Now that I’m 21, I do not get many things for Christmas anymore. So when I woke up on that morning I was excited to feel like a child again. I ran to the tree to find the gift labeled “To Jeffrey” and tear open my copy of Left 4 Dead. As I hugged and kissed the small green box and stared longingly into that dismembered hand on the cover. Then I came to a horrible realization; I did not have anyone to play it with.
Now the first time I had played the game was when I downloaded the demo on Xbox Live. After hearing all of the hype about the zombie killing frenzy, I suffered though the school’s long, horrible download times to give the game a try. I turned it on, played it, and hated it. I did not know what was wrong with me. I had been told it was amazing and it wasn’t.
I waited for my roommate Sam to come back from class (whom is a zombie fanatic), I told him how displeased I was with the game, but since there was co-op I figured it would be best to give it another go. So, we played it though once, then we played it again, and after that we played it once more. I loved it. I could not believe it; playing the game with just one other person totally changed the experience. We were yelling at one another, covering each other, working as a true team just for the sake of survival. This was a game that was made to praise team work as well as scold people who don’t work together. But the problem still remains; I cannot do anything with the game when my friends are not around. Oh and I’ve tried to play it online with other people I do not know, it’s horrible. No one works together and no one communicates. So like I said, I cannot do anything with the game when my friends are not around.
My dilemma is that I have to make sure that one of my friends is picking up one of these $60 dollar games before I buy it. All of these upcoming and recently released games are noted to be better with at least one to three friends, Left 4 Dead 2, Borderlands, Halo 3: ODST, Crackdown 2, Lost Planet 2, and the list goes on. All of these games are or will be $60. So because of this fact, I will not be able to play all of the games I want to play. But there is a solution.
The solution is Serious Sam HD. If this kind of multiplayer continues you have to make the games cheaper, that way people are willing to put the money down for the co-op only games (if the game is much better with co-op it might as well be co-op only). Serious Sam is going to be $15 dollars when it is realized. That is the price of a CD or DVD. Not only that but you can play though it with up to four of your friend. All together that is the price of one full retail game.
I’m not trying to say that you these games are not worth the money, they are. In our college environment though, no one has that much disposable income. This article is really just a wish list of thinks I want co-op games to do and that is make then cheaper so more of my friends will buy them and I can play with them. Either that or make these games have more rewarding single player campaigns so I can play them alone, in my dark room, during the day, without my friend, while they likely do something more fun and rewarding with their lives.
Jeff Silva
Pierce Arrow Blogger