Resistance 2 beta begins… today!

Heya, it’s been a while since I’ve been seen around these parts as James Stevenson, Bryan Intihar and the others at Insomniac have been doing most of the Resistance 2 posting as of late. Along with my return to the blog, I bring a few announcements with regards to R2:

• Today, October 16th, the public beta for Resistance 2 will begin in North America. The beta will offer gamers a glimpse at Resistance 2’s online competitive and co-op modes ahead of the game’s launch on November 4th. We will be admitting players in two waves: a Premiere wave which includes those that pre-ordered at GameStop, individuals who subscribed to QORE for one year and/or bought the episode featuring Resistance 2 and a recent contest from GamePro.com. Those of you in the Premiere wave should be receiving an email with a registration code between now and tomorrow afternoon. A second wave is starting in the middle of next week, and you apply to be a part of it by going to beta.myresistance.net once the site goes live (later tonight). For those of you across the pond in Europe, the public beta will also begin next week.
• The Beta will include competitive maps from three locations in the game. These maps include 60-, 40-, and 20-player maps from Orick, 40- and 20-player maps from Chicago, and the 10-Player map Sub Docks (Bay Area). New modes Skirmish and Core control will be supported, along with Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. The co-op portion of the beta will focused on Orick, and will support randomization of your play-path. Both co-op and competitive will support matchmaking and class/character progression up to level 10. This will allow unlocking of new equipment, upgrades and berserks for character customization.
• Speaking of beta.myresistance.net, the beta version of our new community site goes live tonight as well. Customizable leader boards/user profiles, individual blogs and ‘ticker’ that provides players with up to minute information of happenings on the site are just some of the features the beta site has to offer. Leading into the November 4th North American launch of the game (and the months to follow), we’ll be adding several more features that will make MyResistance.net the destination for all Resistance fans.
• And, finally, Resistance 2 has gone gold. As a special treat, the below image gives all of you PlayStation Blog readers an idea on just how big just the online coop campaign mode is :)

That’s all for now. Keep your eyes open for more R2 announcements as we lead into launch. If you have any questions, write them in the comments sections and I’ll do my best to answer them.