Intro
With so many of y'all enjoying the debating lately (no, not talking political debates), I figured we'd just fire up an ENTIRE thread devoted to it! Let's see if we can keep from hijacking the Fable II, Army of Two, GoW, etc threads.

So the way I envisioned it was we'd come here and talk about aspects of games. Rather than look at one entire game as all good or all bad, let's point out aspects of games done right, particularly with emphasis on co-op. It's pretty much what I've seen on existing threads, so it should be second nature here. Sound good? I'll go first and show you what I mean.

BTW, this is everyone's thread, not just mine! If you want to alter the rules, go for it! The goal is discussion: friendly, respectful (and often nerdy) discussion!

Good Co-Op
Gears of War's unique levels like the ones with the dark and the bird-things (forgot their name!). I loved one guy manning the giant spot light, with the other running around opening doors. I really thought this was a unique experience, much more so than the typical "puzzles" found in FPS's. Several times you'd have to split up, which I can take or leave (would have liked the option to go with my live partner instead of a CPU guy), but overall I liked the way they handled splitting you up to keep things fresh.

Bad Co-Op
The camera in Fable II, duh. This just really ruins the experience. I can live with not having my own character and using a henchman, but come on! We can't get much done sharing a camera! This is worse than being tethered like in Mercs 2.

What say ye?

Since we're talking about how stellar Gears of War handled co-op, I want to know: should it have been a 4-player campaign?

I think that Halo 3 did co-op right in that it offered a 4-player campaign, even though the levels did not have the same level of "required co-op".

To me, there's so much fun to be had in 4-person skull hunting.

I prefer GRAW2's epic 8-12 person Co-op on specific Campaigns. I just wished they gave it the same treatment as the single-player campaign and gave you the option of dropping in as squads on different parts of the map. As in one group starts at the north end and another starts on the south.

Anyway, that's my favorite.


PS: Also it could have used the cover system from the single-player, hey GRAW did it!

Yes, absolutely!! In fact, with GoW2's main campaign AGAIN sticking to 2-player only, I'm not sure if I'll buy the game or just rent it. I really could care less about some 4-player endless wave of badguy shootout: where's the fun in that? I want to run through co-op with four people! Or more!

I will agree in part. I loved that you could play Halo 3 with up to 4 players. I played maybe 10 minutes of the game in single player, and every other time in co-op. Beat it three times, I think, and found a good amount of skulls. Halo 3 had a good amount of vehicles, plenty of weapons, and usually different ways to the objective. It was still very linear, but you had four guys to decide where to go to get the job done.

Where Halo 3 went wrong: no drop in/drop out (quitting mid-game screws EVERYBODY over), and as JG said no I'm dying for another game to attempt to top GRAW2 as co-op king. I'd love to see someone drop us in groups of four around a map and have us decide if we want to meet up or go our own ways to the objective.

While we're on it, I'd like to be able to select which weapons I want to go into an area with, and be able to respawn with said weapons. They could adjust it as needed so it's not always double rocket launchers or something, but I thought there were far too few spots in Halo 3 to really use the sniper rifle.

GRAW2 is the coop king in my book mainly due to the high number of players that can play together in coop campaign.

Gears is second but like Baldy said it would be better if it allowed even more players. On a more positive note I like the way Gears has some coop tasks incorporated into the game (like the spot light in the courtyard scenario).

Honorable mentions to Rock Band, RSV, RSV2, Halo 3, Army of Two & Heavy Weapon (XBL coop goodness).

I liked that Halo 3 had the four-player co-op, but could you imagine if that had been split-screen as well? I'm just more about split-screen than online, and I know that Halo 3 could have pulled it off; both G.R.A.W. games have four-player split-screen modes with giant waves of enemies coming at you in some parts; much larger in number than any section of Halo 3.

Maybe I'm just anti-social (I am), but for me personally, 2 player co-op is pretty much all I need. There are some exceptions of course, like Marvel: UA or Castle Crashers (especially then) but in any game where I have to commit a solid chunk of time to, (Gears, Halo, SR2, Etc), I'm more likely to just want to play with someone I know locally. Mostly the problem is that my schedule is very hectic, so it's hard to work out a schedule with even one person, let alone 3. On top of that, When I play a co-op game with a friend, I always prefer to share the experience with them, beginning to end. Since I can't play often, it makes it hard for me to find people that are willing to hold off on playing again until we can get together. This is one of the main reasons why I don't play MMO's, by the time I get in there, everyone has done everything already.

I agree. Offline co-op should become a staple of gaming. The lack of across the board split-screen co-op gaming is one major reason why I had to purchase a 2nd Xbox. I don't regret the purchase at all, and my girlfriend and I have actually grown to enjoy games over live, even when they are split screen, but as a rule, split screen should be done from the start.

