Alright, so a little confession out of the gate: I have only been gaming online for around 3 years now. That's right, a long time gamer, but until fairly recently I had not seen the big deal with anything online...granted that came from being rather anti-social for a greater period of my life, but still. I found I loved games, but the thought of having to play with the general public sent chills up my spine...I have worked in retail for over 14 years now, serving the general public is bad enough, but kind of inviting them into my home and private life even via internet connection is frightening.
Anyway, my stance altered a bit when I became friends with someone from a new job a few years back. We became pretty damn good friends and suddenly I found myself being urged to buy an Xbox Live membership to play stuff online with him. I was still hesitant, but Resident Evil 5 hit around this time and suddenly Microsoft found themselves with some more of my money on a yearly basis from then on out.
Now, when you actually have someone worth playing stuff online with it becomes quickly apparent that great co-op titles are insanely difficult to find, and when you do find something you hang on to it and play the life out of it...unless it's crap and therefore you either burn through it quick and pretend it never happened, or you trade it in quickly before the value goes down...okay, usually both.
With so few great titles we could play, when I heard about Hunted: The Demon's Forge I payed attention. I mean here was a game being created from the ground up with co-op in mind, hell as an actual play mechanic even! I am a sucker for swords and medieval era things so this had me in another way too. I couldn't wait to hack and slash with my buddy through this game...I even pre-ordered two copies!
Then, it arrived on store shelves...
Okay, so I brought both copies home and decided that just in case it sucked I would only open one copy, try it a bit, and then either return them both or give the other copy to my friend. I actually found it pretty decent, so that night we jumped online and began our first run through of the game. We always check the achievements and see if we like the game just how many play throughs may be needed to get certain achievements, and then usually look very forward to replaying the game...and with the promise of a 'game +' mode that unlocks cheats after the first play through we actually got a bit excited to have another game worth replaying. I mean heck, Res 5 was a blast when you unlocked stuff after the first play through!
So, the game isn't perfect, it has some glitches, frame rate issues, the graphics are between okay and great but never the same twice...I could go on about all the little issues that add up, but reality is Hunted is a rather decent game, far from perfect, but as long as you are co-oping with a buddy you'd be hard pressed to hate it. Until you finish it that is.
The more we played, the more anxious we became to replay this fun but flawed game again...and again. However when we finally made it through the first play through and tried 'game +' mode we first griped because they only left us with the gold we collected, yep everything else that we powered up meant nothing. Okay, whatever we can deal with that and just have a blast with the infinite ammo, mana and all the other little goodies we unlocked during our co-op play, in this co-op game made from the ground up and advertised by the makers themselves to be a co-op experience...only to find that everything we worked hard to unlock in the 'game +' mode was a sizeable MINUS not plus.
Here's the kicker, 'game +' can be played in co-op, however...HOWEVER, all of the perks you unlock like infinite ammo, infinite mana, etc. only work in a SINGLE player game! That's right, this little gem that we made peace with all the little imperfections and still had fun with suddenly turned around and gave us the finger. How could this be an issue? I mean, it's built from the ground up as co-op, played as such, and then tells you to go play with yourself instead...great, a gaming version of high school...
It's rough to be a co-op gamer, I mean for every one game that brings us great joy, there are countless others that just poke us with a stick and claim they did their job...multi-player isn't co-op to me, I want full campaign, no 'spec ops' or 'horde mode' style stuff. I'm not picking on these games, just stating too often programmers are taking an easier way out...I mean, how much better would Bulletstorm have been if you were playing it with a buddy?!
I'm not impressed with Bethesda for not noticing this error, I know they only produced Hunted, however we as gamers have come to trust certain names in gaming, and when they have a team of people working on a game proclaiming co-op as it's first priority that should include all aspects of the game...especially ones this simple to do. 'Game +' was an incredible negative, one that instead of allowing us to play through the games at least two more times as planned, had us trade in the game promptly for two copies of EDF: IA.
I highly recommend playing this once with a friend, never by yourself as the game is crap without another player manning the controls, but do so knowing it's a once through only type affair.
Thanks for your time, and happy gaming!