Multiplayer

[Darthvegeta800]

Before a friend of mine buys this game to multiplay with me... how stable is online multiplayer and how easy to get going?

[JohannZA]

I'm almost through the campaign, playing with my brother. He's playing on two different computers.

On the one, his own, the game runs faultlessly and we have a great time.

On the other, a computer belonging to another family member, the game freezes every now and again, necessitating a restart of Steam and a reconnect to the game. If this happens, it is important that the host selects Kick Player from the menu (after the player has dropped out), or else the game will think the co-op slot is still occupied.

My brother is running Windows 7 32 bit on his computer and the other computer is running Windows XP. That likely has something to do with the above problem. (My computer is running Windows 7 64 bit but that shouldn't affect the performance of the other two.)

As an aside, I quite enjoy the game. It's an excellent co-op experience. The design really expects players to work together to progress. XP is duplicated i.e. both players receive the total amount, regardless of who executes a kill or completes an objective. And you'll definitely need to work together to complete objectives (including bonuses for extra XP). Also, enemies are quite tough at higher difficulties, meaning you'll have to take them on as a pair.

Two minor annoyances:

Only Player 1 can assign skills (unlocked with XP), i.e. Player 2 has to tell Player 1 which skills he wants and then Player 1 has to assign them. During this time, the game is paused for Player 2, which predictably can be quite annoying for the second player.

Secondly, there is no in-game communication. You either use Mumble, Skype or Steam for voice chat, or you use the Steam chat window to communicate through text. This is an odd omission and I wonder what console players do to communicate, since they don't have as many options.

And there you have it!