Cooperative Arts

Part II: Shooters

While many strategy co-op variations exist, the roots of real cooperative gameplay lie in the PC Shooter genre. The release Id Software’s of Doom in 1994 was a real breakthrough in network gaming. Doom featured both the classic death match mode, as a cooperative gameplay mode. You can play with up to four other players over a Local Network. The singleplayer campaign difficulty was slightly adjusted to compensate for extra human players. Since 2000, many Shooter games included a multiplayer option at some point, sometimes even embedding dedicated co-op plays. Id’s next three games also contained a full co-op play mode.

The Games

Doom deserved all respect the game could get. It was responsible for many gaming revolutions: the game engine, the texture package system (WAD files), the entirely new multiplayer modi, e.a. You can read more detailed history information on the game here - even how some Binary Space Partitioning Trees computer graphics algorithms made it into the game. Duke Nukem 3D included a split-screen or network multiplay option, partially thanks to Doom’s multiplayer success. It’s very satisfying to shrink a nothing suspecting human player and squeeze the poor guy, instead of your usual monsterish enemies.

Most recent shooters did not explicitly include a form of cooperative gameplay but instead provided a competitive co-op option in which players are divided into different teams. This works exactly as the traditional RTS games. ‘Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MoH) was one of the many Shooter games released in the early 2000s which also implemented various multiplayer game mechanics. The heavily focused team-based co-op play is what really distinguished MoH from previous shooters. As a WWII game, Medal of Honor logically introduced two main teams: the allies and the axis. Each team has to complete different objectives within a time limit. These gameplay mechanics gave the co-op play a much needed twist.

A bunch of WWII shooters followed MoH’s example. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and later Enemy Territory further developed the team-based objective-based play mechanics, introducing different classes. Although the class system partially existed in shooters before those games, thanks to the modularity and huge fan base of Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike. Still, competitive cooperative gameplay always existed - this is nothing completely new. But those modes became standard thanks to the success of early 2000s multiplayer shooters and the internet boom.

Addendum - Woah, I simply forgot to mention one of my latest favourites: No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s way, including the freely available multiplayer extention. There is a full cooperative gameplay option present in this retro game from Monolith. You can choose to clothe your character as Cate, using the classical “Spy” costume, dressed as various enemies, etc. All full campaign maps are available in co-op: from Russia to Japan. Sadly not every map is stitched together using a plot like the singleplayer campaign.

Technically speaking, the Rainbow Six (R6) games introduced mass thriving competitive clan based (co-op) multiplay before MoH. Mplayer.com and Zone.com became very popular after the first release in 1999. Many internet websites offered various ladder lists for R6, but after the closure of Mplayer.com, the game’s popularity waned greatly. Since then, most players switched to a more technologically advanced tactics shooter. But the R6 series co-op mode still stands apart. In Rainbow Six 3, Raven Shield, you are able to play all singleplayer missions with your friends online or on local LAN. Instead of dividing your buddies into two or more separate teams, every human player enters the game as a Special Agent, hunting for terrorists and rescuing hostages. This allows players to work together to achieve all map goals and eliminate enemies more precise.

Defining real cooperative gameplay is very hard to do. Is competitive co-op play actually co-op? Look at this mode in another direction and you will see clan-based co-op is actually just a minor team deathmatch variation where all players are human. The only achievements you are able to make is winning the game round. While in other co-op play, you actually have to work together to achieve something in the game. It’s almost impossible to tell both apart. Are you playing with all your friends against the AI, or with a couple, against other friends? Of course while playing against the AI, you won’t encounter the same action level as playing against other humans. Only a few recently released games are actually dedicated to full co-op modi.

Talking about co-op games without even mentioning Unreal Tournament (UT) is suicide. UT is another game which is partially responsible for the popularity of mulitplayer/online gaming sessions. UT’s gameplay mechanic can be expressed in one word: speed. People who played Unreal Tournament will know what I’m talking about - UT’s gameplay is very fast paced. This logically enables users to play quick bursts of matches against others, online. Most Unreal Tournament games featured quite unique multiplayer options such as Domination and Assault. The last one is actually quite interesting: in Assault mode, your team has to complete a few objectives before the enemy team. If you handle all objectives within the time limit, consider yourself the winner. Assault gives you a more cooperative feeling than most other mulitplayer modi: you are able to achieve something within the game, with your friends - or against them. Every mode has its on game maps.

Who invented which multiplayer modus? Technically speaking, Rise of the Triad introduced the Capture the Flag game mode in 1994, but the mode was popularised thanks to Quake and various fan-made modifications like ‘Team Fortress. Remember the CTF mode can also be found in some nowadays strategy games, or even platform games. Wikipedia tells me the term Deathmatch was coined by game designer John Romero while he and lead programmer John Carmack were developing the LAN multiplayer mode for the computer game Doom. Since then, many spin-offs were made like Bombing Run, Last man Standing, etc.

The Not-So-Complete List

A quick list containing most available PC Shooting coopeartive games.
To complete the list, add all “traditional” Shooter games.
Rating based on overall co-op feeling and gameplay.

• Doom
• Rainbow Six series
• Unreal Tournament Series
• Medal of Honor Series
• Enemy Territory
• SWAT Series (3, 4)
• Duke Nukem 3D
• Rise of the Triad