Hello all and merry Listmas! For those who don’t know, Listmas is a multi-blog event masterminded by our friend C.T. Murphy of Murf Vs Internet. It’s a wonderful time of sharing, story-swapping, and lists! Oh such wonderful lists! Keep an eye on CT’s blog and United We Game from now until the 25th, as we’ll be bringing you all the wonderful Listmas goings-on! And with that we move on to, you guessed it, a list!
Continue reading Merry Listmas: My 3 BEST Gaming Moments
As a solitary, curmudgeonly gamer with control issues who doesn’t get out much, I don’t have a million and one stories involving co-op play in games. In the early days, my siblings and I used to hand off SNES controllers to play rounds with Mario, which is one form of co-op play, but not the kind I’m thinking of here. In terms of actually having to cooperate with other players to help everyone make it through a game, I can really only remember two such experiences. Yep, two instances of cooperative play in which I took part. And one was probably my worst experience ever with a game, and the other was near the top of my favorite experiences. Let’s start with the bad news first.
Continue reading Community Post: On Co-op Play and My Lack of It
In many modern video games, there is an option to design the main character from the ground up using a robust creation system. For some players, this is an excuse to create the most ridiculous hero ever (eight feet tall and purple hair, yes please), but more often than not, people want to put themselves into the action. It makes sense: video games provide experiences that are wholly unlike real life, so of course you would want an avatar of yourself performing these amazing feats. But the option to create a virtual self is not always available, particularly in the co-op multiplayer games of old.
Back in the saccharine days of the 1990s, when the video arcade was still alive and kicking, huge cabinets provided four players the opportunity to punch and kick their way across cartoon landscapes. Animated shows like The Simpsons and X-Men were riding high, and their arcade counterparts were the featured titles at every gaming establishment across the United States. And at the top of every kid’s playlist sat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. This show (and its respective games) had it all: ninjas, martial arts, skateboarding, and of course, pizza. There was just one problem when it came to actually playing the game with four people: deciding which turtle to play as.
Oh sure, it may seem like an easy decision (Leonardo, duh), but what happens when you have four kids and all of them identify with a katana-wielding do-gooder? You can’t all be the leader – that just wouldn’t make sense. As with so many other co-op arcade games, hard introspection and tough decisions about one’s character had to be made. Several of my trips to Chuck E. Cheese would progress as follows:
“Okay guys, which turtle are you? I am really nerdy and I like to build with Legos, so I should be Donatello.”
“Wait a minute, I like those things too, and I am wearing a purple shirt, so I should be Don!”
“Fine, fine, fine. Well, Cory should be Leonardo, since it’s his birthday.”
“But I don’t wanna be Leo, I like Michelangelo! He has numb-chucks.”
“It’s nun-chucks, stupid! Fine, then I will be Leonardo, Cory can be Michelangelo, Jeremy can be Donatello, and Corey, you’ll be Raphael.”
“Nuh-uh! I am not gonna be Raph, he sucks!”
“Well someone has to be Raph!”
This would go on for some time, until one of us would just break the argument and pick our favorite character before anyone else had the chance. It seemed like every co-op arcade experience went like this until each of us had settled into our roles. For me, I became the grappler/support of the team. My roster was made up of characters like Haggar, Lisa, Nightcrawler, and Ryan, while my brother would take the leading roles of Cody, Bart, Cyclops, and Alex. We had learned which characters best suited our play styles, but more importantly, we identified with these heroes and our time spent gaming became even more special.
Even though arcades have mostly vanished from the world, the experience of molding yourself to a character is far from extinct. There are several modern co-op games that do not allow players to create an avatar from scratch. When playing Left 4 Dead or Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, my friends and I still have to figure out which character is the best representation of our personalities. Most first-person shooters limit the visual customization options to basic colors and body armor, so players must determine their role in the group using the weapons and tools available. Maybe you are the sniper who stays back and picks off enemies for the team, or perhaps the job of a medic might be a better fit. The choice is yours.
While the arguments and debates over character selection were mostly superficial among my friends, there was a deeper reason for all of it. When you get to the nitty-gritty of co-op gaming, there needs to be less focus on your individual progress and more care put into how you can best help the team. After all, if some jack-ass is stealing all of the pizzas when his/her turtle doesn’t even need health, the rest of the team will suffer. Just like Master Splinter said, “Together, there is nothing your four minds cannot accomplish. Help each other, draw upon one another, and always remember the power that binds you.”
Around the time I got my Xbox 360 a few years ago, I didn’t have an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Friends who had an Xbox and a Gold subscription kept telling me I needed to get one. The reason? You can only play with your friends online if you have a subscription. This was also around the time when I was working at a part-time job and my finances were pretty tight.
