Space: the lonely frontier
7. Dead Space
There is a time and place for everything. Horror will usually not function as a team effort if the terrors are based in a characters head like Silent Hill. But, if the scary stuff is not unlike the Alien movies; why not have a whole team of people scared out of their minds? After the "infected" ship Ishimura sends out a distress call, a rescue team is dispatched to help, and their rescue ship is damaged during the mission. While exploring the Ishimura, the rescue team encounters our scary entity called Necromorphs, that kill most of the crew. Key word here: Most. Some of the crew survives and split up from the protagonist Isaac Clark, occasionally reappearing to help. With other survivors built into the story – Co-op was an absolute possibility.
We are aware that the Wii version of the game has co-op, borrowing heavily from the House of the Dead series, which are co-op by nature. However, we'd definitely like to see the original style take a co-op approach sometime in the near future.
See that, two of us!
6. Call of Duty Series
It's always been a mystery to Co-optimus why some squad based shooter games will not allow for co-op. The military's bread and butter itself is Co-op, so why are military games forsaking this tradition to force gamers to play alone? What are squad based games? You're given a character with an optional past and identity, and camaraderie through A.I. support characters. Simple logic would tell you that these squad-mates, your pals, your homies, your family - should be your actual friends, not A.I. The way to beat the A.I. in the impending war is not to join it, but to eliminate it wherever possible.
A step in the right direction is the Zombie modes they've been implementing, but it's not quite enough. Sure we had sort of had a co-op campaign in World at War and it gave us hope hope for Modern Warfare 2. But alas, Infinity Ward would not solve our dilemma, and once again co-op looks to be relegated to an additional mode, leaving the single player to...well single players. We like some story with our co-op, thank you very much.
What do you mean there's two guys standing behind me?
5. The Elder Scrolls Series
Though the Elder Scrolls story lines tend to focus on a "chosen one" lore, but who says that chosen one couldn't have a handy friend? Hercules was the main character in all of his stories, but had a pal named Icarus there to help out. Icarus never had the god-like attributes that Hercules did, but he certainly didn't hurt to have around. We would like to see the Elder Scrolls at least attempt a co-op form similar to this, that would not compromise their stories, but rather aid the main character in some form or another. If that co-op form comes in the form of side quests, similar to closing extra Oblivion Gates, or clearing out co-op specific caverns, we'll take it!