Unlike in single player, there weren’t *any* checkpoints so if you both died close to the end of Calypso Casino (say, at the murderously hard vertical hotel section) then you’d have to replay the entire level from the beginning.

Oh, and that also meant you were forced to spend five minutes sitting in a helicopter at the start of every mission (or indeed if you died at all) since saving once you’d got out was obviously beyond them. Halo and Gears both managed this basic feat of programming, why was it beyond Ubisoft – especially when they’d already made such a fantastic shooter to start with!

Which isn’t to say it was bad – me and my friend played it through so many times we ended up making up challenges. “The entire game… on realistic… with nothing but the Glock 18!” – took a while, but we managed it. Just.

I really hate the way Ubisoft treat PC users though, it’s a terrible conflict but in the end, I’m still going to buy Vegas 2 because I know I’ll enjoy it and the co-op fun for a while after I’ve finished it.

That and they wouldn’t miss my money if I didn’t.

But yes, nothing can quite equal collaborative tasering of old ladies.

And in the game.

So yeah, good. Also good was Vegas but on a much smaller scale. There were a few issues with the implementation, notably the lack of cut-scenes and hot-mission-briefing-lass. Apart from that, it’s slick as Jessica Biel in a leather catsuit.

However! SWAT IV is the closest you can get to feeling like you’re part of a real, consequential, accountable team. Over voice communications it’s like free paintball. Real, challenging, fun.

Gears played quite well, and was much like single player… but, well, experiencing it with someone else. Teamwork sort of happened passively and one player can quite easily prop the other up. More like watching a film.

Halo was laughably bad. It was like Farscape in game form. I laughed heartily, then laughed some more. The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled was convincing the world their game was any fun.

But there’s never really been any point in the game or episodes where it would have made much sense to have co-op play from a story perspective. (Yes, you have a partner for substantial portions of the episodes, but regular solo outings as well…would you want to be sitting on the sidelines during co-op? I wouldn’t.)

I know it’s hard to balance but I wish more games had the bare functionality there so you could make your own fun. I’ve only been waiting for HL2 co-op for oh, what is it? 2 years now? rubbish.

Our big coop games this year have been NWN2 and playing Company of Heroes against the AI which is funny because the first is singleplayer with friends and the other is multiplayer without an enemy.

Left 4 Dead is supposed to come out early this year, I think it’s going to be big.

Interestingly, with reguards to PCs, co-operative play in the traditional sense (aka sharing a screen) isn’t viable. Of course on consoles it’s all online platforms like PSN and XBL nowadays though.

So why don’t PC developers make such games? I can’t remember the last co-operative game I played on PC… Diablo 2? :/