The brief allowed us to create a character with 12.000 tris using a 2048×2048 texture sheet. I use a diffuse/specular/normal and a simple emissive map for the lightsaber. The character was posed using a simple biped in 3ds Max. I skinned the character in a couple of hours, nothing perfect but enough to create a simple pose. My main focus with this character was the eyes and the face, I knew from the start that I wanted to create a character with a lot of emotion in her eyes, a depth that is currently missing from my previous characters.

Basemesh

This is as far as I’ve gotten: BIG HERE

So far it’s using

- 512×512 Tilable bark for tree
- 512×512 Tilable Cliff
- 512×512 For all foliage seen in the scene right now
- 1024×512 Rubble Piles.

And absolutely 0% Zbrush work, everything is photoshop magic.

NIER

NIER is the kind of game that looks interesting but nobody buys until they find it again on sale. Sadly it was like this for me as well. NIER is about a father trying to save his girl from a deadly illness, the father trying to manage every day bringing in money to his household by doing quests for villagers. The quests are mostly about fetching an item from on place and deliver it to another, or go out into the fields, battle monsters until you have the right amount of items and then bring it back, the game rarely moves out of this path though so it becomes repetitive quick.

The most interesting aspect of the game for me was the characters, not necessarily the protagonist but his side-kicks, one being a witty book called Grimoire Weiss. Weiss is a hovering magically imbued tome, allowing the father to access magic powers to combat his enemies. Weiss also has the ability to speak and entertains you throughout the game. It has a decent story and some interesting characters, the gameplay is probably one of the better ones I’ve seen coming out of Japan these days. The game however seems to get stuck trying to please everyone, grinding old JRPG-fans and action-adventure fans, that’s why the game feels like a mix between Zelda and a typical action-JRPG, and it doesn’t quite go all the way, but it’s still a decent game.
Oh yeah, the soundtrack is great! Almost forgot that one.

Dante’s Inferno

I just started on Dante’s Inferno, I’m about 1 hour into the game. I haven’t actually been able to play as much as I wanted to. However the game pales in comparison (visually) to the available games in the same genre, I might only be 1 hour in but I’m still not impressed. I can’t really say much about level-design or game-mechanics yet though, I need to spend more time with the game.

The coming games

I have got Kane & Lynch 2, Mafia II and Starcraft II piled up, hopefully I’ll be able to spend some time with them when the time comes, I’m still swamped doing work on Motorstorm: Apocalypse. Oh yeah and don’t forget to check out www.gametrailers.com for the upcoming Game Developer Conference in Cologne. That is all people.

I was hyped about this game, the first game had a pretty big impact technically on the Xbox 360 , the game offered a big world to run around in, working seamlessly and was fun and new. The sequel however takes all the good from the first game and not much more.

Better or not?

For all of you that don’t know, Crackdown 2 is a third-person action game where you play as the main character “The Agent”. Taking place ten years after the first game Pacific City’s “peace” has fallen into ruins, freaks has overrun the city and a human resistance group called “the Cell” opposes The Agency. What happened to the city? Who are Cell? and who is Catalina Thorn are all questions that you, the Agent will find out during the game.

To be honest I’m not really impressed by the story in the game, though it serves it purpose by giving some kind of meaning to the existence of the world we play in, as well as the characters and monsters we meet during the game, but other than that it’s not particularly engaging.

Gameplay-wise Crackdown 2 is pretty much an extension of the first game, however I’m not entirely sure if the changes were good or bad. The experience-system is still there, allowing the Agent to level up his skills (Driving, Strength, Agility, Firearms, Explosives) by performing tasks involving the different categories. The game does bring some new things, like a wing-suit functionality when Agility is leveled up enough allowing the Agent to soar through the air, but in the end it’s not much of an improvement.

The are two primary missions in the game, one lets you take on Cell Strongholds, a stronghold is usually several locations throughout the City with Cell activity, you go in, call for backup and take out all enemies who oppose you. If there are any other strongholds in the area you need to take them out too or else Cell will re-capture the stronghold you’ve already captured. Pretty simple, annoying but simple.

The other primary mission is “Project Sunburst”, the mission objective is pretty much to clean out Freak Strongholds. To do this you need to go around the city and activate certain beacons, then head into the Freak Stronghold, call for the Sunburst machine and keep it safe from Freaks until it loads up and destroys the Freak stronghold. There are several Freak and Cell Strongholds scattered about in the city, now you have to go to each one of them and do the exactly the same task over and over again at each location. Sounds fun right? Well it’s not.

