Local Multiplayer: Having Friends Has Never Been Better - Part II
https://basementmtl.blogspot.com/2014/08/local-multiplayer-having-friends-has_12.html
Where Were We?
This is the 2nd article of a 2-part piece on couch
competitive and co-op games. If you haven’t read part 1 yet you may do so here.
If you have then let’s jump back into it!
Gang Beasts! is a 4-player competitive beat ‘em up. It is in
pre-alpha and hasn’t even hit
Early Access on Steam yet but looks very promising indeed. It is a hilarious
competitive game where you play as a humanesque thing that resembles Playdough.
The control scheme is awkward and the object of the game is to kill or throw
your opponents out of the game.
Everyone shares the same screen as it zooms in and out to
fit everyone inside. You can move around, jump, collapse to the ground and
raise your arms. Using an Xbox controller, the left and right bumpers control
your left and right arms respectively. Tap a bumper button to throw a punch,
hold it to grab. You can combine grabs with the X button to lift your opponent
above your head which allows you to carry them around to dispose of them. The
different ways in which you can kill another player include: dumping them in a
fire pit, dropping them in some sort of mulching machine, tossing them into an
ocean, throwing them off a moving truck, leaving them in front of a train, etc.
This is a game where the controls are manageable but not
fantastically responsive. This is OK though as it really is one of the things
that makes this game amusing and exciting. It also puts the rookies and
experienced players on a relatively even playing field; Most of the time you
will try to do something to be left thinking “This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to happen, but it
will do”.
GangBeasts is currently a 4 player competitive game but it
looks as though the final release is slated to have a co-op mode as well.
The GangBeasts! pre-alpha is free and available on Desura,
it is soon to be an Early Access title on Steam.
Another offline only couch co-op/competitive game which is
incredibly simple and pretty fun is Hidden in Plain Sight. It’s a basic isometric 2D game with very
basic sprites and gameplay. There are 5 different game modes so I’ll explain the general flow of the game
and then go into how each mode differs.
Each game starts with a room full of characters, the
majority are NPC’s and some
are playable characters. Everyone looks similar and there is no indication of
who’s who on the screen. The
first thing to do in all of the game modes is to find which sprite you are
controlling.
A few of the game modes put hidden players against snipers.
The hidden players must walk within the crowd of NPC’s, either collecting coins or killing NPC
players. Now it would be obvious if you could see a player kill someone in
plain sight, so the game cleverly hides each player’s activity with something similar to a fog
of war. If a player kills someone or picks up a coin, a noise is triggered to
indicate the event, but visually everything will go on as normal. Coins will
only disappear and death animations will only trigger once a sniper pans over
the coin collected or the NPC that was assassinated. Each sniper has only 3
bullets to find the target but may mark players who they believe to be
innocent.
The game is 4 players and can be all vs. all, or 1 team
against another where team sizes are irrelevant.
Hidden in Plain Sight is available on Steam as an Early
Access title for $4.99.
Final Thoughts
All the games in this article and the one that preceded it
are phenomenal. They provide laughs and cries and create gaming experiences
that I haven’t had since the
days of my PS1 and PS2 in regards to couch co-op and couch competitiveness.
These games invoke some of the best gaming experiences I have had with friends
in a really long time. They are not deep and they are easy to pick up and play.
They provide hours of entertainment when played in moderation. You may or may
not be able to sink hours and hours into each of these games alone but it's
simple enough to jump from one to another. I’m incredibly happy that couch gaming is coming back and we are
seeing titles being released for pure enjoyment with friends rather than in
depth, story-driven, slow-paced games. I’m also glad that the Triple-A titles have bored me to the extent
that I went looking for other genres to satisfy my need for fun in video games.
If you want a fun time with friends look no further than this list. And if you
want to know which title kept me up for hours and hours, it’s SpeedRunners: that game is fantastic and
has a ranked online component too.
