I’m really sick of “Halo 2.” Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great game, but even a great game… I’m really sick of “Halo 2.” Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great game, but even a great game can’t hold up to being played for hours on end, day after day. It’s gotten to the point that I want to turn off all the lights and hide in my bedroom when my friends come over, because I know they want to play “Halo.”

That’s how I began my quest to find a multiplayer game to replace “Halo 2.”

It started in September of last year when I purchased “Star Wars Battlefront.” Instead of fighting just human opponents, the player in this game is in the middle of a battle in the Star Wars universe, fighting alongside a friend and a host of computer allies. Then, in the greatest disappointment of my gaming career, I discovered that without Xbox Live, you can’t play with more than two people, even if you link up with another system.

More recently, I picked up “Conker Live and Reloaded,” a remake of a Nintendo 64 game with an expanded multiplayer feature. It had the exact same problem as “Battlefront.” Has the four-or-more-player game party gone out of style?

I don’t necessarily think that massive multiplayer online games are a bad thing, but I have neither the time nor the money to play them. I would probably enjoy them if I did. My concern is that they are going to ruin the multiplayer experience for the rest of us.

Back in the day, four-player games were the party game of choice. When Nintendo 64 was around, everyone played “GoldenEye,” and most games had a four-player deathmatch function. These titles made gaming what it is today. Before them, multiplayer gaming was limited to PC games like “Duke Nukem 3D,” but it was an enormous pain to get a multiplayer game together. Most of us had slow computers, and we all had slow connections. The only option for many of us was to use our high schools’ computer networks, and that was often more trouble than it was worth.

“GoldenEye” changed all that. Up to four people could play against one another easily. If you had an N64 and four controllers, you were everyone’s best friend.

In 2000, “Perfect Dark” came along. It was basically a sequel to “GoldenEye.” Although the single-player game was a lot of fun, the best part about it was the expanded multiplayer game. You could customize almost everything. I still think it’s a better game than “Halo 2.”

It seems to me that these companies don’t care about the more social gamers. After all, once we have the games and controllers, the potato chip companies are making more money than they are. “Battlefront” and “Conker” are two examples of a disturbing trend to make shoddy, offline multiplayer games in an effort to sell more Live subscriptions. It’s plain to see that they are not making the best games that they can.

This is bad for gamers because we’re not getting the sort of product that we should be. And for the money that gamers have to spend on this stuff, we deserve better. “Halo 2” proves that the market for the offline multiplayer game is still there, but the industry itself could suffer from this trend. Eventually, there will be no point in making these Live teaser games. With the advent of Xbox Live, people will not stand for separate subscriptions for each game. Before too long, the vast majority of people who are interested in a subscription will have one.

What happens after that? Maybe the offline multiplayer game will come back, or maybe it will just die out.

All I ask is that those of you gamers who are more interested in playing with your friends at home than sitting alone in your room, stand up for yourself! We’re the first video game generation. We’re the ones who made gaming bigger than film. It happened thanks to our money and our parents’ money. We must demand better.

E-mail Jay at [email protected].