Rant 27 : Multiplayer focused games

Before you think I hate online multiplayer I don't hate it at all. I just hate how it's the focus of a lot of games these days. This wasn't too much of an issue until I read the review of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. Now Castlevania games are usually awesome. I liked them all except for Curse of Darkness (that's a game I can't bother going into details why I hate it) and seeing the new ones style first got me interested until I saw the timer and read the review. Why did this piss me off you ask? Because it's designed for online multiplayer and the solo experience is designed to force you to play online anyway since there is no story or leveling up. On top of this game let's look at Halo.
Since Halo 2 the games story mode is essentially just a training simulator for online multiplayer and the story took a back seat to the fragfest that is the online multiplayer. Now I have to admire games like Transformers: War For Cybertron and Resistance which try to squeeze a good story and multiplayer together and manage to make a reasonable game. Now admittedly the story is very short in these games but they managed a good story with good multiplayer unlike most game which have a bland story which is as I mentioned before are just training for the multiplayer.
Tacked on multiplayer is something that is also a pet peeve of mine as well because I don't like crappy multiplayer where it was added at the last minute to try and make the game more generic to fit in. I prefer a great story with good gameplay and the multiplayer with just as much effort put into it and being just as good and fun as the story mode, Transformers: War For Cybertron is close to that style of game I want but the problem with that is the story mode was too short.

Back in the days before the Xbox, games had all their focus on the single player experience and sometimes allowing a second player to join in in either a competitive way or a co operative way. I liked those days like when you called friends over to play 4 player Golden Eye or rotational Street Fighter II or playing Super Mario Bros. or Mario Party with your siblings or just playing Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on your own. Now online multiplayer is fun most of the time and playing with 4 friends at home online with 6 others in Halo 3 is awesome but playing with friends while they are on they're consoles online just doesn't feel right in my opinion. I prefer the local multiplayer over online multiplayer but that's me. Split screen forever!

Multiplayer can be fun but remember that people do like to play by themselves every once in a while and the best games are usually single player games. I know online gaming is now and the future but I still prefer single player based games and games that use local mutliplayer over online multiplayer... except racers! Racers just plain suck with multiplayer other then kart racers.