UNCHARTED 4: A Thief’s End [The Await Is Over: King Drake sliding into our hearts]

[be back in a bit]

The Last of Us 2 gotta be next. If this generation is gonna be shorter than the last, maybe the next ND game after TLOU2 will be a new IP that launches the PS5.

 

[Fatboi1]

The Last of Us 2 gotta be next. If this generation is gonna be shorter than the last, maybe the next ND game after TLOU2 will be a new IP that launches the PS5.

If PS5 launches in say... 2019, TLOU 2 could theoretically come out in 2017 and the new IP in 2019... right before the launch of PS5. It'll be like how TLOU came out in 2013 months before PS4 launched. Then a year later they'll probably port over the new game to PS5 as a remaster and then idk.

Gonna miss drake though. That was my favorite gaming character last gen.

I hope this new nikka is cool.

He wasn't with me shootin in the gym
Edit:God damn these grafix is just insane.

 

[be back in a bit]

At least we still got an Uncharted coming. Should end in spectacular (and emotional) fashion. I mean shyt, they delayed the game 4 months to make sure they ended their 4 game run right.

 

[Nomad1]

The Last of Us 2 gotta be next. If this generation is gonna be shorter than the last, maybe the next ND game after TLOU2 will be a new IP that launches the PS5.

yea i think it will be TLOU 2, then a new IP just before the ps5 is launched.

 

[Nomad1]

At least we still got an Uncharted coming. Should end in spectacular (and emotional) fashion. I mean shyt, they delayed the game 4 months to make sure they ended their 4 game run right.

think about it, if u4 wasnt delayed we would have been playing that shyt right now

 

[Fatboi1]

think about it, if u4 wasnt delayed we would have been playing that shyt right now

Yeah it was supposed to come out this year. It would've probably been out already like this month. UC3 launched Nov 1 2011.
Now that they delayed it the expectations are probably through the roof. I bet the pressure is through the roof over there. They KNOW that people are looking forward to another classic. So far from what they showed UC4 looks exceptional on all fronts. The PSX demo alone was proof that I think they're confindent in the game. Their first reveal of the game and it's just regular core mechanics and gameplay, no big set piece moment. E3 video was a glimpse at some of the more involved set piece(shyt was really one giant level(Shootout-->Jeep Chase-->Old School Run towards screen Crash Bandicoot sequence). They've hardly shown anything on the game.

MP we'll know what's up with that in a couple of weeks.

 

[Fatboi1]

Preview: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Welcome back, Drake.
Leo Stevenson 20 November 2015

There was a lot of very cool stuff at PAX AUS this year, but for my money, Uncharted 4’s multiplayer being playable for only the second time publicly was a huge deal. It was an opportunity I was very keen to take up. So, at the very end of PAX AUS Day 2, I made my way into a tiny room and for the first time, saw with my very own eyes, Uncharted 4, running on PS4.

Let’s forget for a second that this was just the multiplayer and focus on what I was actually getting to play. Naughty Dog’s first current-gen title. Naughty Dog, who has created some of the most iconic and memorable characters and moments of the past 20 years. Naughty Dog who arguable created the best game of last-gen; The Last of Us and Naughty Dog who created the terrible third entry in the Uncharted series. My anticipation and skepticism were equally high. I was hoping that the memory of Uncharted 3 could be replaced with something superb in Uncharted 4 and from the brief time I’ve spent with multiplayer, that portion of the new title will at least be hugely successful.

Building on the excellent (and more moderately paced) multiplayer from The Last of Us, Uncharted 4’s MP is every bit as much a team affair. While MP in previous Uncharteds has had a slant, it feels much more heavily focused this time around. As usual it’s the goodies versus the baddies so my round was a handful of Drakes, a Sully and an Elena versus several Lazervics, a Harry Flynn and a random goon. Obviously in the final version players will be able to choose from a range of characters, but it’s important to note that regardless of who you choose, every character plays the same. They all have Drake’s uncanny climbing abilities, can run, jump and swing (from the brand new grapple hook) and are all deadly with whatever weapons you happened to select for your loadout.

Yep, loadouts are back and since they worked so well in previous titles, it’s unsurprising that they’re mostly unchanged. You select two main weapons, a skill, a heavy weapon and the newly introduced mystical powers. I was running a .45 hand gun, an AK-47, grenades, a grenade launcher and the El Dorado mystical. The handgun has infinite ammo and although the AK-47 had a limited amount, there was plenty to collect from the corpses of my enemies. Grenades are in short supply, but can be purchases prior to respawning from the in-game store. Each and every kill grants cash, as does collecting treasure on the map and looting bodies.


