Stage 1 - Part 3 - "You got a friend in me!"

As far as I know, Co-operative gaming has been around for years. Further back than Sonic 2 wherein one of the unfortunate duo had to play as Tails.

In the words of my mate Phil, GO AWAY!

 Nowadays, it has grown into a serious gameplay element that intricately evolved the industry in the way games were designed and developed. My first real memory of actually playing a Co-op game was Duke Nukem 3D, which only took place twice, as the method of connecting online was just unreal. How far we have come! Since then I have not come across many that REALLY made me want to call up a friend to arrange a little team building.

Then the first revolutionary Co-op game arrived that, to me, genuinely took team play to a whole new level and almost literally forced players to communicate and indeed co-operate with each other. Many of you will disagree with this as I am confident it is not the first, but I had never seen so many people on the INTERNET become in tune with strangers prior to this.

Left 4 Dead manifested into the world around the time I was at University. As the large majority of my friends were gamers, or at least studying the industry, we were all on board! It blew our minds. Playing through on a normal difficulty allowed us to get used to the mechanics which was entertaining, but once you start working on Advanced or Expert, you are pushed to your limits not JUST as an individual but as a team. If one of you went down, it was up to the other 3 to strategise and execute a rescue, and if there was only 1 health pack between the 4 of you... well you were fucked. There were moments of panic that forced you to think of what your team mates were doing, so you could fill any gaps in your set-up.

The true beauty within all of this, is that you would not always be playing with friends. You could log in to a lobby, and find 3 other players from anywhere in the world who probably didn't even speak your language, and there would be a bond in success that is rarely felt in other scenarios in and outside of gaming. Comraderies would be built, and if anyone felt like being a lone ranger, the rest of the team would be sour, but knew their uppance would inevitably come.

In other examples of co-op games, Army of Two was also built purely for the sake of having a buddy with you at all times helping you take the aggro or flank a sniper while you distract him. It was not as a tight a set-up as Left 4 Dead but you could tell the notion was there. In certain circumstances you would be forced to verbally liaise with your teammate to ensure you didn't fail a particular section, and if you succeed, you could give high fives, or a pat on the back or just the simply fist bump ritual. Unless you hated the guy so you could just gun butt him for no reason...

It certainly has started to be a big thing in games with many other titles following suit (Resident Evil 5), but never quite seems to be able to truly take off. Which is a shame, as you can take it to a huge scale and pitch hundreds of players against each other in genuine warfare...

Why does it not work? Well the above link suggests that it should. I played this for a few months, and thoroughly enjoyed the idea of starting off as cannon fodder in a small group of soldiers only to be gradually promoting yourself to become in charge of a platoon of the aforementioned cannon fodder. In some games you are part of a team of over 100 real players, put at war against each other, playing an epic game of what Treyarch would call "Domination". Sadly what it lacks is, despite all I have said, the right attitude for such a game. What you will find is that about 10% of the team will be taking it seriously enough for success, and the other 90% are simply running from V to H like a crazed cat in a jungle gym, shooting everything and anything that they can.

It is innate in some of us, that being told what to do isn't natural, nor is generally following a rule or order of things, so why change in what can technically be discarded as just a gane? Fair play I say. Fun is fun after all, not rules and orders. It is this, however, that ruins co-op games a lot of the time. It does require team work, and without team work, you have very little chance of success, unless the game is shit. Is there a fix? I wouldn't say so, that's like training a cow to stop shitting and eating grass. It is what they do, and they'll be damned if they have to stop!

To me the only processes that can be taken in achieving some sort of zen in the world of co-op play are to refine, in huge detail, the gameplay mechanics making it nigh on impossible to be unsociable, or simply start up a game and give the player the option to either join a group of players to play as a team, or a group of players who have absolutely no regard for military organisation and simply want to shoot stuff and be done with it!

Then again, there's always Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

NEXT WEEK: "Jack Thompson, your ears will burn!"

If you have anything you wish to share with me or indeed the readers, feel free to comment or e-mail me at twentyfiveand0@hotmail.co.uk - Don't forget to check out the What Have I Been Playing pages found on the right! OR Check out my channel at www.youtube.com/ike1luv