I had such high hopes and excitement for Evolve. I heard hunting monsters that evolve and learn and pictured something like this:
Instead we got this:
Yeah, Evolve’s biggest problem was there was so much pressure on the trapper to do their job as early as possible and if they didn’t… you got Scooby Doo followed by a pounding. I loved the tracking and intercepting phase of Evolve conceptually but the reality was rough for new players/teams without a decent tutorial to hone their skills and sharpen their senses. Running and gunning didn’t really work without experience.
I used to play as the trapper because stopping, listening and looking for clues–broken foliage, carcasses, startled/agitated wildlife in the distance, dull footsteps or even the sound of the monster ‘sniffing’–then looking at the map to intuit where the monster was headed was so rewarding. If I wasn’t able to be a trapper, Bucket’s drone head was a good way for me to help with tracking. The Stage 2 ‘life support’ FTP update gave all hunters the dome ability (and made it instant) but that felt like a really sloppy ‘fix’ to the trapper problem and ultimately reduced the utility of the trapper.
I’m looking forward to Turtle Rock returning to the co-op zombie genre! I’m sure Back 4 Blood will be the closest we get to a L4D 3…
I think the idea would’ve worked with a slower paced game, an creature that wasn’t a player but an AI that could take full use of environment and… not relying on the same players who fill constant action games to shift to that game.
Me and my friends have been playing a lot of coop games over the years. Two games that we played recently and really enjoyed:
It’s weird but apparently only the Overcooked 1 in the “All You Can Eat” compilation bundle of both games and all their DLC has online multiplayer. It’s the only variant of the first game with the backported OC2 engine.
That’s a weird limit to the player population instead of providing it as an upgrade to all versions of the first game.
I don’t think that’s true. I forgot if it was Overcooked 1 or 2, but my niece was online and invited me to a game, and we played a few games together, from across the country. Neither of us has the All You Can Eat compilation. We had both Overcooked games through either GwG or Game Pass.
I checked my Nintendo Switch version of Overcooked! Special Edition and there’s no option to do multiplayer co-op. The sequel does so it looks like it wasn’t backported.
I suspect you played OC2?
Overcooked! 1 never had online. The sequel did, and All You Can Eat features cross-platform multiplayer too. I suspect it would be a headache porting over and packaging up all the new stuff for Overcooked! 1, but more than anything I think Ghost Town would rather get everyone at the All You Can Eat table. It’s a ton of content at this point and seeing as it’s a multiplayer game, the cross-platform element opens it up to a lot more friends across various systems.
Edit: one of the things that makes me laugh though is the amount of moaning folk did about the lack of online MP in Overcooked! 1, but then when they did add online MP, there was more moaning about the online experience not being good enough. I mean, that’s why a lot of small teams don’t do online; it’s hard and a bad online experience only sours things. I always think of this from yellowafterlife after adding online co-op to Nuclear Throne as a third party:
In practice, the reality is kind of harsh, and while you can try to do online multiplayer without prior experience, you are incredibly likely to mess it up on first try.
By which I mean – if you are considering getting into netcode, please do not start with your commercial game. Things are easier to break than fix.
If you can, consider hiring someone that is actually proficient with this kind of thing.
Or at least seek existing tools/libraries that can help you with not messing up.So overall while Vlambeer could have tried to do online multiplayer by themselves, it would likely be regrettable for everyone.
Overcooked! has been hugely successful and arguably created a new genre which I call ‘co-op chaos management’. Ghost Town can afford to add good online MP now but at the beginning, like most local MP party games, I suspect it just wasn’t viable.
On topic: Unrailed! is fantastic. Online and local co-op chaos management with some team competitive options too.
I hear this is free on Epic Game Store this week.
LOL, only three games recommended there:
Unsighted
Nobody Saves the World
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Pretty small list for such a headline, as the first comment says.
It’s not dead! Here, play this game that was released on the Switch three years ago!