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gaming Is local multiplayer in decline?


TheEngineer

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When I was younger, I remember the days when a few friends and I would kick back in a few chairs, boot up the gamecube/ps2/xbox and game away for a while. These were the good old days when you could find quite a few games in the store which boasted about their abilities about local multiplayer. When you bought a game, you usually expected an interesting multiplayer mode that was a lot of fun.

 

Two examples of such games will suffice, Timesplitters 2 and James Bond: Agent Under Fire.

 

Timesplitters 2 was a fantastic arcade-like shooting game which featured a single player story, a co-op mode, and awesome local multiplayer. Every character you encountered in the game was available to be unlocked in multiplayer, there were a huge variety of multiplayer modes, the guns were interesting and fun to use, and it was an immensely enjoyable experience in general.

 

Agent Under Fire, at first, wasn't too great. It followed a lot of the conventions which, at that time, had become a part of the James Bond FPS games. The single player was meh, though it had it's good moments. Regardless, it was the multiplayer which always struck me. The multiplayer mode had all sorts of interesting options like adjusting the strength of gravity and enabling jet packs. This meant that a match could entirely consist of you and your friends boosting across the map and flying past one another while frantically trying to shoot each other. It made for quite a few enjoyable games!

 

Both of these games have some elements which make them fun to play with other people. Sure, there are still a handful of games which have local multiplayer, but even among those games there tends not to be too much creativity.

 

What do you think? Is local multiplayer in decline?

Edited by TheEngineer
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I don't do much local multiplayer now a days, and really most games I get don't offer it... If they did that would be kinda cool yet not work.. Some games just cant do local multiplayer so if anything getting rid of lots of it opens up more creative single player experinces (i dont know what im talking about, im just suggesting things)

there still are some good games out there that do some nice local multiplayer but really I would rather that they (my friends) stay in their house and I stay in mine and we play some online multiplayer together with others. (or something like that)


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I agree 100%. I remember when I was a child I used to ask my Mother for money every two weeks or so to go play Street Fighter with my friends at the arcade :) Good times..In the fighting game community it isn't uncommon to see a few players go to a local tournament and game there but outside of that it's all about online nowadays

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I sadly agree to this fully.

 

Most companies don't want to deal with such a thing for the most part since it is extra time they have to go out of their way to build the game, meaning more money spent. Such games that are exempt from that are games that start of like that such as RE5 or Gears of War.

 

I'm sorta sick and tired of playing so many shooter online games or the WOW clones out there. Wish there was just at least a game in general to play right now. Games as a whole are on a decline on new content from the big budget games; I can't really recall a great original game from them in a while now.

 

Going towards Indie developers they have great games and plenty of them are chock full of multiplayer; but they are on computer so it's a bit awkward playing on the same keyboard.

 

Maybe the OP could list off a full list of co-ops that are offline for people?

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Yep it has been sadly been going this way ever since the xb360/ps3 gen came along the scene. Online is good & all but I miss the n64 days back when you could gather all of your buddies and have a blast sadly very few games ,as of now, have decent local splitscreen.

 

Fav. splitscreen games

 

Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, GoldenEye, Mario Tennis, Super Smash Bros. Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Party series, Burnout racing games oh and there are plenty more.

Edited by GoneAirbourne
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With shooters it definitely is. I think it's local play is still strong with fighters and a lot of games have local co-op but everything is defiantly about online now.

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Yes and no. Yes because it seems they are sacrificing splitscreen for online but no because if you have the money for it or have friends with the same console and game you can plug them into two TVs in the same room right next to each other and play that way. Not the exact same experience but it's about as close as you'll get in some cases. Kinda like a LAN party, eh?

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I used to play local multiplayer games all the time, and I still would if games let me. Sadly, unless you like Halo or CoD, most developers refuse to include local multiplayer. With games like Assassin's Creed, that's understandable; but when you have games like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Left 4 Dead, there is no excuse. I remember playing Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 on the PS2 all the time with my friends, and I bought the remake to experience that again in HD. Sadly they decided that unless you have online, you can only do their two campaigns. But I can overlook that game as simply time constraints might have forced them to can local. What irks me is Left 4 Dead and its sequel. The games are entirely based on 4 player co-op, so why in the almighty hell can you not have 3 local buddies come and help you out? Without online, there is absolutely no reason to even play the games since the story mode is about as short as it gets. And with a sequel, you would expect maybe an improvement as they would have more money in the project - but no. No local.

