Hair of the Dog - Week of Jan 31, 2010
We’ve got just the thing to cure your weekly gaming hangover… every Saturday morning, Hair of the Dog compiles a round-up of interesting Naughty Dog and UNCHARTED 2 links from around the web.
Games of the decade: Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells - USA Today: Game Hunters
USA Today’s Game Hunters blog asked our Co-President Evan Wells to pick his top 5 favorite games of the decade and tell us a little about why those games are important to him.
How I Made It: Amy Hennig - Los Angeles Times
Ben Fritz came by the studio a couple of weeks ago to talk to Amy and the get inside story on how she went from film school grad student to Creative Director at Naughty Dog. Even Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City makes a brief mention!
The Bitbag 2009 Editor’s Choice Award Winners - The Bitbag
The Bigbag reveals their Editor’s Choice Award winners for 2009. We’ve really set the bar high for ourselves for future projects—we got 5 more awards here, including another Game of the Year nod.
PlayStation Heroes Skin Pack trailer and NEW renders - NaughtyDog.com
Not sure you could miss this on our site since it’s the post immediately preceding this Hair of the Dog update, but in case you did, we posted an embedded video (and link) to a trailer we put together for the PlayStation Heroes Skin Pack DLC and a link to new renders we’ve made available publicly of those skins.

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Hi ND.
My game is stuck on version 1.04.533.
I can connect easy enough, but it connects on 1.04.533 without trying to sync the latest data.
I deleted all game data utility files as you suggested but this did nothing.It took around 20 minutes to connect, and the syncing bar came up 15 times but it still only connected to 1.04.533.
So im stuck on an old version with no one to play with.
Unrelated, but It would be nice to know that I’ve been heard.
Try checking your internet connections and router.
that sucks dude but i think you do have to check your connection because it seams like right now that is your only solution
Nd everyones saying that U2 is fixed but ever since the update i havent been able to play 1 game online, and no its not my internet connection. It makes me insanely angry when every time you update u2 it only makes it worse leave it the way it is. plz fix this problem i have not been able to play for weeks.
that must suck. Sorry
arne please let us know if north america is going to get Daniel Pinkerton and Rika Raja too. THANKS.
wats that??
the two eye of indra skins
yeah i bought the comics thinking i would get them but i dont.
Yes, we are and have been working on something to get the skins out here in the US. We don’t have anything we can share right now though.
O ok THANK you so much for your reply.
What about Canada?
Hey ND, Loving Uncharted 2! Especiallly with the DLC! But my gameand others keeps on freezing when it says 1...it only freezes! plz fix this! and also when and how much are the maps gonna be?
hi ND. i have just one thing to ask: can you please fix the gamestats on your website? it shows stats from february 1st but i played my last game yesterday february 6th. thank you very much. keep the good work.
The time it takes to find players is even longer, I have to exit out and refresh multiple times to find a match, pretty ridiculous.
Thats your problem, you shouldn’t keep exiting. The matchmaking is searching for a game with the best possible connection and will add you the instant that its found one. The matchmaking has never frozen on me, you just have to let it do its job.
And sorry if the server truly had an error, but you only get the 40k penalty AFTER a first warning. So it is fine craftsmanship, and please lose the condescending tone.
Really that’s my problem? When the game can’t find players within a 10 minute time span? Really? a 40k penalty after a first warning? Gee I wonder how the first warning came to be? An error due to the game’s faulty design? Because last time I checked, I never leave a game. So next time you try to respond to my comment, actually come up with a legitimate response, because from what I’m reading, all I’m seeing from you is assumptions, which just really speaks to your character.
I have played 321 multiplayer matches since release day and have never once been docked 40k, nor has it ever taken me longer than 5 minutes to find players. So sorry for ASSUMING that it is not the Game Design, but rather you that is the problem.
The multiplayer is not perfect, yet. But there are a thousand ways to submit your opinions without sounding patronizing. Especially when talking to artists, like ND, that actually listen to the fans.
Nice naughty dog, i finally get in a game, and your problems took me out of the match before it even loaded and induced a 40k penalty which I didn’t even deserve. Fine craftsmanship.
C’mon its only 40k alot of you people are over reacting about it, it happens to all of us from time to time but its not that big a deal especially level 45+.
Only 40k, make that several 40k’s at a time. And that’s not even the point, it’s just icing on the cake of the fistful of problems.
I appreciate the game stats and was wondering if the same stats that show up after playing a game could be saved for this website’s stats page. In particular I’d like to see game by game stats for headshots.