Paying for a Gold subscription was quite expensive when you factor in the salary I was earning at the time. It wasn’t like I had no intention of getting one. It was just going to take some time for me to get one. The other issue was I didn’t have too many multiplayer games in my possession either. I wasn’t in any rush to get the subscription. Luckily, I’m blessed with good friends and family. My cousin took it upon himself to buy me a Gold subscription card for Christmas and one of my best friends decided to get me Halo Reach to start me on the path of multiplayer games I could play with both of them. Yup, truly blessed.
I generally like playing games by myself. I want the ability to absorb the story, the game environment, and to just have a quiet moment between me and the game. I knew playing online and on co-op with my friends would be fun, but there are times when you just want to be alone without the distraction of having to talk on a headset while you play. I like paying attention to the dialogue being said in a game, and when you have your friends talking at the same time a character in a game is talking, it’s really hard to stay focused on both. But when I do play co-op, I only want to play with people I know rather than random strangers who are paired up with you in a party match game.
I’m not the best player in the world, and I rather be playing in the company of friends who aren’t asses and judgey about how much I suck at first person shooters. From what I have read of people who do play co-op and are matched with total strangers who are playing the same game as you are, not all players are nice and respectful of other players who may not be as good as they are. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, you may be a better player than this person from whateverville USA, and they are a sore player because of it and insult you. That’s a separate issue and a different topic for another time though.
Eventually, I did discover how some games are better to play with friends than alone. Take for instance, Borderlands. When I received the game as a gift, I was told by others who have already played the game and completed it that it’s better to play with someone else than on single-player mode. I never had the chance to try it on single-player, but when I managed to get together with maybe one or three of my friends for a game of Borderlands, they were right about it being an infinitely better experience to play as a group than alone.
Large groups of enemies are easier to take on as a group. Whatever your weaknesses are when you play the game, there’s someone who will have your back. Strategies can be built and agreed upon to take bosses down. One person might say, “You distract him by doing this and then I’ll take him from behind when he’s completely trained on you.” There’s also some silliness and goofing around when you play with friends.
I remember one time when I played Borderlands with my cousin, my best friend, and my best friend’s girlfriend. There were points in the game where you could get a vehicle, and my best friend’s girlfriend loved getting a pink car and trolling her own boyfriend by threatening to run his character over. It was hilarious hearing my best friend shout, “No, don’t run me over!” and you see his character running away from the pink car. I would sit in the gunner seat and watch as this craziness was happening before my eyes.
Another friend who I have been finishing up Borderlands with recently told me she never finished the story mode for the first game alone, but she finished it for Borderlands 2. She found the world of Pandora in the first game a bit drab and depressing while she played by herself. It also didn’t help that enemies got too hard to fight against on her own. By having the two of us play together, it made going through the entire story mode easier to do. There were also some funny moments that happened while we played and weird game glitches we experienced together.
I also think an advantage of playing a game that has co-op in their story modes is it makes you more likely to finish a game than if you played it on your own. I can’t tell you how many times I have started games on my own, only to not finish it because I get distracted by other games that keep coming out.
While I wouldn’t trade those moments where I can sit down and play a game by myself, I do enjoy finding a day and time with friends to play co-op. Not only do you get to experience the game together for the first time (or maybe for the twentieth time), but it gives you some good memories you can reminisce over. It’s also the best way to do stupid things with friends you wouldn’t have done otherwise if you are alone.
Good thing this community post came along because I was running out of ideas. Okay, so our first community post is about co-op. I thought I knew what this was, but just to be sure, I checked it out on Wikipedia (I am not big into multiplayer and thus am not overly familiar with all the terms). It appears my understanding was correct. Yay. Okay, co-op. Cooperative play. Unlike other forms of multiplayer, this does not involve trying to blow your friend’s brains out, but rather, working together. As fun as incinerating your friends sounds, co-op has its own appeal. Sometimes it can be quite fun to actually work together with other people to reach a common goal, instead of trying to prevent someone from achieving victory. (It’s also not fun when you’re like me, and your friends repeatedly wipe the floor with you.) Co-op can be quite fun indeed (and it’s the only way I can beat “Super Mario World”), and there is actually something I just realized not long ago about it. Co-op, in some cases, actually has the ability to make bad games good.
Take a SNES game you have likely never heard of called “Joe and Mac”. This game involves controlling this caveman or cavemen through a bunch of levels, killing dinosaurs and Neanderthals. The game can be pretty darn annoying, and it doesn’t help that there are no save points. Plus, some of the sound effects and creature designs were just plain creepy. (And I could just never get over the fact that Joe and/or Mac regain health from the meat left over by the Neanderthals. Isn’t that cannibalism?) Despite disliking the game, I’ve kept it because it is a good challenge. Nevertheless, I still really very much don’t like it at all. Continue reading Community Post: Co-Op Makes It All Better
I’ve not had the best of times when it comes to Co-Op games. For me, it comes down to one thing, which in my opinion, is the hardest thing about gaming with other people. Finding the right people for that game.
