Some argue that it shows how "good" of a gamer you are.  The bigger your score, the better you are.  This can be misleading of course.  In the early days of Xbox achievements, Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Burning Earth was notorious for just this reason.  The game had only 5 achievements, all of which could

I like a good sequel as much as anyone and there are definitely games I look forward to that fall into that category.  As a somewhat embarassing example, I went to the midnight launch of Halo 3 and I couldn't wait to get home and play it.  But as soon as I turned my Xbox 360 on, I got the dreaded red ring of death.  You c

Perhaps the biggest question here is "Do games need a story?"  Certainly, there are many games that do not have a story, as is the case in many purely multiplayer games.  And there are even more games in which the story is just a setting/excuse for the player to go from one scenario to another and the plot hardly matters

Next talking point: Story in games

This is going to be a short one.  I love co-op as much as the next person, but after a while playing the same thing over and over can get old.  Games like Halo and Gears of War are a lot of fun, but the co-op in those games mostly consists of taking the main character and copying them multiple times.  Other games like Borderl

The most traditional definition of co-op gaming is probably 2 or more players playing against an AI.  That's still true these days, but it's also become more complicated than that.  One of my favorite games, Team Fortress 2, is usually not classified as a co-op game, but there are distinct co-op elements in the gameplay. &

To that end, I'm going to attempt a weekly blog series called Talking Points.  My plan is to once a week make a small rant about a topic related to gaming, then open it up for discussion to the Co-optimus crowd.  My goal in doing this is not to antagonize anyone, create controversy, or to try and convince you that my opinion i

The one co-op related event I went to was Halofest.  It's basically a celebration of all things Halo that took up the second floor of the convention center annex.  They had a lot of consoles set up for every Halo game on the market, from Halo:CE to Reach.  There was also a section specifically for Firefight, both in ODST

First thing I tried today was Rage.  They had the game running on PS3s, Xboxes, and PCs, although the PCs were using Xbox controllers.  The resolution on the PCs had also been turned down to match the Xbox, but they all looked good and played smoothly.  The demo was single player only, so I can't provide any co-op specifi

Unfortunately, it wasn't a hands on demo so I didn't actually get to play the game.  Instead, some of the devs played through a sample mission and we watched in a small room in the booth.  Our host was none other than the voice of Scooter.  He even gave us a line in character ("Get you one!").  While th

I'm currently sitting in line awaiting the opening of PAX 2011.  I plan on taking many pictures and trying to see as much co-op gaming as possible.  I'll put up a full blog post after PAX is over and I've had a chance to decompress, but if you'd like to follow along with what I see as I see it, follow @secretasianmanz o...