Friday, September 29, 2006
Lunch with Tom: Split this
Maybe I shouldn't have allowed Bubble Bobble to shape the way I feel about gaming. I never thought my favorite 2-player NES game would let me down, but it seems like the message it preached twenty years ago is no longer relevant. I always thought that cooperative gaming had to take place in the same room. Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and all that other competitive crap is fine online, but I always assumed that trying to play through a game with someone miles away would be boring. Cracking jokes over a microphone? Gesticulating wildly to no one? What's the point?
My feelings have definitely changed on that matter. When the X360 came out last year, Nick and I played through Perfect Dark Zero within the first week of launch. We played it split screen, just like Taito intended, and I had a blast. Technology be damned, I was perfectly content playing on half a screen with less graphical effects. 8 months later I got an X360 of my own, and a copy of Perfect Dark Zero as well. And I decided to play through the co-op mode again, this time online. Well, it was much better. Significantly better actually. So good, so tight in fact, that I really have no interest in offline co-op anymore. No interest at all. Lego Star Wars II, which mocked me by including only offline co-op, was quickly played through and shipped back to California. I'm not going to play crap like that anymore. I can't. It's a pain in the butt trying to organize a co-op match at all and it's even a bigger pain to buy extra controllers. $50 per and you expect me to get more than one? Are you nuts?
Cliffy B announced yesterday, for the thousandth time, that Gears of War would have full co-op, though the entire campaign, and it can be played over the internet. Yay! In other news, Resistance is still going to offer only offline co-op. Who cares about this? Yes, it's just a bonus nice Mr. Insomniac included, but it's completely worthless. It's like that create your own damn level mode in LocoRoco. It sounds good on paper but who is actually going to take advantage of it? And have you seen Resistance lately? It looks phenomenal. From a purely aesthetic perspective... damn! Can't wait to see what First Person Shooters are coming out next year at this time, when developers figure out how to use the PS3. So you have this gorgeous game with crazy environments and all this other next generation stuff packed in, and they expect you to play split screen? I'd rather watch Nick play than butcher this experience.
Basically, I not only expect tons of games to have co-op this generation, I want them to have online co-op. Yes, I know the Wii isn't going to have any online co-op. Nintendo is desperately trying to keep people under one roof. But Sony and MS have to take advantage of the sheer laziness of their users, of the rising gas costs and all the other outside devil pinchers trying to ruin my gaming fun, and make all their co-op games playable online. Let Star Wars II be the dirty road kill other companies use as a flagrant warning sign. It's not next generation if it's splitting the frickin' screen.
My feelings have definitely changed on that matter. When the X360 came out last year, Nick and I played through Perfect Dark Zero within the first week of launch. We played it split screen, just like Taito intended, and I had a blast. Technology be damned, I was perfectly content playing on half a screen with less graphical effects. 8 months later I got an X360 of my own, and a copy of Perfect Dark Zero as well. And I decided to play through the co-op mode again, this time online. Well, it was much better. Significantly better actually. So good, so tight in fact, that I really have no interest in offline co-op anymore. No interest at all. Lego Star Wars II, which mocked me by including only offline co-op, was quickly played through and shipped back to California. I'm not going to play crap like that anymore. I can't. It's a pain in the butt trying to organize a co-op match at all and it's even a bigger pain to buy extra controllers. $50 per and you expect me to get more than one? Are you nuts?
Cliffy B announced yesterday, for the thousandth time, that Gears of War would have full co-op, though the entire campaign, and it can be played over the internet. Yay! In other news, Resistance is still going to offer only offline co-op. Who cares about this? Yes, it's just a bonus nice Mr. Insomniac included, but it's completely worthless. It's like that create your own damn level mode in LocoRoco. It sounds good on paper but who is actually going to take advantage of it? And have you seen Resistance lately? It looks phenomenal. From a purely aesthetic perspective... damn! Can't wait to see what First Person Shooters are coming out next year at this time, when developers figure out how to use the PS3. So you have this gorgeous game with crazy environments and all this other next generation stuff packed in, and they expect you to play split screen? I'd rather watch Nick play than butcher this experience.
Basically, I not only expect tons of games to have co-op this generation, I want them to have online co-op. Yes, I know the Wii isn't going to have any online co-op. Nintendo is desperately trying to keep people under one roof. But Sony and MS have to take advantage of the sheer laziness of their users, of the rising gas costs and all the other outside devil pinchers trying to ruin my gaming fun, and make all their co-op games playable online. Let Star Wars II be the dirty road kill other companies use as a flagrant warning sign. It's not next generation if it's splitting the frickin' screen.
// posted by Tom @ 11:56 AM 
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