Co-op playability of game and expansions?

[selection7]

Forgive the newb question, but it's really hard to find a conclusive answer on Google that doesn't raise other questions.
Looks like a fun game to play with my friend but I'd like to know more about what I'd be getting.

For the following games...
MoW,
MoW:Assault Squad,
MoW:Red Tide,
MoW: Vietnam,
...which are playable as coop to finish the same missions as in the single-player mode? Via LAN or internet or both?

For the original MoW, Co-optimus website says that you need a patch to play the actual campaign but that the single missions are available. Huh? What is the nature of such single missions compared to their campaign variant? If this question is applicable to the other expansions, then I'd like to know for those too.

Thanks.

[selection7]

Even if you don't know all the answers to my questions for each of those games, I'll appreciate any info you do know.

[MadMike]

Hi there,

I totally understand your confusion as its hard to get an overview of exactly what co-op modes are supported by each game.

Why they choose NOT TO implement the excellent single player campaign co-op mode from the original game, I really do not understand and it makes me very sad

I may not have the full picture, but here is my understanding:

MoW: Full and excellent single player campaign co-op mode. BRAVO !
MoW - Red Tide: No co-op
MoW - Assault Squad: Strange skirmish co-op mode, no campaign co-op
MoW - Vietnam: I have no idea about this one

I just want to say to 1C that I think you are missing out on a lot of potential sales by not including single player campaign co-op mode in your games. MoW is absolutely excellent and brilliant fun to play in single player campaign co-op mode.

I play co-op with a lot of my friends and we have waited ages for a good WW2 RTS after Codename Panzers. We finally find the brilliant original MoW, but we have not purchased any of the expansions due to the lack of single player campaign co-op. Too bad, as it would seem like a straight forward job to include single player campaign co-op in the expansions as well

[Sneaksie]

Vietnam will have campaign co-op.

[selection7]

Good stuff. Thanks for the info guys.

I totally understand that if you have a game designed around AI reacting to just the solo player...that having a second playing who can think for themselves could "break" the game at spots, but game makers could at least issue an unsupported patch that allows coop play with a note to accept the gameplay as is...or if fan mods are possible then a major part of the work would be done for us.

It's funny, coop seems to be gaining ground in recent years as social gaming has become huge, but I think most publishers still think that adding coop just won't translate enough into more sales. Apparently the average Joe and I differ in that respect because it makes a huge difference with me. Even a mediocre game all of a sudden can become a purchase if it has a coop that works well...and as I mentioned earlier, if the game is great to begin with, the coop mode doesn't even have to be that well implemented. One thing's for sure, if you know your game has terrible team AI, you should think hard about implementing coop where such a thing won't even matter.