PixlBit

 

With the recent patch 1.03 being released for this game, including a new multiplayer mode, I thought I'd give my two cents on something that I didn't cover in my review a couple months ago.

When released, the multiplayer portion of The Last of Us had two game modes: Supply Raid and Survivors. Supply Raid is a basic Team Deathmatch game with wave respawning, though this is spiced up with the supplies aspect that serves as the core scoring function of the game. (More on this later.) Survivors is a round-based, no-respawn version of this.

As these modes are both centered on killing the other team, it would get old fairly quickly. However, the aforementioned supplies goal adds tension to the matches. In order to rank and track your progress in the game, you choose which of the two factions in the single-player to belong to: Hunters or Fireflies. Within this faction, you have your group of survivors (clan), which grows not so much with how many matches you win, but with how many supplies you gather during them.

How do you get supplies? Simplest is through killing opponents and gathering the supplies they drop. But you can also complete actions that help your team, liking spotting enemies, healing your teammates and crafting items whenever you can.

Every match has a supply goal you have to meet in order to grow or maintain your clan. When you don't meet that goal, clan members become sick or injured. This means that any future supplies you receive are used to get those members up to healthy. Anything past that increases your clan size.

This is what has brought me back so often to play The Last of Us. This ephemeral and ultimately pointless metric is so engaging and something far more interesting than K/D ratio. There have been so many times where a round was close to ending and, when glancing down at my inadequate supplies, I suddenly grew worried and rushed forward to grab supplies and hope to craft as much as I could.

Now, with the introduction of Interrogation mode, multiplayer has grown even more interesting. Aside from just surviving on the maps, you have a goal. Every team must protect a safe or lockbox from their opponents. How does the opposing team get to the lockbox? By performing interrogations on enemies. Interrogations are fairly lengthy animations that can be interrupted, most likely with getting injured or killed.

5 interrogations reveals the lockbox, which then must be picked. Again, this leaves time for the players to be interrupted.

I played a couple games the night the patch was released and was astounded by the change of pace and tactics in the game. I think I'll be playing this a lot more over the coming days.

Unfortunately, I was also trying to accomplish a mission, which is a goal that can affect your clan's population. I did not accomplish the minimum necessary and my clan was wiped out. Oh well. Now I can start another clan and focus on Interrogation mode as I try to increase the population! Wish me luck!