Let me hit you upside the face with some apocalyptic quick-fire facts. Multiplayer is called Factions, it’s broken up into two game types (Supply Raid and Survivors) and both are essentially four-on-four team deathmatches. Oh, and there’s a sort of quasi-meta game involving growing clan numbers through performances in matches that ties the whole package together. No doubt that sentence makes zero sense, but fear not, I’ll explain more later.
What you need to know is The Last Of Us’ online mode is no hastily bolted-on after thought. The biggest compliment I can pay is it seems to have captured the ideology of the single-player adventure damn well. Namely, this is an experience built around fraught survival tactics, rather than pinging off headshots in breezy Nathan Drake fashion.
Supply Raid pits two small teams against each other, with each faction having 20 lives split between its four players. The first group to wipe out all their opponents’ lives wins… well, as much as you can ‘win’ in a post-apocalyptic world plagued with crusty-headed zombies that want to each your throat.
Unlike single-player, guns sway far less when you’re aiming. In Joel and Ellie’s offline journey, weapons jiggling around wildly like they’re in a kebab house after 14 ales is a conscious design decision to ramp up tension. That wouldn’t work for competitive multiplayer, though, so lining up shots feels immediately more forgiving. Guns still buck; we’re just not in flailing horse board game territory anymore.
Both modes rock four classes – assault, sniper, support and stealth. If you want to murder folk silently with a carefully aimed arrow, go for the latter’s bow layout. The other types are fairly self-explanatory, giving you a pistol and either a machinegun, rifle or shotty. By foraging supplies from chests dotted around maps, you can also buy more advanced weaponry during rounds.
The key is to survey your surroundings carefully, staying out of open areas. I played three maps, all of which are slightly spoilery in terms of locations, so I won’t be saying anymore just yet. Using your Listening Mode on R2 (which has to recharge every few seconds) to spot enemy positions through walls is crucial. Abandon caution and go sprinting around maps firing indiscriminately and you’ll keel over more quickly than Elvis chomping down a cheeseburger on the bog.
Personally, I found the non-hurried, tense action to be a refreshing palette cleanser from COD’s constant death carousel. The charms of Supply Raid are slow-burning, but there’s a real tactical nous in silently outflanking the oppo team and using controlled pockets of aggression to execute them.
Speaking of executions… EEK GAD! Down an enemy in The Last Of Us’ multiplayer and you have the opportunity to finish them off with a brutal finisher on triangle. Examples I saw included point-blank, face-caving shots to the mug and horribly intimate melee kills. The squeamish need not apply.
Survivors mode is even more nerve-shredding, as it completely nixes respawns. Here you’ve got one life per three minute round, with the first team to win four of ‘em declared the winners. With life so precious in these game types, I found myself cowering in corners of the map for minutes at a time, too reluctant to make an overly aggressive move that could cost my team a round. If Naughty Dog wanted to recreate the gnawing unease seen in single-player (and this is a compliment), it’s succeeded big time.
But what of that survivor meta-game I mentioned earlier? Well, it’s essentially a piece of menu window-dressing designed to incentivise your actions during matches. In Factions’ main menu, you’ll see a sidebar showing you how many survivors you have. Collect more consumables (food and healing items) during matches, and your numbers of these imaginary NPCs – who only live in stats boxes – will slowly grow. The game even tells you what some of them are doing during menu breaks. Ooh, Raul Silva is foraging for berries, is he? Good for him.
Having only played for a few hours, it’s unclear whether growing survivor numbers has any tangible benefit to gameplay or whether it’s tied into how quickly you unlock the various perks available. Like Uncharted, you can spend xp unlocking clothing, guns and gestures (wiggle that ass, avatar man) as you level up. At any rate, the presence of survivors at least shows a desire by Naughty Dog to make online feel in keeping with the tone of the main story.
Multiplayer in The Last Of Us is good, then. It’s way too early to pass a definitive judgement, but Naughty Dog has certainly maintained the tense spirit of single-player, in what’s an involving, tactical mode.