What made the first Crackdown enjoyable for me was the co-operative experience as well as the gathering of Agility Orbs and those aspects are still there in this game. Other than that not much has changed, mission structure is open though the islands are different in terms of difficulty and enemy equipment. The game however expands on the multiplayer-functionality allowing four players play at the same time in Pacific City, and that is what it’s all about. Team up with three other friends and take on the freaks and Cell.

Other than that there are smaller missions/objectives like clear out “freak holes” which are several holes in the city where freaks come up at night, agility and driving races, wingsuit challenges. Other than that there is not a lot to do in Pacific City not by yourself anyways.

Dead world, dead narrative

A game these days need to impress, either by great visuals, great gameplay or a great narrative. However this game only barely survives on the previous games efforts. The gameplay is fun and to some extent addictive but it’s disappointing since there are so few actual changes between the games. The once fantastic city has become grey, destroyed and boring in some cases. There is nothing new to see here except some damaged landmark buildings. The vehicles are the same as the first game but without their cool transformations, it is without a doubt disappointing.

However the game is still a solid game which can provide a couple of hours fun, I on the other hand played the game myself which might be the reasons why I think it’s a bit disappointing, it’s always more fun to blow up enemies together with friends, and maybe I wouldn’t care about the flaws as much if I did play it with friends but in the end the flaws are still there.

Rewarding the player

I think the problem here lies with rewards and the satisfaction of completing a level. Maybe I’m just a slave to the typical rpg-escue elements of gaining experience points for your efforts. In Super Mario Galaxy the only reward you actually get is the 1x star number to your total stars after you complete a level. That might have been enough for me when I was younger but not anymore. It’s not like the game has a great story to keep you interested, the gameplay is the best you can get from a platformer but I really like platform-games going hand in hand with a great story, why should they not?

A couple of days ago I started playing Batman: Arkham Asylum again and yet again I notice just how high quality that game is: story, narrative, gameplay, graphics, sound, music. They take a core-aspect of fighting and make it fun, rewarding and really satisfactionary. You feel awesome playing as Batman, fighting as Batman and sneaking as Batman.

They created the greatest and most accessible yet complex fighting/hand-to-hand combat mechanic this century on top of that they got a experience points system which multiplies if you can keep the combo up without getting hit or distrupting the flow. It’s genius in every way. This is the standard we’re dealing with today people, satisfactionary and rewarding gameplay. What would happen if Assassins Creed II got experience points? Different bransches? I sure as hell would like it more that’s for sure.

I won’t deny it, I’m a slave to experience points. More often than not they make it so that we try harder, become more competative and the functionality makes every part of gameplay more rewarding BUT it should go hand-in-hand with good gameplay, then it becomes brilliant.

I hope more game developers takes a look at Batman: Arkham Asylum because Rocksteady Ltd knows gamedesign that’s for sure.

Metal Gear Solid Rising

Let’s start with Metal Gear Solid: Rising, as some of you know mgs:r is about Raiden and the game chronicles the events of Raiden’s transformation from Metal Gear Solid 2 to Metal Gear Solid 4. The most obvious awesome thing in this game is the free-slice ability, to be able to cut opponents or objects in half at any angle, as an artist I haven’t seen anything like in my life. Even though an older ps2 game featured kind-off the same thing it’s far from being as brilliant as we saw at the conference.

A key gameplay feature of the game is titled zan-datsu “cut & take” which involves cutting you through enemies and taking parts from their bodies to heal/power up yourself. The game is about showing the speed of Raiden which can be hard in a sense but is solved which some brilliant use of the bullet-time effect, slowing down time for all but Raiden (since he’s so frickin fast).

Zelda Skyward Sword

Well I guess you guys know that I like the Zelda-series and it’s one of two game-series that is actually making me keep my Nintendo Wii. Zelda Skyward Sword is the usual action-adventure from Nintendo and is the sixteenth installment of Legend of Zelda. The game is exclusive for the Wii and uses the Wii MotionPlus functionality. (I have to buy a Wii MotionPlus =/ )

I don’t really have much to say about it, it’s a Zelda game we all know what to expect. 1:1 use of the sword will be a nice change if they can get it to work well.

