Uncharted 4 Multiplayer Hands-On

I doubt there are many people who come to a game like Uncharted primarily for the multiplayer. I know I certainly don’t. And yet, looking back on Uncharted 3, multiplayer is where I spent most of my time, and where my fondest memories lie.

With Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Naughty Dog look to be trying to capture that sensation once again. To create a multiplayer mode that defies being labelled “tacked-on”; that will keep people coming back for more, even if, as is likely, it’s the singleplayer that really drew them to Uncharted 4 in the first place.

The good news is, judging from a chance to play at Paris Games Week, it looks like they’re on the right track. In a lot of ways, Uncharted 4 multiplayer feels like a combination of the best parts of Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us. Like the latter, it’s a more tactical and teamwork-focused affair than previous Uncharted multiplayer modes, but with the sense of momentum and bombast that made Uncharted 2 and 3 so great.

One of the main additions from The Last of Us is the down state. When you run out of health, you won’t die right away, but will rather enter a helpless, near-death state with limited movement and options for fighting back. The enemy needs to then finish you off - either by shooting you some more, or coming over and kicking you - but if you can get to a teammate before a timer runs out, they’ll be able to revive you.

This alone makes a big difference to how you approach the game, because it heavily incentivizes moving around at least in pairs, if not in larger groups. If you want to be a hero and run around by yourself, you’re not only dealing with extra firepower when you run into two or more enemies, but far greater survivability.

The other benefit of this system is that it allows for, and even encourages, more varied playstyles. If you want to focus on being playing a support role, focusing on revives and healing, you can do that - and your team will love you for it. At the same time, you’re not strictly locked into classes; it’s up to you how you set up your loadout, so you can pretty much do what you want with the resources at your disposal.

The other big addition from The Last of Us is the ability to earn cash during a game, and the various power ups and items you can use it to buy mid-match. You earn money for pretty much whatever you do - killing enemies, reviving allies, getting headshots, going on killstreaks, yadda yadda yadda - which you can then use to buy items like grenades and mines, power weapons, AI buddies, and Mysticals.

It’s those last two that really shake things up. Buddies come in four variants: a Sniper, who will hold position and shoot anyone who comes near; a Medic, who’ll follow you around, help you when you get downed, and speed up the cooldown timer on your grenades or other items; a Hunter, who’ll run towards the nearest enemy and put them in a hold for easy killing; and a Brute, who’s slow moving but heavily armoured and up to their eyeballs in firepower.

Mysticals, on the other hand, are single-use items based on the supernatural elements of the Uncharted games, with various effects. Wrath of El Dorado is a thrown item that will pull the golden sarcophagus from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune out of the ground, unleashing spirits that hurt any enemies nearby; the Cintimani Stone instantly revives downed allies within a few metres of your character, and can even revive you if you get taken out; and the Spirit of the Djinn turns you into a Djinn from Uncharted 3, giving you a teleport and more powerful melee attacks. There’ll also be two more Mysticals during the beta and at launch, but despite my efforts to pry, Naughty Dog are holding those close to their chest for now.

What this all adds up to is a game with a lot of options in how you approach, and a focus on teamwork that incorporates a variety of roles to cover one another’s weaknesses. Level design also plays into that in a big way, with more focus on funnelling players into fronts than being a wide-open arena. This doesn’t mean the maps are linear, and you have plenty of options for moving around and flanking the other team - especially with the rope, which is surprisingly intuitive and easy to use. It just means that there’s less of a mindless bloodbath, with more chokepoints to facilitate big team battles.

Of course, the trade-off to all this is that it makes playing with friends more or less a requirement. With all the focus on teamwork, playing the game with matchmaking randos is going to be a recipe for frustration, and I can see a lot of people getting turned off pretty quickly as a result. This was something I really hated about The Last of Us; it was a great game when my friends were available, but more often than not, we were playing on different schedules, and it just wasn’t fun or exciting with blind-packaged teammates. I’m worried that the same thing is going to happen here.

Still, Uncharted 4’s multiplayer is shaping up to be something pretty great. It’s another way of playing the game, for those who are interested, but one that doesn’t feel like it’s just been tacked on because multiplayer is The Thing To Do. There are still a lot of questions I’m waiting to see answered (will we see the return of Co-op Adventures?), and things that I have reservations about (microtransactions…), but even as someone who typically hates multiplayer modes, I’m really looking forward to playing more of Uncharted 4’s.

NZGamer.com attended Paris Games Week as a guest of PlayStation.