Halo 3, Call of Duty: World at War, Gears of War 1/2, I'm pretty sure the original Resistance did as well. It's pretty much a staple in AAA-class FPS games these days.
You already listed H3, GeoW and R1.
Far Cry 2, Dead Space, BioShock, Battlefield Bad Company, Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Dark Sector - all don't have a coop mode. Plus as others have already mentioned, coop wouldn't have worked well in R2.
You already listed H3, GeoW and R1.
Far Cry 2, Dead Space, BioShock, Battlefield Bad Company, Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Dark Sector - all don't have a coop mode. Plus as others have already mentioned, coop wouldn't have worked well in R2.
I don't consider FC2, Dead Space, Battlefield Bad Company or Dark Sector AAA games.
BioShock would've just been too weird with co-op or multiplayer of any kind.
Orange Box is full of a bunch of dated games, sans Portal which doesn't make sense for co-op.
Call of Duty 4 didn't have it, but the latest version of the series does so there goes that point...
And I disagree that it wouldn't have worked well in R2. It would've worked just fine, just like it does in Gears of War and Halo.
I'm just saying it's something I would have enjoyed a lot. I'm far from the only person who would think that. Just because "not all games" have it doesn't mean it's fine not to have it. Co-operative play is in these days, online or offline, and it's disappointing that they just implemented the solution where you can't really just sit down with your partner or buddy and play the game together. You need to invite a bunch of other people to your "living room" (virtual or otherwise) to do it, which is less fun for me.
Just finished R2 (had to take a few days off for that whole life thing) and have to say it was an excellent, highly playable FPS. I'm very intrigued by people's interpretations of the ending
, particularly what the sky showed right before the final shot...it looked like a large round dark area...hmmm...
Asher, the discussion is going way off topic, SP campaign would benefit from splitscreen coop at the cost of gfx, streaming, and possibly some gameplay for scripted boss fights and final section (think HL2 coop if you haven't played that much of SP). It's not there, it won't be coming, I feel for you.
That said, if you want to play split screen coop in R2, I really cannot imagine any excuse for not playing the coop campaign (admittedly somewhat poor label), just think it as a game with dynamic and sometimes random squad AI.
The coop teamplay structure is so simple, most of the time you don't need to listen to any chatter from online players, contrary to seemingly popular belief. Not that voice chat is not a plus, it's just not essential.
If you already made up your mind that's not for you either, just sell the damn game.
I don't consider FC2, Dead Space, Battlefield Bad Company or Dark Sector AAA games.
BioShock would've just been too weird with co-op or multiplayer of any kind.
Orange Box is full of a bunch of dated games, sans Portal which doesn't make sense for co-op.
Call of Duty 4 didn't have it, but the latest version of the series does so there goes that point...
And I disagree that it wouldn't have worked well in R2. It would've worked just fine, just like it does in Gears of War and Halo.
I'm just saying it's something I would have enjoyed a lot. I'm far from the only person who would think that. Just because "not all games" have it doesn't mean it's fine not to have it. Co-operative play is in these days, online or offline, and it's disappointing that they just implemented the solution where you can't really just sit down with your partner or buddy and play the game together. You need to invite a bunch of other people to your "living room" (virtual or otherwise) to do it, which is less fun for me.
So then tell me how the Leviathan fight would pan out? Would he grab both of you and you both have to shoot him in the mouth?
How exactly would the end sequence work? It would be STUPID.
How exactly would the fight with the Kraken be any fun with 2 people blasting away at it, with zero tension?
How exactly would fit another character in the game without it being ham fisted, seeing as how you have different people around you at different times. Please, explain THAT to me. It would have been stupid.
Either way, it's pretty obvious at this point that you are refusing to see any side but your own, further debate on this topic is pointless.
But it was never going to have it, they made it clear a long time ago. They put their energy into the 8 player co-op, something no other game has. Frankly if I had to have one I'd take the 8-player. Going through the SP with a friend might be fun once, but the 8-player co-op gives many more hours of play time with the three classes and 30 levels per class. You chose to read zero reviews, you are out $60, lesson learned.
I've played through Gears, Halo 3, Aof2, etc. with my buddy - that was a fun 6-10 hours per game. Now we will spend 30+ hours in R2 co-op with scary strangers online in addition to a great SP offline. I'm happy with that.
So has anyone unlocked the Magnum yet as a medic? I'm curious to know how many shots you can lay down without them detonating / disappearing...
It could be useful for a medic to lay say, 12 magnum rounds in the head of a Titan and then detonate, I think that would do a lot of damage, and net a nice amount of xp.
But it was never going to have it, they made it clear a long time ago. They put their energy into the 8 player co-op, something no other game has. Frankly if I had to have one I'd take the 8-player. Going through the SP with a friend might be fun once, but the 8-player co-op gives many more hours of play time with the three classes and 30 levels per class. You chose to read zero reviews, you are out $60, lesson learned.
