Sunday Sidebar: Is Co-op the new Deathmatch?

I am passionate about co-operative play. When it comes down to playing a game with friends, I am so much more enthused by overcoming an obstacle together, than by pitting myself against my compadres in a face à face that results in largely nothing. I garner such a deep level of satisfaction and pleasure from seeing a plan come together. Right now, I’m wearing an A-Team t-shirt that actually says ‘I love it when a plan comes together’. Do you know why? Because I really do love it when a plan comes together.

It is for this reason that I have been quietly, yet joyfully, noticing a significant development in multiplayer games of recent. A few years ago, your typical game contained a single-player campaign, and a multiplayer that would allow you to use what you had learned in a fight to the death against your friends, or even folks you had never met. Deathmatch was the traditional approach to a multiplayer component: an all-for-one, one-for-all high-stakes battle for honor among your peers. It is interesting to me how times are changing.

Mass Effect 3 will be the first entry with a multiplayer element.

Co-operative Play In The Spotlight

Two releases have been primarily in my gaming radar of recent: Syndicate, the Starbreeze reboot that was released this week, and Mass Effect 3, a little-known science-fiction action RPG made by a developer called BioWare. Both of these games feature a multiplayer option. However, neither of these titles offer the opportunity to defeat human opponents. Rather, players come together to achieve a common goal. There are rumors abound that Syndicate escaped a necessary Online Pass by not implementing competitive multiplayer, but there’s also a strong case to be made for the argument that many of the gameplay elements particular to it would start to over-complicate and even fall apart when employed against players who were performing exactly the same tricks on your team as you were on theirs. Instead, we are uniting humanity and pitching it against the machine. There is perhaps even something of a satirical element here, when we consider thatMass Effect 3 specifically has a main storyline concerning uniting humanity, and the rest of the galaxy, against a common oppressor that just so happens to be a race of sentient machines. Could BioWare be preparing us for the future?

The co-operative play in Syndicate has been described as more closely resembling MMO tactics than those of traditional shooters

There is definitely something important going on psychologically here, in my opinion. Or could it be economic? Has a climate of financial austerity encouraged us to team up, to work together and improve our situation? Are game developers doing nothing more than simply holding up a mirror to a contemporary society in the throes of improving its sense of community? It’s food for thought, at the very least. What I’m most curious about is where the split lies. How many players prefer facing human opponents to those blessed with artificial intelligence? I need your individual perspectives, dear readers. Do you prefer the feeling of victory provided by these Horde-Mode-style gameplay options, or the satisfaction of besting a human? Or do you eschew multiplayer in its entirety, preferring to play alone? Let’s indulge ourselves in a little sociological analysis. It’s the weekend!

Sunday Sidebar: All of the trial versions!

This week’s Sunday Sidebar is brought to you by the letter T. A couple of noteworthy demo versions saw light this week, and it seems prudent to give them some due care and attention. So boot up your Xbox 360, and let’s download ourselves some trials, huh?

Oooh, shiny!

First-off, if you have an Xbox, and you haven’t checked yet out the Trapdoor/EA joint Warp, it’s worth a look-in. Available in trial form from the Xbox Live Marketplace right now, it will be coming to PC and PS3 around March 16. I remember playing it and chatting with one of the developers briefly at PAX East last year, and quite enjoying the cartoony visuals and laboratory atmosphere. As a puzzle game taking place in a scientific locale, the comparisons to Portal are quick in jumping to mind, although the feel of the game is much less cerebral than Valve’s much-loved release. Of course, it is likely that Warp may develop into something more significant or complicated than the demo suggests, though, so perhaps I’m too quick to de-cerebralize it before it’s had a fair chance.

Warp is also the opening gambit for Microsoft’s House Party promotion, with Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, Nexuiz, and I Am Alive to follow in the weeks to come. Of those three, I Am Live is perhaps the most anticipated, and yet another survival horror game releasing this year! Hopefully our Jen Bosier will get a chance to enjoy a survival horror game this year after all? For what it’s worth, Ubisoft had previously scrapped development on the project, which at least gives hope that their is some variety of quality control in place, unlike a certain other release from this year. I’m quite looking forward to the next instalment of Alan Wake, given the pulpy look and feel of what’s been shown of it so far. The black sheep of the House Party is definitely Nexuiz, though. Starting out life as a Quake mod really doesn’t seem to give it much relevance or inherent value. The Xbox 360 is, as ever, still not particularly suffering from a lack of first-person shooters. You can check out some clips of the three here.

