I can assure you that local co-op play is still alive and well my friend. Myself and three mates go crazy for it with Winning Eleven. We started off on the original xbox playing 8, then when 9 came out we actually bought a trophy to play for. The whole set up is just incredibly stupid - lots of corn chips, coke, incessant piss taking and emitting of gas to put off the opposing team. Another great thing about local co-op is that you can change your mates controller bindings when they get up to go the bathroom.

yeah that PC looks nice, but is it really necessary? But if you get that, ill take one of your 8800 GTX's that I think you have

looks like im still leaning towards getting a 780i board. since the MB only can take that specific processor.

I prefer to have a few mates over and have a drink or 2 with them. Its great fun playing some Smash brothers and conkers bad fur day andstuff, more fun hilarious games are great with mates. More serious games ie COD4, halo 3, are more fun online as everyone is a lot better skilled.

Co op wise, i prefer co op over standard MP. I also prefer co op when im the other person is next to me, it makes it a lot more fun. And if they die in Halo Legendary, you get to punch them.

Nice to see you're on board with Freecol Pidgeo I'll have to get a few more games under my belt as well to make sure I'm up to speed again...

In regards to local gaming, besides the obvious DarkLAN that many of us got together to play some real local matches, I'd have to say that myself and Oxamiss are keeping the dream alive with local Halo 2 (and now onto Halo 3).

I'll set the picture... *Insert wavy dream sequence transition and harp strums*

Friday night, 2 guys, Halo 2, Xbox LIVE, pizzas and a lot of beer. The obligatory warm up split-screen matches, mano a mano, will generally invlove alot of trash talk and some pretty insulting in game teabagging. Then onto some team matchmaking where we can strategise all on screen and in person and really get into some amazing team work.

If we lose, then it's beer time and another slice of pizza. Occasionally, hard-won victories are celebrated with us standing up and physically giving it to the other team with some pretty graphic pelvic thrusts...

All in all, actually playing alongside a mate is leaps and bounds ahead of joining him online and I don't think that anything could take that place. Anyone that has been to DarkLAN in the past will know exactly what I mean

Alive and Well, indeed!! We had a bunch of guys in our youth group at church, of all ages, at what we called an 'Xbox day' (v. original). we used it to raise funds for other youth stuff, but mainly paid for the Coke, chips, choc, pizza, and more Coke consumed. We even had some of the girls show up!! And let me tell you, when it somes to talking smack.... the chicks are expert! I think the most machines we had was 9 (Xbox & 360s) playing Halo2, the next trick will be Halo3!!!

haha DarkAmarda i knwo exactly what you mean, at the back on the 4 huge television screen. lol good old times it has been so long since DarkLan

hhmm back in the days when Xbox was first released and Halo was ahuge phenomenon in terms of graphics, gameplay and the best feature it had multiplayer.

1 Television, 1 Xbox, 3 friends and a brother all battling it out in free for all rockets to be named the champion of the weekend and following week. Friday+Saturday at 10:00pm on the dot till late.

Nothing beat the good old calling up my 2 best mates and inviting them over for good night of halo multi goodness. and then also asking my brother to tag along for the ride. So the stage is set, the stakes are high and then when we are all ready in the lobby the game starts.

For hours on end with out breaks nothing we would be battling it out. Of course being the veteran Halo player that i was at the time i would take the lead, but not without a little fight my opponents had in them, but i always fixed that up with the good old punch to the arm to try to distract them.

for the first 2-3 weeks i would be champion, but after that it was not an easy ride anymore, free for all was a thing of the past, and even though the game was free for all, the strategy of surviving against me was teaming up and that is exactly what my 2 friends and my brother done. When i would enter the scene bang bang bang they would kill me first and then continue to shoot each other, while i did congratulated them for their effort their victory was short lived, cos i had come up with my own plan, lets just say alittle bit of sniping with the pistol

At the time there was no adsl or adsl2+, there was no xbox live gamertag, just good split screen 4 player multi. with drinks, great mates and a competitive brother, and then the good old 3am Yeeros down at Marickville Yeeros which would b e full of meat and fattening oil no better way to satisfy the stomach then a fattening meal.