I've played through Gears, Halo 3, Aof2, etc. with my buddy - that was a fun 6-10 hours per game. Now we will spend 30+ hours in R2 co-op with scary strangers online in addition to a great SP offline. I'm happy with that.
I'm sure the devs are too. I guess the sales will tell, but so far it doesn't look like it is the most popular decision.
I actually don't know too many people who enjoy playing cooperatively with strangers, and I also don't know too many people who have seven other friends with PS3s that can coordinate and play games together. It seems like it'll be a pretty niche thing, though it is commendable that they are trying it. It's not that the strangers are scary, it's that it's not nearly as fun playing with twelve year old children calling me faggot than it is playing with old friends.
As for it "never going to have it", that's irrelevant. I don't follow these kinds of games at all while they're in development. There's no point until they're out. I admit I should've done more research first, I probably would not have purchased it had I known about the design the cooperative play. But that's just me...
So then tell me how the Leviathan fight would pan out? Would he grab both of you and you both have to shoot him in the mouth?
How exactly would the end sequence work? It would be STUPID.
To be honest it was pretty stupid to begin with. I don't see how it is any more stupid to pick up two people and then throw them precisely in a well-scripted location than it is to pick up one. I was rolling my eyes pretty vigorously at the time already, picking up two people wouldn't make it any worse.
As for the end sequence --
If you're referring to the "shoot the orb to electrocute the baddie" part, that's easily done co-op. If you're referring to the "get out before the station blows up part" -- have you ever played Halo 1? That end part of Resistance was completely identical to Halo 1's ending, except Halo 1's had a bit more of a sense of speed and excitement with the Warthog. It's absolutely doable in coop. One of my favourite coop gaming memories was driving the Warthog across the self-destructing Halo while my friend manned the gun on the 'hog clearing a path...
I'm sure the devs are too. I guess the sales will tell, but so far it doesn't look like it is the most popular decision.
I actually don't know too many people who enjoy playing cooperatively with strangers, and I also don't know too many people who have seven other friends with PS3s that can coordinate and play games together. It seems like it'll be a pretty niche thing, though it is commendable that they are trying it. It's not that the strangers are scary, it's that it's not nearly as fun playing with twelve year old children calling me faggot than it is playing with old friends.
As for it "never going to have it", that's irrelevant. I don't follow these kinds of games at all while they're in development. There's no point until they're out. I admit I should've done more research first, I probably would not have purchased it had I known about the design the cooperative play. But that's just me...
To be honest it was pretty stupid to begin with. I don't see how it is any more stupid to pick up two people and then throw them precisely in a well-scripted location than it is two pick up one. I was rolling my eyes pretty vigorously at the time already, picking up two people wouldn't make it any worse.
As for the end sequence --
If you're referring to the "shoot the orb to electrocute the baddie" part, that's easily done co-op. If you're referring to the "get out before the station blows up part" -- have you ever played Halo 1? That end part of Resistance was completely identical to Halo 1's ending, except Halo 1's had a bit more of a sense of speed and excitement with the Warthog. It's absolutely doable in coop. One of my favourite coop gaming memories was driving the Warthog across the self-destructing Halo while my friend manned the gun on the 'hog clearing a path...
and you don't think it's detrimental to the story to have two people with "super powers" going through the story, with the second player having absolutley no relevance to anything what-so-ever?
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I'll just say I disagree, you're basically referencing a bunch of poorly done splitscreen co-op games that are tired and thoughtless, and completely writing off a new idea that you haven't even tried. Utterly ridiculous.
Also, your generalization of the community is ridiculous. It's really not that hard to play a game and find a handful of people that are great fun to play online with.
Did I just read that you called it a niche thing? I'm sure you thought World of Warcraft would also be a 'niche' thing? I mean, that has what, Guilds of 40+? Those people are doing massive raids, and look at the install base for WoW.
and you don't think it's detrimental to the story to have two people with "super powers" going through the story, with the second player having absolutley no relevance to anything what-so-ever?
It wouldn't bother me in the slightest. The story in R2 was derivatively corny as it was, that's not why I played the game. If it bothered you, you wouldn't need to play it. Alternatively, you could design around the problem like they did in Fable II -- the other guy doesn't need to be a super-power person, he can be a regular soldier with a subset of the abilities. It doesn't really matter. You act like it's impossible to do, and it's not. It'd just take more design thought and resources to do, which is a legit complaint, but it's something I'd still prefer to be in games.
I'll just say I disagree, you're basically referencing a bunch of poorly done splitscreen co-op games that are tired and thoughtless, and completely writing off a new idea that you haven't even tried. Utterly ridiculous.
It doesn't have to be split screen. You can do online coop play...
