Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This article was published last year in PC Gamer UK. It’s my ode to co-op gaming, and it features quotes from Epic’s Clifford Bleszinski and the excellent Harvey ‘Witchboy’ Smith. (Shame about that Blacksite game, eh?) I’ve revised it slightly for 2008.

It’s our favourite abbreviation: co-op. We’re not simply talking about your basic multiplayer here, and nor are singing odes to teamplay in Counter-Strike or World Of Warcraft. We’re talking co-operation. A couple of gamers versus the game. That is where some the very best gaming moments lie.
Read the rest of this entry »

Being a bandwagon-examining, trend-dissecting, zeitgeist-exorcising journalist of the gaming bent, it was only a matter of time before I dragged together some kind of verbal flotsam to examine the phenomenon of co-op gaming a little more closely. And so I did, in the form of this highly commended PC Gamer feature article.

It contains literary treasure such as this:

The lesson for Smith’s Midway team was that two heads aren’t necessarily better than one when you’re trying to balance a complex action game for play. “It’s about tuning,” says Harvey. “It affects everything from how hard it is to play, to how many enemies you can get on screen. It even affects the fiction. It’s a fun part of the game though, so I hope it works in the right way.”

Alas, as it turned out, it was too tricky for even Mr Smith. Co-operative play was dropped from BlackSite just weeks before our review.

Of course, there may have been a few other factors at play there too… but I think the point stands.

Additionally, I’d like to say that, although no other RPSer seems to think it much cop, Rainbow Six Vegas was a mighty entertaining co-op game. While all eyes might have been on the Gears Of War and Halo 3 co-op experiences this year, there were plenty of others, such as Vegas, that got it bang on. More of that sort of thing, please Developers.

When I was last in the Gamer office, they caught me in a – Dwarf Fortress Mode on – fey mood. Guiding me towards a keyboard, it ended in another rant where I continue the last seven-days theme of asking the entire internet outside, as I think they spilt my pint. It’s about how the current wave of co-op games isn’t exactly the unvarnished joy which its been painted at. I end up saying things like…

There’s nothing wrong with co-op, per se. The problem is when it spreads cancerously in a great singleplayer game, twisting it, perverting it, sickening it, preparing it for death. That’s one thing I won’t co-operate with.

But on the way there, there’s something that may pass for an argument. You tell me.

I’ve not been paying a great deal of attention to IO Interactive’s two-man shooter, Kane & Lynch, but there’s every reason to think this might actually be pretty interesting. Hitman: Blood Money ate a load of my spare time this year, so I’m eager to see what IO can manage to come up with next. I’m also keen to see how this new fad for co-op gaming plays out. Five years ago there was barely a dozen co-op shooters in existence, now they’re clambering out of every marketing spreadsheet. This has to be a good thing, and the ideas that developers come up with for making players work together are going to change the way we play – subtly perhaps, but we’re already seeing the ideas build up. (Pulling buddies to their feet in Gears Of War, for example.)

Thanks, Game Trailers.

And what do you think, readers?

EDIT: 20th November release date – it’s going to be a busy November.

The hats weren’t actually the first RPS-mail. I returned from my trip to Relic and Gas Powered Games to find a parcel addressed to Rock Paper Shotgun from Koch Media. Inside it was a copy of Obscure II, which I thought appropriate as I’d never heard of it. The developers had fallen for that basic mistake of giving the game a name which can easily be turned into a joke for a bitchy review, but – no – really, I hadn’t heard of it. That fearlessness deserves some kind of respect. Also, I chatted to Walker, who had played and actually 79%-liked the original, saying it “rewards innovation over frenzy, and it seems only fair to do the same in return” (Or at least that’s what professional parasites Metacritic claim, anyway, as John couldn’t really remember anything other than he’d played it). Like its prequel, Obscure II is a Survival Horror game but rather than feeding the Romero/Tartan-Extreme-Import duopoly, takes the American teen horror film as its basis. Oh – and it’s got co-op too. I decided I’d better play it.

That “playing it” happened when I was somewhat inelegantly wasted on Saturday night at about 4am. The morning after, between bacon sandwiches, I talked Jim into joining me in some Survival Horror Co-op with reviewing consequences and actually took notes and stuff.

JOIN US FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS.

Read the rest of this entry »