-From 2008-

“Left 4 Dead?”

It’s all he said, but I had to hold the wince on the inside. Really?

The other two were very excited; visibly jittering in their seats. The holidays are the best time for them to catch up on some of the M rated stuff their older cousins are playing. J stares at me a little longer while I ruminate. It’s more time that I don’t get to play all of the other stuff I’m trying to finish, plus something in the back of my head was saying play something else. The previous years it was Halo over the LAN. Two in the basement, two in the living room.

“Alright.” Grudgingly.

The younger two are up and out of their seats before J and I; trying not to run to the basement. We were going to hold off on opening presents since E was taking a nap. By far the youngest in the house that day, he was dictating a great deal of the events. But now the other ones at 11 and 14 were really deciding the activities.

We get to the basement. M and L in their excitement have taken the prime seats on the couch. J takes a perch on a barstool. I boot up Entertainment Central with the Harmony. The interlopers have changed my mood to the opposite of “harmony” within a few minutes. J hands me the copy of L4D and I put it in the 360. My dark cloud reminds me it’s only two player. Ah. I hand J and L, the oldest two, some controllers. “I need to go help clean up lunch,” I sigh. “I’ll come back down to play later.” I’m used to this kind of thing now.

So asking me what I wanted to play was moot. More than likely I will get a few hours to myself after everyone leaves or goes to sleep for the night. What I don’t get is why I was so disappointed to play L4D after enjoying it so much at Thanksgiving. The missus told everyone that would listen over the following weeks how funny it was when J and I were tooling around the zombie apocalypse. As I washed dishes I thought of the things that bugged me about the newest games.

Left 4 Dead, while excellent an experience in co-op, really loses something on the couch. Sure, J and I could play over Live or Steam with some others, but on one 360 only two of us could really enjoy it. The experience I had enjoyed so much a few weeks earlier had suddenly turned negative. Was this really the state of the couch co-op that I had enjoyed so much when I was younger? Or even last year? It seems that so many of the games that the core were really into only have a great on-line multi or single player experience. The casual stuff is what people were meant to play together when Ethernet or fiber wasn’t involved. It mostly dwells on the Wii, or requires more crappy plastic accessories to fill my sanctuary. To top things off I had heard numerous gamers complain that single console split screen was probably ruining their experiences.

“Grabbin’ Pills!”

The meme is working its magic when I return from my self-imposed exile. The cousins have drawn a crowd of the non-gamers in the house, and they’re all cracking impressions of the computer player’s dialog. My scrooge heart grew some sizes watching for a few minutes. And I was sure that I would get my turn before too long, but I kind of understood how it might be fun to just watch. Things could have been worse, but watching the two cousins get owned may have been just as fun as playing myself. Maybe there is some hope for couch co-op yet. Or I just need to buy another 360.