It's become increasingly popular for games these days to allow you to join up with your friends over the internet to play through the single player campaign.  The most recent examples of this are Epic's Gears of War and, of course, Bungie's Halo 3.  I know, I know, "not another Halo post!" you scream...but I promise, this will be the last.  Plus it's really not about Halo, right?  It's about co-op.  At least that's what I'm telling myself.

A lot of the hype surrounding the aforementioned mega-hit had to do with fans' anticipating of knuckling up with 3 of their buddies in online co-op.  I have no beef with this, and truthfully I was excited for some co-op action too, but I think my mind has been changed on that front.  When I got Halo 3 the first thing I did was start up the normal single player campaign by myself.  I made it about 3 levels through when I was invited to join a 4-player co-op game with some of my friends.  I was excited to get rolling but about half way through the first level I realized I wasn't having as much fun as I had had by myself.  There are a few reasons for that I think.

First off, it's hard to enjoy a game, especially when it's your first play through, when you have 3 people squawking in your ear the whole time.  I found myself struggling to keep up with the story and the game was more or less transformed into a shooting gallery.  We'd kill all the enemies in one level, move on, kill all the enemies in the next, and so on.  We didn't care about the story, we were just killing stuff.  I think that when you're playing something co-operatively it's much easier to lose your suspension of disbelief...people are more prone to point out a game's over-the-top cutscenes when they have an audience listening.  That's all fine, and I'm not hating on my friends list full of good guys, but once again, it takes you out of the game.

I didn't have this problem so much with Gears, probably because it was only 2 player co-op.  Two players, both who hadn't played before.  Not only that, but Gears was really focused around having 2 players work together to get through a level, so we were more apt to talk about what was happening in the game then meandering and noticing some of the more unbelievable moments.  In Halo 3, the extra players are pretty much just extra bodies...there are no multiplayer objectives, and everything can be done with just one person.  What that means is that the other 3 people just serve as 3 extra guns that help you kill enemies faster which, admittedly, can be pretty mindless.  That's why, I think, the game discussion goes off the deep end.  When you have 4 people dominating a level of a game without much effort your mind wanders since you aren't really "in the game" as much as you would have been.

The other reason I think I'm going to stick to single-player is that you lose that epic scale when you're playing with 4 people total.  When I'm by myself and I single-handedly drop those brutes or destroy a couple wraith tanks with grenades it's an accomplishment.  You feel like you're making an impact in-game and realize you're Master Chief, badass of the universe.  In 4 player co-op everyone's flocking the wraiths and they get taken out in 2 seconds with minimal effort...it just loses the authenticity of the experience.

Anyways, that's my commentary on co-op...personally I'm going to stick with my tried and true method and at least play a campaign through once on my own even if co-op is offered.  The experience ends up much better that way.  On an unrelated note, I have to really get away from all of the gaming posts.  If you have any ideas about tech subjects or just other things you'd like to hear me babble about please post a comment.  If anyone bore the burden of reading this consistently I'd really feel I was doing them a disservice and I'm sure they're going through DmK gaming-post fatigue.  My sincerest apologies.

Currently Listening To: WebbAlert
Currently Playing: Halo 3, Project Gotham Racing 4