On co-op's disappearance

Much of today's gaming market focuses on the multiplayer aspect. It's becoming increasingly easy to connect with friends worldwide, but playing with a group at home, especially cooperatively, is getting harder. More and more, game companies are making a game that has multiplayer, not co-op.


With the exception of party games like Mario Kart and Rock Band, many titles have gone the one-disc-one-player route. When's the last time a FPS let you play with more than one person at a time? I know, I know, Halo: Reach. Games like that are the exceptions, though, not the rule.

Even if a game does have co-op, it's often impossible for two (much less four) players to play on the same console. Why has this become the case? The easy answer is money. If they can't play together, each player must pay for his or her own console/PC, copy of the game, Internet connection and other fees like Xbox Live and/or game subscriptions. Making games these days isn't cheap, and both good and bad games have to earn back their production costs.

Does anybody else remember the old days, when one guy in the neighborhood had a Super Nintendo and everybody gathered around for Super Mario Kart? While Mario Kart is arguably more group-friendly these days, since four can play, the rest of the gaming industry hasn't followed suit.

So how can this be avoided to enjoy a non-solitary experience? Obviously, party games are prime candidates, but others good choices are LittleBigPlanet series, the Left 4 Dead series, most sports games a la Madden, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Borderlands (although leveling up two characters evenly gets complicated), Resident Evil 5 and most games with more than "1 Player" listed on the back cover.

Be cautious of games that are marketed as co-op central. These are often trying way too hard and failing miserably. A prime example of this is Army of Two, which boils down to the AI filling one bling-covered character full of holes while the other invisibly walks up and shotguns them to death. That is not a partnership. That is a human shield.

Yeah, get used to dragging your dying partner. 

To find the co-op game that's right for you, do some research beforehand. Read reviews (not just from mainstream game sites), watch a couple gameplay videos online and decide what suits every player involved. If you do that right, everyone wins.