To use your heavy weapon and mystical, you’ll need to build up a chunk of cash. The heavy weapons and mysticals are a one time use, but considering they can easily turn the tide of battle in your favour they’d be unbalanced otherwise. Using El Dorado is a blast, especially near a group of enemies, as it shoots out supernatural missiles that obliterate your opponents. Importantly, shooting in Uncharted 4 feels the best of the series and has no trace of the sluggish, slow issues that have plagued the series from day one.

New to Uncharted’s multiplayer is the ability to revive team mates, something straight from The Last of Us. It’s important because it rewards you with cash and also gets your squad back to full strength much faster. Much of Uncharted 4’s multiplayer feels similar to The Last of Us’ but it’s more than a reskin. It’s faster and more exciting, but still more restrained and cerebral than either mode in Uncharted 2 and 3. Additionally, it’s an absolute treat for the eyeballs, with so much colour and depth to the environment and the character models looking better than ever before.



Multiplayer in Uncharted has never been the main event and the same will be true of A Thief’s End, but when it’s this good it just has to be played. Teamwork is more key than ever before and with gun play that actually feels fast, fluid and responsive it’s less work and more fun. The new mystcials add a strategic twist and the in-game store cleverly forces players to carefully choose whether they need more ammo, a grenade or want to go all out and cause some devastation. If you purchased The Nathan Drake Collection, you’re in for a treat when the multiplayer beta launches. Everyone else will just have to wait until next year.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End will be available for PS4 from 18 March 2016.

Preview: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End | Stevivor

 

[Fatboi1]

While Sony was understandably keen to talk up Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End during Paris Games Week, we’re going to have to wait a while longer for information on the main story campaign. For now, the focus of attention is firmly on the game’s five-on-five multiplayer mode.

Via a public showing, a behind closed doors presentation and a chance to go hands-on with an early version, we were able to get a good look at how this supplementary element will turn out.

Those expecting a grand reinvention of the Uncharted multiplayer formula (a range of team-based shooter modes, with some “search and destroy”-style derivatives) will be disappointed, but it was never really likely to happen. Instead, Naughty Dog has stuck with its familiar blueprint while bringing in a few interesting elements from the online Factions component in the Last of Us.

What this means is mechanics such as upgradeable abilities, character classes, a “downed” state and the ability to purchase weapons and related upgrades during a match with cash earned from knockouts, assists and all the things you are rewarded for in online shooters.
While each of the above changes how Uncharted 4’s multiplayer plays, it’s the purchasing and downed state that mix things up the most. The former allows your arsenal to be ever-evolving: string a few takedowns together and you can afford an upgrade to, say, your explosive weapon, reducing its cool-down period and allowing you to use it more often.

The downed state kicks in when a player is, well, downed – basically, mortally wounded a la Gears of War. While crawling around on the verge of death, they can continue to be attacked, resulting in a KO – or they can be revived by a teammate if there are any in the vicinity. It’s a simple addition, but one that shifts Uncharted 4’s multiplayer from a stop-start staccato game of firearm whack-a-mole to one where teamwork and sticking together actually matters – and helps.

Back with the purchasable upgrades, this leads us into a couple of other new elements Naughty Dog has added, rather than cribbed from another of its series. One is the ability to employ sidekicks: pay a fee (which increases each time you use that particular sidekick), place your beamed-in helper with a press of L1 and watch as they go about their business in various ways.

One sidekick, for example, is a sniper – placed strategically atop higher ground and around a blind corner, we found our hired help hitting plenty of the opposition with her shots. Not as powerful as player-controlled snipers, she was best used as an ambush unit to confuse other players, allowing you to move in and finish the job.


Photograph: PR
Another sidekick is the hunter; this unit spawns in and immediately sets out tracking down the closest enemy player. Once found, he approaches them quickly – and usually stealthily, though we did notice some poor choices on the AI’s part here – before grabbing them and leaving them open to attack from you or your teammates.

Backing up these supporting sidekicks are a bunch of new supporting magical items. These supernatural relics run the gamut of Uncharted’s history, from the first game to the present day, and all offer an impressive, useful and expensive super power to unleash during a match.

