Let me preface this post by saying that I love online play. It is fun to compete with other people across the world and with your friends who may be far away. However there is one side effect of the emergence of online play on the consoles that has left me slightly annoyed and that is the subsequent lack of local multiplayer.
Before online capabilities all games that had multiplayer were split screen and required 2 or more controllers. Most games supported up to 4 players at a time. This was a nice addition to add to the replay value of games and it was always fun to hang out with your friends and play some local mutiplayer. But now with the advent of online play, games are coming out with less and less local multiplayer modes. In fact many games, like Battlefield: Bad Company, don't have local multiplayer at all.
This is an annoying trend seeing as how I have an Xbox 360 and it costs money to get onto Xbox live. Also I am at a college whose internet network doesn't allow for Xbox live. So I can't connect and therefore can't play multiplayer on many of my games, even if I have friends here in the dorm that want to play. Consider this, about half of all Xbox 360 owners are NOT online, which means that when a game comes out that only has online multiplayer about half of the system owners will have no multiplayer option. They could still play through the single player campaign but that will only go so far. As much as I love Bad Company the same levels get tiresome after a while. Some online multiplayer really keeps the gameplay fresh and exciting but so would local multiplayer.
So what ends up happening is that I play the game for a little while, get bored of the single player missions and then put it down. I can't get online so forget that and there is no local multiplayer. Local multiplayer needs to be a feature of any game that has online multiplayer. Game developers need to understand that just because online play is possible doesn't mean that everyone is doing it. Many people aren't online and local play will do them wonders when they want to get together with their friends and play a game other than Halo.
Before online capabilities all games that had multiplayer were split screen and required 2 or more controllers. Most games supported up to 4 players at a time. This was a nice addition to add to the replay value of games and it was always fun to hang out with your friends and play some local mutiplayer. But now with the advent of online play, games are coming out with less and less local multiplayer modes. In fact many games, like Battlefield: Bad Company, don't have local multiplayer at all.
This is an annoying trend seeing as how I have an Xbox 360 and it costs money to get onto Xbox live. Also I am at a college whose internet network doesn't allow for Xbox live. So I can't connect and therefore can't play multiplayer on many of my games, even if I have friends here in the dorm that want to play. Consider this, about half of all Xbox 360 owners are NOT online, which means that when a game comes out that only has online multiplayer about half of the system owners will have no multiplayer option. They could still play through the single player campaign but that will only go so far. As much as I love Bad Company the same levels get tiresome after a while. Some online multiplayer really keeps the gameplay fresh and exciting but so would local multiplayer.
So what ends up happening is that I play the game for a little while, get bored of the single player missions and then put it down. I can't get online so forget that and there is no local multiplayer. Local multiplayer needs to be a feature of any game that has online multiplayer. Game developers need to understand that just because online play is possible doesn't mean that everyone is doing it. Many people aren't online and local play will do them wonders when they want to get together with their friends and play a game other than Halo.
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