I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

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Blorx
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I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Blorx » Thu May 26, 2011 1:34 pm

I'm not talking single-player games, nor am I talking games that are clearly meant to be online only, but games like Bulletstorm, Monster Hunter, and now apparently Dragon's Dogma, too, are really starting to irritate me. You know, games that are clearly meant to be multiplayer outings and yet force you to play online for absolutely no reason at all.

In fact, when I bought Monster Hunter Tri, I was almost instantly irritated with the fact that you can only partake in a "true" cooperative play mode over the internet. The only local co-op was some sort of ridiculous arena combat which is fun for about 5 minutes before it wears thin.

When I bought Monster Hunter years ago for the PS2, it was the same way, except the number of people in the U.S. that had a "fat" PS2 that was hooked up to the internet had to be significantly lower, thus making it an even stupider move. $80 for a broadband adapter that may not even be compatible with your internet settings? Yeah, I can't imagine more than thousands were ever online at once.

Then there's Bulletstorm, which is all about showing off with crazy kills. I understand the want to give it online cooperative play, but when it's only a maximum of four players at once anyways, and everyone knows it's a hell of a lot more fun to go "hell yeah, did you see that?!" to someone right next to you who you KNOW for a fact could have seen it when it occurred than it is to say it to someone over a microphone who could be halfway across a map from you anyways and never have known what you were talking about, it's just a huge deal breaker for me.

Now, after watching the latest Dragon's Dogma trailer on Kotaku, I looked up whether it has co-op or not, only to realize that it does - and it's apparently online only.

I just don't see the point in going through all the trouble of making it so that you can have your co-op modes work online only to completely screw the players wanting to play locally out of multiplayer. I don't want to have to buy a whole other Xbox/PS3/Wii/whatever AND another copy of the game just because the developers are lazy/pricks/whatever.

Gaming is a social experience, it works better in person. Both cooperatively and competitively.

Anyone else irritated about games like this?

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Count Roland
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Re: I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Count Roland » Thu May 26, 2011 3:49 pm

Hell yeah I get irritated, just about the only reason I play games any more is for local multiplayer, and especially co-op since I'm really not very competitive and prefer to get a bit of a story with my gameplay.

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Re: I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Godzillah » Fri May 27, 2011 6:54 pm

I agree 100% I mean games nowadays act like no one has siblings or friends that dont own the same console or a console at all, they just assume that everyone wants to play online, I mean come on, I think its way more fun to play with a bunch a friends locally.Sure you dont get the same great modes locally, but I personally just have a better time with friends locally.

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Re: I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Ragdollmaster » Fri May 27, 2011 8:37 pm

Yeah, I love local co-op. Playing online with your friends in a party is cool and all, but PvP can get annoying really quick. Not because it's competitive- competition is fun!- but because the average online gamer is neither the brightest nor nicest person. To sum it up, they're assholes. Playing online can really get your blood pressure up. Some people don't care. I know people who have amassed 50 days+ worth of gameplay on Black Ops' multiplayer. I'm just under 20 hours, despite having owned it since December. Why? Because I despise playing with the morons that plague the multiplayer. Sometimes I'll go on and play, and it'll be fine for an hour or two- no major idiots, everyone is relatively mature, and the game is actually fun for a while. Then all of a sudden there's a host migration or something, the server shuts down, and I have to go get matched to a new one. The new server is inevitably filled with 12 year olds who think there's nothing more skillful than to sit in a far corner of the map and hold the fire button at whatever walks by. It's at this point that I have to resist throwing my controller through my TV.

"But wait!" you protest; "Black Ops had local multiplayer!" Yes, it did. You could play splitscreen on the horrible campaign that I didn't even finish in singleplayer. Or you could play splitscreen online, where the problem of idiots still exists. Or you could play splitscreen on the zombies mode, which is actually pretty good for the first five hours and then gets incredibly stale.

Local co-op- being able to team up with a close friend against hordes of aliens or terrorists- is extremely fun. I don't know if I would call it "local", though. Non-PvP co-op might be a more fitting description. Some games know how to do this; Resistance 2 had a co-op campaign that was entirely different from the singleplayer campaign, and so did Portal 2. You could play either of those locally or over the internet with a friend or stranger. Modern Warfare 2 had the spec ops game mode, which was personally my favorite aspect of the game- 25 bite-sized missions that, again, could be played locally or over the internet, and ensured hours of fun. Bad Company 2 has Onslaught mode, where a squad of players fights waves of AI, and there are similar modes in Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach, as well as Gears Of War. Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 are prime examples of the players-vs-AI gametype.

Co-op- true co-op and not just team-based competitive multiplayer- is really fun, because even playing a squad-based shooter where teamwork is promoted, like Battlefield or SOCOM, you can still go as a lone wolf, and you never truly feel united- it feels like you're competing within your squad to amass the most kills or score the most points.

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Re: I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Sandurz » Fri May 27, 2011 10:29 pm

This is why I like old games where it's almost necessary to play on LANs.

Like the original Halo. That game is fun as hell when it isn't lagging. By which I mean it only happens on a LAN.

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Re: I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Ragdollmaster » Sat May 28, 2011 5:16 pm

Sandurz wrote:This is why I like old games where it's almost necessary to play on LANs.

Like the original Halo. That game is fun as hell when it isn't lagging. By which I mean it only happens on a LAN.
In 8th grade, I had a Computer Applications class where the teacher just let us play games, so I brought in Halo CE on a flash drive, then uploaded it to the school's shared network drive, and we spent many a class period playing it on the relatively fast LAN. By the end of the year, my little exploit had grown from being a one-class thing to being a school-wide phenomenon, and according to estimates from teachers, there were roughly 200 students (out of 1000) playing it during the last week of school. Inevitably, if a kid asked "CAN WE USE THE COMPUTERS" when their teacher declared a free period, you would hear the Halo start-up music shortly thereafter.

Good times. Too bad now in my programming class, my teacher has a strict ban on FPS games ("dude that's why Columbine and Virgina Tech happened what's wrong with you"), but I can still play Minecraft and whatnot :)

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Re: I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Count Roland » Sat May 28, 2011 5:35 pm

lol school shootings because of games.

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Re: I'm really getting sick of games without local co-op

Post by Grayswandir » Sat May 28, 2011 8:40 pm

My programming teacher in high school installed Doom II on all the computers in the lab and we'd have 16 player matches during the lunch period. He'd usually kick everyone's ass...until I figured out that the application had mouse support and a "quick turn-around" button that would spin you 180 degrees.

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