I am and always have been a primarily single-player gamer. I’ll hop online with my friends and run some matches with them but it’s not something I actively seek on my own. A big reason for that is that I look at gaming as my bubble. My safe space to get out of my own head and problems. I’m not really looking for people to encroach upon that all the time.
Obviously, for someone with a competitive streak as nasty as mine, this can be a bit difficult to reconcile. Which is why I’m grateful for multiplayer games that provide some bot competition that I can get that out on. I admit that I need that from time to time. I like winning things, sometimes though, I just don’t like having to deal with what feels like the social obligation to people in the midst of doing so. Also, I can be a lot once I lock in. I have to actively tell myself to chill out once I’ve mentally established that it’s time to get a W.
IT’S STILL MULTIPLAYER
One of the games I really leaned on for this was Unreal Tournament 2004. I spent hours upon hours in back and forth contests with the computer. I enjoyed every minute of it because I could legitimately just zone out and get after it. Especially in capture the flag, I’d be scared to see how much time down to the minute that I’ve put into that mode.
I would also look at it like practice for wherever I did get into some multiplayer games. I’d run all my bot matches on the highest level and get run off the map for about a week before the game slowed down for me and then it was the slow progress of getting better than the CPU until I could eventually blow it out. Then I’d move on to the next game.
My favorite game over the years to do this with though has always been Call of Duty. The bots were perfectly aggressive and gave me a lot to work with in terms of testing my skills. And when I’d get into a good rhythm, I’d take it to online multiplayer just to test myself, and I’d do pretty well for myself.
BOTS ARE STILL ALIVE
I brought all of this up to say how much I’m enjoying playing the practice against the AI in Marvel Rivals. Even with other people, it really just feels like a bunch of people practicing their characters. I do wish there was an option to solo it, but the fact that they at least have it there is good enough for me.
I’d personally love for this to be a staple feature of multiplayer games again. It feels like we’ve gone away from it as there’s been a significant pivot to live service games and pushing people towards a constant stream of content.
Some of us just wanna hop on the game, let off some competitive steam and get better without communicating locations and enemy callouts every 2.5 seconds. When I want the full multiplayer experience, I’ll tackle it. But for the time being, let me enjoy the back and forth by myself and use it as a moment to meditate and relax.
The post Bots Aren’t All Bad: Multiplayer for the Single-Player Minded appeared first on VICE.
The post Bots Aren’t All Bad: Multiplayer for the Single-Player Minded appeared first on VICE.
