Co-operative play today

It seems these days that co-op gaming is all the rage.

It’s been around for a while, with games like Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter etc. But it’s only lately where every game seems to have a co-op play for campaign or story modes which used to be exclusively a single player experience.

When I think of the co-op of today, I think of Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox which was probably the first mainstream game which had this feature. And playing it with a mate is probably one of my most memorable gaming moments ever.

Of course, the subsequent games also had this feature and finally Halo 3 had co-op over Xbox LIVE which was one of its widely touted features.

And since Halo, most FPS games released would have some kind of co-op feature. You have games such as Army of Two and Gears of War which had the gameplay designed around co-op. The latest game to join this trend is Resident Evil 5, which is not even an FPS to begin with.

Somehow I believe developers are starting to miss the point of co-op play.

Games like Army of Two and Resident Evil 5 seem to have totally forgotten about the single player experience. What if I don’t want to play co-op? I still have to endure through all the stupid BS partner nuances and stupid AI who can’t watch my back. Why is there magically 2 levers required for every door in RE5? Why the hell does the team keep needing to splitting up in Gears of War? A good single player experience shouldn’t go at the expense of some co-op mechanics.

Halo co-op was a great experience because it was the people playing the game that made the experience, not the developers. No where at any point during the game did I have to play the game differently because I was playing with someone. My friend and I played and together we beat the game using the same rules as single player, not forced split up sections or bits where you have to press 2 buttons at once. For RE5 it was a bit weird to introduce a new character as the 2nd player/partner, because in RE games anyone you meet up with usually gets split up from you multiple times and/or ends up dead.

Of course there are games where co-op play is well done, or sorely missed when present. Call of Duty 4 for example, it wouldn’t really hurt that much to just drop a 2nd player in and let them help out, especially in Veteran mode because the game is so goddamn unforgiving anyway. Saints Row 2 is another good example because each of the 2 players experience the story their way, even in cutscenes, the player only sees their own avatar and the 2nd player is nowhere to be seen.

Of course, as with Diablo 2, the game needs to get harder in co-op mode to balance out the extra firepower you get with extra players.