The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Heehee, yeah, Assassin's Creed has traditionally always been a Single Player experience. I just love how they included multiplayer so you can do that after and still have fun. I also like how the multiplayer feels like Assassin's Creed. It also gets really intense. I think, other than StarCraft, Assassin's Creed is the only multiplayer game that gets my heart literally pounding from the tension/fear.

Yeah... let's look at these stats in two weeks for Black Ops 2... I bet it's flipped with more multiplayer than singleplayer.

not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that.

That was great! And yes, Black Ops having more Multiplayer gametime than Singleplayer game time is very fair; Call of Duty campaigns are usually very short, ever since Call of Duty 4 because their developers and publishers realized that Call of Duty fans like the multiplayer more.

I was positively appalled when I came to school one day and a friend had bought Modern Warfare 2. I asked him how the campaign was and he said he hadn't tried it yet, he just jumped into multiplayer.

The games are just played for a different reason. Still, I really enjoy the Call of Duty series' Single Player, much more than I like their multiplayer. There are very few games whose multiplayer I like equally, let alone more than the singleplayer.

Agreed. I've always been a single player guy for a variety of reasons.

That said, Mariokart is much more fun multiplayer than singleplayer. (really, any of those party games... mariokart, super smash bros, etc etc etc).

But as far as a legit game, I like campaigns more than multiplayer as well.

I believe most Local Multiplayer games are successful because having a buddy on a couch beside you and either working together to finish a mission, or smashing the crap out of each other in Versus is such a great bonding experience. It's just a different feeling than Online multiplayer, and while the gaming community has gotten bigger because of Online, a part of me thinks it's kind of lost some of the feeling of brotherhood that local multiplayer brings.

What's sad is that most games these days don't include Offline Multiplayer, and at first I thought there was no excuse to do that, but I realized that making two players buy two copies is more profitable than having one player buy one copy and his friend playing with him.

Agreed. The last offline multiplayer I think I played was one of the Ghost Recons with my buddy. I think it's so much easier to yell and point at the screen when you're both there than through a headset. haha

Local multiplayer is good for school-age kids who's friends tend to live close together and have lots of free time. But once you're an adult with a career and a family, most of your friends live too far away to just swing by, and you're all too busy to be able to just hang out at one person's house.

Gaming sessions become things you squeeze into your limited bouts of free time and are often unscheduled, or are scheduled but only for an hour at a time. So online gaming has become a lifesaver. You can still play with your friends and you don't have to drive across town and worry about needing to be back home in an hour. I haven't had a buddy come over in over a year, yet I'm able to get some multiplayer gaming done several nights a week.

I believe that the majority of gamers are mid-20's and older, so the popularity of and demand for online gaming is very clear. And it doesn't hurt the companies that they get to sell more copies that way.

I agree, but this isn't true for every single adult. My brother is 30 and he and his friends meet each other on a regular basis. They all have jobs, so don't worry about asking that question

Furthermore, that still doesn't really excuse companies for stripping away local multiplayer. The engine is the same, it's just that adding local multiplayer would reduce some of their profit. Which is kind of a mean move, in all honesty. We already buy their games, and if your friend likes it enough, they'll buy it too. That's how it used to work.

To be fair, I'm not even that mad at the situation, I'm just speaking my thoughts.

I'm with DAZ.

I'm not advocating local multiplayer in place of online or the other way around. I just wish more games had the option for local multiplayer (either campaign or otherwise) in addition to their online capabilities.

People get together for all kinds of reasons... poker night, Monday Night Football parties, bowling night... if the capabilities were there, I bet people would also get together for video game night as well.

But, for all that you need friends... and for that reason, I prefer single player.

I actually wish (more) games had multiplayer co-op campaigns (online or local). That would be awesome.

I'd say your brother's situation is kinda rare, DAZ. Good for him, though. Tell him to enjoy it while he can. Once he's married and has kids, it's a completely different ballgame.

Honestly, I don't believe that the removal of local multiplayer is purely to garner more game sales. These days, graphics and performance are major factors in game sales, and splitscreen multiplayer has much higher hardware requirements since it has to rapidly render two viewpoints and handle AI an objects in two locations. In most modern multiplayer games, levels are huge and players don't need to be close to each other. You basically need the hardware to be running two copies of the game at once. Something's gotta give, so the graphics have to be tuned way down. That's not in the developer's best interest from a marketing perspective.

