Extra Punctuation: Mixing Single and Multiplayer

[Jacco]

THANK YOU FOR THIS YAHTZEE!!

This has long been my problem with video games that focus on multiplayer *cough* Halo *cough*.

The first Halo was so enjoyable because it had a coherent and good story, the pacing was great, the gameplay was great, etc. Then Halo 2 came along with its crappy XBL focus and they completely revamped the single player gameplay to accommodate that. Halo 2 just FELT different and it was awful. Halo 3 and Reach were even worse. The campaign plays like a multiplayer match- you have to aim perfectly for greatest effect or you instantly run out of ammo. What happened to being able to just lob 8 grenades into a Covenant-Flood fray and watch the chaos that ensued or empty 60 rounds from your assult rifle into a Flood just to watch the blood splatter everywhere? Now in Reach you toss a grenade only at targets of opportunity because you can only carry 2 at a time and you cautiously aim for the head so that you have enough ammo to take out the next room of baddies without having to pick up a plasma pistol.

I hate multiplayer with every fiber of my being. The only fun thing about it is teaming up with a friend once in a while for co-op. Aside from that, I. Hate. It.

 

[LightningBanks]

The co-op was really the only reason why I bought F3AR, bearing in mind Ive only played about an hour of FEAR 1's singeplayer and the multiplayer free thing on pc.

And I did enjoy it alot, mainly because me and my friend had a cracking time playing.

This is what they might of been doing, tying up the games story while trying to pull in new players by offering something like co-op.

 

[James Crook]

I think that both F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin were great games, the former more so than the latter; but F.3.A.R. was just plain terrible, the disastrous third game of the series, that ultimately might kill it.
On the subject of the third-instalment-that-killed-the-series, I find it funny you mentioned Call of Juarez: The Cartel in the article, because that too is the mediocre third game of an appreciated series (the original Call of Juarez and Bound in Blood were better games with less cheesy dialogue), and it also suffers of the mixed up single player and multiplayer syndrome you were denouncing in this article.
If I remember, you said in your review of Bound in Blood that the developers at Ubisoft passed up on a great opportunity of including co-op in the game, because of the presence of the two main characters the player is actually prompted to choose in-between at the beginning of every chapter - save a few, where they were split up. In my opinion, Ubisoft could've very well added a co-op mode through a patch or some kind of DLC on the PSN Store/XBL Marketplace/Steam Store, but instead they released The Cartel, that has some three-way co-op mode, which has scoresheets at the end of every level, a leveling-up system, and some interesting backstory for each character, that generate "special missions". Sadly enough, most of this backstory is a bit dull, the cooperation with the partner requires concentration and prevents you from focusing on the story, like you mentioned in the article, and again, ruined by the cheesy dialogue.
I'm going to wait on you releasing the new Zero Punctuation video to see what your own thoughts of the game are, but from what I've seen, read and heard about the game, it only of Call of Juarez bears the name, and only very few of the plot and character elements from the previous games remained, like if the developers wanted to do more to link them into an overarching story but had to cut it short.

 

[mikev7.0]

I ....don't think anyone is pretending to portray Fear 3 was a horror game. It just felt like they promoted it as a shooter from....... Day one.

Man, I miss Hankman. Even HE'D be jealous of that one.

Hey no kidding, whatever happened to the HankMan?

BOT: It all depends on the game for me. If done well as in the case of something like Ghostbusters or Borderlands, the multiplayer elements don't have to detract from the singleplayer. It also makes the chatty stuff with your friend even more fun. It just depends on the quality of each whether I enjoy them or not. There is no all or nothing for me although I have wished that the resources to create one had instead been used to focus on the other so I understand how you feel.

Enjoy your cake!

 

[mikev7.0]

If a game needs other people to make it entertaining, it's a bad game.

So do you think that Team Fortress 2 is a bad game? I would have difficulty having fun with that one sinle player.

 

[Saelune]

This is one of those occasional times where I disagree greatly with him and think he is talking more than he knows. While I understand a game marketed as a horror game origionally, I dont think FEAR3 is supposed to be scary. The first sure, but now you are either A, a super soldier son of the scary, or the scary psycho son of the scary that was the villian from the first. Its like if you played a Resident Evil game as Wesker. Not exactly going to be a fright fest. Plus I think the co-op worked. My brother and I played through co-op and the different styles was alot of fun. Infact, its something I wish would OCCASIONALLY pop up more. The game is much different depending on who you play. (Though Fettle can play like Point Man if you stay in a body the whole time, its more fun being a support)

 

[andreas3K]

If a game needs other people to make it entertaining, it's a bad game.