Rage

Rage is a graphical marvel, I shown the game to you guys before but really it’s just sooo good-looking. Rage is an upcoming first-person shooter/racing game. It’s being developed by id Software using the new id Tech 5 engine. As most games these days it takes place in an post-apocalyptic world where you’re fighting for survival.

The most interesting part for me though isn’t the game-mechanics of this game it’s the graphical processing power of the game, the new engine features something called Virtual Texturing which is a more advanced use of MegaTexture which supports textures with resolutions up to 128000x128000 pixels ( O_o ).
The technique allows the engine to automatically stream textures into memory as needed, meaning that the developer does not need to concern themselves with memory restraints and texture limits. The result is a really beautiful looking game with vast-environments & really cool looking characters.

Dead Space 2

I’m the kind of guy that loves a good scare, both getting a good scare and giving a good scare, however throughout my life I’ve seen countless horror-movies and played just as many horror-games making me immune to the effects of horror in movies. Nowadays only video-games can scare the crap out of me. The first Dead Space game was such a game, horror-games features the most immersive gameplay. Dead Space 2 unlike it’s predecessor is more focused on Action, the horror is still there but it’s evident from the footage we’ve seen that it’s more action-oriented than before.

I really liked the first one (played on PC) and I’m looking forward to playing the second game when it comes out.

Medal of Honor

When I first saw the footage for Medal of Honor I was blown away, I really liked the first Medal of Honor games and I’ve been tired of the WWII-era for a long time and now they bring the best game from the WWII experience into Modern Warfare, and it is goooood.

From the things I’ve seen things are looking very good, the singleplayer experience from the Medal of Honor team in LA and the multiplayerexperience from EA DICE here in Sweden that brought us the gem Battlefield Bad Company 2. When I saw the trailer my jaw dropped and I got really excited, the things I love about Battlefield and Modern Warfare 2 put together into one awesome mix. Compared to Bad Company 2 the gameplay seems faster, more like CoD: MW2 and features modern weaponry which I love.

It will be quite interesting to see how this goes.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed II

Yeah big news I’m a Star Wars fan, can’t really say much about the game , I really liked the first game though I felt that lightsaber-combat should be more rewarding and more like the actual movies the game is still the closest thing you get for that awesome Star Wars-feeling.

I hope the game will feel like an improvement, I never really cared for the reverse lightsaber style the main character is using, it feels silly to me to have your guard down all the time. However I hope to see some new awesome force-powers, better lightsaber-combat even though it’s not probable.

Most interesting new controller method

Let’s talk a bit about the new controller methods, we got Microsoft Kinect and we got Sony Playstation Move. Let’s talk about the names first. I got really surprised when I heard the new name for Natal, Kinect sounds ridiculous in my ears. Where Sony Playstations Move sounds better, especially together with the slogan “Move into the game”, “Move into the action” etc etc.

I’m not that into Kinect, I can’t see how it would appeal to the hardcore gamers out there, it feels too casual. Jumping around in front of your television takes up a lot of space and I’m having trouble to fit my Nintendo Wii into my current apartment, and it seems like you’re stuck on a 2d-plane when using Kinect. You’re stuck in 2d while the game you’re playing features a 3d-world. Standing on a raft jumping over stuff or like they showed with the new kinect “star wars game”.

Yeah it looks ridiculous I know, a controller where you can’t move on the Z-axis, that’s terrible for hardcore gamers. Good luck with that Microsoft.

I’m more into Move, I think Move features the most interesting gameplay when it comes to the different motion controllers. Where you can actually move in the Z-axis while playing featuring the same capabilites as the Nintendo Wii with more powerful hardware. It feels like you get more for your hard-earned money that way. Next-gen graphics and a motion-controller able to compete with the motion-capabilites of the MotionPlus Wiimote.

3D technology

3D is the big new thing and both the Nintendo and Sony comes forward with their 3D capabilites, Nintendo featuring the Nintendo 3DS and Sony with their 3D TVs and Playstation 3 showing off games like Killzone 3 in 3D. I think that 3D is awesome in a way, it’s expensive to put all your money into a Playstation 3, the games and a new 3D-tv just to be able to experience it.

Being a Sony-man now I might get some perks? Who knows, one thing is for sure though I will post my impressions once I get to see it in real life for myself.

Kevin Butler

One last thing, we all know and love Kevin Butler so I though I would show his speech from the Sony Conference here. Gamers unite!

That’s all for today, til next time. Keep gaming.

