Coop Gaming… Worthwhile?
After a discussion about Diablo 3 and other up and coming games the other week, I was reminded of some recent games and some future games that are apparently going to be including coop.
We have recently seen Kain & Lynch, Army of Two, Gears of War and Halo (4 player coop > you), however they all seem to share the trend of being a first person shooter game... Ive heard rumours that Mass Effect 2 may contain coop, and it would be GREAT if the next Elder Scrolls game contained Coop...
It would be great for most games to have a coop but it would only be a few hours of fun with most people then you would go back to single player, so is it really worth it for developers to spend the time to add coop?
I would love to play Metal Gear Solid 4 on coop, that would be great fun, or play Oblivion coop, hell even Dead Rising would be made ALOT more of a game with coop added. There are lots of games i can think of that would be made better with Coop, but thinking ahead maybe the time of Coop is coming, with Left 4 Dead, Diablo 3 and other coop games being released... im sure there are more coop games coming just cant remember them at the moment...
WAR == WOW???
Ok so as most of you know i like to rant about games that rub me the wrong way... Halo was a great example, i didnt like it so i said so, much to the dismay of my friends who loved it.
Anyway as i havent really ranted about anything for a while, i thought one was in order, linking to a discussion i had the other day at home with Jode/Jen.
If any of you have been watching the <a href="http://www.war-europe.com" target="_BLANK">Warhammer Online</a> (Even the website is named like WoW) screenys and videos as the game was developing you may have thought either of 2 things....
OMG THATS AWESOME
or
OMG THATS WOW
As im sure you guessed i went with the latter, and a good friend of mine came up with the argument that Warhammer was around waaaaay before Warcraft, which is a fair point. However they didnt have an MMO or a game that looked anything like WoW before Blizzard did, which in my eyes means they are the ones who created that art style in an MMO.
Now its not entirely fair for me to say they look identical as there are a few differences in how they look. However any screenshots with dwarves looks like ironforge, and any shots with elves in looks like the blood elf lands. I mean the towers look IDENTICAL, and they even have a train in their dwarf lands like Ironforge...
I mean WoW wasnt anything revolutionary when it first came out, and i ranted about that as i didnt like the style of it (still prefer Lineage 2's graphics), and it seemed to lose alot of the community elements that other MMOS had. However there was one MAJOR thing that made WoW awesome in my eyes... ADDONS. Many people forget that but addons are the best thing since sliced bread, every MMO should allow you to make your own addons. I havent heard anything like this for WAR, but if they brought that in i may be a bit happier about it.
As far as gameplay goes, the only difference i keep hearing is this RvR, however it just sounds like a mix of battleground and open PvP which WoW has had forever and a day.
Ultimatly it looks like a game that should have been out 2 years ago, it looks dated and like WoW, which is the industry leader at the moment. There is no excuse for trying to reinvent the wheel, especially when the current itteration of the wheel is doing the job well. They have the 40k setting that they could have used to blow us all away, but instead they wanted to play it safe, i hope they will come out with 40k, but maybe World of Starcraft will beat them to it, that would make me laugh alot.