So do you think that Team Fortress 2 is a bad game? I would have difficulty having fun with that one sinle player.

Yeah, I think it sucks, but that's a matter of personal preference, nevermind that.

I've thought about this a bit more and I sort of disagree with what I said earlier. When you're having fun in multiplayer, it's probably the game you're enjoying more than the company, and you might find it hard to enjoy a bad game even if you play with friends. It just seems a bit weird and unpredictable to have part of the experience be controlled by some random person.

(I wrote this comment half-asleep, I hope it makes sense.)

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

I ....don't think anyone is pretending to portray Fear 3 was a horror game. It just felt like they promoted it as a shooter from....... Day one.

Man, I miss Hankman. Even HE'D be jealous of that one.

Hey no kidding, whatever happened to the HankMan?

He's gone to a better place. A place where the "Pun connoisseurs" need not fear the judgement of the Banhammer.

 

[Strazdas]

i hate multiplayer. i only play singleplayer in games unless the game is specifically multiplayer (like world of tanks). i hate co-op. im a loner. i want to be able to hide behind a bush for half hour aiming for ennemy, not try to be the bullet eating fridge so my idiot teammate would survive like in deadly dozen game.
singleplayer and multiplayer should be separate. there should be no discussion about it. coop belongs to multiplayer, give me ability to play alone.

 

[mogamer]

The main reasons so many games have forced multi-player now is because developers are getting too lazy to expand the single player part to a decent length and publishers want to make money off of used games and having "pay to play" multi-player is one way to do this. Five years from now nearly every game will have short single player and you will have to play multi-player to get your money's worth. And of course the publisher will make sure that used game buyers will have to pay a fee to play multi-player.

 

[mikev7.0]

If a game needs other people to make it entertaining, it's a bad game.

So do you think that Team Fortress 2 is a bad game? I would have difficulty having fun with that one sinle player.

Yeah, I think it sucks, but that's a matter of personal preference, nevermind that.

I've thought about this a bit more and I sort of disagree with what I said earlier. When you're having fun in multiplayer, it's probably the game you're enjoying more than the company, and you might find it hard to enjoy a bad game even if you play with friends. It just seems a bit weird and unpredictable to have part of the experience be controlled by some random person.

(I wrote this comment half-asleep, I hope it makes sense.)

With respect to what you said, for myself it's both. Just this last weekend I was playing Duke Nuke Em' Forever and ended up in a party of old school gamers who were freinds and about four of us that weren't associated. It was a blast. Partly because of the game, partly because of the company.

When KGB and I are playing Borderlands that's definitely a lean towards enjoying the company. Then again KGB and I have been friends since we were 12 years old. So it's a different situation.

With fighting games it's totally different. I'm mostly just enjoying my character and the game since there usually isn't someone on a headset, most folks online would rather not speak while they play for some reason I can't figure out. When they do speak though it's golden sometimes. To quote one of my old friends from Capcom VS. SNK 2 EO "Daaayy-um, it ain't like there's 50k riding on this yo!"

I guess for some of us, we like the weird and undpredictable. For myself I think it's just because I like gaming with others much more than I like gaming alone. Then again I grew up with games that you couldn't play alone so I'm sure that colors my opinion too.

 

[mikev7.0]

I ....don't think anyone is pretending to portray Fear 3 was a horror game. It just felt like they promoted it as a shooter from....... Day one.

Man, I miss Hankman. Even HE'D be jealous of that one.

Hey no kidding, whatever happened to the HankMan?

He's gone to a better place. A place where the "Pun connoisseurs" need not fear the judgement of the Banhammer.

Oh my god no way! They banned HankMan for making puns?? Okay that's a wee bit south of foul even for here where the Banhammer seems to roam pretty much free and activates by sheer whim at times. I mean I'd never heard him "say" an unkind word to anyone....

That's just literally sad.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

I don't think the problem is so much mixing single and multiplayer, its doing it in a hamfisted manner where you just sort of shove co-op stuff into your single player game.

Take Demon's Souls, the messaging system, the bloodstains, the white phantoms all add to feel of the game. The threat of having a black phantom invade while you're playing in body form. Teaming up with someone as a blue phantom to get some revenge on a boss that pissed you off. It all works very well, and adds to the atmosphere of the game rather than ruin it.

This. While forcing players to play co-op in order to get the best out of a game is silly, it doesn't mean developers can't use other players to add to an experience where it fits in. In fact I think that there's a lot of interesting uses the internet offers that are only beginning to be explored by games like Demon Souls.

