I was a big fan of Trillian because during my 15 year history of using the internet—it’s even longer if you count my bulletin-board days—I’ve acquired multiple IM accounts from different providers. I’m in the process of transitioning my multiple computers away from proprietary OSes that aren’t necessarily worth the money spent. (That’s not to say there aren’t OSes worth paying for.) However, since Trillian is platform dependent, it was out. I needed a multi-network IM client that would work on multiple platforms. Enter Pidgin. It fit all my needs, except…

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So I was skimming through the latest EGM (Issue 210), when lo and behold, I come across a preview about Crossfire. Along with Army of Two and Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, this trio of games make-up the genre of buddy games. With all the advances in technology the gaming industry produces year after year, it floors me that it took them this long to produce games that are cooperative by design, where the single-player mode is the alternative rather than the default. Unfortunately in this initial release, the number of players are limited to two. My gaming buddies and I would love to have more cooperative, adventure/action games. At least this budding genre gives me hope.

I’ve never been a huge fan of MMOs. From a gamer’s perspective, the whole idea of a game without end is great in theory (like eating pizza for the rest of your life), but sucks in practice. That’s not to say it’s bad from the publisher’s point of view. In fact it’s quite lucrative. Without an end (goal), there’s very little sense of accomplishment built into MMOs. There’s no payoff in the form of end-game credits and cutscenes for the time and money invested. So the player is forced to set goals for themselves within the limits of the game. For example…

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