Metroid Hunters ... Hacked and Tired?

I'm a pretty big fan of Metroid Hunters on the DS. Since I stopped playing Unreal (and by that, I mean pretty much the whole series), I was left thinking that shooters needed to think outside of just bigger and more complicated games. When I was a modder, it was hard enough to get a good eight player game going, much less thirty two or whatever. Best games I had were with 3-4 other people that I knew fairly well, not twenty other strangers. Hunters, following the Mario Kart design, captures this concept: nobody has to worry about starting a server or finding enough players ... just load up and go play.

Not that it doesn't have it's faults ... as Thomas recently described ... and they're definately detrimental to long term play on the game. The Brother reports that it's even worse than that because apparently someone has created a homebrew app to cheat online ... and it works just fine over wifi.

Is there a panacea to be had when it comes to playing with complete strangers online? There doesn't seem to be ... the better the game is ... the more popular it becomes ... and the cheaters and griefers move into the hood. I swear it's the same plague that's killing off small town America. Should we hold out for a technological solution or just come up with a social one?

Is the only way to maintain a decent online experience to give people the ability to seek out like-minded players and maintain their relationshop? I was a Counter-Strike admin back in the days when you could only get a good game if you could find a good admin. Maybe we should be finding ways to match up the good players and keep them matched.







tagged: game, gaming