I've rocked a ton of multiplayer lately. Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted 2, several Halos, Team Fortress 2 (of course), Mario Kart (sue me...had an itch, I scratched), plus a bunch of stuff not yet ready for prime time. 'Tis the season, after all. Major franchises have lined up for the end-of-year scrum, and you're not a big game these days without the big online mode.

Any games not rolling out in Q4 are launching betas now to grab mindshare and identify early flaws. Some are public, others are embargoed sneak peaks for journalists' eyes only. So I've seen a lot of different styles and approaches in recent days, but truthfully, they're all trying to do the same thing: solve multiplayer.

I like that. Multiplayer needs solving.

We create to destroy.

Nobody nails their online mode 100 percent on the first go, or the tenth. Beta test that mother and adjust the balances all you want. The second you dump a few thousand smartass gamers into a system, they start finding exploits. Fix the bugs and banhammer the cheats, and they'll just find new cracks in the armor. Happens to the best of 'em. Then you've got to slap on a fresh coat of paint now and again to keep games fresh and gamers interested. A recent Halo: Reach update juggled the playlists something fierce; "Farewell SWAT on Hemorrhage," went the Weekly Bungie Update, "you sucked and everybody hated you."

The bar for multiplayer never stops moving, in multiple directions. So in the interests of science, I'm narrowing the discussion down to three very different games you likely haven't played yet, to see what their solutions are.

Duplication is one popular answer. The Medal of Honor reboot trades innovation for imitation, sliding up so close against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that it skips "flattery" and goes straight to "prayer." They expect you to notice their game's a dead ringer for Activision's cash cow...they just hope you don't care.

Do we? Feel insulted if you want, or close your eyes and call it an early release of Modern Warfare 3...with dedicated servers. Everything feels like home, right down to the small details: kill/assist notices flashing up, stick-click melee, the magic red dot for aiming. Killstreaks offer different rewards -- up-armor your team instead of calling in yet another airstrike -- but not originality. You get a class system lifted wholesale from Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (both were developed by DICE), but otherwise, only close scrutiny clues you to the fact you're fragging around in another franchise.

Put another way, I enjoyed it. Impressive? No. Fun? Of course. Isn't Modern Warfare fun?

If you're playing a copy job like this, the real distinctions come out of the maps and the matches they create. Someone definitely put energy into honing those environments and lining them up to game modes. A Kabul marketplace stood out, expertly blending long sight-lines, elevated sniper positions, and tight house combat. On a mountain hideaway map, a close-quarters bombing mission ran so fast and mean, only one round lasted over a minute. Call this the best Modern Warfare expansion pack ever.

You look awfully familiar....

But it's worrisome. Serious military shooters can't just Xerox each other ad infinitum and rely entirely on map refinement to stand out. Character classes? Those should've been labeled "weapon load-outs."

Not a problem over in the Dead Space 2 beta. This one follows the Left 4 Dead pattern -- four humans on a mission, four player-monsters hunting them -- but you'll never mistake one game for the other. Mostly. Gears of War 3 will offer its variation on the theme, too.

I've only seen one map/mode so far, and it's a meat grinder. I sense that's the entire point. The mission sends fragile space engineers out to collect several MacGuffins (exactly like Left 4 Dead 2's Scavenge mode) before time runs out, while even more fragile Necromorphs slice them up every step of the way. Naturally, it's much more fun to go Necro. You pick from several distinct classes of undead every time you're killed, and the respawn time? Five seconds. Forget teamwork. Choose your creature, find a grate to pop out of, and kamikazi that bitch. Die. Spawn. Repeat. A lot.

Incidentally, Engineers don't get classes or specialties; just assault rifles. That's enough, really. Unlike its far more robust campaign cousin, the multiplayer sub-species of Necromorph breaks into tiny pieces if someone sneezes on it. To balance the Zerg-rush factor, I assume.

This breaks Dead Space.

The primary ingredient for horror is tension, and Dead Space is a survival horror game. Even the combat enforces a nail-biting discipline; you must wait, line up your shot, and blow off a few limbs to stop the things coming to kill you. Instead of slowing it down and constructing a genuinely scary hunt between zombie and victim, Dead Space 2's multiplayer trades in hyper-tense strategic dismemberment for good ol' spray-n-pray gunfights. That's a poor translation of the source material.

'Cause it's a thriller...thriller night!

Taken alone, it's a decent enough monster mash, but I'm thinking this franchise doesn't need multiplayer. Not every game does, believe it or not. Why, I remember everyone complaining how BioShock wasn't a complete package without a full online presence, and I'd be lying if I said my voice didn't gleefully lead that chorus for a few numbers. Presto: 2K Marin's BioShock 2 shows up complete with outsourced Canadian deathmatches, courtesy of Digital Extremes. On reflection, maybe we should've shut the hell up.

That said, we're also obligated to point out such glaring omissions. Shooters must have online multiplayer, or we'll dock you for it. The expectation is fixed. I've taken it a step further, claiming it's actually the primary mode in a lot of top-tier games, with an abbreviated campaign running second. Certainly, some developers take that approach. DICE reps told me repeatedly that the development focus for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 centered on the online. It shows.

If that's your raison d'être, then you must fix the problems driving people away from online gaming -- the things that make it not fun. No shortage of those. Plenty of developers choose to ignore that punch list (or accidentally add new items) but I saw a game actively striving to address the bigger issues at last week's pre-alpha Homefront demo.

Yes, it's another military shooter, maybe a hair more cartoony than Medal of Honor. North Korea invades and occupies America's West Coast, under the charismatic leadership of a sexy, young Kim Jong Un (way, way off from reality, as we learned that same day). Our boys move in to take it back, Call of Duty-style. Homefront's particular multiplayer flavor is vehicle-based, big-map battles (with a touch of Bad Company 2's Rush mode), but the magic happens with its battle points system.

Modern Warfare's killstreaks insist you grease a half-dozen baddies to get the good stuff, shutting average players out. Homefront passes out instant-spend XP for everything you do -- kill an enemy, complete a mission objective, help a friend -- and your tally carries over when you die. Redeem it any time on small items (a bazooka), fancier toys (armed drones), or really save up for that Apache gunship you've had your eye on. Every match we played accelerated from a sniper/infantry ground game to insane tank warfare with amazing speed.

I loved it. More, I'm willing to admit, than Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 combined. Not just for the insanity, but for the attention to detail.

Spawn kills earn zero battle points, and players respawn directly into purchased vehicles. Or if a teammate's in a two-seater, you can pop right into the empty chair. Vehicle hogging and camping: solved. I am concerned about balancing, though. A team of top-ranked players can conceivably bank enough points to field a squadron of attack helicopters in five minutes flat, then wipe the map clean of puny humans. Fortunately, Homefront sets the entry barrier low, and the cheapest items on the menu are vehicle-destroying heavy weapons.

Death from above: always a sound investment.

I want to revisit Homefront after KAOS Studios adds a few layers of polish. Check that -- I'm going to revisit Homefront. This little game that nobody's paying much attention to, from a developer with only one other title on its resume, offers smart answers to persistent questions other companies aren't even bothering to ask. That's worth my time. In fact, I expect to see their solutions filter into other games in the future.

Did KAOS finally crack the code for good? I doubt it. More accurately, I hope not. If nobody completely solves multiplayer, everyone will keep trying to make it better. And I like that, too.