Are people oblivious to the fact that we exist?

[RadarScope1]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesnt care for online gaming. I much prefer a good single player experience. If I'm gonna go multiplayer I'll get some friends over for some beers and few rounds of SF. Much better than playing some faceless person on the net

I agree. I dabbled with online on Xbox Live (the old one) with stuff like Burnout and PGR, and also on 360 with Gears of War (which was awesome when doing Insane). But other than that I have experienced cheating and quitting in games constantly. American teens constantly hurling abuse or playing music down the headsets etc. I think online would be great with stuff like Mario Kart though I have not tried it as Wii I hear you have to mess about with codes. Nothing beats split screen with mates and banter though.

And yeah, Call of Duty and the like I am not a fan of. I don't like these games (I experienced this with Gears) whereby it is the only game people play, you rarely have a fun game online, people take it too seriously or are experts and take you out instantly. That puts me off a game. That sounds a bit elitist of me, sort of in the reverse way, I don't think I'm casual though, but I think you lads understand.

The focus on games should and always has been on the solo experience.

Totally agree. I thought i was going to get into Battlefield: BC2, but I just didn't stick with it. I'd rather play games I can finish.

[Gamerforlife]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesnt care for online gaming. I much prefer a good single player experience. If I'm gonna go multiplayer I'll get some friends over for some beers and few rounds of SF. Much better than playing some faceless person on the net

Few things I don't like with multi-player:

1. It's pointless. You kill some guys, start up another match, kill some more guys, start another match, kill some guys. Even if you're playing something like the original Halo with some friends in a living room, it still gets old quick for me. With a single player game, I can look forward to cool bosses, interesting new stages, some nice story elements. I feel like I gain something from the experience. I had a group I used to play Halo 1 with. It just go so boring after awhile, as it was basically just the same damn thing every time with got together. Mutli-player gets boring quickly for me.

Now, I had a friend come over once to watch me play Resident Evil 4. He was amazed by some of the bosses and cool moments. He actually made me like the game more than I already was. His enthusiasm for everything in the game rubbed off on me as I was playing it. Then we started taking turns. I'd die, he take over, he died, I'd take over. We kept playing that night until we beat it and we were just having a great time experiencing all the cool moments in the game, like that one part where you have to go through a gauntlet of ganados and Mike shows up in the combat helicopter to back you up. A cool moment made even cooler because I had a friend there to experience it with me. Multi-player death matches are nothing compared to the experiences a good single player game can provide. And my story just proves, that a single player game can entertain you and one or more friends. No multi-player required.

2. I like single player games because I can have accomplishments that no one can take away from me. If I S rank a few stages of a Devil May Cry game on Dante Must Die difficulty(not that I ever have LOL), that's a great achievement that no one can take away from me. Now you look at multi-player, you kick some ass, get a high rank, then some better players come along and kick your ass. Now your rank goes down

And I hate leaderboards for the same reason. "Wow, you're number 1 on the leaderboards, go you!!!" One day later after some more people put up scores. "Wow, you're down to like level 30 now, you suck"

The only kind of multi-player I can get into is co-op stuff. Admittedly, going through a beat'em up or Gauntlet style game with a friend or two can be lots of fun for me. And 2-d fighters can be fun to play against others, mostly because of how insanely over the top and cool combat can be in games like X-Men vs Street Fighter. It helps that I'm a sucker for pretty much anything 2-d like a lot of people here. However, I still prefer the enjoyment of a good single player game where I can enjoy a good story and take pride in whatever individual accomplishments I attain within the game and I love it too when I can show someone some awesome moments in a game like Shadow of the Colossus that are much more memorable than watching some nobodies get taken out with a plasma sword in a Halo game

[Razzmatazz]

I agree, multiplayer just doesn't satisfy like a single player game can. However, an underappreciated part of games: Co-op, I find to be great fun with a mate. Games such as Timesplitters, Mario Kart and Gears of War are much more fun with a friend alongside you, and like Gamerforlife said, you get to experience the joys of bosses and twists/turns with a friend. I had that exact same experience with Resident Evil 4, I imported it from the States and a friend watched me play through. Ahhh, I'm so glad Resident Evil 5 had co-op now!

[Gamerforlife]

I agree, multiplayer just doesn't satisfy like a single player game can. However, an underappreciated part of games: Co-op, I find to be great fun with a mate. Games such as Timesplitters, Mario Kart and Gears of War are much more fun with a friend alongside you, and like Gamerforlife said, you get to experience the joys of bosses and twists/turns with a friend. I had that exact same experience with Resident Evil 4, I imported it from the States and a friend watched me play through. Ahhh, I'm so glad Resident Evil 5 had co-op now!