Please make the next DLC free. the heroes skin pack looked cool but, i only wanted chimera and cole so wasn’t willing to pay 5 bucks for it… you can make the next skins DLC cost money but at least make new maps free. thanks for such an awesome game.
for those who have problems with the psn disconnection erros :
http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psnetwork&thread;.id=116102
it works for me!
Just a thought, but the MP40 and the AK47 have the same fire rate and damage, just as the standard pistol and the walther, and the golden deagle is the same as the normal deagle, but gold. So, is there a pack you could release that would allow you to switch between these? I very much enjoyed the nostalgia of using WW2 weapons.
Also, in the website leader bpards, the Wes is considered an online gun. It’s not in any maps, so why is it there?
We just need to remove it. A lot of our stats feeds are built early in development so we had to make sure we covered the possible game attributes, even if they were not valid by the final release. The Wes is left over from that. We’ll remove it soon.
I had the same problem, i couldn’t play the game with the new 1.04 update. i saved my files on a memory card then formated my ps3 and worked out excellent.
Arne why why why have ND taken all my cash of me its not my fault psn goes down and kicks me out the game. i was one game of level 50 now ive got to start all over again. it took me 3 months to get this far with work and real life getting in the way my internet connection is fine nat2 and 13meg download 1.5upload speeds damn psn its not fair. :(
Arne and ND please forgive my last blog my money magicaly reappeard tonight. Still keep getting kicked off PSN since the last update though.As do alot of people.
Very good, just super, Naughty Dog excellent company,I hope that they announce Uncharted 3 at E3 2010.
Add the Guardian skin in mutiplayer! as much as i love my Helghast, the Guardian is a better skin. The people Want it! just make it available for a certain high level to avoid spoilers. Thanks for an awesome game cant stop playing. I HAVE A FRIEND THAT GOT RESET FROM 51 to1! FIX THIS
Hi arne,
I posted this very late to another blog and was unsure if it got read. In regard to the “zombies” we always see respawning in games. People who are levelling up by joining a game and then going to bed and not actually participating in the map. It really is ruining the experience for everyone.
Why don’t you just boot anyone who got 0 kills in the last game. If they are a newbie and got 0 chances are they won’t want to play the same group of people that they just got slaughtered by anyway.
A couple of other suggestions:
1. Why not include a suggestions blog on your site then people will stick to the topic at hand
2. Gold Rush is great but nobody plays because it is flawed. I’m sick of being the only one trying to move the treasure and then getting nothing for it. I can’t blame people for wanting to kill instead of carry because there is absolutely no insentive to carry the treasure. I’ll carry it from one end of the map to the other drop it in the basket and find I have 0 points (or very lttle).
3. Your stats page on the website is a cool idea but has major problems. Each time I go to the site my stats (such as number of games played) go up and down.
4. Please fix those glitches in the fort and ice cave. Sucks getting snipered by people camping in a glitched area.
Are naughty dog employees still playing, I haven’t seen anyone on for ages?
Anyway these are just some positive suggestions. Love the game but I am devoting way to much time to it.
Cheers
the glitches are fun. They should just put them in custom game so you dont interact with the other people online. Its cool because I got into a party with everyone who knows the glitches and we keep fighting over the glitched areas. Its really fun when you try it. But of course i do not glitch when i am online with people that I do not know
so true!
Has anyone seen that glitch in the Fort where in Plunder The Treasure just’s dissapears out of thin air.
pretty sure its patched because I basically know every glitch
Hey, love the game (my favorite ever) I was wondering if the next dlc could be new maps and gamemodes and maybe skins from the first uncharted or eye of indra because personally i’m not a fan of skins from completely different games in this game, it just ruins the feel of it…
Hey ND, i love uncharted 2 and the first one, i hope you make a third game. I would love it if you made a new or change one of the game modes to make it all the variations of death matches in one without objective games, all of my friends agree. I get so frustrated when i feel like playing sniper rifle and pistol or rpg’s and i get an objective game because the game mode has both: variation death match and objective game types.I hope you reply.
I would love a Deathmatch Variations playlist. I think a good compromise would be to include Variations into the existing Deathmatch playlist, but tweak the servers so that they never allow Variations to be both choices. When the players get to pick which map and mode, there will always be at least one standard Deathmatch choice.
THIS GAME ROCKS AND IS WORTH MORE THAN A $100 NOT JUST $60 LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello,
Constantly there is a problem where my friends do not listen. Sometimes I hear in the middle of the game or changing its leader.
Another problem is that it gives the sanctuary there are times when most players are caught (only for other players).
