Tag Archives: co-op

EA’s announced G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra this morning, to release on August 7 alongside the live-action movie of the same name.

It’s an all-platform effort, and will take up where the movie leaves off. It includes a co-op mode, but multiplayer and DLC were not mentioned.

See? Sometimes old toys do come back to life. Just not in the way you thought.

Press release after the jump.

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THQ’s released some new screens for Dawn of War II, which is set to arrive on Steam February 19.

The shots show the game’s cooperative missions.

Shacknews has them here.

The is life after Ziff Davis. A bunch of the old staff from the 1UP Show have launched Co-Op, a new program with a distinctly 1UPy feel. Watch the first episode here.

The newly-formed production company behind it, Area 5, can be found here. Ex EGM ed Dan Hsu looks to be leading the charge.

Apparently Area 5′s received so many fan donations its PayPal account’s been frozen. That’s popularity for you.

OXM’s posted a movie of split-screen co-op from the Resident Evil 5 demo released in Japan today. Get it here.

It looks as though the content’s the same stuff as was shown at the Eurogamer Expo earlier this year, containing the chap with the chainsaw and a bag on his head.

This clip’s got a great ending. She was asking for it, y’honour.

Speaking to IGN at BlizzCon, Blizzard boss Rob Pardo’s said the final number of players to be allowed in a Diablo III co-op party has yet to be decided, and that the team is “worried” that too many cooks may spoil the broth.

“We’re a little bit worried that if you go up to too many players that you’re not really going to be playing together anymore,” he said.

“We want to make sure it’s a great co-op experience where you really play with the people you’re with, so we’ve just got to experiment and figure out what the optimal number is.”

The game was shown playable with up to four players at BlizzCon, although Pardo said the dev team is currently targeting an upper limit of eight.

There’s a full interview through there.

1UP’s posting a new Resident Evil 5 trailer from Tokyo Game Show this evening, releasing the footage at 5pm PST, or 1am BST.

“While we don’t want to give away too many details before the video is up, trust when we say that Resident Evil fans will want to be paying attention, as this includes lots of footage from new areas in the game and some revealing story elements,” says the site.

We’ll let you know when it’s up.

The scale of Far Cry 2, as well as the fact the game’s engine was a proprietary affair, prevented the inclusion of co-op in the upcoming shooter sequel, VG247 was told in London last week.

“The first thing was that the environment is so huge, and we pushed the engine really to the limit… the consoles to the limit,” said multiplayer producer Richard Gaetan.

“It was too big of a challenge at the time. It wasn’t a [pre-built] engine. It was a brand new engine that we built from scratch, from nothing, so it was already a big challenge to do this with dynamic loading, and everything.”

Far Cry 2 will ship with extensive multiplayer options, including a fully-featured map editor. Co-op will have to wait, clearly.

More from Richard later this week.

Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has told VG247 that all Fable II single-player saves are to be horded on one server for the purpose of filtering them back down in the game’s intriguing co-op “orb” system, that allows you to let players into your game through floating balls of light in your version of Albion.

“All the single-player games are accumulated up to this one server and then filtered back down to you,” said the developer.

You can filter the orbs you see in your game in many different ways, meaning you can only see people from your Friends List should you wish.

“There are a number of filters that filter down what orbs are seen in your world, and you can have up to 64 simultaneous orbs in your world at any one time.

“And they can be filtered down by region, so you can see the people that live locally and close to you, they can be your friends from your Friends List, they can be people with a similar game ranking as you, or I think there’s one – this is purely from memory, so I may be wrong here – for people in a similar state or progress in Fable II.”

Additional orbs filters may be added further along the line, too.

“If we could patch the code we could add any filter we liked,” said Molyneux.

“So we could, if we wanted to – not that you can – say everyone that likes the colour yellow, or everyone who dresses the same as your hero, or everyone who’s a woman: we could filter it down in a whole host of different ways.”

So, in answer to your question, Psychotext, if no one on your Friends List has Fable II, you just pick another filter and play co-op with someone that has.

The question in full was: “We know about the co-op orbs for people on your Friends List, but how does co-op work if you don’t have friends with the game?”

Few more to go yet.

The next issue of EGM’s promising 20 new shots of Resident Evil 5 and an interview with producer Jun Takeuchi.

Apparently the piece contains news a system to deal with co-op griefers, as in people who drop into your game purely to mess it up.

More here.

Speaking to Videogamer, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has claimed that Fable II’s online co-op has only been possible because of the way Live’s structured, and that PS3′s online offering isn’t as “mature” as 360′s.

“The thing I love about the 360 more than anything is nothing to do with the hardware, it’s all to do with Live. Live is still underexploited for a game mechanic,” he said.

“Some of the stuff in Fable II we’re doing with co-op is only possible because of the way that Live is structured. I love playing around with that stuff as a designer.

“Whereas PS3 doesn’t seem to be quite so mature on that side. They haven’t got quite the same infrastructure and service but, you know, yeah, I’d love to get games on every platform.”

More through the link. As we reported this morning, Molyneux’s aim is to have online co-op patched into Fable II on its launch day.

Speaking to VG247 yesterday, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux said that it was his “ambition” to include online co-op in Fable II in a first day patch, and that everything was “going well” to achieve the goal.