 

Sorry for my rant. I get passionate when it comes to multiplayer. I do enjoy all those games (except L4D), but it doesn't take long at all for Halo / CoD to get old.

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It really is.

The farther back you go the more and more common 2 player games and being able to play on the same screen is.

My biggest complaint is for game that honestly have no reason not to have 2 player splitscreen.

 

It's definetly a dying feature since most devs want you to own 2 xbox's and 2 copies of the game.


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I agree with you all the way. I hate how constantly new games come out where the multiplayer is online only and has no splitscreen support whatsoever. This is why I'm such a halo fan since every game has supported 4 player online :3. Mostly EA games like Crysis and Battlefield that don't help support splitscreen just to name a couple. I dont like games that only support online mostly because what happens if you have no internet connection for a while? That 60$ game you bought becomes just a shitty campaign


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The days of consoles having 4 controller ports is gone. Sure, the wii has those 4 gamecube ports but the WiiU is coming and is getting rid of that. Other consoles have all purpose usb ports not just for wired controllers.

 

What does this have to do with local multiplayer? There's less reason for developers to include a split screen feature on their games when there are no controller only ports. When a game like CoD comes out, people buy the game to play the multiplayer ONLINE because it has huge replay value. The game rewards you more when you play online rather than local.

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It is in decline and this saddens my greatly. I have 2 sisters and live 1 floor above my 4 cousins so you could imagine what fun we used to have with splitscreen games. We'd waste hours playing Crash Team Racing on the ps1.

Sure online multiplayer is fun and you can play with people all around the world but it doesn't compare to having those people in the same room as you, eating pizza and having a blast.


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Ever play Unreal Championship? One of my favorite local mutiplayer games i used to play with my brothers on the Xbox other then Halo 2 and Brute Force. We also loved playing Conker's bad fur day on the N64 and Super smash bros on the gamecube. I miss those days <3

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there was an article in game informer about this that i read today, and it mentioned that game developers are reluctant to continue to add couch play into their games because so many people are playing alone online more and more. i really really hope they don't do this, my boyfriend and i love to sit on the couch and play on or offline together. that is how i got into gaming and would never have gotten into online gaming without first playing on the couch with someone. i think it would be a huge mistake for developers to cut out couch play entirely.


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Yep it has been sadly been going this way ever since the xb360/ps3 gen came along the scene. Online is good & all but I miss the n64 days back when you could gather all of your buddies and have a blast sadly very few games ,as of now, have decent local splitscreen.

 

Fav. splitscreen games

 

Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, GoldenEye, Mario Tennis, Super Smash Bros. Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Party series, Burnout racing games oh and there are plenty more.

 

An I remember those days, I played a lot of perfect dark (and many of the other games) with friends on my N64, we even talk about it quite a lot even now!

 

I think it was golden eye where you could duel wield grenade launchers and plant sticky bomb on people and stuff, that was so funny ><

 

I feel like this is missing from games nowadays where it's all stats orientated and the teams are much to big. :/

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Online play is completely edging out local multiplayer these days. What irritates me to no end is the fact that there are a handful of games out there that have potential to be extremely appealing in terms of local multiplayer, but the game either has no local multiplayer at all, or it does, and it's obvious that absolutely no effort was put into making it similar to online multiplayer. For example:

 

*Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2: Only two people can play local, whereas an entire group can play online; There are four characters; the least local could offer is four players offline.

 

*Fable III: The local play in Fable III has seen a serious decline since the previous game. At least in Fable II, the second player got to choose their gender, and had access to a lot more weapons and items than the forced character in Fable III.

 

*Ace Combat: Assault Horizon: One of the games I hoped would have a satisfactory local multiplater. Turns out it has absolutely NO local multiplayer at all. A game obviously built for a thrilling multiplayer experience, but not supportive of local play just seems to contradict itself.

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I have seen a decline in local multiplayer...though me and my friends still manage to have a good time no matter what, as long as we can play together it is okay ^^

 

though I would like it if them put a bit more emphasis on it these days. Co-op play was always my favourite, as I was never particularly good at many competitive games, I get flustered and make mistakes a lot. but Co-op is like a friendly multiplayer ^^

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There is definitely a sad decline in multiplayer, which is truly a shame. My good friend and I usually meet up on the weekends to gather around the TV and play some fun multiplayer action. There are certainly a lot fewer good multiplayer titles than there were on the Nintendo 64.

 

Well, minecraft has a local multiplayer mode now if you consider that a plus. I have yet to use it though.

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