About half of my most cherished video game memories involve playing console games in a living room with good friends,
and I feel like these memories have almost ceased to be freshly created.
It all started with the Dreamcast, and our ability to dispense with the inconvenient reality of having to travel to one another’s houses, though unrelatedly, the DC is also easily my favorite console for the physically-proximate shared video game experience. I still remember 9/9/99, the release day of that beloved console and how excited we were to break that thing out and play Soul Calibur.
It continued with the Xbox. I was on vacation in Thailand when it was released, and arrived home late at night the day of the release in 2001. My friend Rodney, understanding games pal that he is, had loyally purchased an Xbox for me (as well as himself, of course), and left it in my living room, coming over to play Halo at 1 am, about 10 minutes after I was back from the airport. We were -psycho- about multiplayer Halo. There was no option to play over the net, so we used two TVs and two Xboxes. Of course, the problem there was that we had to be in the same room to enable trash talking, and if you’re in the same room, your opponent’s sound source is giving you clues as to what he’s doing. Therefore, we dragged in an industrial fan to create white noise, one of us (usually me) wore headphones with the volume turned way up, and that way, we’ve avoid giving anything away to each other. That was simply awesome.
One of the other games we quite enjoyed on the Xbox was Tiger Woods Golf. Usually, it was me, the aforementioned Rodney, and my friend and CTO, Chris Kohnert, playing. None of us have any interest in actually playing golf (ruins a good walk), but we really enjoyed the experience of just hanging out, having some drinks, and playing video golf. It was always a great bonding experience.
Unfortunately, these group experiences have largely disappeared from my life, and damn it, it IS actually technology’s fault. Don’t get me wrong: I love Xbox Live. It’s awesome. Microsoft gets online gaming in a way that few companies do. Halo 2’s matching system and ability to travel from game to game as a group of friends is elegant simplicity digitally embodied. Why all FPSs don’t just copy that particular system of Bungie’s is beyond me.
At the same time, the brilliance of Xbox Live has largely ruined our face-to-face gaming sessions. There are few games that don’t present a palpably worse experience when played face-to-face as opposed to online. One has to put up with decreased frame rates, inferior resolutions, half-sized (or even quarter-sized!) screens, and so on. When the trade-off was an absolute between playing by yourself or playing with someone else, the sacrifice was worth it. Now that we can play most decent games online against each other, getting togther requires sacrificing the game for the sake of the social environment, and somehow, the game itself always wins.
The sole exception in the last year has been Guitar Hero, which I’m just a huge fan of. It’s a superb game for groups, and is entertaining both as a spectator and a player. Further, it doesn’t suffer from playing simultaneously on the same console and tv, and that is incredibly important. I’m not necessarily looking for the so-called ‘party game’ category; most of them tend to be too trivial feeling for me. I like my games to take themselves seriously, even if it’s seriously with a tongue firmly planted in cheek (such as in Guitar Hero).
I’m dying for more games that call for a gathering of friends, wine, food, and lots and lots of shouting at each other and the TV. MUDs/MMOs are great, and are my favored category of game, but as beautiful as they are, and as much as I value my experiences from them, they don’t replace physical interaction for me. Killing the boss with five (or forty) friends online is quite fun and satisfying, but it’s a different kind of fun and satisfying from hanging out with my friends in my living room and laughing, joking, and giving each other shit about our relative inability to hit a straight golf ball.
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June 26th, 2006 at 7:58 am
Blake
The Nintendo lineup offers lots of games for group play, at least it seems that way to me. I finally got myself a Gamecube and honestly am very happy that I did.
June 26th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Matt
You know, I have a Gamecube and for some reason, we just rarely use it for group gaming. Perhaps that is our mistake.
June 26th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Chris Kohnert
Let us not forget Rainbow Six (whichever incarnation it was that didn’t suck). I sorely miss the almost-in-the-same-room co-op of that.
June 26th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Matt
Yeah, Rainbow Six was a lot of fun over Live, but it’s still not the same as gaming in the same room, physically, with other people.
June 26th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Raph
Dreamcast: ah, great library for multiplayer couch gaming.
I have this issue playing with my kids. Joust and Gauntlet on Live Arcade help a bit on the 360. The GC does indeed hgave a bunch — from kid-friendly Sonic games to Super Smash Bros which I suck at.
June 28th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Telvantes
One of the great games I loved on the old PSX for play-with-a-friend is Desert Storm. Sort of a tactical “slower” version of Socom, (which honestly isn’t that fun on your own,) but it’s unbelievably fun with someone else on the same TV, split screen or not.
I also very much enjoy the co-op on Halo. Wish they’d make it possible to co-op between two boxs for Halo 3, because I’d buy two just to do that with the woman.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Mulisha
Totally Matt. I remember being so hooked on games like Achaea and WoW at one point that my OOC social life almost came to a halt. Thankfully, me and my friends are hooked on Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. Damned Shao Kahn won’t die!
July 5th, 2006 at 5:54 am
Larkin
I enjoy playing Halo and Halo 2, even with the split-screen mode. I was surprised at how you can sometimes forget about your friend’s half of the screen and still be surprised when he snipes you or drives over you.
Worms: Forts Under Siege for the Xbox, though a bit buggy, is good fun to play with up to four people. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy for the PS2 is great fun, too.
July 5th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Tom
My experience has been the opposite, perhaps because my friends aren’t the “hardcore gamer” type. We have a mix of Xbox/GC that we mainly play, but not everyone has an Xbox (and only a few have Xbox live), so we can’t just use that to play Halo 2 when we want it.
I had a -lot- of fun with live (stopped my subscription around january because I wasn’t using it and school was getting harder), but it never replaced our “halo nights,” the innumerable Friday evenings spent at each other’s houses system linking 8-player Halo, for a bunch of reasons - not everyone had the capability, we like original Halo way better than Halo 2, and as you said, without the social experience, it’s not nearly as fun.
The Gamecube is -excellent- for multiplayer fun, in my opinion it (because of its games) does everything that matters better than Xbox, except for FPS’s. The only thing it lacks is system linking, so it’s not as good if you want to play with a lot of people, but with just two or three friends (Rodney and Chris, for example) it’s awesome. It just doesn’t get any better than Smash bros melee. Mario Kart double dash is another good choice, and as you mentioned it for DC, Soul Calibur for any system is great.
As for new games, why is that so important? You still have Halo, the golf game, et al - hell, play Soul Calibur on your Dreamcast. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice, but there are plenty already to last us for a while longer.