With the arrival of the next generation consoles, I have seen the rise of a strong multiplayer component within FPS games. Nowadays a good shooter is mostly judged by how strong and addictive its Multiplayer is and the whole single player experience has taken a back seat for good. Games like Call of Duty 4, Killzone 2 and most importantly Halo 3 has reaffirmed the dominance of multiplayer over single player for good and as a result, I have seen a slow decline of good  single player campaigns (although there are some exceptions like Bioshock, Far Cry 2 and the Half Life series). With one of the most brilliant, haunting and well written scripts in recent times, especially within a shooter, Bioshock stands alone as a beacon of how good a single player experience can be in a videogame and it rekindled my hope for good solid single player shooters. Its not that I don’t want multiplayer in shooters, I am totally for it, but it’s just that it would be nice if developers paid equal attention to single player campaign.

What exactly is the point of having a good single player campaign? It gives the game a personality and further pulls the player into the action. A good single player campaign makes the game stand out with its strong characters and plot and turns it into a blockbuster franchise. A Prime example of this would be the Halo series. The first game, while revolutionizing the FPS genre on consoles, had a very good and smart story along with great set of characters. Try to imagine Halo as a multiplayer only game with no Master Chief or Gears of War with no Marcus Fenix and you’ll get my point.

When Bioshock was released back in 2007, nobodymade a big deal about it not having multiplayer. Why? Because it contained a single player experience so good that it didn’t needed a multiplayer mode. However, with Bioshock 2 having a multiplayer mode, I wonder how much it will affect the overall story of the game. Another good example would be Call of Duty 4. It had a great albeit short single player campaign and also boasted great and addictive multiplayer – and balanced them both smoothly. Similar thing is happening with Uncharted. Again – the first game had an incredible story, but no multiplayer. I have played through Uncharted more than a few times and never felt like I’m missing something.

Truth to be told, it is mostly our fault – we have stopped caring. Sure we appreciate when a developer tells a good story but we don’t mind if there isn’t one either -  we are too busy fraggin’ each other. Quake isn’t famous for its story; But for its multiplayer. So is CoD, Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, Gears of War etc. These franchises never relied to sell themselves for their story, they sell on the strength of their multiplayer, since we never asked them for a single player campaign. Majority of the shooters, or any other type of game actually, are telling a story in a way of telling the player to get from point A to point B. Killzone 2 is a good example for this.  I really liked the game and it is one of my favorite shooters but I hated the story. It’s not that the story was bad – it’s they way it was told.

I want to see developers invest the same amount of time in the single player campaing as they do in the multiplayer experience. I would also like to see reviewers stop judging games on the strength of their multiplayer. Sure, multiplayer ensures the popularity and longevity of a game but it seems like just because a shooter doesn’t have any good multiplayer it’s bound to fail.

Developers – please hear my plea – give us good single player campaigns!

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