7 Needlessly Ambitious Multiplayer Modes That Nobody Asked For

me personally I try to get by doing the least amount possible is that enough for the intro all right fine perhaps I should take inspiration from the developers who made these spectacularly ambitious multiplayer modes that came out of absolutely nowhere and in some cases spawned entirely new genres in fact you know what I'm already feeling more inspired let's make this a list of 700 I have plans this evening seven it is people are rarely who they seem Pious beautiful even Noble Assassin's Creed is a series about an ancient order that has somehow managed to forge a successful career in assassination even though a they have an instantly recognizable uniform and B that uniform is objectively the least stealthy color white he's over there don't let him get away get him you'd see him coming a mile off introduced in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood the multiplayer mode for the old Assassin's Creed games contained some mechanics from the main game but applied a complex new set of rules to turn it into a competitive game of murderous hide and [Music] seek each player chose a particular character and then you are placed in a map filled with NPCs using the same selection of character models the way you found your target among the crowds of identical looking people was to wander around and fill up the ring below your character the blue radar Beacon now becomes a full circle indicating we're right next to our Target hey sort of donut of detection if you will and I will the reason this was so interesting and felt so different from the main game was that it was almost a test of your acting skills in order to throw your pursuers off the scent you were trying to hang out with groups of similar looking characters and behave exactly like a standard NPC in the hope that they'd accidentally stab an AI controlled person instead of you and earn you extra points Assassin's Creed's multiplayer mode now feels like it was way ahead of its time multiplayer social stealth is now a huge genre with Among Us in particular building a massive player base and even breaking out into mainstream culture you can even buy branded boxer shorts for pity's sake though don't get upset if someone describes the content of them as sus unfortunately your chance to play Assassin's Creed's unique brand of social stealth multiplayer games is Vanishing by the day Brotherhood servers shut down on all platforms back in October 201 22 and Assassin's Creed Revelations will close its servers on January 25th 2024 the only one left is Assassin's Creed Black Flag and no doubt they'll close that one too pretty soon there won't be a single game with a donut of detection in [Music] it now what's my excuse for eating Donuts National Doughnut Day isn't until the first Friday in June yes I've got it marked in my diary what of it gam isn't a city any anymore it's a Battleground and whoever controls the most Turf is going to rule this whole town the problem with both my Gotham City Ling club and the multiplayer mode with Batman in it is that everybody wants to be Batman I'm taking you in not tonight I told them it's my Laughing Club OB obviously I'm Batman the additional problem with the multiplayer mode with Batman in it is that if you happen to be a Batman Arkham game nobody asked you for such a thing or wanted it I end you such was the difficulty faced by Batman Arkham Origins the first game in the acclaimed and relentlessly singleplayer Arkham series to be developed by a studio other than rock steady and the first game in the series to attempt a multiplayer mode of any sort to the surprise of Arkham afficionados back in 2013 this multiplayer mode developed by the studio Splash damage solved the problem of who gets to be Batman not by letting everyone be Batman in a 100 Batman Battle Royale honestly my first choice but instead by crafting an unconventional three-sided asymmetric multiplayer game in which every role is a banger in multiplayer you play as either one of the Joker's henchmen one of Bane's henchmen Batman himself or good news Robin fans Robin who appears only here in this multiplayer mode and nowhere in the main game despite the resounding indifference from a large proportion of Origins players Splash damage had delicately balanced the three sides with their different abilities and objectives for a Mode called invisible Predator feels like the invisible Predator from the movie Predator ought to have copyrighted that while he still had the chance in this mode two teams of three thugs tried to kill each other while Batman and Robin worked on maxing out their intimidation meters because both are sworn to never kill only to frighten people very badly and sometimes maim [Music] them if you one of Bane's paramilitary goons or Joker's face paint enthusiasts you even had a shot later in the match at fulfilling the ultimate henchman fantasy of becoming your boss let the dream in this way Splash damage did an unexpectedly neat job of creating a mode that no one had asked for where even if players didn't get to be Batman himself everyone had a chance of a good time like in my Gotham City Ling Club so can I sign you up now or I'm Batman congratulations Mr or Mrs citizen rer you've been approved to join the Sinclair Solutions team as a product tester in our home consumer Rewards program here here at Sinclair the customer knows best that's why we'd like to invite you to test our home defense products in the field and tell us how you feel overall we wouldn't describe BioShock 2 as the most ambitious of sequels it takes place in the underwater city of rapture just like the first game it featured many of the same plasmid Powers as the first game and the little sisters and big daddies of the first game were joined