Some Words on Co-op Gaming

Online co-op is not a relatively new feature in modern games, but it's one that's only recently risen to prominence over the last couple of years.  Franchises that began as solely individual experiences are now getting sequels that allow you to play with a friend, or even many friends.  You can see this everywhere, from Portal 2, to Far Cry 3, to The Elder Scrolls Online.

The advent of co-op and multi-player gaming has not been without its growing pains, and developers have struggled a bit to evolve it.  For the longest time during the late 1990's and the first decade of the 2000's, most multi-player gaming was a tacked on feature, sometimes so much so that it had a different application launcher.  That slowly began to change as the decade wore on, and now multi-player has become a standard feature in a lot of franchises, sometimes becoming the -main- feature.  And, of course, multitudes of multi-player -only- titles have been and are still being released to varying success.

But let's focus on co-op for a moment if we may.  This is something that's taken a bit longer to evolve, but it's been coming into its own quite recently.  A lot of big-name franchises have been receiving co-op modes.  Sometimes they are done well.  Sometimes they are not.  Portal 2 is an example of co-op done extremely well.  It's entertaining, engaging, and it makes both players feel like they are contributing to the gameplay.  It was also a separate mode entirely from the main solo campaign.  Usually I don't prefer this, but with Portal 2 it was brilliant.  I loved the co-op characters, and the story was great.  I didn't feel slighted that it wasn't possible to co-op the main campaign.

Other games do not apply their co-op so well.  Take Hunted for example.  That co-op would have been quite good if it was actually balanced correctly.  Unfortunately, in some parts of the game, even on the easiest difficulty, it was nigh impossible to get through it on co-op.  When playing solo, you had an invincible AI character at your side to help you.  Replace that with a player, and you both end up dead very quickly.  Bad design.

When it comes to co-op, it just seems to me that it's very rarely done well.  Either the co-op is good, but separate from the main game.  Or, it's not done well but it's melded into the main campaign.  (I would prefer the main game be playable co-op.  And, unfortunately, I prefer the main game to be co-op, which results in my choices of co-op games being very, very few.

Far Cry 3's co-op is separate from the main game.  I absolutely love Far Cry 3, but I've never tried the co-op.  I don't see the point of buying the game again at full price just so I can play that one small portion of the game, especially when I got so much out of the solo campaign.  Now, if it ever goes on sale for like 50-75% off, I will consider it.  But not until then.

Borderlands 2 co-op is melded into main campaign.  Great!  Unfortunately, I also hate it.  Loot sharing should never be implemented in a game without a means of equal distribution.  That oversight alone made me hate it, and I refuse to play the game with anyone else.

And let's not forget about the elephant in the room:  The fact that developers seem utterly incapable of making connecting to a co-op game easy.  I'm utterly amazed that in today's world the need to forward ports and disable firewalls and turn off anti-virus software and install patches and tweak settings and align the stars are all still necessary in order to simply connect to a damned game.  We put men on the moon nearly 45 years ago, but we're incapable of making a simple online connection between two computers?  Half-Life 2 deathmatch.  Minecraft.  Unreal Tournament.  Magicka.  You're all guilty of this.  That's just a few.  There are multitudes more.  It's horrendous.

I have my hopes, though, that things will only get better.  Some early proof of that is now here.  Dead Space 3 is out, and the main campaign is entirely playable co-op.  I've played some of it.  You can look forward to hearing my thoughts relatively soon.