G-pinions

For a change, I think I'll write about actually playing games this evening. Instead of the usual writing about games that aren't out yet or came out seven years ago, or arguing with Tom or wetting myself over some non-sequitur a developer made over brunch last thursday.

So. Tom and I have been playing a fair amount of co-op (cooperative, for you brain morons out there) recently, in several different games, and I've been making some observations in each about my playing, and about the whole design philosophy of playing games together. Firstly, when Tom and I play, it's usually me forging ahead on the correct path, trying my best to follow the story and objectives, with Tom lagging behind on some "alternate" (read: wrong) path. I usually run into death first though, stupidly finding myself in a den of banjo-wielding scorpions without waiting for backup, while Tom finds the secrets and mini-guns. You'd think that these conflicting styles of play would fuck us, but it actually works pretty well in the end, even if it devolves into me yelling at Tom to follow his map while he figures out a new function on a sword I didn't even know I was carrying (except in Toejam & Earl III, where's he's the faster, sexier toejam - the bastard). I'd say together we could put up a good fight in any 2-on-2 game. I guess we'll find out when we both start using Live later this summer.

Oh, yes, I finally got an X-Box today. Big damn deal. I hate Microsoft, and hate the idea of giving them my money even more - BUT, I'm not going to run a legitimate website here and not buy Halo 2. Plus, I already owned three X-Box games (Breakdown at Target for $20, Morrowind at Disc Replay for $4, and Brute Force with credit at Gamecrazy for $13), and an S-Video cable and Live subscription cards, so I figure I should probably own the system. Y'know, it just seemed to make SENSE.

So, yes, we've been playing Toejam & Earl III, and now Brute Force as well, and have previously dabbled plenty in CoNorrath (as you might well know), along with some 007:EON, Halo, Contra: Shattered Soldier, Timesplitters 2, and a couple of others. I've always said that pretty much any game is fun co-op, and I stand by that, as those first two titles reek of mediocrity taken from any other perspective. Fun is almost always relative to the amount of other people in the room. Every when we played through Prince of Persia together, I think we got a lot more out of it having another mind to think and another set of eyes to stare wondrously.

With that said, even with the best of company, there is still a very specific set of unwritten rules that co-op games must follow to be truly exceptional. A very big part of it is balance and difficulty, much moreso than a typical single-player experience. The idea is to keep both players entertained, while letting them both go at their own pace. Getting stuck at a particularly tricky or dexterously straining section of a game is fine by yourself; it's part of the experience, and should be something you walk away from with a sense of accomplishment and desire to get even further. But when such a point is reached by two people playing alongside one another, the situation often kills whatever momentum that's been building between them. The same goes for finite lives and sparsely distributed weapons/power-ups, etc. These things just inevitably make it less enjoyable for one player, and take out the element of experiment completely.

Brute Force really seems to pretty clearly define all the flaws and benefits to co-op play. While I haven't played the game one-player yet, the chaos and near-constant action lends itself nicely to cooperative play, as does the mostly ample weaponry and multiple, very unique characters. The basis for the gameplay, the controls and the engine, are very solid, if not a complete-yet-inferior rip-off of Halo. However, lackluster level design is never fun, even with two people. The enemy A.I. is surprisingly good in most places, whereas the A.I. of a CPU-controlled player we had to protect on an escort mission made for a good twenty minutes of frustration. Playing by yourself, you have only yourself to blame for not protecting someone, but in co-op, it's just really frustrating when both people trying their asses off fail, only to have to sit through the same damn cut-scene over and over while the section restarts. The weapons management system and guns also aren't explained at all; in single-player, it would just be trial-and-error until you figured it out and figured out what you were comfortable. In co-op, besides having to constantly keep up, you sometimes miss out of a gun completely because your teammate snags it first. Then when the times comes for you to save the day with it later, you look like a douche. There are just a lot of little problems like this is almost every co-op game, and make it tricky to enthrall two people for an entire game. I'm not saying I haven't been having fun, because I have, I'm just saying that fixing the smallest issues of level layout and character and A.I. balancing go a looong way towards making a co-op game great, to a much larger degree than solo games. Halo is fun because even through the levels aren't great, everything in them is rock-solid from a literal and design standpoint, so overall, fun prevails.

Phew, enough ranting. Maybe I just needed to let off some steam after being torn from having so much fun with such mediocre games.

Quickly, here is a bunch of info and screenshots on/of GTA: San Andreas straight from the Penny Arcade forums. Enjoy.

Also, this game will no doubt be viewed as the most chauvinistic game yet, by a ridiculous margin. Sexy, sexy fun, I say.

Goodnight, moon.