The last month I’ve been playing a wide variety of games ranging from Sports to Horror , but as the last part I’m going to list and give my impressions of the games that I’ve actually finished or spent enough time with to feel comfortable enough to give a real opinion about them. I guess I’ll start off with the game Red Dead Redemption.

Red Dead Redemption

I was just as hyped about this game as any other gamer out there, I knew from some simple videos what the game would be about and to some extent I knew about the game mechanics and features of the game. I got the game on the release day, I plugged in my headphones into my tv and turned up the volume since I knew I was in for an enjoyable experience.

Red Dead Redemption starts off amazing, you play has John Marston a former western gang member trying to quit his old life and live in peace with his family. Marston then get in trouble with the government, he gets blackmailed and forced to leave his family behind to hunt his old gang members. As you all probably know the game takes place in the Western America and Mexico, so you’ll see your share of cacti. The visuals of the game is amazing simple models allowing for a really nice view-distance and some awesome lighting. The game also uses blending normal maps, for example the horses one normal map to detail the horse in its’ idle state, and another with the muscle flexed when running. Overall the game looks really good and really gives a sense of a real and realistically brutal world.

The thing that impresses me most must be the random and unique events that happens to the player sometime, you can walk outside a saloon and see a drunk guy come-a walking down the street, or see a prostitute get attacked on the street, sometimes you get challenged to a duel. Lots of events keep happening depending on where you are in the game, so far I’ve encountered 30+ unique random events. And there is also plenty to do with regular static events as well. You can play differnent types of betting games, hunt criminals, hunt animals, complete ambient challenges and much more. The game is truly worth it’s money even though it has some glitches.

I’ve also tried the multiplayer mode, the competative mode is all fun and games forcing players to play against each other in team deathmatch, free for all, capture the flag type game modes. There is also a freeroam mode which allows up to 16 players to roam free all over the big map. However me and my 4-5 friends quickly realized that it’s not much to do in the freeroam mode after you’ve completed all the gang hideouts, you could of course try to finish all the challenges but it’s not as motivating. I really feel that Rockstar could’ve done the freeroam mode just as exciting as the singleplayer mode and I hope that in the future, they’ll release more stuff to do. Then we’ll definitely keep playing the game on our LAN-parties.

Alan Wake

We all have been waiting for this game, I remember five years ago (E3 2005) I looked at the first images released on the game. Back then the game was meant to be an open world horror game taking place in Bright Falls, allowing the player to go from place to place and to solve the mystery of the game. Five years later the game came out as a linear experience, with an interesting story and nice gameplay. Alan Wake is about the writer Alan Wake who decided to take a vacation in Bright Falls with his Wife. Wake cursed by the nightmares he’s having is looking to get some time off and relax from the pressure of writing his new book.

Upon arrival in Bright Falls Wake notices that the place almost looks like his dreams, the couple gets to stay at a cabin at the Diver’s Isle on Couldron Lake. The cabin is a cozy cabin on a tiny island on the lake, connected by a less than safe wooden bridge, once situated in the cabin weird juju stuff happens and Wake realizes that his vacation just turned into a nightmare.

Without spoiling to much I’ll move right into game mechanic, Alan Wake is a third-person horror action game, you play as Alan Wake trying to solve the mystery in Bright Falls and battling the forces of darkness. The game follows Alan as he visits different places in Bright Falls searching for clues during the days and fleeing from the darkness at night. Throughout the game Alan will happen upon The Taken, the Taken are the enemies in this game, they are people/creatures/things touched by the Darkness brewing in Bright Falls. To defeat them Alan uses a flashlight and most of the time a revolver. You use the flashlight to blind the enemies and to take away their darkness aura that keeps them protected from the physical damage, after you’ll want to use your revolver to take them out. The developers of the game are also the inventors of the Bullet-time effect seen in the games Max Payne 1 & 2, so of course Alan Wake also has some slow-motion cinematic effect to it as well, the game allows Alan to dodge & evade incoming blows or ranged attack at the touch of a button sometimes invoking a slow-motion effect to see how close you actually were to escape the incoming blow. It’s a nice touch to keep it fresh and it looks really good as well.

Even though you’ll see your share of battle the game is more about exploring and following a relatively linear path to your next goal, however even though it feels stale when I write it like this, Alans choices in the game feels natural and the flow of the game is good so it’ll keep you playing and on your toes while playing. The game is diveded into five or six episodes which is really nice since you can easily take a break from the game at each episode, and when you start a new episode you’ll get a quick recap of what happened in the last episode to keep you up to date. It’s a really nice touch that allows gamers with less-than-1½ hour of game time a day to stop at good checkpoints in the game.

