Halo 3 - More Fun than Expected

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while will no doubt know by now that I am not a fan of shooters in general - whether they be first person or third person. Lately, of course, the majority of these games have been going online, which lessens their appeal to me even farther. I do believe too many games are completely replacing one aspect of gaming I really enjoyed in the past - personal, side-by-side gaming with your friends - with online play, instead of allowing both types of multiplayer gaming to play nice together.

I've been frustrated recently with games such as Burnout Paradise, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Fable II and others, because they completely replace the split-screen co-op of times past and focus 100% on the online game modes that pit you against a seemingly infinite pool of strangers. Why can't my friend join me as a henchman in Fable II by sitting on the sofa next to me? Why can't I play two-player co-op against a friend in these racing games, which traditionally include such a feature? One of the excuses I've heard from various people on a myriad of different gaming forums out there is that rendering two game screens can't be handled by the hardware. This, my friends, is complete and utter BS. Wipeout HD renders split-screen flawlessly at rather high FPS. Then we have Halo 3, which renders not only two, but up to four game screens at once on your TV.

I've recently gotten into Halo 3 (finally, right?). My brother and I have been playing it a bit, in a few long play sessions. We have hardly touched the campaign, we've mostly been playing online. We decided to invite a couple other friends over this past weekend to give four-player a go. The result? A night of the most fun I've had in years playing multiplayer. Absolutely no online mode in any game I have ever played even compares to having four friends in the same room play together on the same Xbox 360 and same TV. Sure, we were playing online most of the time, but the fact remains, we could have played offline in a similar manner, as well.

This, my intrepid blog readers, is what might get me into shooters - split-screen co-op - since hardly any other genre supports this feature these days. More developers in all genres should take a lesson from the relatively few games that make use of split-screen modes. It doesn't have to be four players, like Halo 3, just two players will do. That at least gives the game some merit for those of us who still enjoy face-to-face competition and actually, you know, having a life while playing games. I know, I know, its hard to wrap your head around. Sit down, take a deep breath, everything will be alright.

Now, my preference is obvious. This does not, however, mean that I despise online gaming and hope it goes the way of the dodo. I realize there's a good portion of gamers that are accustomed to that now and it wouldn't be logical for developers to cut that out entirely - it should be a staple of most genres these days. But, so should split-screen co-op - that's my point. I mentioned earlier that I feel developers should strike a happy medium. Make split-screen and online gaming work together in the same game environment. Again, Halo 3 is an excellent example of this. You can design and play custom games offline or online. If you're solo and want to play multiplayer, you can do that. If you've got friends you want to invite over to play with you (online or offline) you can do that too, everyone else doesn't have to sit out while they watch a single person play the game.

I realize this is probably all too much to hope for in the present gaming environment, but a guy can get all nostalgic about the days playing Secret of Mana or Midnight Club with a friend in the same room, can't he? My apologies if this post rehashes some things about split-screen game play I've discussed numerous times before, but I wanted to point out how much fun we had with Halo 3 over the weekend, and how it trumps anything I've done with solely online play in recent memory.

I'm Looking Forward to Playing...

Its that time once again to throw out lists of what games I'd like to play in the coming months. I've poured through a lot of games on my list in the last three months since I purchased my Xbox 360, which is a good thing. I've found some great games that I would have missed out on otherwise (Mass Effect and Fable 2 being a couple).

Update (2/22/2009): Since I made this post, I've decided to make it a list (and be as comprehensive as possible) of games I want to play or finish and the systems I want to play them on. Some of these games, perhaps, I may have played before and just want to play them on a different system (examples: Prince of Persia, Oblivion) and some of these games I might have started but never finished (Persona 4, Mirror's Edge). Needless to say, its going to hopefully be an exhaustive list of the version of these games I want to play.

I'm probably looking at playing or finishing these games in the near future:

- Star Ocean: The Last Hope (360)
- Tales of Vesperia (360)
- The Last Remnant (360)
- X-Blades (360)
- Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad (360)
- Halo Wars (360)
- Mirror's Edge (360)
- Fallout 3 (360)
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (360)
- Burnout Paradise (360)
- Prince of Persia (360)
- Braid (360 XBLA)
- Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
- Flower (PS3 PSN)
- Persona 4 (PS2)
- Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica (PS2)
- Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP)
- Star Ocean: Second Evolution (PSP)
- Chrono Trigger (DS)
- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS)
- My Japanese Coach (if you can really consider that a "game" - DS)

A Disturbing Trend

As far as racing games goes, in the past I had always been a huge Gran Turismo fan, getting heavily involved in the last three iterations of the franchise (not including Gran Turismo 5: Prologue). Lately though, with a full version of Gran Turismo 5 in limbo somewhere, I've turned my attention to other, more arcade-style racers for high-speed thrills.

