The multiplayer conundrum

It's hard to make friends when you're a Viking, mostly due to the fact that the larger portion of the people you meet are peasants of the village you are currently raiding.

It's also hard to make online friends, because when you live in a place that has a small population density (eg. my hut in the barren snow and ice of Greenland or in the suburbs of Sydney), it becomes the norm that my connection will either drop out during a game or cause a lag that will inevitably leave me frustrated and with a wall decorated with angrily thrown axes.

Add to that every gaming systems inability to make an easy to use 'add friend' mechanic, coupled with every games ability to induce brain haemorrhaging irritation whenever you try to start a game with a friend, the whole multiplayer scenario starts to feel like its dying.

'But hey!' I thought, strapping myself in for a round of online CoD, 'surely playing with and against complete strangers will make the game feel like a multiplayer experience!'

Well, it does and it doesn't. It's kind of like rowing a longboat next to someone you don't particularly like. While you do enjoy the activity, it's hard to keep a positive outlook when the hairy, sweaty guy next to you keeps calling you a noob, threatens to rape your family and then swears he'll 'tea-bag' you, because nothing says ‘I'm a dominant alpha male’ than homo-erotic acts.

But luckily, this rowboat is equipped with a mute button, and after some time you begin to think, maybe this isn't so bad, and then the day drags on and you realise that despite being surrounded by people you are still well and truly alone and may as well be rowing with some particularly clever (or stupid) AI.

So...what the hell is multiplayer now? Before anyone starts, no, online capabilities are not bringing people closer together. I've heard the arguments, and yes, I know you can talk to people from around the world, but when the world throws some kid from New Zealand trying to single handedly ruin his countries tourism industry by annoying his team mates with his consistent and persistent offering of a free Big Mac to anyone that would ‘add’ him (this actually happened) at you, I can’t help but think that this is not the multiplayer we used to have.

I remember days after Viking school (learning how to set things on fire, threaten peasants etc) when we all used to come back to my place to crowd around my Playstation and its multi-tap to play four player Crash Team Racing.

I remember only two years ago, playing four solid hours of Killzone with my friend (who had to travel over 10 km of snow and kill a polar bear with his controller to get to my hut) on my sealskin couch while we talked about current events.

But now my most distinct memory of multiplayer is a New Zealander with a fetish for giving out burgers.

With the release of the newest generation of portable gaming systems, I thought we had arrived at a new system of multiplayer. Surely now we had the power of last gens systems in our hands, players could easily game within the same room!

But I was to be more disappointed than little Ulric who was told he was too young to go on the raid with us this year.

There are no decent multiplayer games on the new hand-helds. Many of you are probably waving your hands and screaming and pointing at copies of Monster Hunter, but any game that rewards you for searching through faecal matter with your bare hands isn't something anyone should be interested in.

Surely someone out there had a better idea for a Diablo rip-off than whoever thought to create a Dungeons and Dragons game.

Think back to Champions of Norrath. Great game both single and multiplayer, offered hours of gameplay and, most importantly, team based gameplay. You're going archer? Well I'll be the Barbarian and the smelly kid can be the Elf. All set? Let's play.

Is the problem the brilliance of the idea or is it simply that it’s harder to put them onto smaller discs and cartridges?

What I don't understand is why a poor (but humble and quite handsome) Viking is telling the gaming industry what is incredibly clear to its market.

The concept of multiplayer is always changing, but a lot of us still remember and treasure the days you could play with your friends and be in the same room. If you can't do it for the consoles, then do it for your hand-helds. If you can't do it for the hand-helds, then you're practically forcing innocent gamers like myself to buy one of the many thousands of multiplayer Mario games that Nintendo will NEVER stop releasing, just so I can be a gamer and social.

I'm giving my nostalgic memories of mutliplayer 5/5 and this new dang form of multiplayer 2/5 due to the fact I sing when I forget I have my headphones on.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.