22nd February 2003, 5:54 PM
It's similar, but looking at the other person's screen in an FPS doesn't put the game into a stale mate. In an FPS, all it does is kill any chance of a good sniper game (never said I was a huge fan of split screen FPS here). Still, minus that it's still a very fun experience and at times that aspect can actually add some things to the game. However, RTS and TBS games split screened tend to kill all the fun. You are the exception to the rule in that you actually didn't look at the other person's screen. However, most people see both parts of the screen at once, whether they want to or not, so the whole thing gets very dull. You know exactly where their forces are, so you send them the other way, they see that, and move their forces to block, and then they see that, and move them the other way, and it keeps up like that until they actually meet, at which point it's very likely both forces will just wipe each other out and you end up back at the start of the match pretty much.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)