I’m a huge fan of co-op games. Actually I guess I should clarify that, I’m a huge fan of co-op games if you can play story mode. A lot of games nowadays have a “co-op” mode that is basically a shell of a game just using the levels from the story mode of the actual game. Most times these are fun for about 30 minutes and then get repetitive as they are just unimaginative mash ups designed to tick the co-op tag on the back of the box.
This is pretty sad, honestly, since these days co-op play can be easily accomplished through networks that we normally have to pay extra for anyways.
So why there aren’t those “true” co-op games being released? And I mean full on story mode.
The reason I am fired up enough to start this rant is because as I went to purchase (2 copies of) Dead Rising 4 last night for me and my friend to play he discovered that co-op story mode wasn’t an option just in the nick of time.
See, I’m a big fan of Dead Rising and after playing part 3 co-op it was seriously one of the number one games I was looking forward to playing this year.
Was it because the Dead Rising games are anything special? No. I actually hated the first Dead Rising with a passion. It wasn’t until I reluctantly played Dead Rising 2, just because I found out that it had co-op story mode, that I even gave the series another chance.
Dead Rising 2, Off the Record and especially 3 were some of my favorite co-op games to play in a very long time. It harked back to the old arcade days, but with a little bit of brains and customization. At its heart it was just a smash them up with zombies….lots of zombies. And that is why I loved it.
So as we both looked up why they decided to remove the co-op story mode from Dead Rising 4 we found a small blub from the developers saying they removed it to have the players “experience the game as it was intended”.
Look Capcom, BioWare, Naughty Dog and whatever other game company is out there listening, don’t tell me “how I should experience my games”. That would be like me ordering a steak and my significant other looking at the wait staff and saying “no, he will have the chicken.” If I am paying for it I should be able to experience the game how I want and I want co-op story mode.
I hardly figure I will pull some deep meaning of life playing Dead Rising 4 “as it was intended” so why can’t I have fun playing it with my friends like you allowed me for 3 of the previous games?
This brings back my ruined Christmas when I got Resistance 2 Fall of Man for PS3 and me and my friend who had played the first one got together only to discover that co-op story mode had been removed for similar reasons.
I don’t care if your game becomes unbalanced or too easy having the second player. If I want to make it more difficult I can normally do that in the options and if you are going to design characters that follow you around the entire time (Dragon Age, Uncharted) why can’t my friend join the adventure with me?
I’d buy every Uncharted game again if they allowed that. I loved when Dragon Age had it a decade back when it was called Neverwinter Nights 2. Yeah, you could manage it a decade back, but now it is too hard!?
Yup this just evolved into a rant more quickly than I thought so I’ll wrap it up.
A lot of the fun I have with games is sharing the experience with someone else. Game companies, if co-op story undermines how you want us to “experience the game” fix your co-op if not let me play the game how I want.
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