The Wrath of El Dorado is one Naughty Dog was keen to show off , taking the form of the giant golden statue from the original Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, this particular relic unleashes a bunch of angry spirits all around it, which pursue and attack any nearby enemies. Used to clear out enemy-held bottlenecks, it’s something we admittedly saw more in the promotional videos than in-game. Perhaps people were too worried about its intense magical powers? Or maybe we just weren’t sure how useful it would be in these early days encounters.


Photograph: PR
It’s not all angry attacks though, with the Cintamani Stone – Uncharted 2’s object of desire – offering a different magical approach for players. Now this one we did see employed quite a lot: once engaged, it coats an area with a blue flame, reviving downed teammates and speeding up the recovery efforts of those not instantly brought back by its powers.


Photograph: PR
None of these new additions felt overpowered or – importantly – out of place. In fact, the addition of supernatural powers is something that probably should have gone into Uncharted’s multiplayer some years ago, what with the main campaign focusing so heavily on these definitely-not-Indiana-Jones relics.

Aside from the updated and introduced elements, playing Uncharted 4’s multiplayer is an instantly familiar experience. Though it has its idiosyncrasies and neat little features to get your head around, if you’ve played a third-person shooter in the past few years you’ll be running and gunning (and climbing) with the best of them.

Navigation has the sort of looseness you do feel in the Uncharted games, with characters ducking heads and listing left and right rather than turning like human tanks, latching on to cover but breaking from it just as easily.

What has changed – for the better – is how the character you choose to control makes his or her way over obstacles. It’s not quite on a par with Mirror’s Edge parkour, but the free running at play does make for a quicker, more vital pace to proceedings. This pace is something Naughty Dog was keen to point out it aims to maintain, to the point that Uncharted 4 will run at 900p resolution in multiplayer, in order to preserve the 60 frames per second yardstick (for comparison, single player will be 1080p and run at 30 frames per second).

It’s a concession that, from some time with the game, does appear to be to the game’s benefit. That general sense of smoothness keeps things flowing, and the purring, slightly-lower-resolution engine is backed up by some smart mechanics.

Climbing – a separate element from the free running-like traversal of levels – is quick and easy, which makes sense as nobody wants to be shot in the backside while trying to scale a three metre high wall. The same goes for Uncharted 4’s new way to get around, the rope/grappling hook combo, which can be employed with a quick press of the L1 button in order to swing, Indiana Jones-like, across chasms.

The ability to emulate tree-swinging apes also brings with it new tactical opportunities, very much like those seen in an earlier trailer for Uncharted 4’s single-player. Basically, if some of your team can run distraction efforts, there are times when you’re able to utilise your rope swing to get behind the opposition.

We were able to use this as a genuine, workable tactic in a couple of the matches we played. It’s sure to be something the player base gets used to and learns to counter (or at least pay attention to), but for the time being it was effective and, honestly, good fun. It’s a simple touch, but one open to all manner of different strategic uses – flanking, escape, looking like a cool archaeologist – and does help highlight a depth to Uncharted 4’s multiplayer that might not otherwise have been expected.

That’s not to say this is a shooter that needs more brains than reflexes and effective use of explosives, but giving the player another tool to take advantage of – and the ability to engage in some thrilling death from above moments as you swing above your opponent before dropping on top of them with a melee attack – does broaden the player’s choice somewhat.

There are other elements Uncharted 4’s multiplayer has in common with its contemporaries, ones which divide opinion. Naughty Dog has confirmed the in-game purchases will be present in Uncharted 4 from day one, though lead multiplayer designer Robert Cogburn maintained this would “generally” be for cosmetic items. “We are definitely not for the mentality of gating gameplay mechanics,” he told assembled journalists, “It’s not something we at Naughty Dog want to do. [It’s] generally for cosmetic stuff.”

That “generally” does stand out, and Cogburn’s confirmation of Naughty Dog Points – Uncharted 4’s in-game virtual currency – raises the question of whether this videogame cash will be available for purchase with real money. One thing that was clarified, however, was that the Points can be used to unlock items in Uncharted 4’s multiplayer: “With that virtual currency there’ll be no gameplay items that you can’t unlock,” Cogburn said.

This would appear to be the most effort Naughty Dog has put into an Uncharted multiplayer mode to date. Beginning as a pleasant aside in Uncharted 2 before developing into a decent attraction in its own right by Uncharted 3, the push the studio is putting into Uncharted 4’s multiplayer mode is apparent for anyone to see.

