G-pinions

There is a simple design philosophy that has existed since the beginning of video games - adding a second player will always make the game more fun. It has been known as the Immutable Law of Cooperative Gaming and has held true for more than 25 years. The formula to design these cooperative games has stayed true since games were powerful enough to allow some sort of ultimate goal for two players to strive for. In all of these games, from the classic Bubble Bobble to the more recent Perfect Dark Zero, the game has been improved from the single player campaign almost solely because another character was added to spice things up. A person to throw jokes at while you casually go through the game. Bubble Bobble did not need wacky new play mechanics, it was just much more fun chasing after candy and blowing bubbles with another player. Sadly, I'm not sure this structure works anymore.

The Warriors is one of the most boring co-op games I have ever played. The "game" only exists as something from which jokes are created. Actually pushing buttons and moving the onscreen characters is not fun at all. It uses the same philosophy of most co-op games in existence - placing another player in the game with no changes to the actual gameplay - and expects people to find their own fun. But this doesn't work at all with The Warriors.

First, I have to talk a little about what makes The Warriors boring from a broad perspective. It is the game that preceded Bully; I should have enjoyed it, right? Bully wasn't fun because of the combat, though. It was fun because it was open-ended (did I mention you could kiss boys?), the story was interesting, and the gameplay was varied. Getting into the occasional fight was entertaining, but we're talking about extremely small doses here. The Warriors is all about the fighting and, frankly, it's not a very good combat engine. Bad combat could have been salvaged if the rest of the game was enjoyable. But The Warriors is as dark and drab as it gets. I know, a game built around teenage street gangs from the late 70s doesn't offer the most vibrant picture, but the setting of The Warriors is just a bum out. I only played the first few levels, but I only saw a dark ghetto. Talk about repetitive. The only thing I could make out of the enemies was some brief flashes of washed out colors. Every building looked just like an abandoned crack house. I couldn't see anything. It was dark and ugly.

And the characters were just as bad. Feathered hair and wanna be street toughs. Wow, not the kind of guys I can rally behind. Heck, it isn't even entertaining to make fun of them. It's like making fun of a kid with a pee stain on the front of his jeans. You make the obvious joke, everyone nods in agreement, and you can't think of anything else to say. The main character in The Warriors looks like Farrah Fawcett. Cue easy jokes and then... what?

The game just takes itself way too seriously. It's tough living in the 'hood, I get it. Why not have some fun with it? You've got this boring combat engine and a bleak setting and Rockstar just expects you to find fun. Where am I supposed to find it?

I will give some props to the fun mini games. You can rob people by grabbing them and pushing a button. From there, you have to find the vibrating point of a circle (just move the left stick until it vibrates) while the other person tries to wrestle free. This was pretty entertaining. You could also smash car windows and steal stereos. This was pretty fun. But the core of the game, and the only way to actually advance, was fighting and spray painting your lame "W" logo on walls, two decidedly unfun experiences. Scott and I just jumped through windows and beat up hobos until the game mercifully froze. We did make our own fun, as happens in any co-op game, but had extracted every ounce of it in only a couple hours with the game. That's it for fun - two hours of jumping through windows. We turned it off and starting playing Lemmings after that.

Are mindless co-op games obsolete? To some extent, I would say they are. First of all, every co-op game needs either solid gameplay or a goofy premise. Adventures of Cookies and Cream may have played only all right, but it took place in a wacky world. It was full of humor. More importantly, the game required two players. You would work together to solve puzzles. It did not just add a second player and expect you to find your own fun. The real fun in co-op games comes from actually working together with another person to pass a level. It sounds like such a simple concept but it rarely comes to fruition. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, for instance, just adds more players to the same, ten-year-old gameplay. It's fun because I can make it fun, but it is the same game when you play it alone.

Gears of War should still be amazing because it is built on solid gameplay. But I really expect more from developers. Why are we still playing mindless action titles that we wouldn't even fathom touching in single player? I love co-op games. I wish more developers would capitalize on this mostly untapped market. A bad co-op game may be more fun to play than a bad Japanese RPG, but it's still a bad game. With every next generation system connected to an online network and almost limitless power at willing developer's disposal, I expect co-op games to seriously improve in the coming years. Honestly, it can't get much worse than The Warriors.