An old friend of mine came to visit last weekend. We hadn't seen each other in five years, and the poor guy had spent the bulk of the last two years stationed in Iraq. We spent a lot of time catching up, and I asked him if there was anything in particular he wanted to do. "You know, I haven't seen a movie in a theater or played a video game in two years," he responded.
Dude, that's my entire social life. I can help.
I'm temporarily staying in an apartment in downtown Austin, and I had the foresight to bring my newly repaired Xbox 360 with me. But I also figured I'd be by myself the whole time so I didn't think to bring obvious multi-player games like COD4 or Halo 3. So when I checked my inventory to see if there was anything to play together it looked grim. I couldn't imagine helping my buddy break his Xbox cherry with a spirited hour of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
I did, however, have Crackdown. I knew it had multiplayer, and he was the kind of guy who I knew would like jumping across rooftops and throwing cars at gang members. It seemed like a no-brainer.
I turned on both controllers and started paging through the menus. As he waited patiently, I kept entering multiplayer mode only to be asked if I want to host an Xbox Live party or join one. My buddy was sitting right next to me...I didn't want to join someone elses party! I wanted the two of us to mop up the streets together or--as was more likely--unload a bunch of explosives into each other. But no matter how hard I tried I could not find any way to do that. I could play against someone in Bangladesh, but no one in the room with me.
"That's OK," I said, "I've got an amazing racing game." So I dig out Burnout: Paradise, which I was sure had head-to-head multiplayer. In fact, running your friend off the road seemed like the entire point of the game. So I confidently started scrolling through the menus looking for the split screen options.
Nothing. Again.
This was particularly infuriating since I knew that previous versions of Burnout had split screen. The developers had consciously removed it. In some meeting along the way, someone must have asked about it and some designer or executive must have said, "Don't worry...people don't sit next to each other anymore."
I'm mystified by this. Nintendo is out minting money with games that can actually injure the person next to you. But if you want to play against your friends as anything that doesn't look like a Fischer Price toy you have to send them home.
I've got news for you, guys...the online parties are never as fun as the ones in your living room.
So here's my plea to the gaming industry. Bring back local multiplayer. Make it easy and intuitive figure out. Split the screen, even if you lose a little video quality. At the end of the day, there are a lot of people who get tremendous satisfaction watching their friends curse as you kick their ass. It's way more fun than doing so over a headset.
My big, battled-hardened Iraq vet friend sat with me for 45 minutes, gamely playing Princess Leia in co-op Lego Star Wars, the only game that let me do it. I kept apologizing profusely, hoping that on some level his combat instincts were being honed firing at toy stormtroopers. Finally, embarrassed, I took him out to see The Hangover and did my best to give him one myself. The satisfaction of beating him--or the agony of getting beaten myself--would have to wait for another day.
Thanks for nuthin', Xbox.
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