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Help Me Play With My Wife (game recommendations)
Denada
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So here's the deal H/A: I like my wife. I think she's a smart person and I like doing things with her. To that end, I'm searching for ideas on things we can do together, specifically games that we can play. More specifically, I'm looking for:
-Co-op video games that are easy to get the hang of. Something like the LEGO [Insert IP Here] games where there isn't a lot of punishment for dying constantly.
-Single-player video games that are fun to watch. For example, she loved watching me play the Metroid Prime trilogy. Think Bioshock, though not necessarily as intense.
-Trivia video games. We enjoy those, but other than Scene It (which we have) I don't know what's out there.
-Fun two-player board or card games. We have more fun when we win together rather than compete with each other, so co-op is preferable.
I own a 360 and a PC that can handle most modern games. I don't own the other consoles and I'm not going to be buying them in the foreseeable future. So keep that in mind when recommending things. Thanks in advance guys and gals.
-Co-op video games that are easy to get the hang of. Something like the LEGO [Insert IP Here] games where there isn't a lot of punishment for dying constantly.
-Single-player video games that are fun to watch. For example, she loved watching me play the Metroid Prime trilogy. Think Bioshock, though not necessarily as intense.
-Trivia video games. We enjoy those, but other than Scene It (which we have) I don't know what's out there.
-Fun two-player board or card games. We have more fun when we win together rather than compete with each other, so co-op is preferable.
I own a 360 and a PC that can handle most modern games. I don't own the other consoles and I'm not going to be buying them in the foreseeable future. So keep that in mind when recommending things. Thanks in advance guys and gals.
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Pretty: Mass Effect 2
Co-Op: Any arcade beat-em up. Turtles is Time is pretty awesome.
but they're listening to every word I say
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Co-op: Castle Crashers.
....what did you play the metroid trilogy on?
I'll second Castle Crashers for co-op video gaming. I also like the Dynasty/Samurai warrior series for playing with my husband - there's enough variability that a "good" player can do most of the mission parameters while the other focuses on small things. If you want to die a lot, try 'Splosion Man (XBLA). It's actually quite fun in small doses (let's hope my husband isn't reading this thread to see me admit that). Earth Defense Force 2017 has great co-op and many different difficulty settings, so you can scale things back to a level that she's comfortable with.
For watching - I'm a big watching fan. Some of my favorites: Portal or Psychonauts, because the dialogue is amusing. Bioshock was great for the story, and I ended up surprisingly intrigued by Dead Space, which I expected to hate. My husband's working on Fallout 3 right now, which I enjoy watching sometimes, but which can get a little dry when he's doing every single explore-a-quest. The Overlord games were good for watching, though I liked watching 1 better than 2, probably because it was new and different then. Mass Effect was fascinating, we haven't started in on 2 yet but I assume it'll be equally interesting.
Try different genres and styles. What I like to do is be around any time my husband starts a new game, and if I find myself interested, I'll ask him to play it when I'm in the room. If I'm not that interested, he can play after I go to bed.
Hear me out, yes, it's an FPS but the weapons are very forgiving of aim. Some of the shotguns can take people down as long as you're facing the right way. Sniping is intuitive and fun. The dialogue is all humor. The co op is excellent and you can pretty much carry the fights without seeming dominating. When you die you get a chance to rez yourself, and if you miss that your partner can rez you, and if you miss that you just lose a bit of cash. And cash is everywhere in this game.
I'm terribad at FPS but I can play this game and my husband I are having a blast.
PSN Hypacia
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Discord Hypacia#0391
That's a whole other H/A thread, believe me.
I had a Wii for a while, but eventually had nothing I wanted to play on it. I also hate unnecessary controller-waggling. So many times I said to myself "I just want to press a button. Please just let me press a button."
This is a good suggestion and something I think I should try. Also Arkham Horror interests me greatly, but I'm concerned that it might be too "horror" for her tastes. She doesn't like scary things, except for certain exceptions. She likes Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural, which I know aren't particularly scary, but they scare her sometimes. How would Arkham Horror rate against something like that?
