The Curse of Multiplayer?

Each genre has something that they’re renowned for, for example RPG’s are known for their stories, Platformer’s for their puzzles, and FPS games are known for online play. Obviously some games cross over, like Mass Effect 3, with its amazing multiplayer. However the one genre which stays true to what it’s known for, is FPS and woe betide any game that goes out of its way to break the mold.

Now, I’m not saying all FPS games are generic or bad, as there are some brilliant games out there that show initiative and you can have a good solo experience, but the main contenders, Call of Duty and Battlefeld, people buy them for their online play, not their solo experience. This has caused a chain reaction, that has made the single player campaign on these games absolutely awful. With the majority of the campaigns barely lasting 6-7 hours and the storyline jumping around and being instantly forgettable (Black Ops I’m looking at you here) the only thing fuelling the cash cows, is the quality of the multiplayer.

Now before you all get onto your high horses, I’m not saying that these are bad games, but they all feel like I’m playing the same one over and over again and when FPS games come out with something even approaching an original story-line, or add something else in, they seem to fail terribly, or are released at the wrong time so they don’t get enough attention. These are the games that give originality to a genre which has become increasingly stale, and with what now seems like only two big releases a year, all the other games seem to get pushed under the carpet and forgotten about.

In terms of storylines and inventive playing, I’m a huge fan of Bulletstorm and Singularity, both games which got good reviews from critics but either didn’t sell particularly well, or seemed to be developed as a way of making extra money to sell beta codes, for other products from the company that sells well. This seems to demean the product, at least in my eyes, as once the beta has been played; either the game will sit on the shelf gathering dust, or be traded in for a different game.

Now I’m all for the games having a decent multiplayer but not at the expense of having a laughable single player campaign, which takes one sit through to complete. To me, if a game comes out like that, it is only half a game, so therefore technically; you should only be paying half the price right? No, you end up paying full price, plus extra for extra maps and DLC, and the single player campaign just gets ignored.

I can’t be the only one who thinks that the fad of multiplayer is taking over games in a bad way, and as I said, I’m not knocking multiplayer at all, I love a good game of Halo with my mates as anyone, but when it begins to affect the quality of what the game is meant to be about, it becomes an issue. In some ways now, it feels like the single player is tacked on just because it has to be, and no thought is out into it whatsoever.

I may sound like an old guy looking through “rose tinted glasses” at the good old days of gaming (I’m not by the way, I’m only 22) and I realise multiplayer is here to stay. All I’m asking for, is for equal time to be spent on both the multiplayer and single player campaign and for the campaign to be engaging, instead of just racing through to the end, so you can get the achievements or trophies, and then go straight online or even miss the single player campaign all together.

What do you guys think? Am I wrong in thinking that if a game is solely focused on multiplayer, it should be cheaper than a game with both? Or am I just living in a fantasy? I want to know your thoughts, so leave a comment below

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