Whether it will be engaging enough to keep people playing beyond a few days or weeks after Uncharted 4’s launch will be another story altogether, though. The fundamentals are solid, if unspectacular, and while there are plenty of elements we’ve not see in an Uncharted title before, none of it is actually new to competitive multiplayer.

Cautious optimism is the best approach for a proposal like this: the meat of Uncharted 4 is always going to be in its single-player campaign, but the sheer endeavour Naughty Dog is putting behind its online push makes this a part of Uncharted 4 that might end up a dark horse.

• Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is released 18 March , 2016 on PS4. A beta for its online component will run from December 4-13. Ian Dransfield attended Paris Games Week on a press trip arranged by Sony, which covered transport and accommodation costs

Uncharted 4: a hands-on first look at the five-on-five multiplayer

 

[Fatboi1]

Naughty Dog’s Community Strategist, Eric Monacelli, has said that the developer will put “everything” it has learned from the previous Unchartedgames into Uncharted 4, and although it has learned a lot from The Last of Us as well, Uncharted won’t lose its identity. In an interview with MCV, Monacelli (who moved to Infinity Ward following the interview), said:

You saw with The Last of Us: Left Behind that we took a little more atypical approach to how we told our story. But at the core of Uncharted 4, it’s going to be an Uncharted game. It’s the final chapter for Nathan Drake, so we’re going out with the best and everything we’ve learnt from past Uncharteds will be put into this one.

Revealing that Naughty Dog also drew some inspiration from indie games like Gone Home, Monacelli said that although the developer won’t change the core of Uncharted, design and game mechanic influences do “seep into how you think” about these aspects, especially if developers want to offer something “distinct.”

Working on The Last of Us has also been a great help for the Uncharted 4 team, particularly for the multiplayer component.

We definitely learned a lot from The Last of Us. Everybody at the studio is working on Uncharted 4, which is a really great feeling and the way that Naughty Dog has always worked best. You’re going to see a lot of influence from every member that touched The Last of Us that they’re bringing to Uncharted 4.

We have a really good pedigree as the leaders in story-driven narrative. We’re always going to champion that and be proud of it but, especially with Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us, we learnt so many lessons about how to make a good, fun multiplayer game.

Monacelli expressed his confidence in Uncharted 4‘s multiplayer, stating that it will surprise people and will be a unique experience in itself.

Elsewhere in the interview, Monacelli addressed reports of other IPs in development at Naughty Dog. He didn’t reveal anything but did say that the studio tends to work on one game at a time. We’re told that everyone’s working on Uncharted 4 at the moment, and following its release, the studio will be prioritizing the game’s DLC.

Beyond that, there’s been tons of ideas bandied around – everybody knows the rumour about The Last of Us 2. There could potentially be – who knows? We could go back to Jak and Daxter 4 if it seems right, or there could be something else in the future on our horizon.

We tend to work with an idea always on the board and once we have time to devote the right amount of attention to it, then we’ll tackle it.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is scheduled for release on the PlayStation 4 on March 18, 2016.

[Source: MCV]

 

[Fatboi1]

Live Stream for UC4 MP tomorrow 11:30AM PST

 

[Fatboi1]

Also, if you want beta access but don't want UC Collection, you can just borrow the disc or rent it from redbox just to download the beta client. Once you download it you don't need the disc anymore.

Though I'd say the UC Collection is like $30 in some places and for that price it's pretty good for a rerun through some old classics.

 

[Kamikaze Revy]

Also, if you want beta access but don't want UC Collection, you can just borrow the disc or rent it from redbox just to download the beta client. Once you download it you don't need the disc anymore.

Though I'd say the UC Collection is like $30 in some places and for that price it's pretty good for a rerun through some old classics.

Good looks

 

[Prince Akeem]

Also, if you want beta access but don't want UC Collection, you can just borrow the disc or rent it from redbox just to download the beta client. Once you download it you don't need the disc anymore.

Though I'd say the UC Collection is like $30 in some places and for that price it's pretty good for a rerun through some old classics.

So there is no beta code per say?

 

[Fatboi1]

So there is no beta code per say?

Nah. The disc has a link to the client on the PS4 dashboard.

 

[Prince Akeem]

Nah. The disc has a link to the client on the PS4 dashboard.