GamerSushi Asks: The Nature of Multiplayer?

A couple of decades ago, if you had asked me what the term “multiplayer” meant, I probably wouldn’t have had an answer. The most “multi” I could get for my gaming dollar was adding my brother into a game of Streets of Rage or the Captain America and the Avengers game for Sega Genesis. In a time where gaming knew a lot of limits, the shared experienced capped out at two players max.

Things were different at the arcade, of course. There, two to four players could race against one another, or four mutants could tackle the coin-op challenges of the classic X-Men arcade cabinet. That was an experience that was fancy, almost futuristic in appearance compared to the tethered wired controllers that got thrown around in frustration over hat tricks in NHL 94. Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: The Nature of Multiplayer?

GamerSushi Asks: Getting Robbed Online?

onlineWe all know the feeling. Placing the crosshairs on an enemy forehead, only to not score the kill. Getting assassinated from the front in Halo 3. Feeling like your head must be the size of a balloon in the rival teams’ sniper scopes. Experiencing these things online can be frustrating.

Just this evening, I was playing a match of versus in Left 4 Dead. We were on Blood Harvest, stage 4, the portion that ends with the long bridge to the caboose that acts as a safe room. As the zombies, we had weakened the team significantly, waiting for that home stretch when the tank would spawn on their final run. And that would be the end of it. Or rather, it should have been.

You see, even though they got a tank when they were zombies, we didn’t get a tank during our round. So, all 4 survivors ran, barely alive, down the bridge and to safety, putting them out of reach for the game. We got robbed.

I’m sure these kinds of things happen to you dudes game online too, no matter what the game is (though mine seem mostly to be in Halo 3). What are some of your worst “we got robbed” stories from online multiplayer? Answer away!