Well I agree with you that co-op is pretty cool

I don't know about RE 5's co-op though. I was so used to RE games being solo, that I wasn't keen on the co-op in RE 5. Part of the fun of watching eachother play when me and my buddy were tackling RE 4 was that sense of dread the game instilled in you because you didn't know what was going to happen next but you knew that whatever it was you were facing it alone. It's kind of fun seeing a friend freak out when he gets ambushed by some enemies or suddenly finds himself fighting a huge, scaring looking boss with no one to back him up. I remember how much fun my buddy had constantly telling me, "dude, you are so gonna die" and I'd be like, "Shut up! Trying to concentrate!"

It bothered me too that even if you played RE 5 solo, you were still forced to play through with another character. One whose AI was lacking at times(AI Sheva is useless when fighting the big cave troll thing at the end of that rail shooter level). I might have liked it if the game had a SEPERATE co-op campaign. That would have made everyone happy. I've seen other games do that.

Seeing a series known for its single player get forced into co-op was just odd to me. I felt the same way when I realized that a bunch of cool new weapons in the re-make of Final Fantasty Tactics for the PSP could only be acquired in the mew multi-player mode. I was like, "I don't buy strategy rpgs for multi-player, especially when its one that was built as a solo game like FF Tactics originally was."

I personallly don't like multi-player getting shoehorned into my single player games, but that's just me

[Rocketman]

It bothered me too that even if you played RE 5 solo, you were still forced to play through with another character. One whose AI was lacking at times(AI Sheva is useless when fighting the big cave troll thing at the end of that rail shooter level). I might have liked it if the game had a SEPERATE co-op campaign.

Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of AI Sheva either. When I first started playing I thought it would be OK, but then I got up to the guy who gives you your first weapon and he was like "I was told there was two of you." and it told me to press right trigger to "locate partner" I knew it wasn't going to be as good as RE4 simply because of that.

Still, Co-op was pretty fun. But like you said, I kind of like the old "level by level, life by life" way of playing things. There's more fun when the challenge is seeing if you can complete a chapter without dying before your friend. Or when you get to a really hard boss or stage in a game and you're both trying over and over again to beat that really hard boss in a game... Ah, good times.

[yomomma1]

Wow.

People in this thread must hate tetris, or any game ever.

Because you do the same thing, over and over and over.

[Razzmatazz]

Wow.

People in this thread must hate tetris, or any game ever.

Because you do the same thing, over and over and over.

Yeah Tetris sucked, I was always a Columns kinda guy.

[Ack]

1. It's pointless. You kill some guys, start up another match, kill some more guys, start another match, kill some guys. Even if you're playing something like the original Halo with some friends in a living room, it still gets old quick for me. With a single player game, I can look forward to cool bosses, interesting new stages, some nice story elements. I feel like I gain something from the experience. I had a group I used to play Halo 1 with. It just go so boring after awhile, as it was basically just the same damn thing every time with got together. Mutli-player gets boring quickly for me.

Now, I had a friend come over once to watch me play Resident Evil 4. He was amazed by some of the bosses and cool moments. He actually made me like the game more than I already was. His enthusiasm for everything in the game rubbed off on me as I was playing it. Then we started taking turns. I'd die, he take over, he died, I'd take over. We kept playing that night until we beat it and we were just having a great time experiencing all the cool moments in the game, like that one part where you have to go through a gauntlet of ganados and Mike shows up in the combat helicopter to back you up. A cool moment made even cooler because I had a friend there to experience it with me. Multi-player death matches are nothing compared to the experiences a good single player game can provide. And my story just proves, that a single player game can entertain you and one or more friends. No multi-player required.

2. I like single player games because I can have accomplishments that no one can take away from me. If I S rank a few stages of a Devil May Cry game on Dante Must Die difficulty(not that I ever have LOL), that's a great achievement that no one can take away from me. Now you look at multi-player, you kick some ass, get a high rank, then some better players come along and kick your ass. Now your rank goes down

And I hate leaderboards for the same reason. "Wow, you're number 1 on the leaderboards, go you!!!" One day later after some more people put up scores. "Wow, you're down to like level 30 now, you suck"

The only kind of multi-player I can get into is co-op stuff. Admittedly, going through a beat'em up or Gauntlet style game with a friend or two can be lots of fun for me. And 2-d fighters can be fun to play against others, mostly because of how insanely over the top and cool combat can be in games like X-Men vs Street Fighter. It helps that I'm a sucker for pretty much anything 2-d like a lot of people here. However, I still prefer the enjoyment of a good single player game where I can enjoy a good story and take pride in whatever individual accomplishments I attain within the game and I love it too when I can show someone some awesome moments in a game like Shadow of the Colossus that are much more memorable than watching some nobodies get taken out with a plasma sword in a Halo game

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on a few of these points, Gamerforlife. First off, both multiplayer and single player modes offer the same thing over and over again: in multiplayer you kill a guy, while in single player you kill a guy. But jump in a decent multiplayer match and enjoy a round, and then play the map again and you'll see differences. Human opponents will try different tactics. AI will do the same thing over and over again. Play through a single player game more than once, and you'll see the same enemies in the same places do the same things over and over again.

