[insert hilarious "joke" about how they could play with my Wii]The pink-and-purple-haired drummer pounds the skins like there's no tomorrow, providing the skeleton around which the two guitarists' melody and rhythm intertwine, as the singer belts out a ballad of steel horses and loaded six-strings. This creature, born of rock and born
to rock is gigantic, powerful, and vicious...and the crowd wouldn't have it any other way. It's more than enough to make my three friends and I forget that we're whaling on expensive plastic facsimiles of rock and roll instruments in the living room of Aaron's domicile. For at least a few minutes at a time we lose ourselves in the very real fun of rocking virtual faces for virtual money and virtual stardom. We are the best fake cover band ever.
Not pictured: drummer cursing in frustration.As the current-generation systems get their legs under them and running at last, the term "multiplayer" as you know it is changing. Almost gone are the days of passing the controller and hogging the game so that your little brother whines and tells your dad and he tells you to share. I mean, it's not
my fault I'm so much better at Super Mario World than he is, is it? Good news for little brothers everywhere: your time to shine has arrived.
This is the day of cooperative multiplayer, and that term is (finally) starting to go beyond the concept of "you play the other guy who shoots enemies". Games like Sony's
LittleBigPlanet revolutionize multiplayer with real-time object manipulation and user-created content-something that has been fairly impossible on consoles until now. Players can move, edit, paint, morph and possibly actually construct their own objects for use in the game world, and it's all in real time, without any discernible lag. Rare's Viva Pinata, which came out two years ago for the Xbox 360, made cooperative gardening and candy-filled animal-raising a worthwhile experience. The Jenga-esque Boom Blox for the Wii is intensely fun with a handful of friends. Even competitive multiplayer is getting a drastic makeover. Lately, many shooters in particular have been taking pages from the MMORPG genre. Some games, such as Warhawk for the PS3 can support up to 64 players online at once. Class-based play is becoming more prevalent and gives an interesting and varied flavor to games like Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company. In Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, the player can even create their own persistent character with stats and experience.
Sackboy (little dude, center) is about to either A) destroy everything, or B) cover it in flowers.While games like
Rock Band are changing the way we think about multiplayer, it doesn't mean that the old standbys of kill-collecting and flag-capturing are going to die, oh no! The power of today's consoles allow developers to give their worlds and characters more detail, their weapons more flash, and—most importantly—their gameplay more balance. Games like
Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Super Smash Brothers Brawl all base their success on refining the wheel rather than reinventing it.
Love it or hate it, people keep playing Halo for a reason.Yes, it's a good time for people with friends everywhere. Interestingly enough, it's also a good time for people without friends as well, as the easy accessibility of online play means you'll never be without someone to frag or frag with. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever console you own, pick up a controller and start playing. You might be surprised by who or what you find.
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Multiplayer: Where It's Headed (And Why We Should Follow) [games] [discussion]