I suspect that I am not alone in having returned to the Mass Effect franchise this week. If not only for the brand-new demo (with multiplayer?!), then to get saved games and desired outcomes arranged and in place for the early March release of the closing chapter in a (so far) wonderful trilogy and excellent science fiction universe. So, the demo then. Opinions on it are suitably varied, which doesn’t generate a whole lot of confidence, but then, you know what they say about opinions. Mine? If you insist. What we are shown of the campaign feels lacking somehow, and having spent the last week re-completing the noir-y dreamboat that is Mass Effect 2, I was surprised to note how much more similar the demo felt to Mass Effect the First than its far-superior sequel.

The multiplayer is, so far as I can tell, Gears of War’s Horde Mode with some rudimentary effecting of masses. At the moment, I’m not convinced. I hope I can eat these words at a later date, but first impressions left me feeling that it is tacked-on, insignificant and not a huge draw. I was hoping for a much better outcome, I must say. All of the hype surrounding it, and my love for the first two games, have had me proverbially foaming at the mouth for the third and final entry, but after this week I feel just a tad cooled in that regard. Fingers crossed for a swift crossing-out of this mindset in under a month’s time.

Speaking of interesting multiplayer, I would direct any of those on the fence about Syndicate to try out its multiplayer demo offering. It’s not perfect, by a long way, but it’s a very intriguing, and it wasn’t until Jerry Holkins pointed it out that I realised that it replicates the playstyle of an MMO in a very interesting way. Also, it’s a super cyberpunk, tech-noir, corporate paranoia overdose. If you like that sort of thing, which I most certainly do.

Some other news is that, as a brief addendum to last week’s in-praise-of article on Double Fine, their Kickstarter campaign for Double Fine Adventure has led to a number of developers, particularly in the realms of nostalgia titles, to consider launching their own campaigns. If the whole thing kicks off, we could be in a very interesting world of business in the near future. Perhaps big corporations will fall, as gamers fund their own titles directly. This cannot happen. We need those big corporations so that we can fear them, folks. Please consult Syndicate for further information.

That about rounds it up for this week. If you’ve tried any of those games out, please let us know what you thought in the comments!

Sunday Sidebar: 2012 – The Year of the Martian Bear

Good morning everyone, and welcome to this week’s Sunday Sidebar. One of the concepts behind the creation of this weekly feature was not just to host a column-style musing on goings-on within the gaming scene, but to occasionally pause for reflection on more significant events. This week has been defined by one particular event, and if you missed it, then I’m happy to break it to you: Double Fine Productions are so hot right now.

Sunday Sidebar: PSA: XBLA A-OK

This week’s post was inspired by a conversation between my fiancée and I concerning the wonders of the Xbox Live Arcade. We were investigating the trial version of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes and we began almost lamenting the sheer breadth and quality of the variety of content present on the service. From time to time, Microsoft receives a low level of flak for some of its approaches to the Marketplace system, but one of the greatest aspects that they established was the necessity for all XBLA titles to be provided in trial form.

'Mass Effect 3' voice cast revealed

You can fight like a Krogan, run like a leopard. But you'll never be better than Commander Shepard

As the PR juggernaut begins to move ever more powerfully as launch day approaches, EA posted a video this morning of the key voice cast members in the closing chapter in its science fiction space opera trilogy: Mass Effect 3.

Sunday Sidebar: You Can’t Go Home Again

This week I’m on vacation in the States. The prospect of just over a week of without work had me trying to plan out something I could do with my time here. After some rumination, I came to settle on the idea of going back to one of my favourite games of last year – Eidos Montréal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. As a usual-resident in the United Kingdom, this game was obliged to stay put when I returned back to the small islands late last year. An opportunity to rekindle what we had together seemed one that I would be unwise to ignore.

"We won't be making any more Resistances", Insomniac CEO confirms

In an interview with VG247, Ted Price, CEO of developer Insomniac Games, has stated in no uncertain terms that their tenure with the PlayStation 3 Resistance franchise has come to a close.

Sunday Sidebar: MMO Fatigue: Is it affecting you?

If I had to choose one particular genre that made leaps and bounds in recent years, it would be that of Massively Multiplayer Online games. If the ’80s were the epoch of the arcade, the ’90s a realm of first-person shooters, I would argue that in the here and now, the post-broadband era of the games industry has been defined by the rise of multiplayer online gaming, and no genre better unifies this concept than that of the MMO. For many players, the excitement and social buzz of playing a game simultaneously alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of other people is irresistibly engaging. For every scare story of babies dying due to parental MMO addiction, there is another of those who meet in-game, fall in love, and live (at least so far) happily ever after.

