Just thought I’d share this ridiculous justification for not having co-op in the main campaign of Modern Warfare 3: http://attackofthefanboy.com/news/modern-warfare-3-co-op-would-take-away-from-the-experience/
Basically, single player is so heavily scripted and story-focused that a second player would “ruin the experience”. Instead, we get second-class co-op modes like wave defense and a set of quick, standalone missions. I don’t play CoD multiplayer, and I’m certainly not paying full price for batch of second-class co-op modes.
I’m really getting sick of modern shooters not allowing co-op in the main campaign. The developers are only interested in scripted sequences, linearity, and bad stories. I used to love the Call of Duty campaigns because they had lots of content and were focused on combat, but they’ve gotten pretty bad since Modern Warfare 2, where the playable content is average but the scripted moments and bad story are more over-the-top than ever.
I think the campaigns would be better if they were designed for co-op for a few reasons. First, co-op is awesome. Second, when designing for co-op, you have to focus on things that benefit single player anyway. Things like having multiple attack options in the levels, removing scripted sequences that won’t work with more than one player, and not boring the players with too much downtime when they are already entertained by combat and each other.
Call of Duty’s competitors (see Medal of Honor and Battlefield) try to compete with these campaigns in a mind-numbingly stupid red-ocean fashion: by trying to out-do each others’ scripted, linear stories instead of raking in easy customers with a 4-player co-op campaign. It blows my mind!
Foolish emailer! You assume a video game should be made for your enjoyment. But a video game is now made today only for the developer’s enjoyment so he can show off his ‘creative genius’.
This has become a widespread plague on present-day gaming. No game company is immune to the disease. Blizzard has the cancer as well. World of Warcraft’s quests are all heavily phased ‘story sequences’ which cannot be played co-opt which is pissing off players. And have you seen that Starcraft 2 storyline? Holy moly, what horrible drek.
Nintendo is probably infected worse than any other company. Let’s look at the Mario, Metroid, and Zelda triumvirate for a moment.
As shown in Mario Galaxy, Mario games are frequently getting the ‘story treatment’. It got so bad that Miyamoto had to put a stop to it. It is unbelievable to me that Miyamoto has to say, when development began at Super Mario Brothers 5, to say, “No story!” Even then, employees went behind Miyamoto’s back and put in a ‘story’ in Mario Galaxy without Miyamoto knowing.
With Metroid, well, we can see a clear and present decline. You could really see the ‘scripted and story sequences’ bubble up with Fusion and Zero Mission. And then there was Other M which was… well, you all know.
And Zelda, what do we have? A bunch of scripted story crap sequences. No overworld. But tons of crappy NPCs saying ridiculously bad dialogue. Apparently, the Unfortunate-Person-Assigned-To-Read-This-Website from Nintendo asked Miyamoto about taking the story out of Zelda. And Miyamoto had the ‘derp derp’ reaction: “I can’t imagine making a Zelda game without the story.”
If you compare the early Zelda games to the recent ones, it is as if there is no ‘story’ in the early ones. Just a nice huge overworld with dangerous dungeons.
So why is this plague of ‘cinematic, scripted’ sequences spreading across all gaming? Instead of the Angel of Death, it is the Angel of Mediocrity coming to game to game. For example, the crappy story in Starcraft II really ruined the franchise for a ton of people. Aside from multiplayer, no one is excited about Starcraft’s continuum anymore. And that’s a damn shame.
The story quality of these games is what I see in a first time novelist who first put pen to paper. It is horribly done. When we tell them it is horrible, they keep doing it. That is what pisses me off.
So why does it keep happening? I think it is because the new generation of game developers believe they are entitled to be creative (which they define creative as in ‘doing whatever the hell they want’). These types of game developers are trash and should be dismissed immediately.
The only way I know for gamers to fight back against this nonsense is endless mockery. Mock their ‘proud’ stories. Laugh at them. Mock. Mock. Mock. There is one thing a so-called ‘creative’ person cannot stand: being laughed at.