Splitscreen on PC making a comeback: Black Ops 3

For people who like to have friends over to play games, Black Ops 3 is going to be on your radar.

As for the game's PC features, here's what we're looking at

–100 percent Ranked Dedicated Servers
–2-Player Split Screen
–Seamless Game Controller Support
–Strong GPU scaling, SLI and Crossfire Optimizations, and 4K monitor support make the game look and run great at full 4K resolution
–FOV Slider
–Framerate Cap Slider
–Improved Text Chat features available in-game and also now in lobbies.
–Fantastic Steam Trading Cards
–Treyarch Anti-Cheat (TAC)

To me it appears Treyarch is putting in the extra effort necessary to make Black Ops 3 shine on PC. Based on my brief experience with the beta, it feels like the level of polish already exceeds what I experienced with AW as of the free weekend a couple months ago. But I will need more time with the beta before I can fully evaluate that.

With Rocket League and now Black Ops 3, that's going to make for a couple of popular titles on PC that decided to include split-screen play. Is this going to be a trend for big-budget games to come? I can only hope so. I went from having zero anticipation for this game to having a lot of anticipation (I'm always looking for a new game to play when drinking with friends).

I'll pass. CoD doesn't deserve my money.

This would have made me interested 3-4 CoD releases ago but I just don't care about the series anymore.

What i'm hoping for is splitscreen in KF2, since i'm guessing the PS4 version will get it.

I generally don't like split-screen because you are only looking at a portion of the screen and you don't get full immersion and detail. I do like the social aspect of course. I am all for including it as long as the rest of the game is already polished and they didn't spend too much time optimizing for split screen when the rest of the game needed attention.

It's really difficult to give every game in the series attention, particularly because their quality widely varies and of course because they've made too many of them. I played CoD 1 and 2 heavily, played a little of 3, tons of 4, and probably spent the most time in Black Ops where I got to max rank for once (no prestige). I only play the games for the multiplayer because they're really easy to pubstomp and do well in. It's one of those games where it's easy for me to stay on top of the scoreboard if I put in a slight amount of effort. The gameplay is usually fun but unbalanced. I tried to get into AW but it kept crashing for me on the free weekends for some reason.

I'd be extremely surprised if KF2 has splitscreen on the PS4 or the PC version. That would exceed my expectations too much to be realistic.

I'll probably pick the game up cheap off a key-site because I'm not particularly concerned if they get full profits from my sale or not.

I understand people who are beyond giving Call of Duty a chance anymore because for the most part, I'm on that wagon. But the prospect of being able to coop a zombie mode would provide at fun experience, at least for a few dozen hours in my case I'm sure.

I can understand that. I've grown up on playing games like Goldeneye 64 with the screen split-4 ways on a tiny SDTV. 1440P at 100+ FPS splitscreen on a 27" monitor is bliss compared to that. So many people these days have a million monitors in their setups - I can imagine it being particularly ideal for them (each player can get his own screen). I only have a single 1440P monitor, but in Rocket League I don't find that I'm missing out on a ton of immersion or detail that's vital to having a fun time. Hell - a bigger problem is finding players who actually present a challenge in 2v2 ranked. Pretty sure the graphics are equally as good as having one big screen, just less screen space. Hopefully devs wouldn't dumb down the graphics on PC for split-screen. And in terms of screen space, if you're rocking 1440P and 4k, doing splitscreen with FoV turned up isn't too bad of an impact. People with ultra-wide monitors would be perfectly fine too. I just think with the excess of hardware power and technology we have these days, it's a feature that makes more sense now than ever.

It's also nice that devs again are going beyond bare minimum again in features. They could easily say "want to play with a friend? tell him to buy a pc and another copy of our game lol". So it's nice when they give extra consideration to people that might not want to spend a bunch of money just to play a game with their friends.

Except if you have more than 1 monitor you can use Nvidia Surround to set it up so each player gets their own screen. I've done this with Rocket League and it works awesome, haven't tried with other games but I'm sure its possible with enough jiggering

So it detects two different sets of keyboard and mice?

Serious Sam 3 had this capability on the PC, so it is possible. They might require the second person to use a controller, often that is how splitscreen is done in PC.

This is where Steam controllers might come in handy :p But really I just want DS4 support.

My answer to every splitscreen topic.

@dxmcat said:

My answer to every splitscreen topic.

I love it. Looks like they got a serious play session going there.

@dxmcat: And those of us who have actually done this through the years without having to read about it on the forums, or internet, have the experience to know that the audio is still a problem.

This is why I have all but given up split screen gaming. LAN is where its at. If you can't LAN then online.

But for those who do not have the access to such setups, then I guess this is good news for them.

As for BO3... If I can find it on a really good sale on the xboxone. If not I am not even gonna worry with it. I am tired of split player base, and the complete lack of any Hardcore FFA mode.

Well some ppl are casual and can still have fun. I however am competitive and can't tolerate it. It works for co-op but thats it.

I never thought about the audio. You're totally right. You would be getting two audio outputs and with systems like 5.1 and 7.1 these days it would be a mess of sounds.

Yep, online or LAN is where it's at, that way each person has their own headset/speakers and full use of the screen.

You sound a little picky. What's wrong with having both competitive and coop game experiences? I think you're focusing too much on the situations it's not applicable, rather than the wealth of situations where it's great for coop and competitive.

Sports games? Split-screen has few flaws here really.

Racing? Some flaws, but minor.

Fighting games? No problems, fighting games are practically made for 2-players.

Cooperative FPS? Work's great in most instances.

Rocket League? It's godly.

Platformers? Pretty, pretty good.

Of course, in a lot of these cases it's not literally split-screen, but that's beside the point. The point is just sharing the screen(s) and system with another player or two. There are tons of games that are great fun to play competitively with friends on the same screen - if all you have is Dota 2 and Counter-Strike on your mind...well yea...split-screen won't do much for you there.

As someone said before, if you can have separate screens, why not?

And way to over-simplify. There is a crap ton more than Mobas and CS that is terrible on split screen. I'm sure you can figure it out.

Not exactly splitcreen, but Gang Beasts has local multiplayer and it's a good laugh.

Hmmm. I will always stand by hot-seat gaming, never liked split-screen. I totally support incorporating it as an option, though, for those that can enjoy it. If you have your PC in your living room with a big TV, sounds like it might be fun.

As for the audio issue, never really was an issue in the past. Goldeneye was a crapload of fun, and whatever tactical loss was sustained from not being able to pick out people's footsteps was compensated for by looking at their screen (MUAHAHAHA?).