Poll: Living room multiplayer leaving for that big arcade in the sky, gamers happily pack its bags.

[LoompaOompa]

I can't play games with my friends when they come over anymore. It's not because they lost they don't like video games anymore, it's not because they have carpal tunnel syndrome, and it's not because someone broke into my house and stole my PS3. Developers have given up on putting split-screen multiplayer into games, and I'm confused as to why I never hear anything about it.

There are obvious exceptions. Halo 3 does it right, and that's why its still the most popular multiplayer game on xbox 360. Rock band also deserves mention. Call of duty 4 allows it, but it doesn't count because you can't take your friends online, even if they have xbox live accounts. This is especially frustrating, because in the previous Call of duty games, you could do splits creen multiplayer online. Resistance for the PS3 has not online split screen multiplayer, either. Unreal tournament, a game that has no other reason for existing, other than multiplayer, doesn't split screen multiplayer in any capacity. Gears of war allows 2 player split screen. Am I playing SNES all over again? I have 4 F!*king controllers. I guess I can use two of them as doorstops while we play. Team Fortress 2 in the console versions of the orange box has no split screen multiplayer. Why don't people ever talk about this? is anyone else upset? When I got my PS3 for christmas, I went out and bought 10 games. Out of those 10 games, only 1 allowed me to play with my friends in the same room, and even then, we couldn't go online. We resorted to taking turns battling each other in super puzzle fighter, which i downloaded from the PSN.

Of all of the games I mentioned, only one has any resemblance of a real excuse. TF2 is a port of a pc game, and therefore is less likely to get added functionality. Are developers lazy? Are they pushing the hardware so far that they just can't do 4 player split screen anymore? If that's the case, why not scale it back for multiplayer? I would gladly play a slightly uglier version of gears, if it meant that all of my friends could play when they came over. And what about games that have 4 player split screen, but won't allow online? Who decided that that was the way to go? Halo proves that it's possible, so what's the problem?

This was kind of a rant, but I need to make sure that I'm not going crazy, and that other people are noticing this.

 

[righthanded]

Split screen and bots should be in every FPS game. Perfect Dark should be the model for Multiplayer options. Customizable weapon slots, rule sets, four-way split-screen, and bot personalities should be standard by now. Just add all of that to the ability to go online and you should be golden. How come games can't get away with looking dated but are allowed to have multiplayer components that would have looked weak two generations ago?

 

[Shamtee]

its because we're now the 'online age' Publisher tell dev teams to mainly to work on single screen online and to really forget the split screen as people would rather play on separate consoles having to both own that game. Bunige really had free rain over what to do which was lucky for both them and us.

 

[i_am_undead]

I think that in the case of the developers, they don't want to sacrifice graphics for split screen action, which inevitably happens when they build the split screen multiplayer function into the game. In my humble opinion, however, the loss of split screen totally sucks...

Can't gaming stay a social experience in America? First almost all the arcades shut down, and now no more split scree/co-op/multiplayer on the home consoles... I hardly ever play shooters anymore because of this reason alone. Dark times, these are... dark times...

 

[shadow skill]

Yea that does kind of suck that split screen is seemingly dead. I am not much of a shooter person but I really enjoyed splitscreen with Goldeneye.

 

[sammyfreak]

The only time i feel annoyed by this when there is no split-screen to TF2.

 

[Cooper42]

Agreed.

Perfect Dark allowed so much adaptation to the MP gaming, meaning it could be (and often was) rinsed down over and over.

I miss being able to sit with a bunch o' mates /together/ and play games. Apart from a few mentionable games, it just doesn't happen. But still, nothing beats that kind of MP experience.

 

[Pharsyde]

Just last night, my friend and I were playing Perfect Dark on his old N64. We find the multi-player options for that game are classic and we often return to the N64 system to enjoy that game. We were talking about how it's so horrendous that newer games don't all have a similar or even better system than Perfect Dark by now. It seemed so obvious to happen, but now gaming has either completely forgotten about it, or doesn't care.

There are some good games to mention for these days: Rainbow Six Vegas, Halo 1-3, GRAW. There are other's I'm sure, but I can't think of them. Which is kind of sad that I have to stress my mind to think of what I could play with friends.

 

[shadow skill]

Well hopefully Haze and the next Timesplitters games turn out to be excellent games.

 

[Talisker]

There is nothing more entertaining than getting some mates round opening some beers and kicking the living shit out of each other on Halo/Red Faction/Goldeneye, hell even Mario Kart. Yes, online multiplayer is fun but it should never, EVER, be the only option.

 

[Shiroi_Okami]

you are exactly right. developers recently have become so obsessed with 'online this, online that', that they forget that almost half of console games dont have xbox live or the like. its something that really ticks me off. thats one of the reasons why halo 3 was a godsend. its multiplayer system is simply AWESOME, i can just have my friends over for 4 player split screen madness, or 8 player split screen madness if we have two xboxes. and who we have most to thank for it is the people. bungie was considering at one point removing offline split screen, but a severe backlash on the bungie.net forums changed their minds. (thats what ive heard anyway). more developers should follow bungie's example, methinks.