Gears of War was the epitome of perfect Co-Op for me. Drop in/drop out, your partner helps you out more than just by increased the damage output, offline/online, and when you partner drops out the game is still awesome and fun. I don't like it when games have to be co-oped to be fun, as most of my friends don't have the same kind of free time as I do. I'm also a big fan of co-op being 5 or less people. Any more than that and I start to feel insignificant, like I'm one of the crowd.

Fable 2 does almost everything wrong. Being a henchman and not your actual character doesn't disappoint me as much as the bad camera angles do. Even if each player got to play their hero, the camera would f*** everything up.

Can we talk about the biggest travesty to Co-Op gaming ever? Games that require you to play through in single player before you can play Co-Op. There are a couple games that I know are current that I can't think of, but one that really sticks out is Kameo.

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King had fun co-op, but you could only play one stage at a time, and it had to be unlocked by playing the single player campaign.

What about Super Mario Brothers, talk about a game that should have had Co-op in it at the beginning! I mean, it's a platformer so it would be simple to keep the places together and it would have been so much fun

What I really would like (no, LOVE) to see is an Action-Adventure game like Zelda or Mass Effect (maybe) do Co-op. Only because while tearing up a city or going through levels is fun.

I want a game that has that epic feel to it, but have co-op. Seems most of the epic adventure games are single player. I don't want a FPS or TPS shooter like Halo or Gears. I want something that has action, but is more of a RPG storytelling backbone to it.

Anyway, I like military tactical shooters, which is why I like GRAW2 and it's 8 player Co-op. Split up into teams and take the enemy down!

Wow, I hadn't heard of those!! That's horrible! I know that playing through in co-op is easier, but come on, isn't that some of the lure?

Great discussion guys!! Keep the thoughts/ideas/examples coming!

The problem with co-op: it is difficult to make, requires more money and work to do, it may take more time to release the game, sometimes requires graphics downgrade, it must be made since the start of development. That is even more complicated when you are making offline co-op. I´ve read Valve saying that, Larian and Ascaron too.

Pick all of those problems and you got a lot of developers that doesn´t have the money, nor the time to do it

One game that raised the bar and dropped the ball at the same time is 007: Everything or Nothing for PS2 (not sure if the Xbox version operated the same way or not)... The co-op mode followed the same progression as the single-player campaign, but without the cinematics and with fewer levels, but some were original to the co-op - including an incredible shootout in a Turkish(?) marketplace.

It was for two players in splitscreen or online, and the feeling of two MI6 comrades slinking and shooting through multiple exotic locales was one of the best experiences I ever had in co-op. Controls were spot-on, featuring a cover system lifted from Kill.switch, and the third-person lock-on targeting of Syphon Filter (with an added function that allowed you to pinpoint your aiming, if you had time to).

Unfortunately, the co-op mode was not given fair exposure (pre- Co-Optimus days), and was gimped by a lack of character choices/customization (only 4 character models to choose from, and each player had to be unique) and incentive to progress. You could play through the story-less campaign from start to finish, but you could also skip ahead at any time.

Worse than all of this is that online PS2 gaming was practically handcuffed by SOCOM 2 and Final Fantasy XI, so there were very few players online. The close release of LotR: Return of the King didn't help matters.

I was upset when Activision took the license from EA Games, because I felt like EA had finally come up with a great formula (Goldeneye: Rogue Agent aside) for 007. Quantum of Solace looks like it will be a lot of fun, but Everything or Nothing holds a special place in my heart for what could have been.

Original Mario Brothers was Co-Op, but I get the gist. I think, at the time, it would have been wierd to play co-op.



Legend of Zelda: Four Swords for Gameboy and later Game Cube. Fun game on the GC, but really aggravating in the fact that everyone had to be ready to move on to the next area or no-one could. All it takes is one a-hole to be meandering about while everyone else is trying to move on to ruin the pacing.





Have you played Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 or 2? Superb fun.

Just because you lost our debate, doesn't mean you should be stalking me!

Besides what happened this weekend? I thought we were going to have fun, but I was stuck in a corner to deal with my own ****.

Yes, Rainbow Six 2 is fun, but it needs more, MORE! I want to go at a building from two different sides. I want a team to hit them at the first floor while I attack from the roof. I WANT IT ALL!!!

On the PS2 a good, and solid co-op game would be Ratchet Deadlocked. You play through the whole single player campaign, and having twice the carnage! The only problem is you can't really split up. But it's a platformer. If other games did co-op games with fun weapons and story like this game I'd buy it.

Another game would be Crackdown. I love that you aren't "tied" to your partner, and you can both be on opposite sides of the game world. The only downside is most people won't let you join them and you have to play with a friend.

The main problem with Kameo's co-op was that it only let you do the dungeons, and the dungeons weren't even the fun parts of the game really. It was much more fun travelling around and doing the things the built up to the dungeons than playing the actual dungeons.

It was only fun for a bit. The campaign is 2-player only, and super linear. The terrorist hunt is alright, but gets old quickly. Several steps in the right direction though, loved shooting through walls on certain levels.