Some games desperately need multiplayer modes. They might have okay single-player campaigns but lack that extra bit of oomph to really make them memorable. On the opposite end of the spectrum some games have decent multiplayer modes but lack that necessary punch due to a lack of a single-player component.
In this case, we take a look at 9 games that would be better with single-player campaigns. These games are listed as having some great qualities but just lack the extra bit of content that would actually make them iconic beyond being flavors of the month. So without further ado, you can check out the full list and see if you agree if these games need single-player campaigns.
Rainbow Six Siege
Ubisoft recently released Rainbow Six Siege and while they've received a lot of positive feedback for the game's multiplayer component, they've received a lot of negative feedback for the lack of any sort of cohesive single-player campaign.
Originally Rainbow Six games were famous for their single-player components and their hard-as-nails campaigns, but this newest game is multiplayer only all the way. It's a real shame because with the destructible environments and a lot of attention paid to the detail of the weapons, this game could have been a great little single-player romp for gamers who felt like blasting down terrorist and blowing holes in walls without having to deal with pesky teammates or kids screaming through the mic.
Titanfall
Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment – the defective remnants of the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Infinity Ward team – unleashed Titanfall in 2014 to some fairly positive reviews. Most gamers were keen on praising the game for the wall-running, verticality and the mix of mechs and ground-based combat. The title was quite fun for a lot of gamers... except for those who didn't quite care for multiplayer only shenanigans.
This was another game that lost out on a lot of replayability from the non-multiplayer crowd by axing the single-player campaign and just focusing on team deathmatch. Had the game featured some large, sprawling single-player maps with a bunch of mechs, a ton of weapons and a simple story centering around a military squad fighting against an evil dude, it would be the sort of game you could always return to when the multiplayer server rooms are empty.
Overwatch
I know Overwatch still isn't fully out yet, but it's basically aimed at being a team deathmatch game designed to bridge the first-person shooter genre and the multiplayer online battle arena genre together. It's a colorful, Pixar-style action game with a very cool cast of characters... and it's an online-only, multiplayer shooter.
A lot of people would probably ask: How could a game like Overwatch even work as a single-player title or with a campaign mode? Well, it's pretty easy... it could work like Mortal Kombat X where you play various characters in various story-oriented scenarios to complete the missions and beat the campaign. It's a win-win for people who like Overwatch but don't like the whole online-only schtick.
Evolve
Turtle Rock Studios gained a lot of fame with Left 4 Dead. Despite the game being nothing more than an arena-style, zombie-survival game, the title still had a campaign mode that could be played in single-player or with other players in co-op. For their game Evolve, Turtle Rock decided to forgo the campaign portion of the game and focus mostly on just the asymmetrical multiplayer features.
Going multiplayer-only did the game no favors as far as replayability is concerned, even though most publishers see multiplayer components as a way to push a game's replay factors through the roof. The problem is that the game had very little to hook players as a multiplayer-only title, and there wasn't enough content to justify a $60 purchase for it to come without a single-player component. In the end, Evolve was a game that had a short-lived lifespan out of the gate.
APB: Reloaded
One of my personal favorite MMOs... APB: Reloaded is a game that has an awesome concept of putting a strong focus on player customization in large scale PvP environments. The game has had its fair share of troubles but it also has a ton of potential. Reloaded Productions has tried in the past to develop a single-player game around the world of All Points Bulletin but it didn't quite pan out.
The game is ripe for something single-player oriented designed similar to Saints Row where the player's created character either follows a campaign of chaos and destruction as a criminal or a campaign of mayhem and order as an enforcer. It would be a nice way to compliment the game's competition against other open-world titles out there by expanding the content into the single-player arena.
CrimeCraft
Vogster Entertainment's CrimeCraft came out back in 2009 when it was hip to experiment with different kinds of MMOs and have them run on the Unreal Engine until developers finally realized the engine wasn't so great for MMOs. One of those games that showed a lot of promise and potential is the free-to-play third-person shooter, CrimeCraft.
The game actually has a fairly interesting story that slowly unfolds across multiplayer PvE, PvP and special event missions. Unfortunately a lot of the story is lost in the messy MMO design, but a straight-through single-player campaign with the deep customization and crafting system carried over with the post-apocalyptic setting would make CrimeCraft a pretty cool game.
Payday 2
How could this game not make the cut? Out of all the games on this list this is probably one of the few that could get a legitimate pass just because of how fun it is playing the multiplayer. However, the game has an extremely rich lore just to be about a group of masked heisters.
Overkill Software has expanded the Payday 2 universe in ways that most people never would have imagined over the past couple of years since its release, adding content like John Wick and Bodhi from the new Point Break remake. But what would be even better is if the game had a really sick campaign mode and competent enough AI teammates so that gamers could play the single-player offline campaign with no problems.
DayZ
I'm pretty sure most people would think that a single-player version of DayZ would basically be State of Decay, but there are significant differences between both games. DayZ is more of a no-holds-barred, super hardcore survival simulator, where-as State of Decay is more of an action-arcade game. It's not often that we get hardcore single-player simulators.
Adding a single-player component to DayZ is likely never going to happen given the game's current development cycle, but it would still be cool to think about what it would be like attempting to complete a story-style campaign in the game while trying to deal with hunger, dehydration, broken bones, the risk of infection and permadeath. It would be a pretty cool to try to get to the end of a game where dying is easy and surviving is hard.
Ravaged: Zombie Apocalypse
This game had a ton of potential, it was recently removed from Steam for some unknown reason but the premise was basically a mix of Mad Max and Killing Floor. It would have been pretty awesome to see what a full-on single-player campaign would have been like in a game such as Ravaged.
The game wasn't just another first-person zombie survival title, it was a game that had an awesome array of vehicles that ranged from cars and trucks to ATVs and small aerial copters. A game centered around fighting off zombies with a cool, futuristic array of weapons and vehicles in a Mad Max-inspired wasteland seems like it could be a really gameplay experience.
Star Wars: Battlefront
Last but certainly not least is Star Wars: Battlefront from Electronic Arts and DICE. It was obvious this game was going to make the cut because it's just too good of a target to pass up. The game has so much untapped potential, especially given how great the graphics are and how spot-on the sound and music implementation is.
A lot of gamers were disappointed to find out that this newest Star Wars: Battlefront would not have a single-player campaign and oftentimes compared it to the bare-bones but campaigns in Pandemic's Star Wars: Battlefront games. However, something streamlined and focused to showcase the vehicles, the character classes, weapons and stages in a cinematic way through a campaign mode would have been perfect to add some depth and replayability to the game.