My first thought was "What? Nahhh." but you make a good case. I really enjoyed Borderlands on the PC, so I might have to pick it up for the 360 even if it doesn't work out for co-op goodness.
EDIT X-men Legends, that was the game. Had a ton of fun playing those with my girlfriend of the time.
We had a lot of fun together with Castle Crashers, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, and Rockband.
It's not actually that horrifying. It's set in the Lovecraftian universe, so it's you verses Cthulu or Hastur or whoever your boss happens to be. The "scary" factor is very low, it's mostly just sort of set in a dark theme. It's a cooperative game, so I think it's really worthwhile - you each play an investigator with certain abilities, and you band together to collect clues and items and defeat monsters. It's a little complex (the first game will take you a while to figure out) but definitely fun once you get the hang of it. You can try reading some Lovecraft and seeing if you think it would be too scary for her, though I really doubt that it would be.
Might be better to ease her in with Catan or something. Arkham Horror isn't the best introduction...
EDIT: Oh, co-op board games. Hrrrrm...still...
Burnout Paradise is also awesome. Neither my girlfriend or I like most racing games in the least, but a few rounds of Showtime after her brother brought it over convinced us to buy it so we could destroy as much shit as possible in a hilarious manner.
Castle Crashers is pretty fun, and I imagine any co-op beat-em-up would be as well.
Rock Band is also great, but there probably isn't anything I could say about it that you wouldn't know.
Dragon Age would be ok, as long as you play on an easier setting (as combat requires Alot of pauses and finese of controls on harder difficulties), but the same would apply here. Your choices drive Alot of the story in Dragon Age, probably more than even ME1 or 2.
I can't compare my experience with PC or Live play because, frankly, I don't like online play (and yet I played WoW for too many years). However, I don't have issue with the split screen play at all. I have a small to moderate size HD (26 inches, it's a small apartment) and I find I have plenty of screen space. In addition there are extra cooperative things my husband and I can do playing split screen such as; I'll leave my map open while riding shot gun for easier driving navigation and on those odd platforming jumps I'll position my view under the jump while he goes to take it so he can have a second view.
As for watching, Final Fantasy just hit. I know that I enjoy watching a pretty RPG and it IS supposed to be pretty.
And I know it isn't co-op, but in the interest of your wife loving video games, have you sat her down with Plants vs Zombies?
PSN Hypacia
Xbox HypaciaMinnow
Discord Hypacia#0391
I got my wife to play Burnout Revenge with me for a while. She said she liked it more than BO:3 because she could run in to the "civilian" cars and not crash.
buy warhams
Arkham is good fun for two people, and not terribly scary, just dark. In fact, some of the comment cards are quite silly. I would hit up www.boardgamegeek.com for the alternate rules for 2 player- helps considerably.
The boy and I are in a similar boat. We're both major board game and video game junkies and the boy likes coop versus competition We tend to play coop video games and two player competitive board games to even it out.
Coop video games, non-Wii:
Splosion man - so cute, it hurts.
The Lego series
Earth Defense Force 2017
Rock Band
The Halo series (not oo scary graphics wise and fully adjustable for skill level to prevent dying burn out)
Borderlands and Left 4 Dead are great, but probably a bit hyperviolent
Fairytale Fights (buggy as all hell, but also plain fun and cute)
Two player board games:
Arkham
Race for the Galaxy
Space Hulk (expensive, but awesome)
Ticket to Ride (can be played with 2, better with more, but certainly doable.)
Lost Cities
Some of the munchkin games are 2 player
If you're both into word games, there are a metric ton of 2 player word games out there. I'd say Quiddler is my current favorite.
We've also taken to taking turns playing episodic games where one plays and one watches. most episodic games are pretty easy, cute, ploit based games so they are as fun to watch as play.
Arkham Horror isn't really horror at all and its not meant to be. Its a pulpy 1920s Cthulhu setting.
Its pretty fantastic, and I can't recommend it enough.
The two player rules for my wife and I entirely consist of 'play two characters each'.
Mass Effect 2 literally enthralled 3 of my best friends.
