Co-op gaming

Some of my fondest memories in gaming come from playing Bubble Bobble on the SNES back when I was in fourth grade. It’s the first time I can remember playing a multiplayer game where both players could play simultaneously, and were working toward the same goal. My friend and I played this game every time we were together, for hours upon hours every time. The magic of cooperative gameplay was instilled in me from a young age, and to this day many of my most memorable gaming moments have been played with a partner working by my side.

The allures of co-op are very easy to understand. Nothing creates bonds as quickly as working toward a common objective – suffering the same setbacks yet overcoming difficult scenarios together. Two heads are indeed better than one! Two minds working out a puzzle, two guns trained on the same enemy. While trash-talking and a nice win ratio can make head-to-head multiplayer games quite a rush, fighting along side your friend produces a happier mindset without the negativity too frequently encountered with head-to-head play.

So why don’t more games have co-op? I love FPS games, and Halo 3 is one of my recent favorites due to the ability to play through the campaign with up to 4 people on a single Xbox or online. The single player campaign is solid fun, but it can’t compare to the excitement that comes from forming group strategies with your friends in the same room.

Recently I’ve noticed a shift toward Xbox Live only titles, which is very disconcerting. Take Call of Duty 4 for example: You can’t play on Xbox Live with more than one person per Xbox. Even if everyone has their own Gold account, only one person can log in at a time. To play with friends, they must each have their own TV, system, and copy of the game, which makes playing in the same room very difficult (and expensive)! Compare this to Halo 3, where not only can four Gold account holders play online on a single Xbox, but one Gold account member can have up to three guests play social matches on the same system. Further accentuating this problem is COD4’s complete lack of a campaign co-op mode, online or off. To have a squad based shooter without the ability to work as a team with a friend is a travesty to me. COD4 has one of the best single player campaigns I’ve ever played, and I can’t begin to describe what an incredible experience it would have been to incorporate another player into the squad.

Some games incorporate a co-op mode, but leave much to be desired. Rainbow Six: Vegas and GRAW2 both have co-op modes where certain individual missions are playable, but the main campaign as a whole is not.

Now, I don’t think all games should have co-op play. Bioshock, for instance, factored the isolation of the main character heavily into the story. There is no room for a second player because it would ruin the atmosphere.

An excellent example of co-op play done right is Rock Band. With both Band World Tour and Quick Play, each player can designate their own difficulty independent of the others, and it allows 4 people to play in the same room with no Live accounts. It has been hailed as one of the best party games of all time for exactly this reason.

More games need to take a cue from Halo 3. Live enabled games need to be playable by more than one person at a time, especially if everyone has a Gold account. Main campaigns should have a co-op mode where applicable. I do not like the increasing trend toward online only relations – many of us still prefer to game the old-fashioned way, with 3 of our best friends right there on the couch with us.