I've been increasingly disappointed with many games the past years. Plenty of games had the potential for some great coop modes. Latest game I know of was quake 2 (talking about PC only and having coop built into the game). Everything else is just plain singleplayer or multiplayer, i.e. deathmatch etc. The latest disappointment was Republic commando. I mean it had a squad! 4 teammates. Surely it could have had coop mode. Well I think Brothers in Arms had coop but i only have one computer capable of playing it so I never gave it a try. That and the Tom Clancy series. I'm not fancy on Tom Clancy so I Brothers is my only option. K. Enough of getting sidetracked. I wanted to stop the whole no-coop thing and make a coop game. I was hoping on using the Half-life 2 engine but see my issues later on. My coop game would have a number of unique features that others don't have. #1 Squad splitting unique storyline. By that I mean the squad will have to split up for various reasons, not always just a few. And they will be able to assist other players from their own path. Such as the player who took the high route uses a crane to create a bridge for the rest of the squad. #2 Seamless maps. Not the whole thing, each chapter everyone loads the next level together but there may be several maps between the next chapter. It is my hope that I can either find an engine that supports this or it is not impossible at least. Think how map loading goes with MMO's as you run across the terrain. #3 To go with 1 and 2, players can be on several different maps on the same server. #4 then the whole, weapons, models etc, but in a sense, that's nothing new. . . . #1 shouldn't be too hard. It will just be tedious to make sure that there are no bugs, doors are opened remotely like they should, etc. #2 I want this as I can keep maps small and not have to worry about huge loading times. if I do this, I have to have #3 otherwise everyone is crammed on a small map. It is these two that I'm unsure of how to go about this. I would like to know the proper terms if I'm to search on the net for them. So far all I could think of is "dynamic content" but I don't even know if that's the right term. The engine also has to allow for dynamic content as well. When I asked if this is possible under the half-life 2 engine, i was told no. Not without some heavy coding, real heavy coding.

Oh, it's First Person Shooter

Quake 2 is really not the latest game with coop. Unreal, halo and halo 2 are fps's with coop. They weren't really built for it, but it can be quite fun. Then there's brute force, which I never liked, but it's a bit more squad based, so there's a bit more emphasis on the coop.

And... um... what was the question?

I'm not really sure why more games don't implement Co-Op modes myself, i think i may have heard somewhere that it's easier to implement DM only modes rather than taking the time to code better AI, or having to balance all the singleplayer levels. Not sure about that, so i could be wrong.

Halo only supports co-op on the X-Box, the PC version never had it implemented. I don't know about Halo 2 for PC though, i haven't heard much about it.

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#1 Squad splitting unique storyline. By that I mean the squad will have to split up for various reasons, not always just a few. And they will be able to assist other players from their own path. Such as the player who took the high route uses a crane to create a bridge for the rest of the squad.

Project Eden is an excelent co-op game with stuff like that, infact it'd say its quite similar to Republic Commando in some ways, so may be worth checking out. Upto 4 players where you have to split up on a regular basis with one (or more) players throwing switches/using skills to allow the others to pass through the level. Often specific members have to go rather than just anyone, since each of the 4 players has a unique skill (IE: environmental immunity, hacking, repairing, etc). Getting through a level usually involves all the skills of the players being employed at one point or another.

Didn't Project Eden suck? I remember being so hyped based on the pre-release noises coming out of Eidos and the gaming mags, and then the game actually came out and seemed to be immediately buried and covered with a rug, and then have a couch placed on top, like a dead body in a whorehouse.

I only ever finished Halo in co-op mode. They had a funny brute force mechanic where, if you fell too far behind and your partner crossed the checkpoint, you were teleported to meet up. This turned out to be a positive in some of the tougher areas, where we simply let whoever was better at that go ahead and do it while the other person kept getting teleported (like that stupid warthog run at the end). It also let us avoid restarting areas from scratch/checkpoint by only needing to keep one player alive, so whoever had less health/armor/weaponry could sacrifice himself (kamikaze plasma grenade!) against an aggressive brute and give the other guy a shot.

Most fun I had with an FPS, ever.

However, I also need to point out that co-op is alive and well... in sports games. Many sports games let you play teams, on both console and PC. NBA Live for PC supported up to 4 players on one machine as far back as 1999, and the feature remained in 2000 and 2001. (EA skipped a 2002 PC release, and by 2003 I'd jumped to Xbox.) The NBA 2K and NBA Live on Xbox support 4 players on one machine; on PS2 one of them supports a full 10 using the extender/multitap thing - which reminds me that SNES hoops games also had at least 6-player co-op via multitap.