I really loved Burnout Paradise. I love it so much, in fact, that I want to purchase it again for the Xbox 360 (and get rid of it on my PS3). Its cheap and its definitely worth it. Only problem - no two-player split-screen. That's a huge issue for me, even though the game has great solo and online experiences.

While Burnout Paradise does what it sets out to do very well, I've always been a fan of customization. This is why the Midnight Club series has been one of my favorites since the original game. My friends and I would sit and play for hours just chasing each other across the city, forming races every so often. We explored, we tested shortcuts, we had a great time. Midnight Club: Los Angeles, the latest in that series, seems to continue many of the things I've come to love about the series. Excellent customization options, a nice variety of cars, thrilling high-speed races through crowded downtown streets - the entire experience seems to be here. Except, once more, no two-player split-screen.

I find it hard to give these two games a full thumbs-up approval without this most important feature. Too many games these days are getting away from the face-to-face aspect of playing games. Do these developers not realize that, many times, that is what made the game fun? You can sit and trash-talk and have a good ol' time with buddies in the same room. Its so much more fun than playing against random (usually rude) people online. It seems these days first-person shooters are the only games that allow split-screen co-op play.

This brings me to another argument against split-screen that I've seen many people bring up - the graphics are so intense these days that the systems just can't handle rendering two copies of the same game at the same time. This is a false assumption. Like I mentioned, FPS titles are still going strong with two- to four-player co-op and many of these are some of the most graphically stunning games available. Why can an FPS do it and not a racing game? My theory is that the developers are just plain lazy or don't care. Either that, or the publisher rushes them and doesn't care about split-screen so it doesn't get included in the final product.

Either way it sucks. I will never pay full price for a racing game that lacks this feature. Never. Twenty bucks or less for Burnout Paradise is great, but there's no way I would have paid $60 for it a year ago when it first came out simply for this fact.

And the List Grows Larger...

I have an ever-increasing list of games I'd like to pick up for the 360 that I used to have, currently have or have played for the PS3. Most of them come rather cheap these days, as well.

- Burnout Paradise
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Game of the Year Edition
- Assassin's Creed
- Prince of Persia
- Midnight Club: Los Angeles

I went and traded in my PS3 copy of Oblivion because, if I get the urge to play it again (which is likely), I'll want the 360 version so I can get all the downloadable content. I currently have Burnout Paradise, and I love the game, but its been a while since I played it, so I'm considering starting over on the 360 version if I can find it cheap. I used to have Assassin's Creed, as well, and I'd eventually like to finish it. Its been a while since I played it so I'll probably just start over on the 360 version when I get around to it.

But, right now I have three games to finish up (Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, Infinite Undiscovery) and Star Ocean: The Last Hope coming out next month!

Paradise City and Futuristic Hover-Car Racing

A couple things today, both dealing with recently purchased games. I'm having a hard time getting into Burnout Paradise. No, its not because of the game itself, but rather its patches. I had heard a trophy patch was coming out for the title, and I didn't really want to start up a new game until that happened. I had originally heard the trophies weren't retroactive. Then, I read on Criterion's site, of all places, that they would be. So, Wednesday evening, the day the game arrived in the mail, I booted it up, downloaded the bikes patch and away I went for a solid two hours.

The very next morning I find out that the trophy patch was available and...the trophies were not retroactive. So, I had to start over with a new game. This isn't really much of a problem, I suppose. I had only run a handful of races, but I had explored the city quite a bit in that two hours the previous evening. So, anyway, no big deal, right? I got home yesterday afternoon, booted up the game and the patch wouldn't download. In fact, the in-game news ticker said I couldn't connect to their servers.

Now, this had happened the day before too, but that had been the result of my ISP's DNS servers having issues and that had since been resolved, so I knew it wasn't that. I got reading online and found out many people were having this issue. To solve it, they completely deleted their patch 1.40 data, booted up the game again, and it connected and downloaded the patch 1.50 data (which is the trophy patch). Indeed, it worked just like that for me, as well. So, I'm good to start a real game this time.

In other news, I downloaded Wipeout HD last night and...wow, that game looks and feels amazing. The difficulty and learning curve are there, but only time will tell if things are too difficult. I did every race in the first section of career mode, some of them several times, and ended up with three gold medals, a few silver and one bronze. A couple of the silver metal races I ran multiple times and still could not snag the gold. This is going to take some work.

Needless to say, I don't get bored of the tracks or races because the game looks so amazing, plus I can put my own music to it and just race away. I'm quite hopeful this game will improve even more over time with new DLC, and I look forward to playing it online, as well as getting in some much-needed two-player split-screen action.