Co-Operative Obsession

If you know anything about me, you know I’m a whore for Co-Op gaming. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the utter destruction of other players but nothing compares to progressing through games with friends. In recent times we’ve seen the rise of co-op modes becoming prominent in popular games as well as a number of titles released that feature co-op as a major theme to the game or even have gameplay that completely revolves around co-operative play. I couldn’t be more happy about this progression. 

Quite often co-op used to be relegated to bug-filled, community made mods or games that featured half hearted attempts at the mode. Now I’m not talking about your classics of co-op; your old school arcade titles or beat-em ups (even though my love affair with co-op gaming did start with Golden Axe) so let’s stick to more recent releases as examples so as to not delve into the entire history of gaming. 

I personally remember being at LANs with friends and fumbling around with co-op mods for games like GTA III or Rune back in the day and usually getting too frustrated with the lag issues and game problems that we called it pointless, or the time me and a friend discovered we could force Unreal to load single player maps in multiplayer and play through the campaign. Eventually we discovered Sven Coop (http://www.svencoop.com/ - these guys are still creating co-op action even today) which was a well made mod for Half-Life 1 that purely revolved around supplying players with co-operative maps to play on, whether it was against waves of zombies or playing through HL1 campaign together. Before this most of our co-op gameplay revolved around Diablo 1 and 2 or RTS games against the AI. Not that this wasn’t fun, we just didn’t have a huge amount of variety. Console gaming always gave co-operative gaming a comfortable home, it is so much easier to pick up a controller next to your friend and begin an epic adventure than it is to play online or have LANs.

The Era of Co-Op Shooters

It seems after spending years of time hanging out with beat-em ups and RPGs, co-op had found a new buddy. Shooters.

One of the first games I ever stumbled across that featured co-op as a main theme was Army of Two; a console, cover-based shooter which had built all its action around co-op. A player goes down? Not a prob: head over, drag him to cover and revive him to keep the action moving. Of course this has become a staple of any co-op shooter, the ability to help each other out with resuscitation, boost each other over obstacles, trade gear and generally get each other’s back is now a common seen feature in co-op shooter gameplay.

The difference with Army of Two? This game was built from the ground up to be played with two players, even the story centred on dual main characters. Sure the game could be played single player but the second player’s role would be taken by a bot. This felt very unique for me at the time and so began a resurrection of my love for co-op gaming. Since then I’ve played through numerous shooters with friends that either have a solid co-op mode or are completely designed for co-op, games such as:

• The Army of Two series
• Gears of War series
• Resident Evil 5
• Borderlands
• Halo series
• Left 4 Dead series

Even Call of Duty got their finger in the co-op pie with World at War allowing complete co-operative play through the main campaign and with the now famous zombie mode.

Future of Co-operation?

It appears as if co-operative gameplay is here to stay, it’s making a comeback in a big way. Many gamers are now asking for co-op game modes for their favourite games and developers are responding. I’m sure I don’t need to talk about some of the more popular co-op titles that are in development *COUGH* DIABLO 3 *COUGH* but here a few gems coming out that you may or may not have heard about:

Brink: A co-op FPS that is combining elements of RPG character progression and gameplay with team-based multiplayer.

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge: Said to be the dark fantasy answer to Gears of War. Two player cover based shooter with one player taking the role of a spell caster/archer while the other is a melee specialist.

Dungeon Siege III: The third of a hugely successful series of ARPGs.

Portal 2: If you haven’t heard, the sequel to Valve’s masterpiece puzzler will have co-op.

Magicka: A four player humorous ARPG where each player takes the role of a little wizard, allows players to combine their spells to create crazy attacks. 

You better believe I’ll be pissing off everyone I know within a 200km radius to play games with me as co-op gets bigger and better... or just annoying the hell out of my partner :D

The only question that all of this leaves me with is, with co-op now big in three different genres and with game design becoming more advanced and expanding all the time... when are developers gonna start applying the epic awesomeness of co-op gameplay to new and interesting genres? (Yes I know Dawn of War II has co-op campaign which is great for an RTS, but still). I can’t wait to see wait the future will bring... hell, I may just go out there and make the future myself ;)