Most of the sports games were flexible. You could play 2-a-side, 3-on-1, all four together or any other configuration where there were more players. In fact, full co-op online is more rare than local co-op.

Don't even get me started on soccer games, from Nintendo World Cup through Striker, International Superstar Soccer, Pro Evolution and FIFA. I'm not a big hockey guy, but I know hockey games had and have co-op, too.

One last thing: co-op is much better as a 10-foot experience than 2-foot. Crowding around a PC monitor with a bunch of friends, even if you have gamepads (and how many PC gamers have gamepads?), is not nearly as comfortable, ergonomic or enjoyable as gathering around the television screen, plopped into the couch or sprawled on the floor.

(This is why sports franchises are so essential to the health of consoles.)

Serious Sam and Second Encounter Co-op was a blast. Hordes of enemies, and coded well enough that you could have four people on different computers, multple players on one computer, or some on different computers and some sharing a pc.
Single PC games are far better with gamepads. Some of my best gaming experiences have involved breaking out the beer and chips with my friends for a game of Gish or Crimsonland. It's a shame more games don't include co-op. I had high hopes for Shadowgrounds, but that was dissapointingly actionless.

I was under the impression that Halo was only coop for the console, not the PC. I don't think Halo 2 is out for PC; as I remember, it took a year for the first one to go from X-box to PC.

I think it's because Coop is a niche market. It's not as sellable as singleplayer and definitely not as multiplayer. That and I think it's harder to track if that's why the game was bought.

It's hard to play online as, unless you don't care, you'll need the same group of people each time. Unless you also play all the way through.


Oluseyi -> Interesting metaphor :)

I totally forgot about Sports games, but since i restricted it to FPS' Coop, they don't count ;)

I've never been a big fan of the serious sam style of FPS, but at least it's a start. I like doing the thinking fps games where the AI is very well done and will use cover or grenades to flush you out. AKA Halflife. Or attack from nowhere because they are cloaked and you are not AKA AvP2. Both have mods for coop but i heard they are fairly buggy.

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Didn't Project Eden suck? I remember being so hyped based on the pre-release noises coming out of Eidos and the gaming mags, and then the game actually came out and seemed to be immediately buried and covered with a rug, and then have a couch placed on top, like a dead body in a whorehouse.

I don't quite know why that would've happened, when i sat down and played it after buying it from the bargin-bin i thought it was pretty good (maybe its just me?), I loaded it up and beat it again not that long ago. The closest i can describe it is like Republic Commando, but with a greater emphasis on puzzle solving, and you have to micromanage your party abit.

I figured it was at least worth a look given the topic, you can find a good playable demo Here.

I've played PlanetSide (PS) on and off for 3 years, and it has some of the best squad based strategy (it's an MMOFPS though). The biggest thing is that players have to have a reason to stay by a player. PS did this by implementing specialization. Some players had a medic restoration ability which was very powerful. Some units were in powerful slow moving suits that had weaknesses to "rocket launchers" so if they stay next to an infantry person that can repair them and they would stay alive. Or the infantry shot the guy with the rocket launcher because changing weapons in the game took time. (Cloakers that could ressurect players and repair and such added a lot. People start getting suspicious when people are resurrecting right after they killed them and they see no enemy :) ). I could go on but you get the point.

Players need to have a reason to co-op. I find that "double the fire power" is just a bad reason why co-op would be good.

I agree that we should have more co-op games. Games are stating to go the way that you kill your friends instead of working with them. I can think of many games which would be brilliant as with a co-op function. Doom 3 is my first example. Excellent game and I loved every minute of it, and I think a co-op option would have been really great.

There is one thing I find excellent about Quake II however is that you don't need an ace graphics card to run it. I have a measly nVidea GForce 4, barely enough to run Doom III and it's on the 'Minimum Requirements' list of many of the games out today. I still play Quake II online in multiplayer and in co-op modes, it's still a really good game after all.

One game has done an great job in promoting co-op modes, but also implementing deathmatch as well. Enemy Territory. Not only that but IT'S FREE! How many games of that quality can you name that are free? I can't name many, if any at all.

On the whole though I think that going through a co-operative game such as Quake II with a friend there at your side blasting the monsters back is astounding. I think what's really good about it is that after you've completed the game in Single Player, it's a whole new experience going through it in Co-Op Multiplayer. Co-op add-ons for games like Doom III would be amazing. Pitty my GC isn't up to the job though...