And congratulations on this fantastic game.
Please more maps!!
hello , i faced a problem when i played uncharted 2 multiplayer mode,. it freeze occasionally with black screen , is it related to patch 1.04???
Putting the ability to cook frags would be TERRIBLE that only works in FPS not 3rd person shooter
But with frags in mind....will yous reduce the explosive radius of them there like nukes going off seriously you could be 10 feet from it and still kill you (wasn’t a problem when the game first released....?)
Even though I HATE the new skins (because they have no voice) I thought it was criminal to leave snake out like c’mon hes the primary character of ps3 (Drake 2nd).
I dont want U2 to turn into MGS but maybe Heroes:Old Snake, Meryl Villains: Liquid Ocelot, and Naomi or The Boss(not big boss)
(But WITH voiceover’s I know time and money would be a factor about getting voiceovers but im sure alot of people would agree that that would be AWESOMMMME)
OH and I read a post awhile ago about ND getting in with MM to make a Uncharted Little Big Planet costum and level kit...ND yous REALLY sould think about doing this it would 1.Make people who play LBP and never heard about U2 think about getting it (This happened to me with killzone) and 2. there would be nothing more fun then playing LBP dressed as Drake ,Elena, Sully, or Flynn....NOTHING I MEAN NOTHING LIKE IT.
On a side note
IF YOUS KILL SULLY IN UNCHARTED 3 I SWEAR I WOULD BECOME ANTI-ND ANTI-ND IM NOT JOKING I WOULD NEVER FORGIVE YOUS EVER.....MORE SULLY IN U3 HES A LEGEND nearly dare I say as much as snake......:O
IM WARING YOU ND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IM WARING YOU ND !!!!
KILL OF ELENA IF YOU HAVE TO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t you dare! I love Elena.
Whoaaaa!!!!!
Not that you guys care or anything because you obviously shown you don’t.
1) Grenades in this game are retarded. I have thought over with some people different ways to solve it such as making down on the d-pad the way to pull out your grenades or making the timer on grenades longer. Grenades should be thrown at people capturing a treasure, capturing a turf war point, capturing the hill, so on so fourth NOT to throw at someone when you got worked in a gunfight or as a first instinct because your terrible with a gun. I personally don’t understand why there are two reload buttons ( Down and R2 ). Why not just take out the down one and make it to where it pulls out your grenade and you can throw it far just like you would with a gun, zoom in and throw or lob it just like you would holding down the button without being zoomed in.
2) The melee system needs to be toned down. 6 head shots to kill someone with an AK and only 2 melee’s to kill someone makes no sense to me and hopefully everyone else on this game. The only suggestions i could think of for this is tone it down to make the melee less powerful or make it to where it stuns you just like a grenade would if it lands a ways away from you. There’s a third suggestion but that would obviously be too much and thats to redo the whole melee system all together.
A couple suggestions:
1) A little more clan support to where you play in a playlist like objectives, rank, and deathmatch where you could play another clan. A game i saw this work with excellence was Saints Row 1. You could enter a clan based matchmaking where it would match you with other clans that were around the same numbers you were. (Ex you have 3 members on it would pair you with another clan that had 2 members, 3 members or 4 members). Call the playlist “Clan matches” or “wars” or something and then put something up on the leader boards to show who is the ranked clan. Only thing me and a buddy of mine have thought of for this is the randomizer or whatever you use to give us 2 maps to choose from in the original playlists would have to select one map because obviously the clan’s would both choose a different map most of the time. Once again just a suggestion.
2) A playlist with no power weapons. I’m not complaining about the weapons i just know there are many both good and bad players and brand new and old players who dislike the power weapons and want to prove their gun skills otherwise. I haven’t gone in detail about how this would work but i heard one of my friends say jokingly “why not make a playlist where there were no power weapons and only party of 5’s could enter.” I thought it was a great idea but obviously not enough play this game to make that playlist popular.
If you read this naughtydog add me on PSN, id be glad to discuss more things in detail that me and my friends have come up with.
Last but not least a huge problem i see in your game today is when people die they will be lieing on the ground or falling to the ground and a grenade comes shooting out of their bodies at 100 mph like a Randy Johnson fastball and lands at your feet killing you. If you care nothing about what i just said at least fix this.
Thats actually a very good idea with the wars or clan ta fight thing. Hope they make that happen
1) First, there is a way to throw or baseball-throw a grenade: hold L1 and then press L2. Second, it takes skill to kill an attacker with a grenade during a gunfight. Third, this is the first game since Halo that made grenades fun again. Instead of being a secondary form of attack, they are viable to be a primary. Please, try learning how to use them or learn how to dodge them. Both are a major part of Uncharted gameplay, which I personally find to be extremely and satisfyingly balanced.
