I gotta say, I don't understand all the bashing that local multiplayer gaming's getting these days. I've never so completely disagreed with Jeff Gerstmann on something, but there it is: split-screen multiplayer is still, without a doubt, better than online play.
 
Okay, any more than two players and the screen crowding is ridiculous. That's a fundamental problem. But I see it as about even to the fundamental problem of requiring a good connection for online play to be any good at all. Before immediately dismissing this point, consider: no one in the world, no matter how carefully crafted their home system, no matter how lovingly tended the developer's matchmaking servers, no one can guarantee a stable connection 100% of the time. Sometimes you'll be playing a person with a bad connection and everything will be jumpy. Sometimes the servers themselves will go down for maintenance and play will literally be impossible.
 
But that's just a comment on 'fundamental issues'. That's not even why I prefer split-screen. No, technical issues don't even come into it. It's the physical factor. The emotional factor.
 
The experience of playing a game with someone you can only interact with aurally, through a headset, will never, never equal (or even come close to) the emotional connection created by playing a game with someone sitting right next to you. 
 
I am a huge fan of the Halo games, but I almost never play on matchmaking. For me, it's all about the co-op. The whole reason I bought an Xbox in the first place was that I'd experienced how much fun you could have with Halo 1 on co-op mode. When I play Halo with my brothers, wonderful and ridiculous things happen. We've had situations where we're both trying to kill each other by jousting with Warthogs on the side of a hill, totally ignoring the hordes of aliens intent on murdering us, dodging fire from Banshees overhead, sometimes sailing over each other as we accidentally hit a bump on the hill. Once, instead of getting out of the car and entering an underground complex on foot, as the game intended, we drove the car into the building, the gunner clipping through the top of the door, and scraped along the tiny corridors, totally overpowering the Covenant with our heavy firepower. We've created all kinds of memories, done all kinds of things that made us laugh so hard our jaws ached.
 
And when silly and wonderful situations like this occur, we can actually turn to each other and laugh about it together because we're in the same room. We can casually discuss strategies on dealing with our enemies without going out of our way to activate a headset, or asking the other guy to repeat what he said because it was staticky. And when we're not being ridiculous and actually play the game the way it's meant to be played, when we're fighting powerful enemies and impossible odds and still manage to come out on top, we can share in our victory together, give each other a high five or compliment each other on our success.
 
No, the simple fact that you can play with another person over the Internet, that doesn't appeal to me. Never has. I've been able to do that for years on PC and never did it. For me, playing a video game with another person always has been and always will be about forming a bond with them, a bond that just can't happen over a headset. 
 
So until online gaming gets to the point where they can project a hologram of your distant partner into your room (and by then we'll probably have holodecks anyway), it will always pale in comparison to the supposedly outdated, oh-so-simple technology of separating the display into two halves.
 
Split-screen is still superior.

So last week, after IGN put out their review, I finally gave in and pre-ordered inFamous, the electric superhero game. (As I like to call it, "The Adventures of the Human Pikachu." It wasn't the number, it was the fact that the guy who wrote the review was totally stoked about it. He genuinely enjoyed playing through inFamous, and I got the distinct impression that he's going to go back to it. And I suspect I will love the hell out of this game for a long time to come. But how did it come to this?

I have to admit, for a while, I was leaning more towards Prototype, the other superhero game coming out this early summer. You see, when I first heard about inFamous, it was described to me by a friend as "It's like Grand Theft Auto, except you have superstrength and can fly." Think about it: watch the announcement trailer, the one that first used that epic phrase; "Save what is left, or destroy it all." At no point does Cole use his electric powers. You see him jumping around, you see explosions, you see a car flying at him, but not one spark comes out of our hero. So I was under the impression that it was going to be like Hancock, except without turning into crap halfway through. When I found out that all of Cole's powers revolve around him emitting electricity from his body, I was devastated. There's melee, yes, but it's just the strength of an ordinary man slightly enhanced by the lightning trailing behind his foot. Sure, you could move cars around, but sending out a static shockwave to flip it into the air just isn't as visceral as picking it up with your bare hands and smashing it into a dude's face. And yeah, you can climb all over the place and glide from building to building, but plenty of gaming heroes can do Parkour these days, and Batman's always been able to glide without having any powers at all.

So I turned to Prototype, where actual flight wasn't available, but at least the powers seemed more badass than electricity. Turning your hands into razor sharp claws? Transforming into your enemies? Hurling cars around recklessly? Hell yes! ...But the more I found out about the game the more something seemed off. I finally realized what it was when I showed a friend the trailer that came out a month or two ago. She described it as "trying too hard to be OMG GRITTY"; and I realized that none of the game's badassery really comes across as genuine. It's trying too hard to come across as vicious and angry, to cash in on the popularity of rage-fueled antiheroes like Kratos from God of War. Not to mention that the more of the game I learned about, the more I realized that the character was a supervillain, or at least an antihero.

Now, I'm not talking slag about Prototype for no reason here. I may actually pick that game up too, once I get my shit together and find a job, and there's nothing wrong with playing an evil character, or at least a ruthless one. But here's the thing: in Prototype, you play a government experiment with superhuman abilities who is absolutely ruthless in attaining his personal goals, and will gladly sacrifice scads of innocent people to do so. In inFamous, you play an ordinary man who is suddenly granted extraordinary powers who has the potential to become a monster like the man from Prototype... or he can fight against his baser nature and become a hero, selflessly fighting on behalf of the people.

It's this idea of choice that so appeals to me. Think about it: most superhero games force you one way or the other. In Superman games you can never kill anybody because that's important to the character. You can never say 'Oh screw it' and use your power to destroy Metropolis. In the new Wolverine game, Logan tears people limb from limb, but all of them deserve it for their evil ways. In inFamous, you decide whether to use your power to do the right thing or the easy thing. You make the choice. Sure it's the same kind of black-and-white choice between comic book villainy and saintly acts of kindness we've been seeing for years, but the choice is still yours to make.

So I went back to inFamous. It comes out in a mere five days, and the demo is available now. (Well, it would be if the Playstation Store weren't completely borked, probably due to lots of people going after the inFamous demo) The game is just barely out of reach, and I can hardly wait to get my hands on it.