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- How not to make a multiplayer experience, Part 2
- Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago by BurningStickman
Part one can be found here.
Army of Two just came out, and it seems like an interesting idea: A shooter made pretty much exclusively for co-op play. Everyone loves co-op play, and a game entirely tailored to it should be great, shouldn't it? I know some of my best gaming experiences have been in front of the TV with one of my brothers blasting/hacking/etc. enemies side by side.
Not that EA seems to care, since from what I've heard, there's no way to play Army of Two with local multiplayer. I.e., you can't plug another controller in and play on the same system. You can only play co-op online. How stupid is that?
Seriously, I'll bet thousands of players were looking forward to exactly the kind of gameplay that EA has forbidden from them, and now will probably never play the game out of disgust. To be perfectly frank I was probably never going to play the game anyway (I don't have a 360 or a PS3), but still, this is a really stupid move. Way to alienate your potential userbase, EA. This is worse than the whole "You need five different systems to play Crystal Chronicles" thing.
Remember: Online gameplay in anything but an MMO is supposed to be an added feature. It shouldn't supplant the kind of things we've been able to do since Contra on the NES.
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Comments
I agree BurningStickman
Okay, so Tycho's edited his original post to clarify that it's no LAN co-op. So, uh...nevermind most of what's in my rant, I guess. I'd edit this into the text of it myself, but for some reason I can't edit.
I hate to say this but i knew this game was going to be bad. After watching gameplay videos it was painful watching the character motions (syphon filter on the PS1 had better character movements) and then not allowing local co-op, was a big mistake. EA makes mediocre games.
Yeah, I based this on what I saw at Penny Arcade (and off what a friend told me, though admittedly he might have also gotten it from PA). Like I said, I don't have a PS3 or 360, so I couldn't check it out for myself, so sorry if I got some of the facts wrong and/or mixed up. Still, it's kinda dumb to make something like co-op play more complicated than it should be.
It also has local multiplayer on the 360. Army of Two was a great vision but the final product wasn't what I expected it to be. Me and my one friend kept asking ourselves if any testers actually worked on the game.
I popped this bad boy into my PS3 last night with the hope of getting some online co-op in with my boy. After ten or so minutes of not being able to get into a game, we gave up.
Made me wish I had gotten it for 360...
Actually, I think you can. Odds are you, like me, based that thought off of Penny-Arcade originally but I have the game and it does have local multiplayer on the PS3. Maybe that is for online modes, in which case it is still dumb, but not insane.