And they're not poorly done. You're right there's no point to debating this if you think the cooperative play in the Halo and Gears of War series was "poorly done".
The fact is my SO sat around and watched me play a game that they could've joined in on and was used to being able to join me with on competing games. You can point me to the 8-person online coop as the best thing since sliced bread, but that changes it from being an intimate two-player experience to a more anonymous squad-based online thing, usually with strangers. They're not comparable, IMO.
I finished the game early last week, but have held off posting on it until now. I was a huge Resistance 1 fan I should mention, and a huge fan of Resistance 1 multiplayer as well. R2 is a great game, but it is a different game. And as someone expecting a sequel, well, it didn't really feel that way for the vast majority of the game. By the end of course I was intimately familiar with the new mechanics and was invested in the plot, but I feel there are definite leaps/breaks from R1 tradition - if you can call a single game tradition - that makes me feel as if they had compiled a list of all the things that would make the best FPS experience ever, and decided that somehow, no matter what, these ideas were making their way in. I think it's a worse game for it honestly, and think they would have done great with simply the engine revamp and carrying forward with R1 stylistically into this next iteration.
I have to say also that I love the whole Resistance storyline/plot; I didn't feel entirely satisfied honestly with how much (or how little) I learned in R1, and I feel less satisfied here. I just feel that somewhere in the mix here, there should have been some briefing/debriefing moments, something to put things on - pause - and let the player soak in some of the 'big picture' intensity. If nothing else, I'm just honestly curious as to the state of the effort, and though I love the intel finds and the radio shows, the plot revelations via companion conversation didn't work too well for me. Example:
"doesn't this make you wish for the days when they needed conversion centers Lieutenant?" Uh, ok, so the entire premise of the first game is brushed over with this one line? I liked the conversion centers! I think they went to this though (non centers), because of course it was on their list of 'awesome things to include.'
Great graphics, truly wonderful sound. A great game. But so many times I felt I was playing a different idea, just dependent on what was going on. Also the multiplayer, I do have to say, I was a gigantic R1 MP fan. I'm not super vocal about it like Patsu and others are, but I earned my (literal) stars, y'know? What made it great was that it was distinct also - if you said Resistance-style MP, that meant something. It did have its own style. This is still great MP, but I feel it's a different style.
Honestly IMO they should have released R2 w/R1 style multiplayer, and then maybe released a second "World of Resistance," or "Call of the Resistance" (catch that obvious allusion there) game that did the online co-op, and changed up the multiplayer to the new experience. I think that R2 would have been received better initially - and initially is crucial - and the second ancillary game would have sold quite well, and have been judged on its own merits for what it was clearly trying to achieve, rather than for what was changed from R1.
The series is obviously, hopefully, headed for a third game. I'm honestly surprised at the final plot twist, and I do hope that somewhere in the mix with all this, they map out the Resistance plot/timeline in greater detail. I can't hope that the third game will do a better job than the preceding two in this regard, so as a bonus for finishing that third game or something, that the comprehensive overview of the Chimeran situation and the human efforts against it be detailed.
I have been playing MP lately and my biggest problem is deciding whether I should play coop or competitive, which is a very much welcome problem, and a first for me. The idea that they should have instead shipped seperate games is almost offensive.
As for the SP and competitive changes, as much as I loved R1 SP and had finished it more times than any other SP since Quake days, R1 didn't get the praise it deserved. It's totally understandable for IG to make radical changes to the game. Too bad, too many of the SP campaign changes are for the worse.
I also don't get the pun "Call of (the) Resistance" to be honest. The similarities of competitive MP to CoD(4) are minor, as minor as the difference between any FPS. More importantly, what MP brings to the table is way bigger than what it borrowed from other games (more so than R1).
I have been playing MP lately and my biggest problem is deciding whether I should play coop or competitive, which is a very much welcome problem, and a first for me. The idea that they should have instead shipped seperate games is almost offensive.
As for the SP and competitive changes, as much as I loved R1 SP and had finished it more times than any other SP since Quake days, R1 didn't get the praise it deserved. It's totally understandable for IG to make radical changes to the game. Too bad, too many of the SP campaign changes are for the worse.
I also don't get the pun "Call of (the) Resistance" to be honest. The similarities of competitive MP to CoD(4) are minor, as minor as the difference between any FPS. More importantly, what MP brings to the table is way bigger than what it borrowed from other games (more so than R1).
You're free to disagree of course, I'm not saying that "I'm right," and other opinions would be wrong.
But I do think that R1 style MP, which, remember... R1 may not have sold insane numbers, but it sold a lot of games, and a lot of us are fond of R1 style MP... would have aided the initial reception/uptake of the game. If the co-op and squad-based multiplayer had been offered as a downloadable $15/20 add-on with nice plot tie-ins and some other veneering, I think it would have done quite well. And more importantly in terms of the entire experience, I think that people that bought R2 expecting something would have more received what they were expecting, and people enticed by the new MP would still be given that option. I think the sales would have been higher for the initial game, and of course strengthened further by the add-on. Also, I think that some R2 MP holdouts might be more easily enticed to try the new experience if it was billed in that "brand new" format.
