CO-OP 0311 -- 10,000 Deaths by 1,000,000 Bullets -- Multiplayer Shooter Special
matt chandronaitFirst of all, Jason makes a fashion statement in this show I think we’re destined to see become a gamer standard. Comfort being key and all.
Multiplayer shooters can have an incredibly long tail if done correctly and maintained well by the developer. We assemble a roundtable to talk about our favorites. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Team Fortress 2, Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 Battlefield 1943, HALO, are just the more modern offerings that make an appearance. We even delve into some classics like Quake! More after the show:
And who’s on this week’s multiplayer shooter panel? Why that would be Dan Hsu and Brett Bates from BitMob.com, Kat Baily, RebelFM and Eat-Sleep-Game.com badass Tyler Barber, and representing Area 5: Myself and Ryan. Yes, we know Left 4 Dead 2 didn’t make it into this week’s show. Originally we had planned on it being featured, but the natural flow of the conversation kept it from getting hte full coverage it deserves, so it will get its own, proper segment in our second show in January. I know I’ve been promising it for weeks now in our comments, but I think you’ll agree that it’s better to give it its due.
What are some of your favorite multiplayer shooters? What do you continue to go back to month after month, or even year after year? For my money it’s Tribes 2, kept up and moving thanks to the fantastic community of TribesNext. I installed it to capture the few minutes of footage we needed for this week’s show and I haven’t stopped playing it since!
Reader Comments (24)
Great episode guys. One multiplayer game I had a lot of fun with this year was Red Faction: Guerrilla, but just as you said, most people chose to stick with staple titles like Call of Duty.
Thanks for all the great content this year, I will be sure to keep watching in 2010!
I was always amazed at how great the multiplayer modes in GTA 4 and it's expansion packs could be and how little anybody played them.
I'm pretty disappointed that you guys didn't put SOCOM Confrontation for PS3 into this episode, seeing as it's one of the(if not the) most popular games on PSN, just had a big DLC release with new maps and guns, and has probably the most dedicated fanbase of any hardcore online shooter.
Just saying...
I'll watch this still. Love the show. You guys still do a great job making these.
Great show as always guys!
One question I thought you might ask in this episode, but didn't was, "Which one of the Halo games was your favorite for multiplayer?" I am sure Hsu would have something to say about that. Thanks for the show.
Co-op is the best vg show of the internet. The production value is great but the best part is your games selection, perfect.
I'm gonna make you heavy promotion on french vg sites.
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Great episode guys! Liked the shift in focus on a genre of gaming rather than your usual individual reviews (which are great as well). It was a nice change.
@Mark ... RF Guerilla was one we all said "Oh man, we forgot...!" right after we were done shooting. Such is life :/
@MattQ ... yeah, that was the thrust of our purpose in this show. Why is that? What makes something like GTAIV's multiplayer so much less "sticky" than the others. The answer these days seems to be "Character persistence." Though that's not always true either. Definitely much more to think about, here.
@MrDaBucket ... Unfortunately we couldn't cover anything that someone in the panel hadn't been able to play. I agree the SOCOM community is HUGE and hugely involved in their devotion to the game, but it's just an unhappy accident that no one who could be on the show when we needed to film had played it. You're right, though, that it deserved inclusion.
@Michael G. ... Yeah, that would definitely have gotten the nerd rage going ;) -- questions like that are destined for flame war outcomes. Would made some good TV.
@Fliss ... Well take all the promotion we can get! Hopefully your French fellows will find as much to you like as you did! Thank you!
@Adrian Clement ... yeah, it's good to break up what we do occasionally. Partially so we don't become stale in our own routine, but also so we have ample opportunity to present some thoughts that too often boil down in peoples' minds to "Buy/Don't Buy." Glad you liked it :)
as a kid (I'm 20) my brother would never let me touch his sega 16bit so I got to grow up with the ps1 and pc. I still din get to play most of his quality games except for FF8 and I also fell in love with neverwinter nights/diablo so RPGs will always be my first love. (doom scared me to death at the time) but I finally got to try counterstrike at a LAN shop with my classmates, and from then on RPGs will always be second in my heart to shooters, esp fps :) until today I am still delving into older games and so THANK YOU for doing a feature on shooters guys, cheers to another beautiful episode on coop and happy new year! looking forward to another great year of games games and more games!! (I cannot wait for diablo 3 to come out too though)
I haven't played many multiplayer shooters, but maybe that's because I've never had much experience with them when I was younger or I just plain suck at them. The only game I can recall getting into is the Quake 3 mod Tremulous.
Can we play Team Fortress 2 with you guys?
@TheLonelygod I'm pretty much free today, so sure, I'm down for some TF2. When would you like to play?
Great shooter special Area5! Kind of reminds me of your very first episode back at the end of 2008.....
You've had a great first year as a team that's not part of 1up and I hope that you keep doing the show until 2012 when the world is going to end from massive special effects.
Here's to another great year of coop, Area5!
