I spent my middle school summers playing roughly 1,300 games of Halo 2 on the original version of Xbox Live.
My formative years are riddled with Halo memories I remember sneaking sessions of the M-rated Halo: Combat Evolved on my childhood best friend's Xbox at age 11 (we told our moms the Spartans were robots, and the bloodstains were just oil).
HALO 5 SPLIT SCREEN MULTIPLAYER ONLINE SERIES
As with last year, we're running a series of opinion pieces by members of the Polygon staff explaining why certain games earned top marks from them even if they didn't make our staff-wide Game of the Year list.įor more than half of my life, I have been playing and loving Halo multiplayer. Local play is fading, lets hope that changes.Every year the Polygon staff chooses 10 excellent games to award our Game of the Year honors, but that means some games we love don't quite make the cut. But with the internet becoming ever more ubiquitous I fear this may not come to pass. In an ideal world people will begin to remember how much fun they used to have in split-screen, and games will start to reflect that. If games like Halo are starting to abandon it then who knows where it’ll be five years down the line? Honestly I really couldn’t tell you. While this is a very positive thing I’m still worried that local play is teetering on the brink. Gang Beasts, Broforce and Castle Crashers are all currently available to satisfy your need to play with actual human beings. The rise of indie gaming has given smaller developers a chance to create games that don’t need cutting edge tech, allowing room for experimentation. There may be one or two publishers out to make a quick buck but the majority probably aren’t quite that evil. People believe that developers are dropping split-screen in an effort to force consumers into buying multiple copies of a game if they want to play it with friends. On the more cynical side of things, there are claims that the real reason we are seeing a shift away from local play is the extra revenue generated by online multiplayer. It offers something that even online play simply can’t. I might be asking a lot but I really believe that split-screen still has a place in modern gaming. Developers need to realise that local play can make a game more fun, and that including it is worth it to make the game better. I’m sure there are many others who would agree. I feel that actually making an enjoyable game, that delivers the most fun possible is more important. To my mind the modern games industry has an unhealthy obsession with graphical capability. Games can tell compelling stories or make us think about the world around us, but sometimes all they have to do is be pure, unadulterated fun. Games can do many things, but I think we can all agree that we still sometimes need a game that is just fun. Many developers have also cited the extra cost and amount of QA as potential hurdles.Īnd while all this may be true I don’t think it justifies neglecting local play altogether. Split-screen is apparently an unavoidable casualty on the path to graphical perfection. As graphics continue to advance consoles have struggled to keep up. Having to process two cameras and two players in today’s games is a lot to ask of the hardware.
So why have developers started to ignore split-screen? The answer we are usually given is that incorporating split screen means that the graphics have to take a hit. Halo 5 lacks split-screen, as do Uncharted 4 and Star Wars : Battlefront. And this isn’t something exclusive to Call of Duty. None of the recent games have supported more than two players on the same machine. But if I wanted to do the same thing now? If I wanted to invite some friends over and have some stupid fun in four-player split screen on a shiny new COD? I couldn’t do it, Plain and simple. Even as someone who never touched the game otherwise, running and gunning alongside my friends was some of the most fun I had ever had. I myself have happy memories of playing the old Call of Duty’s in split-screen. Local play has been a cornerstone of console gaming since its inception and the industry is poorer for simply dismissing it. But recently I’ve been noticing a sharp decline in the number of games (AAA mostly) including any way to play locally. Games like Super Mario Kart, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Smash TV and Halo are all fantastic examples.
Many of the games we now herald as “classics” were built on this idea. Being able to play against your friends was a major reason for their success. Split-screen multiplayer is remembered fondly for a reason.
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