Chatting While Playing.

I’m usually not one for Party Chat while playing games. On multiplayer games with lobbies such as Street Fighter or Call of Duty it can be fantastic, but nine times out of ten I play games alone and like it that way.

There was a game released last year on PSP that was a whole new experience for me and a very positive and enjoyable one at that.  Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was an obsession for me and one thing that happened time-and-time again when playing in four player lobbies was chatting to other players, specifically about all things Metal Gear. Extra Ops in Peace Walker is basically Metal-Gear-cum-Monster-Hunter where you will find yourself re-playing levels in order to gain new items/experience/mechs or to progress and unlock newer, harder levels. Any Monhan player knows exactly how amazingly fun this can be.

Due to this repetition you will often find yourself  in a kind of trance-like state. There is a certain comfort to this and it can sometimes be incredibly relaxing. It was in this state I would find myself having epic and esoteric conversations about the Metal Gear games with people playing with me (often helping me progress), and it was utterly brilliant. We would be talking about specific parts of Peace Walker and other games, things we noticed,  things we found funny and exchanging tips on how to beat certain levels and how to unlock secrets. It was really bizarre having so much to say about such specific things with complete strangers.

I have since imported the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and have been re-playing Peace Walker and the same thing has happened. Sadly it’s rarer with very few players on PS3 using their headsets however, when you do find people with headsets the chances are they are taking things quite seriously and want to play the game “properly”, so I add them to my friends list and we play to S rank missions or even just for fun, because even without the carrot-and-stick of shiny items and unlocks the game is still intrinsically fun and lends itself very well to 10-20 minute sessions.

I imagine this kind of thing is only possible with games with such rich and substantial histories, perhaps like Lord of the Rings or Final Fantasy where you can wax lyrical with people for hours who have experienced similar things to you. Who knew chatting to like-minded folk was such fun?

I am really enjoying some of the games recently that incorporate online aspects; from the weird quasi-consistent online world of Dark Souls to Peace Walker that allows you to play over 120 missions in coop with between 2 to 4 players. One thing I am looking forward to is developers getting creative with online and using it in ways that benefit the player, the game and games in general.  Bizarrely, the best experience for me was a PSP game played via PS3 with the little-known god-send of an application called “Ad Hoc Party”.