The Last of Us Multiplayer Pits Survivor Against Survivor

[Steven Bogos]

The Last of Us Multiplayer Pits Survivor Against Survivor

The survival game will appropriately feature two survival-based multiplayer modes.

The Last of Us is making waves with it's unique survival based story (and a strong, non-sexualized female sidekick! Shock horror!) but its multiplayer is shaping up to also be quite interesting. The game will feature two multiplayer modes: Survivor and Supply Raid. Survivor looks to be your traditional deathmatch style MP, except players only have one life and the emphasis is on 'outlasting' your opponents rather than run-and-gun Counter-Strike-like skirmishes. Supply Raid is a co-operative mode where players share a pool of 20 lives, and must eliminate NPC factions while collecting supplies for your group.

In Supply Raid, supplies that you collect can be converted into weapon and armor upgrades for your group. As you have a very limited set of lives, the game should become a delicate balance of scavenging enough supplies to keep up with your opponents while not being so reckless that you lose too many lives. Players will have to make good use of the "marking" and "listen" system in both modes, to properly and stealthily engage their opponents. The "marking" system is a way of marking enemies so you can track them later, while the "listen" system has been compared to Batman: Arkham Asylum's detective mode.

You can see a gallery of screenshots from both modes below:
[gallery=1534]

Players will be able to fully customize their appearance, outfit and equipment in both multiplayer modes. Naughty Dog has promised an impressive selection of loadout options for players, as well as the ability to craft new weapons and tools while in-game. Exactly how, if at all, the multiplayer ties into the singleplayer story is yet to be discovered.

The Last of US comes out on June 14, exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

Source: Game Informer [http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_last_of_us/b/ps3/archive/2013/06/03/naughty-dog-breaks-down-the-last-of-us-multiplayer.aspx]

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[Casual Shinji]

Naughty Dog proved it can do a good multiplayer with Uncharted 3, but why the hell does a game about a man and a young girl surviving in a post-apocalyptic setting need a damn multiplayer? [small]Yeah I know, don't answer that.[/small]

 

[Irridium]

The Last of Us has multiplayer?

Well, just something to ignore, I guess.

 

[JokerboyJordan]

Just like the Tomb Raider multiplayer then?

More pointless costs. Nobody is going to be playing the game for the multiplayer, why not just focus on making a more engaging story?

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Wait, wut? Multiplayer? Since when? Why?

Maybe it's a concession Naughty Dog had to make in exchange for having a girl as a main character.

 

[josemlopes]

To be honest why dont see anything wrong with it having multiplayer, its the big triple A PS3 exclusive game by Naughty Dog, it can afford itself to add a multiplayer mode.

 

[mysecondlife]

Hah. An Xbox360 tag.. silly Bogos..
...
I've seen a YouTube footage. Didn't seem like anything more than just cover based shooting and brutal melee attacks I guess crafting weapons would be there as well...

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Multiplayer in my atmospheric, story driven game about 2 people fighting for their lives in a post apocalyptic setting? Sign me up!

- Nobody, ever

Of all the games to have tacked on multiplayer, this is just...

My brain.

 

[1337mokro]

In other news multiplayer continues to be tacked on to games that don't need it, have no use for it or whose buyers have no desire to play it! We now cut to the dickbag forcast with Joe. Tell us Joe how are the publishers doing?

Still no improvement Bill, it seems their bimonthly frontal lobotomies are still preventing them from using their higher brain functions. They continue to rely on focusgroup testing of 12 year olds to base their business decisions on!

 

[loudmouth]

To be fair, it looks like they have had a good go at making the multiplayer interesting. You know for a tacked on multiplayer at that.

Weather that's a good thing, a nice little aside at end of the game, or a bad thing, spoils main game, I have no idea.

 

[dragongit]

Ugh... taked on Multiplayer... seriously Naughty Dog, this kind of a game doesn't need it. It's like telling the tragic story of a mother loosing their child, then putting in a go kart mini game. Maybe not exactly but having it in there feels slaped on and pointless. No one is going to care about Miltiplayer a year from now. Thats money and time that a team could have been using to make the main plot and focus better. I don't care if you outsource the miltiplayer, outsource to fix for bugs or make the story longer/better.

