On paper, this game could have been created specifically for me. A game that casts you and three of your friends as survivors of a zombie apocalypse. A game that follows a simple formula: Get from Point A to Point B through various creepy environments while coming under constant zombie attack.
I played through the demo on single player and the experience was nothing short of awesome. Walking through an eerily dark and silent subway tunnel, running low on ammo when a flood of zombies suddenly bursts through a door…or seeing one of your fellow survivors get grabbed and dragged off into the darkness, while you make the split second decision to shoot or not shoot because your bullets can kill your friends as easily as your enemies.
Unfortunately, I will never buy this game.
You see, playing this game singleplayer only gives you about 10% of the experience. Most of the enjoyment of this game comes from the people you play it with rather than the game itself. Think of the game as a playground. It doesn’t really matter how good the playground is if the only people you can play with are gigantic gaping assholes.
That’s the big problem with co-op multiplayer. It only takes a single player to ruin the game for everyone else. For example, if you’re playing a shooter where you’re playing against other players, it doesn’t really matter if the other players are all gigantic douchebags. In a co-op environment you’re put in the position where you have to work with and rely on those other players…so one idiot can easily ruin the whole thing.
Let me give you an example.
The first time I played the Left 4 Dead demo online, I got really lucky and the game was an absolute pleasure. You see, Left 4 Dead is a game that requires teamwork and tactical thinking and flat-out punishes poor teamwork.
So in that first game, we got to the subway part, when at the other end of the tunnel we saw a hundred-zombie ambush running towards us.
“Quick.” Said one of the other players. “Get in the subway car!”
It was a sound plan. The doors to the subway car would act as a bottle-neck, stopping us from getting surrounded and allowing us to concentrate our fire and save ammo.
I was the last to get to the subway car because I was in the lead when we got ambushed and I was pleased to see that one of my teammates, rather than just running inside with the others, had waited by the door and was covering me as I made my way towards the car.
It was directly out of a movie. He was standing on the ground next to the subway car, firing burst after burst of SMG fire at the advancing horde behind me while I ran past him and leapt into the subway car.
“Come on!” I shouted as soon as I got through the door. “I got you covered.”
I started firing my shotgun into the rapidly closing crowd as my teammate stopped firing long enough to leap up into the subway car
“Shotguns in front!” I shouted, figuring two shotguns trained on the door would hold the zombies back easier than the sub-machine guns. Again, I was delighted to see the other shotgun-holding player on the team get into place next to me as we opened up…the bottleneck was working beautifully. A few seconds later I heard an SMG start firing behind me.
“Wait!” Said another voice. “Save your ammo until the shotguns need to reload.”
Again, another excellent decision. The zombies would have to get through a single door to get to us, so two shotguns was more than enough to hold them back. The downside was that shotguns take ages to reload and only have 8 shots each. A few seconds later my shotgun had run dry.
“Reloading!” I shouted, and like a well oiled machine, the same player who’d covered me on my run to the car took a step forward and put himself between me and the zombies. As soon as I reloaded I took a step forward again and we managed to finish the last of the ambush.
It was awesome.
Well, let’s just say my second game wasn’t quite up to the same standard, or the third, or the fourth…
The next game I played started as usual. We started on the roof of a building next to a table loaded with weapons, ammo and first aid kits.
“Hey everyone.” I said into my headset. “How…”
The sound of shotgun blasts split the air, and before I knew what was going on, another player had shot me in the back of the head before turning on the other team members. Before I knew it, my headset was filled with squeaky-voiced racist epithets.
The game after that? One player insisted on running as fast as he could through the whole level, inevitably getting ambushed and killed…which of course made him start screaming ‘NOOBS’ at the rest of us because we ‘obviously didn’t know how to play’.
The next game? I quit after spending ten minutes listening to two other players bitch, moan and argue at each other. What ever one suggested, the other suggested the opposite. There’s almost nothing that’s less fun that getting killed in a game because two of your team mates would rather bitch at each other than actually shoot at the bad guys.
That was the average experience from then on in.
So, the problem is that I don’t have four friends that have Xbox 360’s, and even if I did, convincing them to spend $60 each on a game that would only be fun on the rare occasions we could all play at the same time would be a pretty tough proposition.
This leads us to an already known conclusion. Douchebags are destroying the internet.
I wonder how many people who, like me, are not going to buy this game for exactly that reason? I wonder how many people leave their consoles off line for that reason too?
We really do need a douchebag-free channel on Xbox Live.
No comments:
Post a Comment