With the rise of the internet, especially it being wireless, fast, and relatively cheap, developers are forgetting about people who actually want to play together. For my friends and I,and probably a lot of other people, it is not at all good for us. We have different consoles, not all of us have awesome internet, or xbox live, and we want to play it splitscreen because that is so much more fun anyway. Anyone who has had a split screen sesh knows how much more fun it is, the dirty screen peeking tactics, physical violence, and verbal abuse made possible with close confines and a long history of shenanigans and in-jokes.
Against all the odds we still try and play together, but out options are pretty limited, xbox 360 is the only console we have enough controllers for combined, but the range of games is limited. We all felt relatively unimpressed by COD4, sure it is alright, but it always feels too reliant on who sees who first, favouring camping, which isn't fun. On the other hand Halo 3 allows running around randomly and whoever has the better aim over 5 seconds. They have served us well, but the skill differences between us are also showing and we want a bit of variety, unfortunately there is pretty much nothing out there that supports 4 player gaming.
We were all feeling bored, exams were coming up and even I was thinking of leaving, COD just wasn't really fun anymore. Then my friend suggested playing James Bond Nightfire, a Bond spin off for the original XBox that looked, sounded and played pretty lame. They reminisced about how much better it used to seem, it felt like a dodgy GoldenEye sequel to me. Then a strange thing happened, we got really into this game. The hard to aim guns meant long, trash talk involving, showdowns. The bots gained mutual hatred and led to alliances to take down these all conquering hack machines. It was just hilarious and fun. One moment, highlighting the dodginess of the gameplay, i ran out of pistol ammo and charged my buddy with my nothing but my bare fists and my manhood. Literally five minutes later I was taken down, but despite what appear to be flaws it was much more fun than COD or Halo. Then came the best moment, and will long remain a group meme for us. On a map suited to snipers Player 3 was playing as Oddjob, and Player 1 was casually strolling at the opposite end of the map. Suddenly, completely out of nowhere, Player 3 realises he possesses a mystical hat, and unleashes with pure optimism. "THAT HAT IS SO OVERPOWERED"
This video demonstrates how much it needs to be nerfed, seriously.
Now James Bond Nightfire has become one of the best games ever. Proving that just about any 4 player multiplayer game can be fun, so why not include it more? I know it would certainly get us very excited and desperately wanting that game. Why are we punished for having friends outside of the internet? Also, the more absurd the better, 4 player games are meant to be great for a laugh, and all about everyone having some legitimate shot at winning, hopefully developers will realize this and make more splitscreen games.
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