Also, the one shooter I keep going back for more is Golden Eye for the N64. You can hate me all you want, but I still think it's the granddaddy of all shooters!
happy new year! long live co-op! anything chance i could get on the show?
Oh shit, Cesar has some Asian Kung Fu Generation on his computer. Awesome.
First I want to thank you guys for the, in my opinion, best videopodcast on videogames on the internet.
It's is probably due to the holidays and also because of this kind of videogame drought now, that you produced this co-op special, but I have to say it is one of my favorite episode. So I wanted to ask, if you could make this special episodes, where you discuss just one specific aspect of videogaming, more often.
Great show guys. Would love it if you did shows like this from time to time.
finally got some time to watch this one and i wanted to let you know that i really enjoyed the round-table discussion format of lots of different games in a genre. it was almost like a "state-of-the-genre" episode and i think it would be cool to do more episodes about others ie. platformers/rgs/racers. keep up the innovation! me gusta!
Come on, where was CS? It has more players than MW2 on PC
I liked the product placement this week. If I had 250 bones to spend, I would pick em up, but alas still working 9-5 and pay check to paycheck. Anyways, I generally trust the groups opinion, perhaps theres some other gear out there that you could guys could promote? Anything from hardware to apparel would be interesting. Also any word on the collaboration between Area5 and 1up?
I have the Astro A40 Mixamp and it is PHENOMENAL. Trust me when I say that with a standard pair of stereo headphones, you can pinpoint every sound in the game in all directions, even above you or below you. I use them with a pair of high end, open-air Audio Technica headphones that actually have better sound quality than the standard Astro set. If you can't afford it all, just get the mixamp and use any standard headphones, then get some higher ends cans later when you can. Check out head-fi.org for lots of good recommendations on great audiophile headphones. Do not go for the "surround sound" Turtle Beach type setups. Their sound quality can not compete with real cans and the surround effect is no more, actually probably less effective than what you get with the Astro mixamp. Google some binaural recordings and listen with a standard pair of headphones and you'll understand why you only need one speaker for each ear for "surround" sound.
It is awesome to see some TF2 coverage. It's pretty much my favourite game of all time.
Dan Hsu was commenting that any game gives you that awesome "I'm a part of a team" feeling if you play with friends. I think the brilliance of the TF2 design is that it forces you to play as a team, and gives you that feeling WITHOUT playing with your friends. Don't get me wrong - it's awesome to play TF2 with friends, but I can play it any time and usually get into an awesome match.
this is a really awesome format for the show.
Sitting around a the living room and talking feels a lot more natural as a viewer than standing in the middle of a field. ;)
I see evolution of duel (specially quake) this way:
1. We put 2 players with the same weapon, amount of armor and health onto a square map.
2. But running in a square map is quite boring and really limits the tactics because there are no obstacles, structures and whatnot to take advantage of while trying to overcome the opponent.
So we start to add different structures, different rooms to increase the amount of tactics we can apply overcoming the opponent.
3. Now we have a map that has fine structures and the game play looks more colorful. But adding more weapons that react differently and are meant for different situations increases the amount of tactics even more and gives more depth to decision making (pick a wrong weapon and die). This introduces the importance of positioning because different parts of maps and situations have different "best possible weapons for the situtation".
4. Okay, we have a map where 2 players run around with different weapons. But on the map there are certain spots that give you a significant advantage over your opponent. Whoever gets there first, will most probably frag more while being there.
So we add the concept of item pickups or power up pickups.
We lower the starting health of both players, strip them from armor and give them only on weapon which is the weakest in the game. This makes them move around and look for better items which respawn after fixed amount of time, because otherwise they would be in a great disadvantage.
But still, we don't want players to sit in the better spots without having to give up on something.
So we make the health and armor drop to some fixed amount, so the other player who does not have the advantageous position, will collect it from other parts of the map.
This makes both players run and fight for the items in order to get advantage. It's a battle of resources (health, armor, ammo). Because of the items respawning, they have to go for them again and again giving the game a timing aspect.
5. Now Quake series have introduced a concept of advanced player physics which allows players to gain speed while doing various combos of movement buttons and mouse movements (strafe jumping, circle jumping, rocket jumping and plasma climbing) so the game speed rises significantly. This all gives more and more variety to different things and tactics you can do in the game. But what is most important - it makes the game faster and gives the movement lot's of depth.
These steps make Quake (whichever) the best FPS game that is there (same things apply for tdm and ctf also but with little different variations).
You have to constantly think about what your opponent is doing and make constant decisions based on the amount of armor, health, ammo, weapons you and your opponent have; where are you and where is he positioned; what do you and what does he potentially want to do; the time to next power ups; the time left in the game; the amount of power ups left in game; how certain you are about his state and vice versa. If any of these changes, then you will have to recalculate and rethink your chances and find out the most optimal thing to do. And all of this goes on in high speeds - one situation can turn to another within 0.05 seconds. So you really have to be able to adapt and react.
So this is duel or quake for me.