The other factor is the time an cost to put it in. It's just that much more to program and test. Don't think that simply cutting the screen in half is all there is to it. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that would need a complete overhaul when now allowing two players have separate experiences while remaining consistent with each other. Add the capability for four players and its even more to deal with. Local multiplayer doesn't sell games anymore (other than Nintendo party-style games), so it's usually not worth the time and cost to put it in.

I'm totally with you on that. Even if its just for the post-credits play, I would love to be able to run around Boston and New York with a buddy, taking down guards everywhere.

Your argument about it taking more powerful hardware and cuts having to be made is good on paper, but look at the Call of Duty series. Starting from Call of Duty 4 and onwards, every single one has had Split Screen multiplayer, rendering not just one but sometimes four different viewpoints. Those games look gorgeous and local multiplayer still has all the abilities, perks and items available in online. So in that situation, what "had to give"?

Something had to. Chances are stages are small (typically are in those games) and a lot of things like foliage are likely fudged (they're probably just 2D sprites in local multiplayer). In fact, chances are a lot of that crap is turned off or set to very close view distance only. And the internal resolution is a lot lower, I read somewhere. They probably look great in motion, but if you stop and smell the roses it probably smells like ass. Those games also don't have as many interactive surfaces, objects and NPCs as most single-player games do. Those things all consume hardware resources.

If you look at a game like Assassin's Creed 3 which struggles to put out 30 frames per second consistently, there is simply no way it would run two separate viewpoints at the same quality and performance. It's just impossible. And the proof is in the 3D: the game's resolution takes a nosedive when you enable 3D, which is basically just alternating between two viewpoints.

That's a fair point, but if you think about the fact that no one really notices the little details of CoD games, no one really stops to look at the fudged up textures, isn't that still a success in gaming development? It's still a great game, and it has that functionality without seriously harming the experience.

It's possible if you try, they just don't want to try because it seems most people care about different values. Yes, it might take extra hardware but Nintendo has always put out fun, multiplayer games. Their production values LOOK lower but they're always fun games (if they're first party/made by Nintendo themselves). The WiiU, PS4 and X720 are coming soon. I'm curious to see if they have Local Multiplayer.

It's the type of game. In games with little or no NPCs and interactive environments, less resources are required. Few single-player games can say the same.

Wii games did it because the system runs at such a low resolution and first-party multiplayer games have very little detail and instead rely on simple brightly colored graphics. That's easy on the performance. With the Wii U's specs, it would theoretically be able to handle splitscreen with the same general graphics as PS3 or 360 in single-player. The next Playstation and Xbox should easily be able to do the same, albeit most likely with certain post-processing effects like anti-aliasing switched off. Which is fine. But then it's a question of it being worth the development time and cost. As I said earlier, local multiplayer doesn't sell games anymore. It's more of a niche thing. That's why so few PC games have it, despite having dozens of 'controller' ports and much beefier hardware. It's just more convenient to have your own copy and play from your own home. In your underwear with Cheetos dust all over your face, if you want.

I would love to see an option put into games where it would use online multiplayer code but simply serves to allow others to watch your single-player gameplay. I'd love to watch others play games like AC3, and would love to have my friends watch me play and be able to talk about it over the headset. Live game streaming is really gaining in popularity right now, but currently requires expensive hardware and a killer Internet connection to stream in HD. With my idea, it wouldn't require any more hardware or Internet bandwidth than current multiplayer games, but would require each observer to have their own copy of the game.

Alright, your point is strong and your logic is sound. That is very true, it's just a matter of reality. You've won my brain over

Also;
[quote=Asaic
I would love to see an option put into games where it would use online multiplayer code but simply serves to allow others to watch your single-player gameplay. I'd love to watch others play games like AC3, and would love to have my friends watch me play and be able to talk about it over the headset. Live game streaming is really gaining in popularity right now, but currently requires expensive hardware and a killer Internet connection to stream in HD. With my idea, it wouldn't require any more hardware or Internet bandwidth than current multiplayer games, but would require each observer to have their own copy of the game.