The on-again off-again saga of multiplayer in Mass Effect 3

First it was rumored, then speculated to be ruled out, then hinted at, and finally today it’s been confirmed. Casey Hudson, executive producer of the Mass Effect series, confirmed via Twitter that Mass Effect 3 would include a co-op multiplayer mode.

Reaction to this announcement has been shaky at best. Some call it another strike against BioWare’s record since the release of Dragon Age II, while others are taking the logical wait-and-see approach.

The worries of most are that by adding a multiplayer mode, the resources that went into multiplayer could have made a better and more polished singleplayer. To that, I point to both Dead Space 2 and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Both games included a multiplayer mode that was the first for the series, and though neither were engaging gameplay modes that players kept coming back to, I’m not sure that they detracted from the main singleplayer story.

Then again, this is the internet where people will voice their opinion about a game they have not played. More information about co-op multiplayer should be coming in the next few weeks. Mass Effect 3 will hit shelves on March 6, 2012 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Sometimes I wish I was a Console Gamer

I love being a PC gamer. The number of reasons why PC gaming is superb is more than just a handful, as opposed to what console gamers might suggest. Mouse and keyboard support is the most precise control on any system. The ability to switch DPI on the fly for sniping is invaluable. An analog stick on a controller just doesn’t match. High resolutions and true HD gaming are a standard for the PC. While consoles of this generation are just now approaching 1080p, resolutions of 1280x1024 and higher have been a staple of PC gaming since the early 2000s. The fact that resolutions range as high as 2560x1440 nowadays shows how far ahead PC gaming is in terms of computing power and graphics. The modding community is a strong sub-culture in PC gaming. Fans of many games have taken their existing architecture and used them to create new maps, weapons, items, or entire new games. Counter-Strike originally started as a mod for Half-Life, and it grew into a full fledge title. The number of mods that can be found for Unreal, Quake, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, StarCraft, Fallout, and many more games show that while the shelf-life of a title is finite, the modding community can extend it’s prevalence to near infinite.

Not Everything Needs Multiplayer

Multiplayer is a strong feature on games and consoles since its first inception on the Sega Dreamcast back in 1999. As the console generations have matured and grown, multiplayer had a foothold on the generation as a way of bringing together gamers over long distances to play their favorite games together. Halo and the Call of Duty franchises are at the forefront of multiplayer games. The wide-spread popularity and the polished and refined gameplay helped keep these games among the top played games online. So when other game companies see the kind of numbers these multiplayer franchises are getting, they want a piece of the pie as well.