Multiplayer in games has gone from bad to worse.

Today, if you were to go out and by a game with multiplayer, you would be lucky if it supported 2 on the same system. Its the rise of the '1 player multiplayer' games.

This needs to stop, I don't care about devs excuses "we don't have enough power...." Come on! We fight here over which system is the best, saying it can do the best graphics the fastest frame rate and so on. But Gears only supports 2 player split-screen while dozens of original X-Box games could support 4! And only 1 player online! Is that because of some lag issue or because the devs a lazy? I don't have 2360s to spare!And Cows, don't get your hopes up because you also have tour own slew of problems. (now watch I'll get a list of all the games that have 4-player support on the PS3.) The same goes for the Wii, but it seems to be doing the best so far hmm........

I hate to do this, but I'm going to bring up Halo as an example. (People tend to write you off as a fanboy if you do this.)

Halo is the perfect example of how multiplayer should be done. If every game had 4 player split-screen online and off plus co-op with such good game making options we might have more lan partys on our calender. Which brings up an interesting story...

Some of myfreinds had set up a Gears lan match. We had 9 people total and 4 360s. Because one xbox had never gone online, it never got an update that the others got. So now we were down to 3. the turn taking became so annoying that we eventually started playing Halo 2. Everyone could play and we tried out fun custom gametypes. That is one of the reasons Halo was such a huge hit.

This is something that we, as gamers, should demand.

Nintendo has always gone for a good multiplayer experience with your friends so I am not too worried about that, however the online world has also opened the door to more playing experiences with other people instead of having to own 4 controllers (or having friends bring theirs over). Obviously the online multiplayer has its advantages, like not having to share a screen with 3 other people, which was annoying in FPS games unless you had a big tv. Smash Bros is still one of my favourite 4 player console games mainly because it does not require 4 split screens in order to play, but then again it is also side scrolling so it is easier to do it whereas in FPS games it is not the same. Also games have gotten more complex and so multiplayer has become harder to do with all these huge games, it takes up excess space to have offline map. Of course to play online you need a fasst enough connection but most homes in the major regions where gaming exists now have cable, dsl or broadband internet instead of dialup (anyone using GS on dialup must be enjoying the load times because it loads slow even on my 512k connection).

If you are into LAN parties, the only kinds of people who do that are PC gamers, consoles are not designed to be good LAN machines. Last gen the GC had only 1 LAN capable game and that was Mario Kart: Double Dash as far as I know. I mean, yeah its annoying having to lug your computer and monitor to some place to play LAN games, but you can build a compact gaming PC for relatively cheap that can play all the games you want.

As far as I'm concerned, if multiplayer can't be played on a single screen (ielike sports games and fighters,not splitscreen) its not worth it except for rare cases.

Totally.

But, Thank god for the Wii. Offline Multiplayer lives! :3

As far as I'm concerned, if multiplayer can't be played on a single screen (ielike sports games and fighters,not splitscreen) its not worth it except for rare cases.

pundog

Go play Mario Strikers Charged and get back to me on that one...-CheeseEater-

I wish Crackdown was 2 player splitscreen.:(killab2oo5

Split screen is horrible. I don't want to share the awesomeness of my HDTV with someone else.

Back in the days of Goldeneye, it was so easy to exploit the fact you could see where the other person is. I owned so much in Goldeneye because of that fact. Camping body armor and hunting down my friends with the best gun available.

I don't understand the hatred towards split screen. In this HD era, it's better than ever. We have a much clearer picter and a much larger screen to share. Pretty much all the negitives of split screen are greatly reduced by HDTVs.goblaa

[QUOTE="goblaa"]I don't understand the hatred towards split screen. In this HD era, it's better than ever. We have a much clearer picter and a much larger screen to share. Pretty much all the negitives of split screen are greatly reduced by HDTVs.project343

Pretty much I guess. I just never found playing online anywhere near as fun as playing with someone over.

[QUOTE="goblaa"]I don't understand the hatred towards split screen. In this HD era, it's better than ever. We have a much clearer picter and a much larger screen to share. Pretty much all the negitives of split screen are greatly reduced by HDTVs.project343

Yeah, anyone who has LAN parties understand that just playing over the net save the trouble, but I suppose there's some benefits of being in one place. But LAN parties aren't split screen. Got your own computer.

Split screen is horrible. I don't want to share the awesomeness of my HDTV with someone else.

Back in the days of Goldeneye, it was so easy to exploit the fact you could see where the other person is. I owned so much in Goldeneye because of that fact. Camping body armor and hunting down my friends with the best gun available.

NobuoMusicMaker

Agreed, Split Screen was old tech, and it was annoying not being able to sneak up on people, your friends just look where you are and thats that.

[QUOTE="project343"][QUOTE="goblaa"]I don't understand the hatred towards split screen. In this HD era, it's better than ever. We have a much clearer picter and a much larger screen to share. Pretty much all the negitives of split screen are greatly reduced by HDTVs.NobuoMusicMaker

Yeah, anyone who has LAN parties understand that just playing over the net save the trouble, but I suppose there's some benefits of being in one place. But LAN parties aren't split screen. Got your own computer.

LAN parties a serious TON of fun. But compared to split-screen, or online, they do take the most effort, planning, and hardware. I love LAN gaming on both PC and DS and I'm looking forward to games like strikers and Bwii since the Wii has wireless LAN too.

[QUOTE="NobuoMusicMaker"]

Split screen is horrible. I don't want to share the awesomeness of my HDTV with someone else.

Back in the days of Goldeneye, it was so easy to exploit the fact you could see where the other person is. I owned so much in Goldeneye because of that fact. Camping body armor and hunting down my friends with the best gun available.

Meu2k7

Agreed, Split Screen was old tech, and it was annoying not being able to sneak up on people, your friends just look where you are and thats that.

That's assuming your playing a FPS.

[QUOTE="Meu2k7"][QUOTE="NobuoMusicMaker"]

Split screen is horrible. I don't want to share the awesomeness of my HDTV with someone else.

Back in the days of Goldeneye, it was so easy to exploit the fact you could see where the other person is. I owned so much in Goldeneye because of that fact. Camping body armor and hunting down my friends with the best gun available.

goblaa

Agreed, Split Screen was old tech, and it was annoying not being able to sneak up on people, your friends just look where you are and thats that.

That's assuming your playing a FPS.

Yea, some games did it fine, but I cant think of many that were worth playing that were not FPS, platformers and racers, thats about it, and fighting.

None of which really had a competitive feel, but thats opinion.

4 player guest system on gears would be horrible

don't you know how many people on live

8 so if your team would be a team of noobs