So this weekend I spent some time playing the new Uncharted 4 “Stress Test” Multiplayer weekend. While I usually don’t get into Beta’s that much, I wanted to play this one because Uncharted Multiplayer holds a special place in my little gamer heart. Uncharted 2 was the first ever multiplayer that I played, and before that I lived my happy PS3 existence off line away from the drama of things and some other stuff…but that’s another story. So here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly from this past weekend’s stress test.
The Good
Let’s start off with some good points when it came to this multiplayer experience. First of all it was only for the Team Deathmatch portion of the multiplayer, which I have no problem with because it’s the one I usually play anyway. When this portion did work, it worked perfectly and almost flawlessly. There are definitely some noteworthy improvements like not having to click L3 to constantly run. This made everything way more fast paced than any other Uncharted Multiplayer and actually made it more fun to play. I liked the new in game store that is offered throughout the course of the game where you can buy power-ups with the money that you earn while you play. This is a cool new concept and it hasn’t been done before. This was actually one of my favorite parts of the Multiplayer since it makes you try harder in order to get more money so you can buy certain power-ups depending on which loadout you use. Also, the couple of levels that you’re allowed to play in are visually beautiful. The level design is just amazing and completely up to PS4 standards, not to mention the amount of detail that went into each level is just awesome.
The Bad
I always like to start with the good, because to tell you the truth there really wasn’t a lot of it. I understand this was a stress test to see if the servers are responding correctly and see if things run smoothly and whatever else was being tested, but seriously there was a lot of bad. Let’s start with some new gameplay mechanics that were added into the multiplayer along with all of the running, jumping, and rolling. You can now latch on and swing in certain areas. This at times can be a little awkward since you can start swinging in random different directions and not end up where you wanted to or even end up off the map. This takes a lot of time to get used to and you’ll most likely die, either of your own fault or someone see’s you swinging around like an idiot and shoots you. The new addition of challenges is a nice one, if they actually worked. When you complete some challenges, you don’t always get the rewards promised with them. What’s the point of having challenges and completing them if you’re not getting the rewards that go with them? Then there’s also the problem of not knowing who I’m playing with half the time. Most of the time the server will just say players found, but you’ll never know who you’re playing with because the names don’t appear. This isn’t anything major, but I do like to know who I’m playing with. Even though I thought the level design was awesome and beautiful, the characters, with the exception of Drake himself, look nothing like the characters that I’ve grown accustomed to. Sully does not look like Sully, Elena does not look like Elena, and Marlow does not look like Marlow. These are some iconic characters from the series and it’s important that they look the same as they did in the other games. I know this is a new system and a new engine, but still having the characters look like they did in previous games is important. Let’s not forget to mention that they added Elena into the multiplayer (Yuck), but clearly forgot to add Chloe in to the multiplayer. Seriously??
The Ugly
Oh the ugly of the stress test weekend, the very very ugly of it. It’s seriously no wonder why this game was delayed yet again and I hope it’s to fix some multiplayer issues. Let’s start with the loading issues. Sometimes it takes over 5 minutes to load into a match, which is way too long and there’s no way to back out of the loading so you’re stuck on a loading screen. Sometimes you’ll be lucky to be added into the room and at other times you’ll be left with a black screen because it never even loads. This means that you constantly have to quit out of the game and then go back in and start all over from scratch hoping that this time you’ll actually get into a game, which has to be the absolute worst. The whole loading thing locks up way too much and at times it makes you want to just give up because what’s the point. Then there’s the fact that the match making constantly stalls, this you can at least get out of without having to restart the whole game, but it’s just as annoying as having to restart the game.
While I was a little disappointed that this game was delayed for another two weeks, this coming after the whole Mass Effect: Andromeda delay, I will say that I hope they use the time to fix up some of the issues concerning the multiplayer server. While most people, like myself, will jump into the single player mode first because this is supposed to be the last Uncharted and we have to see how it ends, a lot of people will jump right into the multiplayer. If this isn’t fixed by release and performs the way it did this weekend, then I can see a lot of trouble ahead. I’m going to keep a positive attitude though and anxiously await the new release date.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 