Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: Difference between revisions

 

Compare [[Socialization Bonus]], where playing with someone else is actually beneficial.

 

== [[Action Game]] ==

** According to lore, after Space Quest 6, Sierra was trying to develop Space Quest 7 into a multiplayer game, multiplayer being the next big thing in the late 90s.

 

* ''[[Battletoads (Video Game)|Battletoads]]'', as pointed out by [[The Angry Video Game Nerd (Web Video)|The Angry Video Game Nerd]]. The number of items is not adjusted, the two players can hurt each other very easily, if one of the players dies, both are sent back to the last checkpoint and one of the levels becomes literally [[Unwinnable By Mistake|Unwinnable]] because of a glitch in programming. Later ''Battletoads'' games for consoles mitigated this a little by offering an alternate two-player mode where the players can't hurt each other.

 

* ''[[Punch Out]]'' for Wii has a head-to-head mode that is regarded as this by many people, though others will argue that this mode is actually a very deep and intense battle of the wits and people are only disappointed that they can't play as King Hippo or Super Macho Man.

 

* The multiplayer modes in ''[[Painkiller]]'' are considered by some to be an afterthought, shoehorned on top of the single-player mode by the publishers' demand...but that didn't stop the Cyberathlete Professional League from choosing ''[[Painkiller]]'' as their official 2005 World Tour game.

* The PSP version of the ''Peter Jackson's [[King Kong]]'' game added a WiFi multiplayer mode: Both of you played the same level in single player, and the person who completed it fastest "won".

** ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' also allowed to give control of some characters to player 2.

** ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'' did it too, probably as a throwback.

* Troika, the makers of ''[[Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura]]'', were [[Executive Meddling|forced to include a multiplayer mode by Sierra]]. [[Writer Revolt|They promptly hacked out a single module and an almost completely unplayable interface]], which was promptly laughed at by the fan community.

* ''[[Lord of the Rings The Third Age]]'' had a 2-player mode that was just like the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' examples above. Or worse, since your party is only 3 characters in this game, while all the above examples have 4-man parties, so ''someone'' is only getting one character.

* ''[[Dark Messiah (Video Game)|Dark Messiah]]'''s online multiplayer play more like a bad ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' mod than anything to do with ''Dark Messiah'', ignoring the singleplayer game's brilliant combat system, spells, classes and with far worse graphics. Of course, it was made by a different company altogether.

 

* ''[[Psi Ops the Mindgate Conspiracy (Video Game)|Psi Ops the Mindgate Conspiracy]]'' is primarily a first person shooter with [[Psychic Powers]]. It has a CoOp mode that allows player one to steer and shoot the weapons, and player two to control the psychic powers. Unless both players are on the same page on what to do, things can get very... strange. Considering the dev team had so much trouble assigning buttons they couldn't find a way to fit in rolling or dodging (and thus both are absent from the game), this would be an ideal solution to games with lots of powers... if you had four arms or really good teamwork with player two (but lets be honest, the first is likelier).

** One game along these lines was the original ''[[Mechwarrior]]'' on the SNES, in which one player did the steering and the other aimed the turret.