Fall 2008 Must-Have Co-Op Xbox 360 and PS3 Titles

There is no avoiding it, multiplayer support in a game, even the longest RPG, can extend a game’s life well beyond it’s initial single-player play through; even allowing the game to grow into it’s own cult status like a Halo or Counter Strike.

While most players used to seem pretty satisfied with Death Match or CTF multiplayer modes, what has always had us excited and made titles stand out from the rest has always been good co-op.

Doing co-op well can sometimes be easy, sometimes impossible and almost always hard to get exactly right. When a title does it extremely well, you barely even notice, all you know is that you want to keep playing that game over and over again with a friend and don’t give it much thought (like Gears of War or Rainbow Six Vegas).

Unfortunately ridiculously shitty multiplayer can also ruin a gaming experience, like Saints Row 1 or GTA IV, both have pseudo “co-op” that have nothing to do with the main game, leaving you with exactly the experience you didn’t want in co-op: something other than the main story line with a friend.

Since we are big co-op junkies, we are keeping our eye on the streets from here until March as the Fall lineup trickles out, and we want to list out here the best upcoming co-op games we think you should keep your eyes out for. Here they are:

September

• Rock Band 2: The full box set is due out October 19, but if you already have the instruments, the new multiplayer modes and player/instrument flexibility make this an easy choice for co-op and music-game fans.

October

• Oct 14, Saints Row 2: Yes it’s a GTA clone, but the Saints Row team doesn’t take itself too seriously, giving you freedoms like stealing sanitary trucks and blowing sewage all over town or killing people with chainsaws for fun. Also the 1 glaring omission from Saints Row 1 was it’s complete lack of real co-op gameplay. Almost every one I knew that played that game had the same felling: “God I wish it had co-op to play through with a friend”, so now it looks like we will!
• Oct 21, Fable 2: A persistent, detailed fantasty world with incredible NPC AI and designed from the ground-up with co-op play in mind, to the point that when you are playing solo, if any of your friends are playing solo as well, you will see them as “wisps” in your own game, and you can drop in/out of each other’s worlds… awesome, WHAAA?
• Oct 26, Guitar Hero: World Tour: If you are a Rock Band or Guitar Hero fan, you are already waiting for this. We have to wait and see how it turns out, but it’s built for co-op and band play so that’s good news.

November

• Nov 7, Gears of War 2: It’s gory, it’s action packed, it’s a Triple-A title, it’s awesome. Co-op was perfect in Gears of War 1, now it’s even more perfecter in Gears of War 2.
• Nov 11, Call of Duty: World at War: It finally takes the Call of Duty franchise and does with it what we have all been wanting and thought would happen in Call of Duty 4: it adds 4-player co-op, hell YES.
• Nov 17, Left 4 Dead: What is there to say… zombies, gore, team-dynamics that actually work, playtesting and tweaking of the gameplay for the last year by the Valve team and built from the ground up to be a 4-player co-op game. GIMME!

March 2009

• Resident Evil 5: You’ll notice the dry spell from Nov to March for co-op games, but talk about worth the wait… finally a survival horror that you can experience with a friend.

Uncertain

The following is a list of titles we really want to have co-op, but we aren’t sure if they will or won’t:

• Fallout 3: It hasn’t been confirmed or denied yet if Fallout 3 will have co-op, but given the other games Bethesda has done, and how damn similar Fallout 3 is to Oblivion (same engine, similar assets, etc.) I have to imagine it won’t have co-op either, so adding it to this list. The awesomeness of having co-op in a game like this needs no introduction… it would be like adding co-op to Mass Effect, it’s crazy cool.
• Alan Wake: Adventure games are always made better with a help from a friend, even if they are story driven, but chances are this will be a single player experience.
• Fear 2: Project Origin: Given how scary the original got, the same thing applies to this game as does all FPS’s (they should always be co-op available) and horror games like Condemned… it is awesome to bring a friend along to experience the scary stuff.
• Just Cause 2: The first took the sandbox/GTA style of play and made it fun by giving you a MDK-esque perpetual parachute (+1 for anyone that played/remembers MDK) that could be used in a badass way for any vehicles. Given that Mercs 2 did co-op so well, we have to assume Just Cause 2 will raise the bar and do the same here.
• Ghostbusters: We are pretty sure this will have co-op, you have to be able to take on the role of the other Ghostbusters if you join with a friend… if they don’t do co-op I think that’d be reason alone not to buy it… just to punish them for being idiots.

Major Disappointments

This section lists of the titles that we are stoked about but are missing co-op which we really think would have made them crazy-awesome.

• Far Cry 2: Common… you give us an incredibly detailed work, amazing AI, full physical world modelled for us to destroy and you don’t let us bring a friend? Boooooo….
• Silent Hill: Homecoming: Ok, this is just on the list because games like this and the Condemned series totally should have let you bring a friend along to experience the horror. Resident Evil 5 pulled it off, and experiencing total horror with a friend would be so fucking cool.
• Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway: Are you fucking serious? “BROTHERS in arms”, a squad almost the entire game, and you can’t let a friend hop in as one of those soldiers? That’s just stupid.