i loved the 4player split multi back int he days, but now that people have moved on it is much harder to just call up your mates and go hey come sleep over halo all night ok? people have jobs, sport and other commitments, so with good old calling up friends and relatives came a much easier approach Xbox Live, it has opened up many many doors into the world of multi and i have welcomed it with open arms, but even though we have headsets to speak to who we are vsing, there was nothing better than beating your friends and rubbing it in to there face countless times, and then breaking out into a good old brawl with your own brother because you kicked his arse so many times, and even though he would continue to be be persistent, and lose he would always be in the good spirit and give a little brotherly love my way in the form of a nice cork to the arm that would render me useless and get me killed. grrr hehe.

but even though live is the new local, i have resurrected the local mp with my old mate, after school 2 times a week cos i would finish at 10:30am we play Rockstar Table Tennis at his house as he finally got a 360, and PGR3 only 1 week of doing this i can already see the great memories of Friday+Saturday nights coming back to me. with local Mp now i play the great game of football FIFA08 with my 2 brothers great competition there, used to play some Rugby on original xbox, and some good old virtua tennis 3 with my fanatic tennis loving oldest brother.

Local Co-op is still much alive between and my friends. Every 2 weeks we still get together and play any local multiplayer co-op we can find. We usually play Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Counter Strike with our PC's and lately we have gone back to the old Nintendo 64's for some great Goldeneye 007 death matches along with 4 play MARIO KART! In my mind it can't be beaten. Yourself and your closest mates battling it out to be king on the night and to who won't be paying for the pizza .

Its still a joy using star power to take all your mates from first place to last in the last 100 metres of a Mario Kart race and for them to yell out HAX or LAG on the one Xbox or LAN hehe.

Yes its still in my mind at a stage where i prefer local competition to online because you can't go back to school on a Monday rubbing it in the faces of the people you've beaten in another Country can you? :p

Live hasn't taken away the experience at all, if anything it has made it stronger because it has added another dimension of say if friends can't be available, just jump on the Xbox 360 and play with your friends on Live.

Its still much the same as it always was, next time we are trying out Fifa 08 on the one Xbox 360 and we will be getting out Age of Empires from the games library

Nice post there Pidgeo.

On Coop:

Years ago, it was a phone call everyday after school finished to see whose house we were going to for some coop action. Then everybody would bring some food or drink along and a controller.

In the earliest times we played Goldeneye deathmatch maybe once a week. But the game that gave us the need for a once a day split screen multiplayer match was Halo: Combat Evolved.

School marks dropped. The games were so intense, Parents complained over the screaming, occasionally dropping in to see what was going on to only notice "we were fighting over a game".

As you said, school was always interesting. The person who won always made sure the others knew how things stood. And that didn't help the competition slow down.


On the note of screaming HAX or LAG: I'm sure you would remember the DarkLan events?

"I'm sorry I killed you Pidgeo, just don't ban me from Live"

Really I think that multiplayer with a friend or two still can't be beaten. No network code could ever replace the feeling you get when you win a match 50-49 to the person sitting to your left. The moment the match finishes there is so much emotion shown, so much disappointment and so much smack talk about the next match.

This experience can't be had with someone over the internet.

I don't think Local multiplayer will be going anywhere for a long time.

tiger

ok sorry, im going to do a better post, because for some reason I missed the paragraph about the comp lol. So time to put some more effort in!

There is a fine line between which games you play locally with your mates, and which you play online.

Fast multiplayer shooters such as COD4, Counter Strike, Halo 3 and Gears of War, are all games which are much better enjoyed with people online at your own skill level. Whereas generally when my mates come over to play video games, they come to play games they don't already own. usually resulting in myself getting bored because im winning all the time. You also have the problem of a few mates who don't play FPS games and are having a lot of trouble and not having fun. When we have a LAN party kind of thing, they prefer to play games that can be easily played by anyone and are a lot of fun as well, games you can just get up and yell at the person in the other room "You just got owned David!". ie Mario Party (shudders), Super Smash Bros, Conkers Bad Fur Day (your in for a bagging if you die by getting peed on).

There are a few exceptions for the "enjoyed better online" games with my mates. We have Halo 1, its such an unbalanced game anyone of my mates can find something to enjoy, whether it being driving the Warthog around and killing anyone the car slightly bumps into. And although it causes a lot of deaths, its just a fun way to die. You've got your head on Wathog collisions that cause awesome jumps and flips etc. And all the secret hiding spots you can find, eg the ledge high up on the right wall of Blood Gulch; fly up there and you now have the best Sniper Spot! Its great to watch your friends spend 10 minutes trying to find you while you keep pulling off headshots. Even if the game is full of people with different skill levels, its always fun. Halo 2 and 3 on other hand, have been much more balanced and are no where near as fun in a LAN as the best skilled players are easily portrayed.

