I would never object to people having the option to play split screen on a PC, and indeed am somewhat baffled that it isn’t more common than it is. However, in my case, online MP is much more practical because of the distribution of my gaming friends.

@Jim Rossignol

That’s good to hear, I look forward to your review. If the SP really is sufficient to justify the asking price, that would be good to know. I’ve just gotten the sense, based on what you guys have written about it thus far, that I’d be missing some huge component of the game by not being able to play it MP. If that’s not the case, I’d very much like to know it, as the game itself looks fantastic.

That makes no sense at all. I’ve used the splitscreen multiplayer option several times, and only wish that it was better supported than it is.

On another forum, there were people cheering because they took out the split-screen multiplayer option (OPTION, you don’t have to USE it) from the PC version of Left4Dead. How in the hell does that even make sense?

“Multiplayer of any kind is a bonus.”

Normally I totally agree, SP is the most important game mode by far to me. In this case, though, it really sounds like you’re missing out on a large part of the gameplay if you can only play it single player. Creative solution-finding seems very limited if you only have a single character on screen, whereas they’ve outlined in detail how many new possibilities are opened up by having another player.

In short, I’m slowly becoming convinced this game is really optimized for MP, and PC gamers are basically getting hosed by only realistically being able to play the far less diverse SP mode.

Multiplayer of any kind is a bonus. Of course, network multiplayer is always far more desirable with the PC, but having two of us play Bionic Commando (to give an example of a relatively recent co-op on one screen game) really wasn’t that bad and was actually quite fun since it opened up totally different play styles and tactics. Whether it was on the 19″ monitor or the 32″, it worked well. There’s something really nice about having someone next to you when you try to puzzle things out. It takes me back to the old person A tries something and dies and passes the controller to person B to give it a shot communal puzzle solving. It may be easier, and usually more practical, but on-line co-op can’t quite give the same feeling. Having local and on-line, of course, is the best of both worlds. (Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge)

Regardless, go go gadget July!

I’ll add that to the article.

“If your monitor isn’t some tiny, impractical little thing, just get yourself a couple of friends, some beanbags, and a couple of cheap USB gamepads.”

Yeah, I’ll get right on that. That or, you know, just skip this game. I wonder which is more likely?