by the not especially Original Big Sisters no little daddies though cowards BioShock 2 developed by 2K Marin came with a multiplayer mode though and it was an almost entirely separate game built by a separate developer called digital extremes this multiplayer mode was called fall of rapture and the fancy title reflects the fact that this was a rare attempt to blend a proper story line with multiplayer matches and progression good evening my friends I hope you are enjoying your New Year's Eve celebration it has been a year of trials for us all tonight I wish to remind each of you that Rapture is your city the mode casts you as a citizen of rapture during the plasmid powered civil war between Andrew Ryan and Atlas which took place in Rapture prior to the events of the first BioShock game it begins in your apartment and as you complete rounds of multiplayer and rank up you earn not only new weapons and abilities but also unlock news clippings and audio Diaries I mean I love Fred I do but if he won't wear the pants around here I'll just have to pull them up over my panty hose a lady married to someone called Fred who refuses to wear pants well Flintstone is that you the story elements detail the gradually unfolding fall of rapture that the title refers to as Society collapses and these citizens become more panicked it's all stuff that fans of the series storyline will get a kick out of and contextualizes the mess you found Rapture in when you originally played Bioshock better yet when you finally reach level 40 in multiplayer rank the ending sequence plays which reveals that all your multiplayer matches have been leading up to the plane crash which kicked off the events of the first game in fact part of with the wreckage basically lands on top of your apartment and Ryan calls on each of you now to take hold of the great chain Tonight Rapture stands of Walls by your hand hope it's a rental because that's really going to affect the resale value well that and the total dissolution of society [Music] [Music] you okay when Watch Dogs was announced back at E3 2012 it was accompanied by a spectacular gameplay demo that promised a Chicago where almost anything could be hacked when the game arrived in 2014 it was a bit of a disappointment and not just because there wasn't a single dog in it players grumbled about the graphical downgrade required to fit the game on the current generation of consoles but really the biggest disappointment was how the elaborate all powerful hacker fantasy was boiled down to mainly just hacking security cameras and the odd traffic Ballard if I wanted to ruin the day of other Road users I would simply drive around in a fat multipler easy one area where the game couldn't be accused of being short on ambition though is in its unique multiplayer mode mode while the were more conventional multiplayer options the most interesting one came via what was known as the COS companion app right now we're going to show you how we can connect to other players in three very distinct ways online hacking contracts cos mobile companion app and the competitive decryption combat this was technically a crossplatform multiplayer mode at a time when those were already pretty rare but the difference is that one person would be on their PC or console and the person they were competing against would be using a free app on their mobile phone you see this helicopter that's controlled by a mobile player I'm bad enough at flying a helicopter on a controller rather than attempting to directly control a sophisticated hovering aircraft by scrubbing their thumb across a touchcreen mobile players actually control their half of the competitive multiplayer game from a map view where they could watch their opponent trying to escape as they deployed police and triggered hacker will traps in the city I can anticipate all of the hacks the mobile player using against me with a tap on the screen they can explode steam pipes raise barriers or cause massive traffic accidents in a way this mobile app sold the fantasy of the game better than the game itself in that you really were causing chaos by tapping away at a mobile phone screen rather than just watching the lead character do that on your TV screen in his stupid overly complicated trench coat and while there was a brief fad for video game companion apps that fizzled out pretty quickly because most of them didn't add much at all this one felt like a great fit for the game and allowed you you to enjoy a meaningful enjoyable experience on your mobile phone which makes a change from the usual Doom scrolling much better Gamers of a certain vintage will remember the Splinter Cell series starring Sam Fischer in his extremely snug rubber suit just think about the sheer volume of talcum powder required to get into and out of that thing it turns out Sam wasn't the only person capable of Levering himself inside a neoprene leotard from the sequel game Pandora tomorrow the Splinter Cell series introduced a unique asymmetrical multiplayer mode called Spies versus Merks in it two unnamed spies in equally formfitting gear faced off against two mercenaries if you were playing on the mercenary team though the game played totally differently from the single player instead of a third-person stealth game it became a purposefully slightly clunky firstperson shooter honestly that's not just my lack of ability not this time Merks were deliberately made harder to play as to allow the spies to apply genuine stealth tactics in a Close Quarters multiplayer match MKS had no night vision just some much less useful Vision modes and the levels were all gloomy enough that a spy could be hiding in every [Music] corner more significantly it was one of the really early examples of an asymmetrical multiplayer mode you know before every 1980s