But for Co Op games I enjoy them for a longer time than a standard MP matches, its much easier to coordinate and have much more fun with a mate right beside you. My mate up the street from me always walks down to my place or visa versa. To get a co op game going rather than playing online. - Except maybe on rainy days when wetness could occur.

Same goes for playing online with a "guest" if they haven't played the game before, they usually get bored extremely fast as they cant keep up and often die. But if you put them with a group of their friends which they can drink and have fun with, they usually put up with and have fun. Because regardless of gaming drinking alcohol is good. Right? (Smirnoff ftw)

Me and friends usually opt to play a shooter in our LAN's or something that we can laugh at/with such as Super Smash Brothers, or Conkers Bad Fur Day. Combined with drinking all night these can lead into some super fun nights that will never get old!

So in conclusion, I prefer Local games over Online games, and I prefer Co Op games over standard MP games. But local games are not just for fun, its helps your friends bond, and sometimes will give you fantastic moments that you may talk about for a long time after.



ps: Pidgeo still want your 8800 gtx when you upgrade Oh have you seen the performance charts for that motherboard, they dont provide a huge jump in performance such as Crysis, infact Its barley any difference. They say at the moment its more aimed for big software processing programs. But if you ge the comp for free, your bragging rights will increase!

Somethings are fun on your own but are better with other people around.

Beers.

Sex.

Ricky Ponting Cricket

Local co-op is still alive for me. The first 3 times I played through Gears co-operatively when it came out were all on my old 68cm CRT because it was larger than my HD LCD at the time, and split-screen just screams out "bigger is better".

I've since played it in HD.. and wow, what a difference in quality - but I still didn't enjoy it any where near as much as with a co-op buddy in the same room, knocking back beers and wondering how many more beers it will take before we're able to work out how to take down Raam for the first time.

Since then, 4-player co-op Halo 3 has been great, but again - not nearly as much fun as having your mates lug their LCDs and boxen to your living room. No excuses now - if there's teabagging, it had better be done for real.

I've not been into deathmatch for a long time, and back then it was local so you could throw something at the guy that just camped your ass. Now, team deathmatch is the word - and games where you can have a local team versus the world, it certainly makes for a much more lively game.

I'm always looking for more good co-op games, but local is always a winner.

haha i definetely think local co-op is still alive. In the recent times i have played Kayne and Lynch Dead Man with my best mate timmy to get the Co-op achievement. I have many fond memorys of battling it out in Halo 3 Meta Games just for one. We actually had a boxing match to decide the winner due to playing two games winning one a piece.(truth be told he nearly knocked me out) i am for playing local co-op together insted of online for pure enjoyment. cheers Sonny

I still play co-op and online. Team Fortress 2 has become a big love of mine - and I'm really wanting to pick up Call of Duty 4.

As for co-op, I'm more of a party gamer, so I've been getting into Viva Pinata: Party Animals and Scene It (Make more!). Still, I love playing Gears co-op when I feel like just playing something mindless and fun, and I'm looking forward to checking out Army of Two.

local co-op for me was the beacon of gaming light in my younger days where conkers bad fur day on the 64 was the king of all games to play wehn i had mates around just running around killing dinosaurs and teaming up against a far superior AI.

Since then i found xbox live back on the original xbox where everything i had ever dreamed of happening for bad fur day was soon realised. SO much so i played the mechassault demo for 3 months before moving on to mech assault 2 when it finally hit aussie shelves. Then like food for teh starving conker was re released onto the xbox and i was hooked almost never to play split screen again.

Now that im older me and my fellow gaming mates still have our "sausage fests" (named thereafter the severly lacking female variety of homosapian) where we link up 4 xbox's and 4 tvs in 2 different rooms having a good old split screen lan going of halo and anygame we can grab enough copies of.

So to me split screen will always be a fond memory of the golden times when life was care free and being home sick from school had no impact on you except "cool i can play games all day" But in this day and age i must say oraganising a good old lan up with the mates is alot more cahllenging when teh temptation of xbox live is there stareing you in the eyes.

seemed my coment was deleted after posting last night, testing this one now