The first Co-op game I can remember playing was Champions of Norrath on the PS2. I played it with both of my brothers and our mother. My little brother wanted to hit things. So he played the barbarian. My older brother played the dark elf, finding it to be the “coolest” race there. My mom wanted to be an elf, so she was the woodland elven archer. I really can’t remember why I was the human cleric. Maybe because I wanted to heal, or maybe just because I thought she was pretty. I was young at the time.
First of all, timing was an issue. Most of the time my mom was home to play, my dad was too. The gaming system was in our living room which was right next to his room, so we felt bad when he had to deal with our noise, and him being left out, so we tried to just play when he wasn’t home. Second of all, the age of our players. My younger brother, and maybe myself, should not have been playing until we learned a little bit more about playing Co-Op and not getting everyone else killed. I can recall several times of us yelling at someone else not to do that, and watching them get killed.
The difference in gaming experience was very evident. My little brother was the lowest level, because he tended to run right into the middle of things and get himself killed. My mom and I were about the same. We were both playing squishy classes. My older brother kicked butt, and usually was reviving the rest of us. My little brother was good at hitting things. My mom shot things but was pretty dead when things came at her. My older brother summoned undead skeletons, usually with magic swords. Fire, lightning, and such. They were pretty neat. Me? I summoned a sparkly blue hammer. And yes, I have to include the fact that it sparkled as it stomped things, and followed around my blonde girl with pigtails.
We got Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms when it came out. We were excited. We did manage to beat the first one. Ask me now and I can’t remember the plot. We uploaded our characters from the first game, and started it off. We only got through one location. For some reason, most of the interest was lost. I would have continued on, but seriously a cleric who does nothing really but summon a hammer? I was toast to say the least. They traded off the two of them last week. I was rather sad, with my sentimental feelings for the game, but the truth was, they were dusty and we weren’t going to get back to them.
The four of us also played Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the PS2. There was always quite a bit of fussing over that game. Someone picked up health packs they didn’t need but someone else really did. Someone hit the button to level while someone else was in the middle of a fight. We had a surprising amount of drama over that one game. We did get through it eventually, but we never played a 4 person, or even a 3 person game again (unless you count Rock Band, which I count under a slightly different category).
Since I mentioned Rock Band, I’ll go ahead and get into that topic. Within my family, there were a few contentions. My mom wanted to play the bass guitar part. My older brother would play drums, guitar, and even occasionally sing. The rest of the time, I was the only one willing to sing. I didn’t mind it too much. I love singing. I minded the fact that I was stuck doing it and I didn’t know half the songs. That left my younger brother to fill in the role our older brother wasn’t taking. He could usually do songs on easy. But he also lacked, at the time, the ability to multitask and hit the bass pedal as well as the color it instructed on the drums or moving his hand for the guitar.
This was a game without commitment, that I could drag people into sometimes. One year at our New Year’s Eve party we had Rock Band set up in my brothers’ room. I was in the room playing with these two girls and their older brother. He was playing the guitar part, the older sister was playing the drums, the younger sister was playing the bass line, while I sang. The younger sister started fussing that she wanted to sing. So, we switched parts. The trouble was, she was probably 4 at that time. She didn’t know how to read. She didn’t know any of the songs. She just stared at the screen while we failed each song, fussing when we tried to suggest we switch back instruments. It was a long night. With other friends, the story tended to be that they were very set on doing the songs they knew, yet had me sing, when I didn’t know the song. It tended not to work as well.
I played a handful of two-player Co-Ops with my older brother. We played Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, and beat it. We both started X-men Legends and the Fantastic Four game on PS2, but he lost interest in the first, and we got stuck on the latter. The Adventures of Cookies and Cream… was very frustrating to say the least. There was a pretty good chance on each level that he was telling me exactly what to do or was on my controller as well.
Now that I’m reflecting on it, I don’t think I’ve played a single Co-Op for any system but the PS2. I’ve gotten used to playing games on my own. Even on Lotro, I usually do things by myself. Those that have played with me would love to tell you stories about the time I ran them off a cliff. In my defense, I thought it was a really steep hill (or which there are several), and they didn’t have to be following so close behind me. Or letting me take the lead for that matter. Anyway, it’s something I really ought to do. I just need to actually find the right person for the right game to play with, a thing of which I have had little luck for so far.
My husband and I have bonded over lots of things during our years together. And early on, we found common ground in video games in that we each liked playing them. We’re both continually interested in games, new and old, and we do our best to stay in the news loop concerning games. But what we don’t really do is play games together. We do lots of things well together, but video games are not one of them. So when I tell other gamers that yes, we play video games but, but no, we don’t play them together, they seem to get very confused and something like the following conversation ensues:
Continue reading Whaddya mean you don’t play games together??
