One common feature that stood out among many of the high profile triple-A games on showcase at E3 this year was that of multiplayer cooperative play. Anyone who's read Game Rant for a long period of time, probably knows that we love co-op games and for the most part, we believe all games can benefit from being able to play and compete with friends as allies instead of AI-controlled digital avatars.
Aliens: Colonial Marines, Borderlands 2, Dead Space 3, Far Cry 3, Gears of War: Judgment, God of War: Ascension, Halo 4 and Splinter Cell: Black List, for example, are all shipping with co-op campaigns and/or various other co-op modes at launch. So, what about some of our favorite games of the current generation that released already without such a mode? The modding community is coming to the rescue.
Modding did wonders for Minecraft, with many of the community-generated additions later becoming official parts of the game through updates, and it's made the latest few games of The Elder Scrolls Series become entirely new games. In only one week after the Skyrim Creation Kit releasing on Steam, there were over 2500 mods including a special Portal-themed one made by Valve.
While modders have yet to find a way to add in fully functional multiplayer into Skyrim, they have found out how to add multiplayer into Avalanche Studios' Just Cause 2 and Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy 2, two games we absolutely love.
Say hello to JC2-MP, the multiplayer mod by a group of passionate and talented fans of Just Cause 2 who managed to get multiple players in the game at the same time, enjoying the extreme craziness its massive world and countless vehicles have to offer. There are five players working together (and against each other) in the following video which went up over the weekend:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtOwWoOiggc
Keep in mind: this is a work-in-progress but what we see is incredible so we can't wait for the finished version - even Avalanche's Senior Level Designer Magnus Johansson is impressed. The mod originally began development over two years ago but personal matters seemed to have halted the project until recently, where the team says they've been working in secret for a month to overcome all of the "obstacles" they previously encountered. At the moment, they're working on polishing the mod to make it as stable as possible for release. Find out more at the official site http://jc-mp.com/.
Next up, Mario Bros.! Literally, the brothers are (playable) together in Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the first time ever thanks to the following mod so I'm renaming the game, Super Mario Bros. Galaxy 2. The mod allows for splitscreen multiplayer with player 2 playing as Luigi, but there's quite a lot of work to be done by Chadderz and YouTube user MrBean35000vr
This is a preview/teaser of a new hack/mod coming for Super Mario Galaxy 2: split-screen multiplayer. This will boot via Riivolution and will enable you to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 with a friend on the same Wii, both of you controlling one character, either Mario or Luigi.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqef07U0LNs
And here's how it'll play:
As for how the game will play with multiplayer, it'll go like this. Both characters will have their own HP meter, and freedom to explore, kill enemies, etc. Lives, starbits and coins are shared, and if either player loses a life, both players have to go back to the beginning/to the checkpoint that they last obtained. It seems that if one player encounters a cutscene, the other player will be warped to that location (for things like boss fights, to avoid glitches that may occur from having a character outside the fight). Mario and Luigi will also be able to interact with each other, knocking each other around should they see fit, but obviously no damage will be taken from friendly fire :P
Now if only the developers could include these features at launch with the next installments of both games...
If you want to know more about these titles:
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Source: CVG