Of the 33 hous and 3 minutes I played the game, I can honestly say they were sat watching a good 28 or 29 of those hours. Bar the mining of resources stuff, the game has stuff going on constantly and it's essentially like watching a movie. My friends said it was better than a movie, because you get to control the outcome of it yourself depending on what role you wish to play as.
My mates didn't even bother playing it or trying to play it, they just sat watching it while I played.
Uncharted 1
Uncharted 2
Heavy Rain.
Also someone suggested Worms. The new Worms: Apocalypse on xbla is absolutely fantastic.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
I would add Ratchet & Clank? The Pixar-ness seems like it would be a good draw.
Borderlands co-op is poorly done on the 360, we tried it but I kept getting so frustrated because I couldn't see enough so we didn't play much of that, but I did enjoy the game and it didn't matter if one person died repeatedly as long as the other person stayed alive.
So far Carcassonne and Dominon have been huge hits. Race for the Galaxy was too complex for her. I think the symbols and variable phases threw her off. She's the type of gamer who wants to do everything and can't focus on a specific strategy to the exclusion of other choices. That doesn't go well with RftG. Warhammer: Invasion has been fun. It's a card battle game, but you don't blind buy anything. They just release periodic card packs every month or so, and they are all the same. But it can be frustrating if you lose all the time.
Mass Effect 2: I loved watching my boyfriend play so much that within 2 days of him buying it I started up my own game, and then beat it before he did. I'm thinking of going back and doing a play through of ME1 now.
Fable 2: This is one I like watching played and keep meaning to start up myself.
One thing that could help with the Borderlands difficulty, is that you both start a new character in single player mode. Play till you take out the first "boss", then start doing co-op. By that point most people have a good handle on the basics, movement, gunplay, specials, and can navigate through the smaller area the co-op screens present.
Or just move the TV closer.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)
It's intense, to say the least.
Munchkin (3 - 6 players) is fun. It's also not what you asked for, exactly, with the 3+ player part.
- http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/cardgame/
--- don't you have a Wii? You mentioned her enjoying watching you play Metroid Prime Trilogy.
[Video game / board game]
I forgot if Dokapon Kingdom (Wii or PS2) counts as co-op.
- http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/4/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokapon_Kingdom
Aegis Wing is a shmup on Xbox Live Arcade, it's free, and it's got very robust co-op. You can attach the ships together and one person control while the other shoots. I've had a lot of fun with it. If you like that, there's Schizoid on XBLA, which works with a positive/negative mechanic in that only one of you can eat a specific colour of enemies.
There's also 1 vs 100, but that's at scheduled times and it's not running at the moment.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
Arkham Horror (sounds like fun)
Pandemic (seems like something she would be interested in)
Mass Effect 2 (gonna play it anyway)
Carcassonne (already have the xbox live version)
LEGO Indiana Jones (have it)
Peggle (have it)
On Borderlands: I want to get the game anyway because I love it. With the issue of screen real estate, would co-op on a 47" LCD give us enough room to play? I'm sure I can handle the reduced view, so I could pick up the slack easily while she's learning the ropes.
I'm also looking at a card game called Fluxx, which seems like it would be a lot of fun, easy to pick up, and different every time. Anyone played that? I'm finding myself really drawn to (at least the idea of) board and card games, since turning off the TV now and then would be a nice break for both of us.
Also, she really likes mysteries. Are there are any cooperative mystery-solving type games out there, of either the board, card, or video variety? She enjoyed Professor Layton on the DS, so mystery/puzzle games are also good.
Mostly because I want someone to play on XBLive.
I can't imagine an issue with that size TV, but I'm also the one that doesn't think it's an issue in the first place.
As for mystery, they aren't co-op per se, but my husband and I will sit down at the computer together and play hidden object games. You can get the Mystery Case Files games for 6 bucks a piece from Big Fish Games and the Ravenhurst games actually have decently compelling mystery type story lines.
Also, Million Heir for the DS is a hidden object Mystery Case Files game. I
PSN Hypacia
Xbox HypaciaMinnow
Discord Hypacia#0391
It's kind of love-hate with people though, so I'm going to say try it before buying it? Something like that I guess.