“It is a very usual thing with anything to do with co-op and it relies upon the Live service,” he said. “It gives us a tiny bit more time to polish it and make sure it’s working right. Anything to do with Live is much more complex than single-player, so out ambition is to get it out on day one release patch.

“Now, I can’t absolutely confirm that at the moment. It’s all going well. It’s looking like it should be spot on for that. It is down to a few minor little things, and we’re pretty close.”

Molyneux added: “This is purely me as a guessing man – remember, I haven’t been in the office for quite some time – but it’s all looking good to be a day one patch.”

The developer said the situation with the feature was preferable to having the game slip.

“I’d much rather have done that than to have delayed the product, obviously,” he said, saying patching in this way was a throwback to older PC development.

“This is kind of like a heritage from the PC days, of course, when you did always used to patch with a day one patch, and because you’ve got Live now you can do these things,” he said.

And yep, we did ask him some of your questions. We’ll put up his answers this week.

Oh dear. This isn’t going to go down well. This GamesScoreBlog post‘s confirmed that Fable II isn’t going to ship with online co-op, as promised.

The feature’s going to be added at a later date as it’s still being “tweaked”. From the entry:

We just got word that while we will be able to play the single player and local co-op on day one, they are still making tweaks to the online co-op. Don’t worry, it is definitely still coming. Seriously, as a gamer I’m glad they’re taking the time to make it right instead of just rushing it out the door. Lionhead and Microsoft Game Studios are looking to get the update out within the first week of launch in North America, so again, don’t think this is going to be a decade long wait. I suggest you do what I’m going to do – go play some more pub games and get a ton of gold to buy cool stuff as you start the single player or local co-op game.

Having said that, as you are playing through the game, you will still be able to see your friends as glowing orbs as well as chat and trade with them.

As soon as I get information for other regions and the date that the update is expected, I’ll let you know.

PS – Lionhead sends a huge thank you to all of the Fable fans, and asks for your patience and understanding. This is their most ambitious game to date and can’t wait to get you playing their vision as soon as they possibly can.

We’re saying nothing.

Activision’s released an official co-op trailer of Call of Duty: World at War, and it’s all looking just dandy from where we’re sitting. There’s no fixed date for the game’s release at the moment, but shooter fans should definitely be looking forward to a four-way play option from the look of this.

See for yourself.

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Ubi’s put out a video of Armored Core For Answer, showing online co-op “for the first time in the Armored Core series,” apparently.

Game’s out this month for PS3 and 360. Watch big robots go pew pew after the break.

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THQ’s released another excellent trailer for Saints Row 2, showing drop-in online co-op gameplay and, obviously, pirates and ninjas.

It’s out on PC, PS3 and 360 on October 14. Why would you not want this?

After the break.

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Both Gamespot and Eurogamer have posted hands-on impressions of Resident Evil 5. Read these: the game sounds brilliant.

The two new movies we told you about earlier can be seen on Eurogamer TV, here and here. It’s all good, obviously.

Capcom has just demo’ed the first ever showing of how online co-op will work in Resident Evil 5.

The game was shown in action at the Microsoft E3 press conference, with Chris Redfield and his female counterpart working together against the zombie hordes. Looked amazing, to be honest.

Before we got to see anything really juicy, the announcer said that there wasn’t any more time. However we did see how you can assist each other through the levels by opening certain gates and moving object in order for you to progress through the game.

Speaking to videogaming247, Chris Easton – Prince of Persia’s community development manager – has said that co-operative play in the upcoming action reboot may be explored.

An earlier statement, given by producer Ben Mattes at the recent Ubidays event, said that there would no co-op in the game at all.

“There are no plans for co-op as of now, but we may explore the possibility,” Easton told us.

Co-op seemed as natural feature of the game, given that play centres on the Prince and constant sidekick Elika, and it would seem that hope is not yet lost, despite Mattes’ comments.

Look out for more from our exclusive chat with Chris later this week.

Speaking to 1UP, Microsoft’s game director, Andre Vrignaud, has picked out three Xbox 360 titles he believes sport the greatest co-op-play in games.

“Certainly, a lot of people at Microsoft are believers in co-op,” he said. “That can be seen throughout the organization, including the platform side and Microsoft Game Studios. I’d highlight Crackdown, Halo 3, and Gears of War as having some of the best co-op implementations in the industry today, and that’s certainly not by accident.”

Vrignaud recently put together a “Co-op Gaming Bill of Rights” on his blog, a piece now widely quotes among those in love with the feature.

“I’d certainly suggest for anyone who is interested to take a moment to read through the comments on the [Bill of Rights],” Vrignaud added. “However, if I had to summarize, I’d say people were pleased to see a variety of concepts and ideas that had been discussed over the years collated together in one place.”

Have a read. Interesting stuff.

According to this CVG piece, Far Cry 2′s single-player campaign is 50 hours long, but no co-op play will be included.

“Just on single alone, gamers can potentially have close to 50 hours of game play,” said producer Louis-Pierre Pharand.

“We decided to abandon [co-op] for this instalment simply because of the complexity and size of the game. Add the Multi experience & the Map Editor… gamers will have their money’s worth with Far Cry2.”

Hit this for the rest of our Ubidays coverage.