Editor's note: I'm not a big fan of online multiplayer, either. The concept is great, but when you toss cheaters and a-holes into the mix, it's quite often a nightmare. Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts in the comments. - Aaron

My friends often ask me to buy "Game X" or play "Game Y's" multiplayer with them. But I usually have little desire to purchase a game strictly for online play. If I do have the game, I don’t join in online multiplayer very often.

Some of this has to do with the genres of video games that I enjoy. Outside of MMO's, role-playing games don’t typically offer multiplayer options. Adventure games also do not offer many multiplayer options. Real-time-strategy games often do, but I typically enjoy turn-based affairs. And honestly, I’m not entirely sold on online gaming in general. It is something I participate in only casually.

While this seems to rule me out of most multiplayer experiences, I will tell you what kind of multiplayer experience I absolutely love: LAN parties/local multiplayer. While these activities seem to have waned to the point of almost dying, I enjoy them much more than online gaming for many reasons.

When I play online, I tend to play, or more accurately want to play, exclusively with my friends. I have little-to-no interest in playing with strangers. That’s because strangers mostly fall into one of three categories: insanely annoying, cheaters, or people who are just way too good at the game.

Everyone knows the annoying people. They are the 12-year-old boys that sound like eight-year-old girls, and they think that yelling at everyone is cool. The cheaters are in almost any game, exploiting some glitch that ruins the experience for those of us who aren't cheating. The people who are too good destroy me to the point that it's even fun to play against them, because I know I'll never be able to compete.

This last category is particularly troublesome in some of the genres in which I do play multiplayer. I enjoy fighting games -- I have played at least one game in almost every fighting series. Some of my fondest gaming memories include hitting up the arcades as a kid. But despite my love for the genre, I have never been very good at it, especially at the competitive level at which many online fighters are played.Â

I like to play my fighting games in person, but I am not aware of anyone, or at least not many people, who are into fighting games and would like to get together to play them. To me, fighting games are best played locally. There is no lag and friendly trash talk can flow naturally. Everyone has to physically pass the controller after a loss, which gives winning streaks more importance and visibility. But not enough people want to play Street Fighter 4 or BlazBlue with me.

And then there's the big category when it comes to multiplayer: shooters. I am typically not a big fan of shooters, but when played locally, they can be quite a bit of fun in much the same way as fighting games. Halo with a few TV's in the same room, all of a sudden becomes an enjoyable experience. It's a safe bet that Left 4 Dead would be much more enjoyable in a room full of people than it is online, and Unreal Tournament would be certainly be a blast in a LAN party environment.Â

Even less-traditional multiplayer games are more fun locally. I can’t tell you how much fun friends and I have had playing N+ or LittleBigPlanet sitting on a couch together; yet we hardly play together online. Board games are always more fun in person than over Xbox Live. Even multiplayer heavy games like Diablo are just more fun over LAN, and I hope Blizzard doesn’t remove LAN support from the next Diablo, like they've done with Starcraft II.

All in all, I wish people played locally more often. It is a great experience, and is always an enjoyable, inexpensive option for something to do when hanging out.  Everyone I know enjoys playing games, and I just don’t get why people don’t play them together more often. It's a shame.