We've just completed Enslaved: Oddyssey to the West on single player. It's amazing how fun a single player game can be if you just pass the controller between you every twenty minutes or so. Just as you get to the point of "ARGH F*%K THIS GAME" as it punishes you with death, it's time to pass the controller and let your co-op partner show you how it's done.
A superb game it was, too, even more enjoyable that we got to share its story, much like we would when watching a film. It's opened the door to a lot more games for us to play together. We thoroughly enjoyed the Mortal Kombat main story on single player together, but tired of the multiplayer quickly. Now we have Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed 1 & 2, Uncharted 1, 2 & 3, God of War 3 and many more delights ready to accept us into their worlds together, albeit with our new co-op twist.
Skyrim, my kind of RPG, broke our team up for a while, so my lady has worked her way through Fable II & III, started Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and others, honing her gaming skills. Our co-op gaming nights (which are pretty much every night) now take many forms:
- Dual single player RPG's, a couch each, a console each, a screen each. Ee play different games as the spoilers for RPGs would be diabolical.
- Side by side single player campaigns, which is great for a few FPS games that sorely lack a buddy option. It creates the illusion you're working together quite well.
- Good old fashioned couch co-op for which we regularly crack out a Halo game. Hopefully soon we'll have SoulCalibur 5 for that too.
- Finally, our new "share a gamepad" single player co-op system.
A quick look through Co-Optimus shows that co-op games are getting few and far between again. Obviously we have played much more than what I have talked about and there are still a few games to come out over this year. Not all of them will be to our taste, though, so it's "work as a team to keep fighting" or "go watch some celebrity nonsense on TV"... ha!
If all else fails, though, we have our "in case of emergency" game, Dungeon Defenders. We love the game to pieces! You could spend weeks leveling up skill points with it, but it's best left for those days when all other co-op games run dry, or we both break a leg and need to sit on our backside all day, which ever comes first.
And so it continues...
[Player 1 Press Start]