2)The melee system is the same as grenades in this specific game: a viable primary option of attack. 6 bullets with an AK-47, 2 punches at close range with a fist, or 1 well-placed grenade can kill in Uncharted. Now, again, I think that this “rock-paper-scissors” is perfectly balanced; no option is better than the others in every situation. There is a delay between two punches and they are easy to avoid.
Your suggestions:
1)I like your idea, but I’m personally happy with out it. If it was implemented, I would use it.
2) Don’t worry, there actually is this type of playlist. Its a mode called Deathmatch Variations, and is found only in the All Modes playlist. It may be in Ranked playlist as well, but I have never seen it. There are Pistols and Grenades, Snipers and Pistoles, and Rocket Launcher-only matches.
3)And I’m telling you, it takes a lot of practice and a tiny bit of skill to kill an opponent with a grenade right before you die. Try it yourself.
1) I know this, where did that come from? Next: It takes zero skill to bank a grenade off a wall right next to someone shooting at you or throw it at there feet while there shooting you. Grenades? Fun? I can understand if they had a sticky grenade or something but cmon these grenades in this game are probably some of the worst because everyone relies so heavily on it. I know how to use and dodge them, i love how you assume i’ve never played this game in my life and i’m a bad player.
2) A viable primary option of attack? Get out of here, when i play several games on uncharted i feel like im playing tekken or some shit everyone does nothing but beat you down. And close range? you obviously haven’t been beaten down like chris brown sliding across the ground 10 feet away to smack you with his elbow and magically slide back to where he was a second ago just to do it again. As for your rock paper scissors theory thats so wrong for one reason, grenades win period. Up close, far away there’s nothing that beats them. You may get lucky and beat someone down twice who has happened to throw all their grenades before you got to them. Last but not least the delay in punches is so flawed because people will snap to you and beat you down for the second time like i said earlier.
2) All modes playlist has RPG’s only, Sniper and Pistole, and pistol’s and grenades. I don’t want to play any of those and thats what comes up 99% of the time and not to mention that when i do try that playlist i can’t even find a match.
3) it takes no practice and no skill to tap your l2 button when your zoomed in looking at the enemy.
Again, don’t assume i’m a noob and don’t know what i’m talking about if you want to see why i hate grenades, add me on PSN, play me 1v1, i’ll use nothing but grenades and make you understand why i hate them.
I agree with strict, make the grenade timers longer or make it so you have to equip grenades. It takes no skill to tap the grenade button before u die. Ill kill someone in a gunfight then all of a sudden the guy just shits out a grenade and it somehow kills me from 10 feet away, awesome. The melee thing is pretty bad too. Everyone knows when u get hit with a gun twice in real life you die....i jus dont get why you made the ak take 6 headshots and 7 bodyshots but only 2 melees. Melee should just stun the person so you can shoot them.
I don’t know. What you see as flaws, I see as the very reasons that I play Uncharted 2 more than any other online shooter.
Look I’m sorry for coming off as a jerk, I was trying to be informative. You’re saying that grenades are overpowered. But if you used ONLY grenades and I used ONLY Fal and AK then I can tell you that guns would ultimately have the higher kill count.
Hey ND, i hope you reply to my message from yesterday, cya.
Hi Naughty Dog do u think u could tell us the price for the 2nd add-on soon. The one that comes out on Feb 25, Thanks
hello ND my characcter gets freezed while playing online uncharted 2 and it´s very anoying.
so please help me, because some people have the same problem.
(i have the ports open, and all that stuff, and i can play online the other games i have, like far cry2 and i doesn´t have lag. so please fix it in the next update please)
I was wondering if there is any recourse from the penalty and level drop? I was in the middle of a plunder mission and the PSN just dropped on me, there was a warning that said “you have been dropped from the PSN Network” and then when I logged back into Multiplayer, it said you’re dropping 3 levels (from 10 to 7) and you’re taking a $40k penalty.
I don’t mind the cash penalty but I am not happy with the rank drop. I was never “warned” about dropping from a game and I did leave a plunder mission once because the idol was off it the mountains, it seemed to be a glitch. We were playing for almost 30 minutes without the idol moving.
I’d be grateful if there’s a chance I can even just get the 3 ranking spots back please as I understand the need for the penalties but it was a technical error on the server’s part, not me.
Thanks
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