Showin’ Some Love For Squad-based Games.
I am a very social gamer. I think playing with other people makes playing games a whole new event. I used to love me some single player games and all, but I am all about the multi-player these days.
What I really want is one seriously bad ass online RPG. I guess that’s where MMORPG’s some in, but I would like to play a short RPG designed to be played with other people. But where the online games really excel is Squad based games, like SOCOM. I love SOCOM. You just get together with a few friends and go out and do stuff. Co-Op rocks.
Playing with non AI squad mates makes the game experience more involving. I will admit when my squad mates are AI bots, I send them out first into the line of fire while I figure out the plan. They’re bots! Who cares if they get shot? I’ll just get another one soon enough, or I can heal the downed allies. If I fall, they’ll take their time getting to me.
Then you get games like Republic Commando that try to specialize your allies. They give you a complicated series of menus and options that automatically appear when you can use one. Where’s the point in that? Those games are just mindless fun. They don’t give you a chance to figure things out for yourself. If it wasn’t for multi-player, I don’t know how long that game would have really lasted. There’s no real draw to get into the game. That’s why I would only play any of the HALO games in co-op mode. Playing HALO 3 with Angry Joe made that crappy game for me. It was funny beyond all reason. But see what I said there – Halo 3 sucked overall but it was fun because I played it with other people and it changed the dynamic.
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More games need to be able to do this. Of course not every game will work that way. I don’t see Overlord being a squad based game, though it could be if they were to change it up some. There are plenty of war games out there. Those are perfect for squad based Co-Op. And I hear the Sony has the Agency coming up, a secret agent based MMORPG for the PS3. I would like to see other fun games using co-op game play. I for one think Gears of War would make one bad ass squad based game, but I call Baird. That dude is awesome.
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I’m not sure if this counts, but let me say it anyway. I love team based RPGs, and although I haven’t played a whole lot of them as a kid, I’ve played one in a kickass series.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about games like Wizardry, Might and Magic, The Bard’s Tale, and the goldbox games.
As a kid, I spend countless hours on Icewind Dale, with what kind of combination of party members to use, managing them, and of course my favorite aspect of Team based RPGs, fighting waves of monsters.
It’s sad that the last, true, mainstream team based RPG game we’ve had was D&D: Temple of elemental evil, because everyone loves to think that Baldur’s Gate is the quintessential RPG, and Icewind Dale is just a turd with little to no story…and you have no idea how much this pisses me off.
Now were stuck in this rut, where we only make RPGs with recrutable party members w/t personality, and for every team based RPG that’s released, people will look at it, and go “that sucks, it’s just an action game” well guess what, so was Diablo, and I didn’t see you complaining.
Sorry about that, but yeah, I hunger for the day when Team based RPGs become popular again, especially if you can invite your own buddies in your team…co-op Wizardry, now there’s a thought.
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I love a great SP game more than anything else. I played Cod: UO for about two years and CS:S for another two though lol. Maybe I just sickened myself.
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