I wouldn’t exactly say that the game is hard on Normal Mode, but for less skilled players or easily scared people it might prove quite a challenge sometimes. In the end I would say that the game looks great, plays great and is overall a great game even though it might get a tad repetitive to fight the enemies however the story keeps you motivated and interested throughout the game.

Alpha Protocol

I was really hyped about this game, however the game got released without much fuzz almost under the radar for some. Alpha Protocol is Obisidan Entertainments latest game, they’re known for Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic II both great games and they’re currently working with Fallout: New Vegas and an unannounced title using their Onyx Engine. Obsidian are known for their RPG-style games and I’ve really liked all of them so far.

Alpha Protocol is third-person action/RPG hybrid where you take the role as Mike Thorton an Alpha Protocol recruit agent. When I first started playing this game I was pretty satisfied with how it started I though the game looked decent and had good voice-acting however after just a couple of missions my mind had already gotten disappointed with the gameplay. The game isn’t good enough to be a good third-person action game, not with other amazing spy games out there like Splinter Cell, and the game isn’t deep enough in customization to be a complex RPG. HOWEVER I kept playing the game and was able to look past its’ flaws and I realized that the game is actually pretty decent, it’s not the hit of the year but it’s definitely a game you could play on a rainy day from start to finish.

I’m very impressed of the voice-acting and player models in this game, the VA (voice-acting) is very good in my opinion not even once did it feel silly, I believe the acting to be very serious and realistic. Before each mission you get a brief from your handler and sometimes a debrief after missions, they all felt very relevant and interesting. This game is certainly not for everyone, if you are the kind of person that can only see flaws in a decent game then this is not for you, I’m the kind of gamer that gives all games a second chance. You can’t give a real opinion after just playing a few hours, sometimes it’s needed to play form start to finish because this game picks up after the first missions and from the middle to the end it’s an absolute blast if you can look past all the gameplay quirks.

I would definitely recommend it to a friend, especially for a cheap price or if you can borrow it from someone, it’s worth at least a playthrough, and I’m actually on my second playthrough playing through the game as a different personality and it’s a lot of fun.

Skate 3

I started playing Skate 3 when the Demo came out, I really liked the demo even though the changes felt minimal as usual. I played the demo a lot until I decided to get the full game. I’m a bit unsure whether I like the game or not, Skate 3 has a lot of things that I like, more tricks, building your own skate-parks, darkslide (awesome) and a hardcore mode. Though I still miss the fact that money doesn’t matter, your board can’t break and overall the game feels less realistic than its’ predecessors. The hardcore makes up for it, by making ollies more controllable and making grinding the hardest part of the game, landing the grind you want can easily make you want to kill yourself.

I feel like Skate 3 is a good game however I still feel like it’s not really there, I feel like Black Box should have spent some more time on the game before release, right now it almost feels like a yearly release of the game even though I know that it’s not. I was really excited about the fact that the game would feature an entire new world to skate in however, when I skated throughout the world myself I felt like the game got more and more disconnected from reality. At one part you actually skate inside a rusty old ship, I mean really? Really?! The world does not feel realistic at all, sure it might be a skate paradise or whatever but skating inside an old ship makes the game feel like Tony Hawk.

To me Skate 3 still feels like a bad expansion, and since they do not introduce anything new the game gets old fast. I put Skate 3 on the shelf after a couple of days for more interesting games.

Monster Hunter Tri

MH3 has always put me in a dilemma, it’s a great game for us who doesn’t mind hardcore-type gameplay with lots of grinding with only decent graphics. Another thing that makes it hard for me it’s that I’m the kind of gamer that wants to play all the games out there, staying with one game for 100+ hours is hard unless it’s an awesome game like Fallout 3 or TES IV: Oblivion. However Monster Hunter Tri is an awesome game and I feel like it should be said.

Monster Hunter Tri is most enjoyable online I’ve spent quite some time with the offline mode but that game really shines when you play with other people, friends or strangers, it doesn’t matter since the guys online playing Wii are much nicer than the ones on Xbox Live. Oh yeah about the game, the game is an action rpg type game where you hunt Monsters. These monsters are mostly different kinds of dragon wyverns. The game follows a simple formula

Start in town -> Go out into the world -> Gather Resources/Hunt Monsters -> Get back into town -> Create items/Forge Armor/Forge Weapons to grow stronger -> Go hunt bigger Monsters -> And around it goes.

