As I mentioned yesterday, I rented Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory to play with my friends last night. Not a wise move. The packaging on the back said “4 Players”, and didn’t differentiate between online and offline. So my friends and I were sitting on the couch as I navigated the menus. And guess what, there was no four player mode unless I went online, and even then it was with three other online players. Finding this out took some time, because the manual was very disorganized and mentioned a “Versus” option that was named something else in the actual game. So then I thought, hey, maybe we can do some two player co-op play and just take turns. But no, co-op levels were only unlocked once you played them in single player. It’s like Ubisoft went out of their way to annoy me.

So, in the end, we never played the game. I payed $8 to rent this game from Rogers. (Prices have recently gone up. I’ll be going to Blockbusters next time). If Rogers is open today (it’s Canada Day) I’ll be asking for a refund. (Tomorrow I’m going on vacation.)

When will game developers learn that games are entertainment? Therefore they need to be entertaining, not frustrating and unplayable. Several things went wrong last night:

• Bad copy on the back of the game, leading me to believe I could play the game at home with friends.
• A badly written manual, so it took me a while to figure out that I couldn’t do what I wanted to.
• Unlockable portions of the game are annoying! I should have been able to play co-op mode right away. This phenomenon is quite common in games today, and it’s annoying wherever it pops up. If I get a racing game, I want to be able race on all the tracks with all the cars right away. Why artificially restrict gamers like this? It does not make for a better experience.

Unfortunately, none of these things are tied to this generation of hardware. All these things could be repeated on the PS3 and 360. Lets hope that companies wise up in time for the next generation.