As for the Call of Duty allusion, it was just an allusion - I wouldn't get too worked up. It's the same type of allusion that Insomniac likes to use in their game titles anyway though, which is why I think it would work, and make the concept immediately understood and accessible.
I'm sure you will have the same criticism with Gear's 2 Horde mode and Left4Dead. I'm not sure why you are hung up on a play mode that was not advertised and is no means standard at this point. The game isn't for you, time to get this thread back on track, R2 isn't Halo 3 and I for one am very happy about that.
The point is, why are you seeing experience points pop up at all? Why are there classes? Why is it squad-focused? None of that, IMO, has anything to do with what made R1 MP what it was, and for someone looking for R1 MP to be extended through into this game, it's simply not what was hoped for. It's a fundamentally different experience, and one that if you use R1 as the benchmark, I would call 'un-Resistance' in nature. If people like me, who loved the original game MP, were alone in our thinking... well, this wouldn't be a contentious issue at all. But it is contentious, and that tells you something.
The point is, why are you seeing experience points pop up at all? Why are there classes? Why is it squad-focused? None of that, IMO, has anything to do with what made R1 MP what it was, and for someone looking for R1 MP to be extended through into this game, it's simply not what was hoped for. It's a fundamentally different experience, and one that if you use R1 as the benchmark, I would call 'un-Resistance' in nature. If people like me, who loved the original game MP, were alone in our thinking... well, this wouldn't be a contentious issue at all. But it is contentious, and that tells you something.
Does COD4 have classes? I've played it only a little bit in 2007, but I had the impression it was more like CS, in terms of how you choose equipment. R2 coop is very much 'resistance's coop'. Nothing else on the market is like it, either console or PC; a fast-paced, many-weapon-carrying MP game is unique on consoles, but also sounds a lot like Quake or UT (but probably dialed-down).
Does COD4 have classes? I've played it only a little bit in 2007, but I had the impression it was more like CS, in terms of how you choose equipment. R2 coop is very much 'resistance's coop'. Nothing else on the market is like it, either console or PC; a fast-paced, many-weapon-carrying MP game is unique on consoles, but also sounds a lot like Quake or UT (but probably dialed-down).
It does have classes, but that's neither here nor there. The issue is not how similar is R2 MP to other games' MP (I never mentioned COD4 incidentally), the question is how similar is R2's MP to R1's - I would say very dissimilar. I think people here are getting way way defensive/antagonistic about this issue, for reasons I don't understand. To reject that this has been a mixed-review shift in product offering, IMO, is simply to deny reality. You can disagree with why those views are held, but you can't possibly disagree that those views *are* held. And it's not just by game sites or this and that reviewer, but by die hard R1 fans (myself).
It's not a matter of whether what is being offered is unique, good, or enjoyable, it's a matter of whether one thing was expected (reasonably so I would say) and another received.
The point is, why are you seeing experience points pop up at all? Why are there classes? Why is it squad-focused? None of that, IMO, has anything to do with what made R1 MP what it was, and for someone looking for R1 MP to be extended through into this game, it's simply not what was hoped for. It's a fundamentally different experience, and one that if you use R1 as the benchmark, I would call 'un-Resistance' in nature. If people like me, who loved the original game MP, were alone in our thinking... well, this wouldn't be a contentious issue at all. But it is contentious, and that tells you something.
1) The experience points are a reward system, and I would attribute that to RPGs in general much faster than I would attribute it to call of duty, even then, that doesn't alter the gameplay at all, you take away the visual pop up, and the game still plays the same, moot point.
2) Classes are only in co-operative play. There are no classes in multiplayer. There are also no classes in Call of Duty 4. There are different configurations of weapons, that you can tweak and customize, this is not exclusive to Call of Duty, and games like Socom and Rainbow Six have been doing this for ages. Again, moot point.
3) It is squad based to help organize the game, it has more to do with iterating on your existing technology. The original Resistance was great, but you were playing with a team of 20 people, and you could hardly get organized on a team that large. Playing on a smaller team of 5 is significantly easier to work with and organize, and also helps to distribute the 'flow' of the battle so it is spread out among the map.
4) it is a different experience. R1 was very "old school" and for R2 to be successful, it will have to be different. R1 was largely critisized for it's elements that can be attributed to early shooters, things like weapon pick ups and run and gun gameplay.
Say what you will, but for the average consumer, R2 is a better game, and far more accessible. Trying to lessen the choices made by Insomniac by worthlessly comparing it to another successful shooter like Call of Duty is a bit over the top, in my opinion.