It is very simple but very rewarding, all major monsters got their own attack patterns forcing you to pay attention to survive. After spending 20 minutes hammering strategically on a monster to finally making it fall or to keep it damaged enough to catch it’s pretty darn satisfying and I bet most of the players feel the same. This type of game appeals to those interested in action RPGs but mostly those willing to actually take it slow and plan your next hunt. In the end it’s a great game and I would love to have more time to play it.

Lost Planet 2

I actually got this game for the co-op mode, many gamers out there keep ranting about the game being bad since it forces a co-operative mode just like Left 4 Dead or Army of Two. I say yeah it’s a co-op game and it’s way underrated. I finished this game together with my friend Jacob Rastad and I have to say that it’s a pretty good game. Since the game forces you to play in a squad of four characters AI took over for the two other characters in the squad and they did a decent job. However it probably would have been an even more enjoyable experience if we actually got to play as 4 human player characters. It’s definitely worth buying if you can find it cheap anywhere for the co-op experience.

The game plays just like it’s predecessor, it’s a bit slower than the typical third-person shooters but it has got personality and features some really nice boss battles. The game plays out in 5-6 episodes where you play as different factions against the Akrid, the jumps from different faction to another can be confusing at the start but you start to understand the story after a while. Basically you start off an episode, where you battle through several chapters to meet the episode boss. During the episodes you have something called a Battle Gauge and it’s basically a team spawn gauge, you complete objectives to fill the gauge up however when a player dies, the gauge takes a hit and when it reaches zero you have to start from the beginning of the episode.

Many people has complained about this , however when me and my friend Jacob played it didn’t annoy as much since we kept our cool and didn’t die as much. The battle gauge didn’t drop when the AI-controlled characters of the squad died so it might be harder and it might not be when you play as a complete squad. It all depends on the individual skills of the players.

The game is definitely punishing in that sense, and you certainly need a level of skill to complete the game without trouble. It’s still an enjoyable experience though with some really nice graphics and epic boss battles. The game features a lot of different interesting environments. If you can find the game for a cheaper price you should probably buy it if you have some friends to play with.

Part 2

With part 2 I’ll go through my thoughts of Red Dead Redemption, Alan Wake and Alpha Protocol. Until then guys & girls, take it easy and keep up with your gaming.

Playing video-game with IRL friends

Even though I still play a lot of video-games alone, I spend quite some time arranging LAN-parties with my friends where we bring our current gen consoles and pack together in a small room. We are a tight bunch playing video-games together over a few couple of days. However even though playing with friends is fun, it never is the same tranquil experience as when you play alone. Can you be truly immersed when you have friends that might dictate the pace of the game? Maybe your friends are in the room and even that might cause a disturbance to your immersion. I often think about how great Fallout 3 or The Elder Scrolls : Oblivion would be if there actually existed a co-operative mode, but then again when you have a friend that keeps accidentally sabotaging your soon-to-be stealth kills or keeps rushing the enemy it might not be as fun anymore.

Every gamer plays a game at their own pace, I myself like to take it slow and think things through before rushing into battle others I know like to fight every battle like a brute, taking on loads of enemies with strength alone and without super-clever tactics and preparation.

What is it that makes great single-player games great? and will they really work when a multiplayer/coop-mode is introduced? I have yet to experience a really brilliant co-op experience that excels in every aspect. Most of the time the story ain’t that good, your friend might screw up etc. The most fun I’ve had playing multiplayer and coop games are games with no great super complex story. They are games such as CoD, Earth Defence Force 2017, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Serious Sam, Little Big Planet, Left 4 Dead. All of them lacking in the story-department.

Maybe it’s not a good idea to try to transfer the thing that makes a singleplayer game great, to a multiplayer experience? Maybe we all should accept that multiplayer games will never be as immersive or great as some single-player experiences, and the thing that makes single-player great can’t be transferred into multiplayer. Generally speaking I really like having LAN-parties with my friends, experiencing games together can truly be awesome, but sometimes…the experience of being alone with the big screen in a dark room, a bunch of snacks and a great singleplayer game can be truly blissful.

You can always dream though, about the day you actually get to play a game with a co-operative mode just as dramatic, powerful, immersive and awesome as the best single-player experience you can imagine.