beta... I will be coming back tomorrow.

Ladies (are there any in GIantBomb? I've yet to interact with one here) and gentlemen I have spent a tedious hour trying to play this beta. And I can only applaud the people at Naughtydog for hiring more than a million beta testers with no pay and no benefits included.
 
My first interaction was of course to start the beta and try to connect to the servers, a task that proved impossible in the first ten minutes ("Error initializing session manager."). When I was finally able to connect I started customizing my character (we only have Sully & Drake skins for heroes and two nameless pirates for villains [I WANT MY HELENA SKIN FROM UNCHARTED 2!]) only for the framerate to drop to around 10 fps (I'm guessing, but it was pretty low) locking up my PS3. After a hard reboot I went back in to try to get into a match only to find that if my connection is slightly being used by something else the gameplay will be reduced to a crawl, sometimes crashing the PS3 again... after quitting and getting kicked out of several games (be it framerate issues, slow connection making the game sluggish, or PS3 crashing) and receiving the message "You were kicked out for killing teammates" (all a lie because I couldn't even move in some instances) several times I finally got into a match.
 
In the Airfield map (thank the gods that the connection was stable) you starts with the plane going down a runway being chased by bad guys in trucks, initially it's pretty slow since the other team has to go from the trucks to the plane in order to have a decent firefight, after I fell down from the plane (and got a few kills in the process, yay!) a couple of times, the plane lifts off and we go into another section of the map, this time we appear inside a hangar where the two teams can square off in a better way... But unfortunately for me after five minutes more or less the game crashed on me again, after a reboot I managed to see the end of one of the matches.
 
After this I decided to take a break and go write here for the first time about what the hell just happened.
 
So, impressions, impressions... The game, just like the last Uncharted looks amazing, the lightning is better (Airfields second part is at sundown and it looks pretty darn good), animations do look more fluent and the overall aspect of the game is good but not drastically better than the last game. I did not like the sounds for the weapons (they sounded like peashooters). The ability to join a match in progress, customize characters' clothes (colors and types), unlock new weapons while leveling up and the use of special skills when getting a given number of medals (a little too Call of Duty for my taste but I guess it's not bad to take a little inspiration from the most played game right now) are good added things to give the multiplayer experience a little more life. The added cinematography for the levels (in the end of the Airfield match if the good guys win they actually lock up the villains in a crate) is kind of an added bonus (at least it's not just a bunch of people trying to kill each other mindlessly anymore) and it gives the deathmatch type a little more of a "story" if so to speak.
 
On the other hand I found nothing new to the game that wasn't in Uncharted 2, it's just the same game but with some minor tweaks and detailing (everything I mentioned in the last paragraph). I still liked it a lot but the hard lockups, slow framerate (in some instances) and connection issues where a bit too much for my patience, I never had any issues like this in the Bad Company 2 or Uncharted 2 betas and here's hoping that the experience is more stable in the days to come (after all it is still a BETA).
 
As a side-note I still want to see something more similar to the horde mode that we had in Gears of War 2 and that is coming to Gears of War 3; survival and siege in Uncharted 2 are too impractical and unpolished, there are no team tactics to playing those modes besides avoid getting killed.
 
Gooodbye readers? And I hope you have a good beta... I will be coming back tomorrow.

The beta is freaking awesome, good Day-1 on the beta. I have been having technical hiccups with the beta, but it is only the first day. I bet by tomorrow (because I'll be playing all night) there will be less.

The beta is fun....when it works....which isn't often. I've tried to play 6 matches, only 1 of them fully. I hope it gets patched soon, cause it seems like a lot of fun.
Also, vdort, join my game!

The beta is fun....when it works....which isn't often. I've tried to play 6 matches, only 1 of them fully. I hope it gets patched soon, cause it seems like a lot of fun. Also, vdort, join my game!

Maybe tomorrow should be day 1.

I've crashed 5 times tonight.   I did get about 3 matches that went smoothly.  But all the other matches the performance degraded massively and the frame rate became a slideshow.   Naughty Dog seems to know that this is happening and are trying to fix it.   I'm using the FAL equivalent mostly, seems like a beastly weapon still, it's fun and i really think it would give gears3 a run for it's money if they were ever on the same platform as the definitive third person shooter on consoles.

In the middle of my 4th crash now hope they fix it because when it works its fun.

I'm actually having no trouble now. Its a lot of fun.

It's a goddamn mess. Not only the myriad technical issues, but the game itself feels... Directionless, for lack of a better word. Sprinting is awkward, as is the loadout system - it feels like they just crammed them in there because they think that's what people expect. Loadouts remove a huge aspect of team play in that you don't need to co-ordinate with your team to control power weapons. The Airfield map is just awful - the second portion of it is pretty good, but cutscenes in the middle of a multiplayer match is a big, huge, fat fucking NOPE. Dynamic environments (read: anything random that affects gameplay, like the moving trucks) are terrible gimmicks and absolutely destroy any competitive aspect the game has - I hope to god this is the only such map. And though it's more of a nitpick, what's the point of the small reticle that appears when not aiming - blindfire has its own crosshair anyway, so as far as I can tell it's useless. Also, what's with the forced zoom on the sniper?
 
I do like the treasure/customization system and the way your emblem appears around the map if you're on top, but overall this feels like two steps forward and one giant leap backwards.

I've played a few matches. I don't like hard rebooting my system. So I'll wait till that part is resolved so I can continue playing. Other than that it's awesome.

It seems like a pretty great game to me. Well, except for the PS3-freezing and otherwise horrible framerate. But besides that, I like it. Will continue playing it later, hopefully some of that will be fixed.

its fun gameplay-wise but i keep having technical issues!

new patch is up! yay for a 15 hour work day i wont be in until midnight !

@Three0neFive said:

It's a goddamn mess. Not only the myriad technical issues, but the game itself feels... Directionless, for lack of a better word. Sprinting is awkward, as is the loadout system - it feels like they just crammed them in there because they think that's what people expect. Loadouts remove a huge aspect of team play in that you don't need to co-ordinate with your team to control power weapons. The Airfield map is just awful - the second portion of it is pretty good, but cutscenes in the middle of a multiplayer match is a big, huge, fat fucking NOPE. Dynamic environments (read: anything random that affects gameplay, like the moving trucks) are terrible gimmicks and absolutely destroy any competitive aspect the game has - I hope to god this is the only such map. And though it's more of a nitpick, what's the point of the small reticle that appears when not aiming - blindfire has its own crosshair anyway, so as far as I can tell it's useless. Also, what's with the forced zoom on the sniper? I do like the treasure/customization system and the way your emblem appears around the map if you're on top, but overall this feels like two steps forward and one giant leap backwards.

I agree with this guy. I was bored after 3 games. Considering Uncharted 2 was one of my favorite games of all time, I'm hoping this is just beta blues.

Yeah, the two times I actually managed to get into games, the frame rate rendered it unplayable and both times it froze my Playstation. On a beta of this scale, that's a bit of a shame.

My ps3 froze three times when it asked me to download the 1.01 patch so I'm not going to bother trying anymore. Too bad, I kinda wanted to try it out.