 

[oathblade]

FEAR has always been a bad 'horror' game. It startled you to try and keep the tension up in the first one and that worked ok, so they keep stumbling on like that's some sort of amazing device. F.Three.R.E.is just more of the same but since they don't know what horror is they make design choices that make it less workable. That said it will be an interesting experiment in seeing how people deal with it.

Warcraft is an interesting axample of the story getting in the way of the game and vice versa. They want it to be more of an epic single player experience but all they do is botch the multiplayer.

 

[andreas3K]

If a game needs other people to make it entertaining, it's a bad game.

So do you think that Team Fortress 2 is a bad game? I would have difficulty having fun with that one sinle player.

Yeah, I think it sucks, but that's a matter of personal preference, nevermind that.

I've thought about this a bit more and I sort of disagree with what I said earlier. When you're having fun in multiplayer, it's probably the game you're enjoying more than the company, and you might find it hard to enjoy a bad game even if you play with friends. It just seems a bit weird and unpredictable to have part of the experience be controlled by some random person.

(I wrote this comment half-asleep, I hope it makes sense.)

With respect to what you said, for myself it's both. Just this last weekend I was playing Duke Nuke Em' Forever and ended up in a party of old school gamers who were freinds and about four of us that weren't associated. It was a blast. Partly because of the game, partly because of the company.

When KGB and I are playing Borderlands that's definitely a lean towards enjoying the company. Then again KGB and I have been friends since we were 12 years old. So it's a different situation.

With fighting games it's totally different. I'm mostly just enjoying my character and the game since there usually isn't someone on a headset, most folks online would rather not speak while they play for some reason I can't figure out. When they do speak though it's golden sometimes. To quote one of my old friends from Capcom VS. SNK 2 EO "Daaayy-um, it ain't like there's 50k riding on this yo!"

I guess for some of us, we like the weird and undpredictable. For myself I think it's just because I like gaming with others much more than I like gaming alone. Then again I grew up with games that you couldn't play alone so I'm sure that colors my opinion too.

Both are definitely involved.

What I meant was that the game provides the playground and the tools for the players to have a good time, and if it does that well and manages to create a solid platform for an enjoyable experience, it's a good game. Good company is always fun, but that doesn't have much to do with the game itself.

I'd say human unpredictability is one of the things that make life interesting, but can also ruin your fun if you end up playing with an asshole. The game is, or at least it should be, designed to give you the best experience possible, but since other players are not part of the game, they're not there to serve you, they only care about themselves. Your friends may care about you, but if you play with strangers, it's up to game to motivate them and you to play together and to not shit on eachother's fun.

At this point I have to disagree entirely with my original statement and say that multiplayer games can be as good as any others. If a game needs more than one player to be good, that's fine. Single player games need an AI, and all games I know of need at least one player. I just prefer to play by myself.

 

[awdrifter]

Some co-op games can be fun. I really liked L4D2 and RE5 co-op. I probably wouldn't have played the higher difficulty in RE5 if not for the co-op. Sure not every game should be co-op, but for shooters it's not a bad design.

 

[Swifteye]

I don't think the problem is so much mixing single and multiplayer, its doing it in a hamfisted manner where you just sort of shove co-op stuff into your single player game.

Take Demon's Souls, the messaging system, the bloodstains, the white phantoms all add to feel of the game. The threat of having a black phantom invade while you're playing in body form. Teaming up with someone as a blue phantom to get some revenge on a boss that pissed you off. It all works very well, and adds to the atmosphere of the game rather than ruin it.

He played demon soul's and really didn't consider that function useful at all.

 

[Calico93]

I think Brink was proof that mixing multi and single player doesn't work
I mean I loved the game for its movement system and art style alone, its just, I wish there was more from it.
I wish it had a stand alone campaign that could be played from either side ( resistance or police force ) and then a multiplayer that had the usual affair of team deathmatch and whatnot, but also had similiar objective based game types from the single player.
Plus the AI was shockingly bad.

 

[TheMadPunter]

I agree with Yahtzee on this issue. Trying to shoehorn multiplayer in where it doesn't belong is a recipe for disaster. It's perfectly fine to have both single and multiplayer modes, but when multiplayer functionality begins to constrain plot and atmosphere, or when going solo prevents you from seeing story-based content, it's time to rethink things.

Also, good use of "chucklefuck".

 

[Mike Fang]

I think co-op definitely can't work with horror, but for other games, it doesn't have to ruin a plot-driven game. It's all just a matter of you and your partner having an interest in following the story. If one of you is just trying to blitz through the game as fast as possible, teabagging enemy corpses and doing the squat-thrust dance on an NPC's head while they're trying to tell you about your next objective, that's going to break the immersion.