Bringing The Best Of Naughty Dog To Uncharted 4’s Multiplayer

Just as the last decade has seen Naughty Dog honing their art of storytelling through the Uncharted series and The Last of Us, they have also spent that time learning how to create a compelling multiplayer experience. They’ve never rested on their laurels, continually looking to try new things and create a different multiplayer experience.

As a result, all three of their previous attempts have turned out rather different from one another. Uncharted 2 was a rather minimalistic competitive game, while Uncharted 3 furnished it with a more in-depth loadout and upgrade system, alongside mid-game power plays and more varied game modes. The Last of Us dialled the run and gun side of the gameplay back towards a more cautious and considered affair, in keeping with the tone of the main game, but didn’t lack its own innovations with the mid-match store to purchase various items and abilities.

In some ways, Uncharted 4 is a greatest hits of all that went before – and it’s fitting, with Lead MP Designer Robert Cogburn saying this is “most likely going to be the studio’s last Uncharted game.” There’s the familiar blend of run & gun gameplay and cover-based shooting from the previous Uncharted games, but they come with the tighter controls of the DualShock 4 and improved, more fluid animation systems. The multiplayer game steps down to 900p in order to allow for the lower latency and improved inputs of running at 60 frames per second, rather than the 1080p30 of the single player.

Your traversal options are greatly increased by the grappling hook points that are dotted around certain parts of the map. It takes some getting used to and a small amount of knowledge of the map, but it’s not too long before you realise that you need just have faith to leap out into the abyss, only to sling your grappling hook and swing yourself across to the other side. It can even let you swing out and round to come at an enemy from the side, or be chained straight into a brutal leaping melee move.

However, you can quite clearly see some of The Last of Us’ gameplay within the mixture. One major element being brought across is that you can be revived by a teammate when you’re downed, rather than simply being dead. It can quickly change the flow of a battle if you’re able to restore your side of the gunfight to full strength, rather than have them wait and respawn well away from the action. Of course, there are the risks associated with trying to get your friend back up with your enemies rushing toward you.

TLOU’s mid-game store also crops up, but rather than letting you buy nail bombs and the like, it acts as a gateway to Uncharted 4’s more unusual new additions, with Mysticals and Sidekicks. Those wanting a return to the simplicity and purity of Uncharted 2’s gameplay will be left wanting, it seems, but these will certainly inject a little more variety and even some of the increased pace that we’re seeing in major online games.

Sidekicks are a clever introduction, letting you call in an AI buddy to support you and your team. The Sniper is extremely effective at locking down a particular avenue with covering fire from a position of your choosing – perhaps too effective – while the Saviour will come in and revive you if you’re down, the Hunter chases after and grabs enemies from behind, and the Brute brings a minigun to bear with potentially devastating effect, though with a cost to suit.

Certainly much more unusual are the Mysticals, based off the several supernatural MacGuffins that we’ve seen over the course of the series. The Wrath of El Dorado summons the sarcophagus from the original game to spew out spectres to track and damage the other team, while the Spirit of the Djinn from Uncharted 3 shrouds you in flames and lets you burst teleport to close the gap, as well as hit and kill in two hits rather than three, at the expense of being able to take cover. Uncharted 2’s Cintamani stone returns as an area of effect healing tool, to let you stand teammates up in a second and even trigger your own revive, if it was active before you went down.

What’s interesting is that once purchased from the store menu and activated, these abilities continue on a timer after you respawn. Meaning that even if you die, you still get some time to try and get the full worth out of their effects. Sidekicks will also stick around and give you their support until such a time as they’ve taken too much damage, rather than being on a timer. Getting all of these abilities and AI characters to gel and feel balanced will be quite tricky to manage.

One thing that will potentially help is a new design philosophy to the eight new maps planned for the game, that tries to take a step away from the old arena-like layouts and aim for something the pushes you to work as a team and establishes clear lines of combat. That will certainly come to the fore when objective game modes are being played, but it can also be seen in the standard Team Deathmatch, where you really do want to stick together with your teammates and take advantage of being able to revive and combine fire, rather than go it alone.

With a beta test on the way at the start of December, it will be fascinating to see if they have managed to pull all this together. However, in looking to combine the best parts of Uncharted and The Last of Us, and sprinkling them with some intriguing new ideas, I’m optimistic that this could be Naughty Dog’s best multiplayer yet.