Online vs. Local Multiplayer on Consoles

A screenshot of Medal of Honor Heroes 2. It shows two soldiers firing against each other and another one, the main player, whose gun and hands are the only things we see of him. You can’t see his face, but our soldier here is very sad because the game doesn’t have local multiplayer. The soldier on the right is some stranger from the internet and not his best mate, who came over for some chips, but wanted to play too.

The guys at IGN took some fractions out of their New Super Mario Bros. Wii USA review score because it doesn’t have online gaming. This kept bugging me, I would never think this would matter so much. And the UK and Australian reviews of the same game in the same site didn’t seem to mind either.

The importance of online multiplayer in consoles is growing and growing. But what happens to old local fun? There’s a new trend nowadays to only offer online multiplayer, even in something like racing games, which is such an obvious call for getting another controller to play with someone else. A friend of mine went to my house the other day and we tried to play Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for Wii together. Guess what? We couldn’t. Multiplayer only online. We ended up playing Mortal Kombat Armageddon instead and had loads of fun.

Here’s what me and my friend would have to do to play Medal of Honor Heroes 2 together: 1) my friend (who owns a PS3) had to get out of my house and go to a game shop, get a Wii and a copy of the game. 2) my friend then goes to his house, installs the Wii, connects it to the internet 3) I go out of my house to buy something that enables me to connect my Wii to the internet, since I don’t have it online 5) Then I go back to my house and put the console online 4) We play together, without seeing each others reactions, hearing each other’s laughter and being alone in our rooms, if we don’t have any internet connection problems. Couldn’t the guys from Medal of Honor Heroes 2 put some split screen, please?

A screenshot of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It shows Fire Mario shooting a fireball at a yellow Toad. The player controlling Mario can look at their side and laugh at the player controlling the yellow Toad, in case the fireball ends up on that fungus’s bum.

When playing online, you also have to mind some racists, misogynists and homophobic players. If you’re not male, white and heterosexual you may not be welcome and people can call you names the minute you make a mistake in the game. Or before. Or always. I’m not going to extend myself in this issue since it was already discussed many times here in The Border House.

Don’t get me wrong, I have played online on my DS and it was fun. When you’re alone and your friends are all busy, isn’t it better to play with a person online than with the computer as an additional player? With online, it’s also easier to find another player at your level, in case your friend sucks/is too good at a game and there’s not balance between you. Online is also great to play games your friends hate and you love. Anyway, you get my point, there are some pretty nice advantages to connect your console to the internet.

In gaming, we need options. In my view, the online only adds another type of multiplayer, it doesn’t substitute the other one. Putting only the online option is discouraging people to get together and do something fun. How ridiculous is that? Let’s have both kinds of multiplayer, so you can invite all your friends home or play with another gamer when all of your friends are too busy to come over.

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