I absolutely agree with you that leaderboards are annoying because I dislike being reminded of how often I die in a game...but then again, I consider it the price one has to pay to try new things, which I will do in multiplayer. I feel I can experiment with the game more in multiplayer, whereas I'm supposed to play it a specific way to get through a single player game.

I also dislike ranks which are based entirely on everyone's score. I feel unlockables work in multiplayer quite well, but I don't think they should offer a drastic advantage: case in point, the dog tag knife in Battlefield 2142. Get 75 kills with the knife, and the appearance changed. Compare it to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where unlocking a few guns gave the player a large advantage over people just getting into the game. With a little skill the base gun was quite good, but players just coming in were at a disadvantage. This bothered me, so when I played I spent a lot of time with the base M-16. Made it more interesting. And when I maxed it out, I tried other weapons I had unlocked.

But to say that multiplayer doesn't offer the experiences that single player does...I just can not agree. I'll give you a few stories that happened entirely because of multiplayer:

Battlefield - Fastbilly and I stole a gasoline tanker, drove up a mountain and off a cliff, and rammed a helicopter piloted by a friend of ours in mid air, saving the rest of our team from being pinned down by said chopper.

Warlords: Battlecry III - A friend got bored and built an entire army of nothing but leprechauns. Listening to them sing about their pots of gold as they rushed the defenses of everyone else's base. I still have nightmares.

Asheron's Call - I created a character dressed like an enemy race in the game and declared myself a superhero. People remembered me three years after I quit the game, and there's now a statue of that enemy in that town.

Battlefield - In the map Carenten, we would steal the regular cars and engage in roller derbies in the middle of a large field. We would then attempt to ram tanks.

Battlefield - Fastbilly got really good at flying the planes upside down and knocking people's heads off with the tail.

Call of Duty - We discovered you could melee people with binoculars. The only time I was ever killed by binocs was to Fastbilly, who I beat down with a smoke grenade at the same time.

Guild Wars - We managed to synch up characters dancing about three months before the auto-syncing emotes were put in the game.

Battlefield 2142 - A squad of friends and I held a tower from a 64-man invasion while we waited for the rest of our team to start jacking points farther down the field.

World of Warcraft - A friend and I started a running battle against the Alliance in one area that lasted three days.

Guild Wars - Fastbilly tanked the economy.

I have lots more stories of multiplayer experiences with my friends(or just on my own in servers). I find the best way to enjoy multiplayer games is to play with friends of course, but I also find coming up with unique ways to play games extends the life far beyond what I can do with a single player game. Just be creative with your gameplay and understand that you'll likely die and get cursed out a bit...but even that is entertaining.

Also...are you complaining about repetitive gameplay? But...but we like Dynasty Warriors...

[Pichu]

Guys!

Did anyone see this new article:

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/ ... games.aspx

I think it is relevant to the last few posts.

[MrPopo]

I also dislike ranks which are based entirely on everyone's score. I feel unlockables work in multiplayer quite well, but I don't think they should offer a drastic advantage: case in point, the dog tag knife in Battlefield 2142. Get 75 kills with the knife, and the appearance changed. Compare it to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where unlocking a few guns gave the player a large advantage over people just getting into the game. With a little skill the base gun was quite good, but players just coming in were at a disadvantage. This bothered me, so when I played I spent a lot of time with the base M-16. Made it more interesting. And when I maxed it out, I tried other weapons I had unlocked.

I think Team Fortress 2 has really nailed multiplayer unlocks. First off, they're all intended to be sidegrades that change the way you play your class. A few of them are straight upgrades, but even those ones aren't overpoweringly better, they're just better enough that there's no reason to use the original (a few of the medic unlocks fall under this category). The second nice thing is they're unlocked in one of two ways. The first way is by getting a certain number of achievements (which also gives Valve points for making achievements relevant). The achievements break down to a few easy ones, a few medium ones, a few grindy ones, and a few ones that you have to get lucky to be in the situation or just get a buddy to help you do it on a private server. To give an idea, the day the Engineer update hit I was able to get all 15 achievements I needed to get all three engineer unlocks. The other way is the random drop + crafting system. The game randomly gives you items as you play, and there's a crafting system you can use to get specific items that refuse to drop (and that you're having trouble getting the achievements for).

These two things together means that the unlocks and variety and tactical choices but you can still do well even if you don't have any of them (and indeed, many people don't even use unlocks depending on the class and their playstyle).