 

[Steven Bogos]

Hah. An Xbox360 tag.. silly Bogos..
...
I've seen a YouTube footage. Didn't seem like anything more than just cover based shooting and brutal melee attacks I guess crafting weapons would be there as well...

My bad! I also had a PC tag in there. One can only hope...

 

[Legion]

We shouldn't really be surprised at this point, pretty much every big budget game tends to have it now, because they clearly don't understand that COD, Halo and so on don't make a lot of money from multiplayer purely by having it, but because a lot of time, effort and money went into making it work as well as possible.

Most developers don't seem to realise that it's not enough to merely include it, but that they need to maintain and promote it as well. Or else you end up like most of them where after two weeks all the games are empty.

Although that said, I am surprised at this article, as I genuinely was completely unaware that they were going to have it. I don't recall them mentioning it at all before.

Maybe it's a concession Naughty Dog had to make in exchange for having a girl as a main character.

Seriously, this kind of paranoia needs to stop, it's starting to get ridiculous.

It also shows a complete lack of understanding of how the publisher/developer relationship works. Naughty Dog did not need to demand a female main character, they argued with the publisher over having her as the prominent character on the games box art. Publishers are mostly in charge of the marketing side of things, they normally have very little do with actually making the game unless the publisher owns the developers company (Like EA with Maxis and Bioware).

 

[Tumedus]

Well, this week's Jimquisition seems apropos. Clearly the focus groups must let them know that if it has guns it must also have multiplayer.

The interesting thing is, being someone who likes achievements and thus visits related sites, I am seeing more and more people who won't buy a game with multiplayer because those achievements are invariably more hassle than they are worth. Kinda makes me wonder if they aren't actually hurting total sales the more they keep tacking on this stuff.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, just something to ignore, I guess.

Can you imagine being part of the developement team that had to work on this, knowing full well nobody's going to give a crap?

 

[Colt47]

Actually, these days Multi-player is put into games like this one as a mostly harmless add-on meant to keep people from simply buying the game, playing through the single player section, and then returning it to Gamestop for credit.

 

[kailus13]

Supply Raid sounds kind of interesting, but Survivor just sounds like an extremely slow version of Last Man Standing.

Exactly how, if at all, the multiplayer ties into the singleplayer story is yet to be discovered.

As long as it isn't the ME3 system, it doesn't matter that much.

 

[Marowit]

I could see survivor working well, and being a lot more fun, if it's on a pretty big map. Just put dots on the map showing where other survivors are, but only give vague locations like the Map in Red Dead Redemption multiplayer. but, that' might just be me.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Maybe it's a concession Naughty Dog had to make in exchange for having a girl as a main character.

Seriously, this kind of paranoia needs to stop, it's starting to get ridiculous.

It also shows a complete lack of understanding of how the publisher/developer relationship works. Naughty Dog did not need to demand a female main character, they argued with the publisher over having her as the prominent character on the games box art. Publishers are mostly in charge of the marketing side of things, they normally have very little do with actually making the game unless the publisher owns the developers company (Like EA with Maxis and Bioware).

My comment was actually meant to be sarcastic. I don't really think the female main characters thing and the inclusion of mp are related. Guess I should've made that more clear.

For all we know mp was always intended to be a big part of The Last Of Us and perhaps Naughty Dog put a lot of effort into it. They have successfully added mp to Uncharted before, so there is no reason to think they're incapable of pulling it off. That does make it doubly odd that the news about it seemingly came out of the blue.

The pessimist in me does think chances are higher Naughty Dog thinks they need to include mp because they believe it is the norm, or because focus testing says they should. Or because of publisher pressure, similar to what happened to Spec Ops: The Line. Naughty Dog is a subsidiary of Sony, so in this case the publisher does probably have a big say in development.

Actually, these days Multi-player is put into games like this one as a mostly harmless add-on meant to keep people from simply buying the game, playing through the single player section, and then returning it to Gamestop for credit.

That sounds like a needless expenditure of funds and development time for the off-chance that the mp proves successful enough to stop people from returning their game.