Sunday Sidebar: Meet John Drake of Harmonix

In my continuing mission to expose the great and good of the videogames industry, this week I called in on John Drake of Harmonix Music, the developers of acclaimed franchise Dance Central, party favorite Rock Band, and recently, on iOS, the total nonsense-fun app, VidRhythm. John is responsible for heading up everything public about Harmonix, as well as being a generally easy-going, yet always enthusiastic, guy.

Sunday Sidebar: Easycore? – How lifestyle changes affect gaming approaches

There is a maxim that refers to the three stages of life, and how these three stages govern the management of free time. To relate it to gaming is not hard. As children, we have no money, but a veritable abundance of free time. For many of us, this is how our gaming habit takes root. Long nights (mis)spent exploring cavernous dungeons or aboard extraplanetary vessels, our imaginations caught like ships amidst digital storms. As school or college students, we have more money, but less free time. Where previously we could consume infinite amounts of experience, we must begin to better focus our gaming habits. It is at this stage that we will normally commence honing our skills in a particular area.

Sunday Sidebar: How not to do Gaming PR

In the weeks following Christmas, the gaming industry, like many others, falls into a slump. The big releases of the winter period have been thoroughly hyped, pre-ordered, purchased and played, and we wait, satisfied, for the new-born of spring to provide us with future gaming excellence.

For the press, this dearth of new games and significant news is usually overcome with End-Of-Year lists of best-ofs, worst-ofs, underrateds and also-rans. You might see a few retrospectives, or a well-constructed thought-piece concerning where the industry is at with regards to too many sequels, or big sellers, or failed releases and why they failed. In short, it’s a relaxing time where you can plod through old content from throughout the year, and re-arrange it into something people can enjoy. It is basically recycling, and we must always encourage a sustainable model of journalism. Well this week has been a little different.

Sunday Sidebar: Meet Ska Studios

Since posting last week’s invitation for content, I have learned two things: 1) Some people would actually enjoy hearing me talk about Magic The Gathering, and 2) People did not like the 2011 Video Game Awards on Spike TV. I wish I could be saying that I found some novel way to unite these two into a powerful, Voltron-esque article, but rather, I took inspiration from the latter issue foremost. It pertains to an issue that has bothered me for some time, with regards to the video game industry. Disclaimer: I am not about to lament everything in the VGAs.

What was most apparent to me about the VGAs is that the music and movie industries have one powerful thing that the gaming industry does not. Something so lacking, and of which it is in such need, that the VGAs endeavored to transplant this missing organ from movies and music. It is a simple thing, but rather awkwardly also something for which most games players probably do not care much, but if our industry is ever to be taken as seriously as its two bigger brothers, we’re going to need it. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you: The Mainstream Celebrity.

Sunday Sidebar: Welcome

Silent Hill 2's James Sunderland stares into the depths of a Sunday, and it stares right back.

Sundays, and weekends in particular, have always been an Internet bête noire of mine. For anyone as accustomed as I am to surfing the web for nigh-on 16 hours per day, the weekend tends to recoil into a chasm of content, a crevasse of creativity, an absence of articles. On weekends, sometimes it can be hard to find something good to read is what I’m trying to say. What’s worse is that this negative space occurs right on the few days that I have more than enough time on my hands to indulge any and all of my interests.

All quiet on the blog front, but why?

If I had Post-It notes, and a fishing rod, and VGW was a boat, this would make more sense.

Sincerest apologies, hallowed fan who has been wondering where all the cool news, thoughts and updates about my gaming life have gone to. I have some 'splaining to do, I suppose. So I shall begin. It's always best to begin at the beginning, they say.

This Week I Have Mostly Been Playing: Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers

The handy little beams of light help to show you what's going on throughout each phase.

In case you hadn't already noticed, Xbox Live have started advertising low-price XBLA items on the Spotlight section of the Dashboard. I'm not sure if this phenomenon is UK-only, but I failed to pick up on it whilst I was in the US, and just happened to notice it last Saturday evening, whilst casually perusing the Xbox with little to do. I missed out on an incredible deal as part of their Friday-only offer, which was Torchlight at 400pts, but settled with a 33% reduction on MtG:DotP and was happy, although much to my chagrin they further reduced this from 800 to this week's 400 banana bucks. That's a price at which you'd be mad to miss it.