Tag: multiplayer

Minecraft

Gaming
Sphere in a Box
The top of the box is pulled back to reveal the construction within.

A few weeks ago, I caved in and bought Minecraft.  It is a fun little game.  The game can be played single player, or multiplayer.  Currently, multiplayer is a little broken – the monsters can’t hurt you, in fact, nothing can hurt you, so jumping off stuff is fun!  Multiplayer servers can also be modified to allow players the ability to summon items instead of mining them.  The picture to the right is what I’m currently building on one such server.  If you want to spend some time, you can go through the map of that server and see all the awesome things that people are building.

Anyway, the one thing I really dig about this game is that it shows what an indie developer can do, and that high end photo realistic visuals aren’t needed if the game is fun to play.  Minecraft is a blast and it has a very 8-bit look to it.

The game is still technically in “Alpha” (the phase before Beta, which is the phase before release), however you can purchase it now for about $15, which gets you the Alpha and free upgrades to future releases.  If you wait until release you’ll have to pay double, at least, and you’ll miss out on months of fun!

Another thing I like about this game, and the buzz it is getting, is the idea that, if embraced, some of the free form creation that exists here might find their way into other games, other MMOs.  Though I do think it will work best on a small scale.  Can you imagine World of Warcraft allowing people to make their own buildings and destroy terrain?  Insanity!

Bass Groove

Gaming

When it comes to most games, I’m a team player.  I disliked Quake Deathmatch, but I was obsessed with Team Fortress.  So, I wasn’t surprised at all when I finally picked up a Guitar Hero controller a couple of years ago that I really enjoyed playing the “second fiddle” rather than the lead guitar.  When Rock Band came out, while I did thoroughly enjoy playing guitar, the fact is that I enjoyed taking up the bass in a band on tour much more.  A little thing that makes me enjoy online play a bit more since everyone else in the world seems to want to play guitar.

Rock Band 2 came out this past Sunday, and having pre-ordered it a while back, I went and picked up my copy.  The game is great.  Its like Rock Band, only better… sort of.

The one drawback to the new game is that there is no straight tiered solo playlist.  You can’t just get in and play down the list to unlock songs.  To unlock songs you need to either have two people and do the challenges, or you play by yourself in a band on the tour mode.  Basically, its the old multiplayer tour, but playable by one person.  The drawback is that like the old multiplayer mode, you end up playing the same songs over and over in sets until you unlock more… well, unless you owned Rock Band 1 and a bunch of Down Loaded Content (DLC), because then you can choose from any previous song.  All your RB1 favorites and all the songs you paid extra for, right from day one.  Functionally, the single player mode works like the original game, but the presentation makes it feel different.

The advantage to this system, is that as a single player, I can play bass as my method of choice going through the tour and unlocking songs.  And that totally rocks.

Consoles and Couples

Gaming

Something I left off of Monday’s post about Burnout Paradise was its lack of local multiplayer.  They aren’t alone.  Tons of games don’t have local multiplayer.  And even more rare are games that allow more than one player to play online.

One of the greatest features of Rock Band is that my wife and I can both play, and play online.  Now, of course, the interface for Rock Band is pretty simple… but the fact remains, if I wanted to sing, my wife wanted to play bass, my brother wanted to play guitar and my brother’s wife wanted to play drums, despite living a thirty minute drive away from each other, the four of us can do that, my wife and I on our console and he and his wife on their console.

Burnout Revenge had a local multiplayer mode, so the wife and I could race… but if I wanted to go online, she couldn’t play again, because only one player can be online from the same console in that game.  And that’s how most games are: Local or Online, but not a mix of both.

More games need to explore allowing multiple players from the same console play online.  I don’t work at a game company, so I can’t say for sure, but I would love to know what the hang up is.  Do they just not think about it?  Do the games require so much bandwidth that they can’t possibly run two sessions from one machine?  Is there not enough RAM or processing power?  I realize that there would have to be limitations… perhaps in Burnout Paradise, the second (and third, and fourth…) player from a console could only join if the first is hosting the game, and they can only join the locally hosted game.

Since I did name Rock Band as an example where a couple can play online together, does anyone out there know of other games that allow multiple players to be online from the same console?