In the past couple of years, the amount of great games which come with a multiplayer have greatly increased mainly due to the success of Xbox Live and PSN (Playstation Network) and how widely available they are to everyone. But the question that i want to ask is, do all these games need multiplayer modes?No, not the Call of Dutys and Fifa's of the world, I am talking about the games which have traditionally been a single player game and have ventured into the multiplayer sphere as they believe it is the next step of progression. Games like Assassin's Creed and Resident Evil, which have a great single player mode and have recently tried their hands on adding a multiplayer feature with mixed success.
Lets look at this from both sides, the mose recent example is probably Dead Space 2. The original Dead Space was a great game, even though it was just a single player it was a great experience and one of my favourite games of all time. I was hoping for more of the same from the sequel and would give the multiplayer a chance as i saw it as an opportunity to share the excellent Dead Space experience with millions of other people all across the world. Once i tried it, my opinion changed, yes, i loved using the necromorphs, it was something which i enjoyed, but the whole point of the multiplayer seemed a bit pointless. It did not replicate the single player horror experience, and was just wave after wave of Necromorphs stopping you from reaching your targets, with many journalists dubbing it "Left4dead Space". What made the single player and the Dead Space games great was the horror aspect and this was unduly taken away in the multiplayer. The Left 4 Dead style does not go with the Dead Space idea, whilst Left 4 Dead focused on team play and made it work, the multiplayer in Dead Space rewarded people with the most kills and not by completing objectives together. It just seems that Visceral Games jumped onto the multiplayer bandwagon because they probably believed that the single player would not be enough which is the wrong assumption.
On the other side of this argument is the success that a mutliplayer mode could do to a successful single player franchise. Assassins Creed Brotherhood is a fine example of this. Whilst i was relatively dismissive of this game when it was announced, believing that this was just merely an excuse for Ubisoft to cash in on the popularity of the Assassins Creed franchise but releasing an Assassins Creed 2.5 and shoving in a multiplayer mode. How wrong i was. The single player was excellent, but what stood out was the innovative multiplayer. Rewarding players for stealth kills made this a unique experience. It detracts people from just running up to targets and killing them and does not reward people who move away from the core principle of stealth killing as much. Hiding in a crowd of people and seeing your pursuer assassinate the wrong target is a great feeling, whilst air assassinating your target from the roof without them noticing you also brings the same sort of satisfaction.
These are just two examples of single player games making the transition to adding a multiplayer mode, with rumours that Uncharted 3 and Mass Effect 3, more and more developers will try to cash into the multiplayer phenomenon as it will make their game have longevity. But multiplayer is not the only way to improve longevity, a great single player on its own can do the same job, i have spent countless number of hours on Mass Effect 2 as the story is exceptional and the various number of different options available have kept me coming back for more. Note to developers, multiplayer is not always the answer!!
