Multiplayer: The Dark Side of Gaming

I finished the main story missions on Batman: Arkham Origins today and decided to give the online a whirl. I sat there watching the suggested tutorials and thought this sounds like it will be fun! I selected quick match and then just sat there for 10 whole minutes and no one joined the game. Now I will never know if the multiplayer on that game is any good, but saying that, is any multiplayer any good these days?

When I first got my PS3 and started to play online multiplayer games, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. The first game I had experienced online multiplayer with, was Warhawk. There I was every night having dogfights in the skies before dropping down to ground level to give support as a gunner on a tank. SO. MUCH. FUN! Then I got a new game and went off and played that, can't remember what it was but it didn't have multiplayer. Once that game was done after about 2-3 weeks I went back to Warhawk. Whilst I was gone, everybody else started playing that game and boy did they get good. I felt like I'd never played the game before. Just before I left, I was getting in the top 5 of the leader board at the end of each match. Now I would be lucky if I managed to string together a kill streak of 2. That highlights my first problem with multiplayer. You have to give your life to it. Take FIFA as another example of that, I have two friends that literally only play FIFA. They buy the new consoles when they come out and then their collection of games runs from F to F. They will play it every single night as do all the others that play FIFA online. The online community for FIFA is not a very welcoming place if you've just started playing online, as you will probably lose your first ten games 8-0. Now maybe it's just me and I don't have the patience to keep on trying to get better, but seriously losing by that much again and again is just soul destroying,

The second problem I have is other players. When playing co-op you might need to talk to people during the game to co-ordinate an attack or something, but when you try and talk to the others on your team no one says anything. Most of the time in co-op, I think people forget what co-op means and are clearly out for themselves. Then there are the people that do talk and tend to be the most obnoxious, racist, homophobic, scummy little ten years olds I have ever met! The abuse that gets thrown around online is vile; I worked in a pub that had 2 stabbings in a week and I never heard anything said there that could compare to the stuff said online! There is one more group of people that really do my head in and they are the ones who turn there mics on and just play really shit French rap music down it. What the hell is that all about? If I wanted to listen to shit music, I would borrow my wife's Ipod! (Sorry babe! Love you x)

Take me back to the days of split screen. The days when you would all be on the couch and the banter was funny and the bragging rights would last until the next meet up. That's multiplayer. That's fun.