Uncharted 3 Pre-Release Event Impressions

I dedicated my evening last night to the Uncharted 3 pre-launch event in San Francisco hosted by AMC theaters. The main appeal of this event was to get to see early gameplay footage, a chance to play the game early and a bunch of prize giveaways. If you were smart enough to pony up a total of $60, the cost of a full retail game, Naughty Dog was going to ship you a copy early on the 25th of October via 2 day air (most likely arriving on the 27th). With the opportunity of getting the game a full 4 days early, it was a bit of a no brainer to drop the extra cash. Aside from pre-purchasing a copy of the game, you may be wondering: how was the rest of the event?

My "Premium" ticket (the one that gave you a copy of the game) told me the event started at 5PM, so not wanting to wait too long to get in line and get my pre-order copy registered to be sent to me, I showed up about 5 to 10 min early. At this point, there was already a line of about 50 people forming. As the line got longer behind me, more and more people were looking around confusedly; the ticket had stated 5 PM though AMC online had the event starting at 6:30 PM, so there was some question as to when it actually started. I did find a person who had called AMC to figure out which time was correct, and even they couldn't provide an answer. Oh well, it wasn't that long to wait for an early copy, was it?

A little after 6:00 someone from the event finally started to get things moving and began to bring some order to the line, which had now formed down a stairwell and was a good two floors below me. At 6:30 they started to process people and give out the registration info. I was handed a card with a code on it (to get my early copy of the game) and ushered into another fucking line. While this one was not as long (though it was damn close) it was moving along rather well. They started to divide the line into two, one for people where were participating in the multiplayer ladder, and the other for those who were not. Because it had been a long ass time since I last played Uncharted and I really wasn't too interested in the competition, I patiently waited in the "I just want my shit" line, which happened to be longer. After another 20 min or so, I finally got my wrist band for my swag bag and then got to stand in yet another line.

This line was exclusively to enter that code I got earlier into a tablet along with my address so they could mail me my copy of the game. After I entered my code and double checked my mailing address, I was told to head to auditorium 10. I tentatively walked into the theater, expecting another line to be had; they would have a line to find your seat or to play the game or something. Mercifully, there were no lines in sight. After finding my seat, we were treated to 3 trailers played on the big screen for the next 30-45 minutes of waiting. These clips were mostly footage we've seen previously, the trailers, gameplay, etc. A full two and a half hours after I had originally arrived at the theater, the event finally began.

The event started with some 3D gameplay done by one of the Naughty Dog developers, some behind the scene footage as well as the world premier of the Uncharted 3 launch trailer. The main portion, however, was dedicated to the multiplayer competition. If you wanted to, you could sign up for this competition at the beginning and they would assign you to a team. There were around 4-5 teams of 5 members each with around 20 PS3s set up in the front of the theater. Once the footage on the big screen was over, each team went head to head in a ladder. Between the rounds, there were raffles for various, however disappointing, prizes. I didn't stick around much past the first few multiplayer rounds, but the first prize was a signed copy of the Uncharted novel (woohooo...).

Watching the 3D footage of Uncharted 3 was a bit eye opening. While the game looked pretty good in 3D and translated really well with the beautiful environments, there were certainly a lot of jagged edges. This probably has to do with the technology as they have to render multiple layers for it to project in 3D. However, it looked like there was absolutely no anti-aliasing on any of the edges. Drake stood out like a pixelated cutout on a beautifully rendered desert. For me, 3D is just way too expensive and not a mature enough technology to even consider it as a viable consumer alternative. Perhaps if we give it a couple more years, it'll actually become worth it, however, in the mean time, Uncharted 3 in 2D looked stunning.

So once all is said and done, would I do it again? Maybe, but if I did do it again, there would be several things I would have changed. For one, I would have showed up later as waiting in the line early got me absolutely nothing. For another, I would have signed up for the multiplayer competition. I'm certain I would have sucked and dragged my team down, but after watching a bit of it, it still would have been a lot of fun. The multiplayer ladder went on for quite some time afterwards (many hours) so unless you are willing to stay the entire time, I wouldn't recommend signing up for it. Unless you've already got a ticket to one of these events (happening tonight and tomorrow), you probably won't be able to pick one up since the events for San Francisco sold out days ago. If you did manage to get your ticket already, then I would certainly suggest showing up a little late.