Games got good again!

There are simply too many games coming out all at the same time. It's the same every year, with a mad rush to steal our Xmas money. Don't publishers ever think that if they wait a couple of months they can get the entire market to themselves? Imagine if you were a developer, and you were told that your game was scheduled to be fighting for shelf space with FIFA, PES, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider Underworld, Left 4 Dead, the WoW Lich King expansion, Resistance 2, and Little Big Planet? Wouldn't you be just a little concerned? Wouldn't you rather be the only good game released in March? I know for certain that I would.

But, that's not actually what I am wanting to talk about. It is a rant I am all too happy to go into this time every year, but this year is different.

Because this year there are two games released that may well steal the entirety of my play time.

I got into games at the age of 7 by playing Space Invaders on my way to school. Back then, arcade games were a whole new concept. They were also EVERYWHERE! Corner shops, takeaways, the local swimming pool, pubs ; all had their own arcade machine. Some were good, some were not so. But they were all pure excitement to a nipper like me. Of course, I wasn't very good at them, but sometimes I did well enough to make it into the top 10 scores. And I have never forgotten the feeling of typing my name in to the scoreboard, even if I knew it would probably be gone the next day. (I didn't even realise at the time that the top 10 was almost certainly wiped every night when the owner unplugged the cabinet.)

As I faced my teenage years, though, arcade cabinets were not so prevalent anymore. But that wasn't a problem as games had moved well and truly into the home. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum that I got for Xmas as a 12 year old became the single most used thing I posessed. Games got more complex, and more varied. Graphical adventures made you think, but overall I still felt more comfortable with games that just kept on pushing me harder against ever increasing odds.

Cycling on several more years, and the high score concept had all but left games for good. Story had taken over. Shooters had more or less died. The focus seemed to be on 3D worlds, and ensuring the player got a 40 hour campaign/story. Final Fantasy VII deservedly sold millions, but it also made games into virtual masturbation. the social and competitive aspect was becoming a memory.

XBox Live changed all that. By having leaderboards for pretty much everything, and by allowing remote players to connect their consoles, competitive and co-operative multiplayer console gaming became the norm once more! (I know the DreamCaast did it first, but the XBox did it right. That is what matters to the world at large.)

And now, the XBox 360 has two games that are pretty much the realisation of my videogaming wet dream.

The first is Gears of War 2. Here we have the age-old story of Man vs Aliens. LOTS of aliens! Sure, there is a campaign mode, but it isn't a life-sucking epic. It is 5 acts, and unless you jump right in to the hardest difficulty solo on your first attempt (as I have done) you won't be seeing much beyond 10 hours gameplay, no matter how poor you are.

It also has multiplayer over Live. And, one of these games is the new 'Horde' mode. In Horde, up to 5 players co-operate against the Locust. Wave 1 has 10 or so enemies. Wave 2 has more. Wave 3 has even more. Oh, and there are more types of them, too. They are bigger and meaner. Every single wave adds more enemies. Then, at Wave 10, they get double health!

This continues for 50 waves. And, you get a score. So, we have a co-operative game where you are all facing against ever-increasing amounts of tougher enemies, which then allows you to compare your skills to others. My friend Jon and I managed to get to Wave 18 so far, and it is getting quite insane already. Plus, this is on NORMAL difficulty. There are two additional difficulties beyond this! I am already taking an hour to cool down, what exactly is this going to do to me on Insane?

Naturally, there will come a day when I will attempt to do all 50 waves on my own. Because THAT is what I game for! Being the guy at the top of my friends leaderboard? Trust me, it doesn't get any better than that for me.

I once started a Source mod of my own. It was going to be some kid of Secret Agent training simulator, where you just fought ever-increasing numbers of AI bots in an attempt to get a higher score. But, the Secret Agent bit was just a quickly invented plot on which to hang my perfect game. I spoke to several people about it, and they all said more or less the same thing. Most weren't into it, needing more of a plot.

But somehow it seems that Epic read my mind, and gave me a marginally altered version of my ideal game. (Only because my game didn't end at Wave 50, it just kept on going until it beat you by sheer brute force and weight of numbers.)

I can honestly say that I have no need to ever play anything else, but then I remember that Left 4 Dead is released very soon. And, having played the demo of that one, I am even more excited than I have been for a very long time.

It's not just that it is zombies. It's that there are just so many of them!

It's not like Horde. Things don't keep on heating up. Left 4 Dead is basically 'Escape the city' for the four of you. In fact, it is more like Dead Rising, pitting you against so many enemies that at times you literally can not see anything else on screen. What makes Left 4 Dead is the co-op aspect. Even on your own, you are teamed up with 3 AI bots. The option is, of course, to have humans for each of the four charcaters. I swear, with 3 friends it won't matter if we win or not. I know for certain that 99% of the time I am going to be too busy laughing to shoot straight.

There are 4 campaigns, each with 5 maps. 20 maps of zombie MAYHEM! Again, there are multiple difficulties, with the last one being labelled 'Impossible.' How can I resist something like that? And as it is Live, there will be leaderboards.

Zombies. Co-op. IMPOSSIBLE. Did Valve reach into my brain and make a game for ME?

Co-op is the future. Every game should have a way to play with others, regardless of how little sense it makes. Halo 3 was good solo, and great with friends. If you haven't played the campaign co-op, you haven't played it properly. With friends, the story doesn't matter. With friends, the difficulty is basically what you want it to be. With friends, even if you mess up you can still laugh. With friends, you can all work together, or you can kill steal and team-kill for lulz. I often stick plasma grenades to team-mates right at the end of the level, just because I can.

Things are looking up. Gaming is slowly remembering just what it was that made it popular in the first place. It was never about epic tales, it was just about epic gameplay.