horror movie had one the wildest addition to this already unique multiplayer mode though was proximity voice chat but only under very specific circumstances if you were playing as a Merc and were grabbed by a spy they'd have a few moments to to whisper something in your ear before they snapped your neck which was a fun new way to find out what my mother had been up to welcome to Los Angeles rookie the City of Angels No Angels here anymore unless you count Angel Mendoza Target moving south on him Angel runs a tattoo Salon in Hollywood he's a Recon mutant with six hands it might not be immediately obvious but future cop LAPD on the PlayStation 1 was a continuation of the Beloved strike series which included desert strike jungle strike and not Silver Strike bowling future cop LAPD imagined a dystopian future Los Angeles where the only way to deal with the crime riddled streets is to send cops out in terrifying transforming mechs their job was to suppress suspected law Breakers with high-powered weaponry and what appears to be a strong preference for lethal Force crowd control situation I know you can get rubber bullets for crowd control but I'm pretty sure they don't do rubber rocket propelled grenades believe it or not even for a game set in 2098 future cop LAPD was somehow more forward-looking than you'd expect that's because of its unique trailblazing multiplayer Focus mode Precinct assault when one of your hover tanks enters the enemy base you win sounds simple I don't think so instead of the straight shooting and occasional platforming of the crime War campaign mode Precinct assault was an honest to goodness strategy game complete with bases capturable turrets and units inspired in part by an ancient Sega Genesis strategy game called Herzog the goal in Precinct assault was to deploy units which would follow a set path to the enemy base if one of your tanks manag to break into that enemy base you won the match base is destroyed Enemy Within BL base perimeter blue Bas turret destroyed you might recognize this as the basic formula for the multiplayer online battle AR Ena or MOA genre now popularized by Dota 2 and League of Legends and by popularized I mean they fill stadiums with these games so it was pretty surprising to see a competent version of this sort of thing complete with five separate Maps popping up in a now long forgotten top down shooter from EA that only stld 200,000 copies back in the '90s and because there was technically the option to play Precinct assault online when it was released on PC shortly after the PlayStation version in 1998 and because technically the O in MOBA stands for online some people claim that future cop LAPD is in fact technically the world's first true MOBA though if we're being that pedantic we're going to have to start referring to Pac-Man as the world's first survival horror game get game developers often use zombies as the morally acceptable way to allow the player to Gun Down hundreds of people but if you want to make extra sure your consciences clean better make those zombies Nazis as well that's what the development team at Treyarch did in Call of Duty World at War when they created the Nazi zombies multiplayer hoorde mode sparking both a fan favorite spin-off and also an endless discussion about whether they are technically Nazi zombies or actually zombie Nazis this is the Ted Talk that will get me banned from ever doing another Ted talk but this Zombies mode was an entirely unnecessary addition it's not like Call of Duty multiplayer was exactly in need of another mode as the followup to Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare World at War inherited an enormous player base for its standard multiplayer offering it feels a bit like gilding the Lily to add another bonus multiplayer mode leave some multiplayer for the other game developers will you still they included It Anyway the first iteration of zombies was limited to a single absolutely tiny map but it established the core mechanics that have stayed with the series since earning currency by killing zombies and spending it on new weapons and fortifications more maps were added via the DLC map packs and before long the Zombies mode was a fan favorite element of treo's versions of Call of Duty showing up in every Black Ops game since these days zombies has grown into what someone on a video game publisher investa call would describe as a core pillar of the Call of Duty experience COD zombies has its own unique Maps power-ups and even a Mythos that has fans making deep dive law videos when's someone going to do a deep dive on outside Xbox law we've been seeding the clues if you miss them maybe just go back and watch the 4,000 or so videos we've made again do you think they bought it we're still rolling hey thanks for watching this video about ambitious multiplayer modes that were way more spectacularly interesting and Innovative and great than they needed to be if you want to watch more videos from us check out these two here's one from us down here is one from outside extra and now having completed the bare minimum uh for this video I will now take my leave thank you very much see you later

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 310,799

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, mike channell, 7 things, top ten, top five, top 10, top 5, list, countdown, best, worst, multiplayer, co op, mp, mode, ambitious, revelations, black flag, assassin's creed, brotherhood, Batman: Arkham Origins, Invisible Predator, batman, Bioshock 2, Fall of Rapture, Watch Dogs, Companion App, Splinter Cell, Spies vs Mercs, Future Cop LAPD, Precinct Assault, moba, first, call of duty, cod, World at War, Zombies, waw

Id: 31WZiEaSCBs

Length: 18min 14sec (1094 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2024