Good co-op games to play with a newbie gamer?

Games
1

Before anyone mentions it, yes, I know there is a co-op thread flying around already, but it’s specifically PC, and I didn’t want to hijack it.

I’m looking for some good games to play co-op, 2 player.

I’m specifically looking for games that can actually be played co-op (you play together through the story/main game/whatever, unlock stuff), not games that have some one off co-op mode. This is for me and the girl – who is a newbie gamer, but has liked what she played so far, and shows some promising signs of addiction.

We’ve got a PS2, Gamecube, and a couple PCs (I’m not really holding out much for the last one, since we don’t really want to venture into MMO land).

So far, the best we’ve found was Mario Kart: Double Dash, but we’ve already unlocked everything there. Someone mentioned Return of the King had a decent coop, true?

Any other recommendations?

2

I bet Diablo 2 would be fun.

Or maybe Diablo 1. It’s a smaller and arguably simpler game, so it might fit the bill better.

3

Baldurs Gate:Dark Alliance? A lot more hack n slash than the original BG series.

4

Beach Spikers (GC) and Virtua Tennis 1&2 (DC, PS2) are quite accessible and not very tough on ‘Easy’. Definitely something you can play together with a newbie (vs. CPU).

5

The Mario Party games can be played co-op against the computer too. :)

6

Didn’t NOLF2 have a co-op mode? System Shock 2 has one as well (make sure you’re sitting near each other for when she gets scared :)).

7

It’s pretty good, yes.

8

The nice thing about Serious Sam coop is that even if you totally suck at the game you can still get all the way to the end… unlimited respawns. This is what I taught Joaen to FPS in, because it’s a really good time untarnished with “game over” frustration. Just keep coming back and burning 'em down.

If you don’t mind split-screen, Halo has similar unlimited lives. I’ve heard good things about D&D Heroes coop, and I’m not sure about Champions of Norrath.

I’ll also second the Diablo II recommendation. Coop in that game is “where it’s at.”

9

Universal Combat.

10

I easily second: Diablo 1/2, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2, Champions Of Norrath when it comes to action RPGs, and Serious Sam when it comes to FPSs.

I love Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors, but its co-op mode only magnifies the already annoying slowdown/pop-up problem you see in singleplayer. I’d go with The Two Towers instead for old-school beatemup action. I honestly think it’s as good a pure game as any DW/SW title, it’s better than RotK by a small margin, and the co-op just makes it all the more kickass.

Here’s an idea: maybe sports games? Oddly enough, I don’t know if my two favorites, Sega NHL and NBA Live 2004, offer co-op or not, because my friends and I have been too busy competing against each other to ever bother trying to play on the same team. I’ll look into the possibility, though, because assuming it’s possible, those two games in particular are simply outstanding. You’d have to harbor an avid hatred of hockey and basketball to not enjoy them. As far as complexity for noob players goes… Sega NHL lets you play with simplified controls in case the anyone finds all the advanced options to be too intimidating. Same with NBA Live, but I can’t imagine anyone really being overwhelmed by its “Freestyle” controls. If you do play with simple controls in either game, turn down the difficulty because you will lose the ability to pull off some funky moves that are very useful, and the AI will not take pity on you.

Fighting games tend to not include a co-op mode - well, maybe Tekken Tag does but I thought that game was totally average and forgettable. The closest you can probably get to a co-op “fighting game” is actually a series of wrestling titles. The two latest WWE Smackdown! games support up to six players, and it’s easy to set it up so that you and a friend can tag-team up against the AI, or another tag-team of two friends, or whatever. And unless you hold pro wrestling in utter contempt and cannot imagine yourself possibly enjoying games based on it (believe me, I can understand why for a number of reasons, although personally I find it enjoyable in the same way I find Roger Corman movies great), you should have an absolute blast with Smackdown. They have the best “create your own character” mode I’ve seen in any game, period - you can lose yourself for hours just screwing around with that and not playing the actual game.

I can’t remember if Ikaruga has a co-op mode or not. If so, it might be worth checking out. It isn’t my favorite old-school shooter ever, but it’s fun enough, ya know? I can’t think of another recent old-school shooter that offers co-op, but I’ve only paid a small amount of attention to this genre. All the awesome little freeware PC games I have - none have co-op. =(

11

I second the virtua tennis recommendation. VT on the dreamcast still gets pulled out at our house when we have gamer-lite company.

12

Thanks for the recommendations all.

I’m a little embarassed diablo 2 didn’t occur to me since I have multiple level 70+ hardcore characters on US East.

I’ll probably start with some of the console recommendations though.

13

I can’t play up virtua tennis enough. The controls are so simple that complete non gamers can pick it up in two minutes, and you’d be surprised at how competitive people that don’t normally play videogames can get over it. :)

14

Almost any MMORPG is good for that. My wife is enjoying playing Diablo 2 with me write now. I got her to play Halo with me and she loved it. She wouldn’t play either game alone though. Halo is nice because you can cover each other and if one person dies, the other can respawn him/her. You can also play it on an easy level and with two people, it’s pretty damned easy. We play the Xbox version of Halo, so I don’t know about PC.

We also LOVE co-op Monkey Ball (2) tennis. Mario Tennis is also a lot of fun for coop.

also, lots of single-player RPGs can be fun for two people, where one person “drives” and the other gets to enjoy the story, help out, etc. I’ve even played them where the non-driver gets some characters and gets to decide what to do in battles (turn-based, obviously).

15

Holy shit, let me get this straight. Somebody recommended Ikaruga as a newbie game? Hahahahahaha. Get back to me when you guys get to level 4. That should only take, what, like six years?

16

I’m sorry, let me clarify that the UC comment was a joke. I don’t want you to go buy it and find out.

17

The best co-op game I’ve ever played is a quirky little PS2 title called Cookies and Cream. It’s about two bunnies who… err… well, that’s not a selling point.

It’s truly co-op though, as you literally have to help each other progress through the game by moving obstacles for each other as you race along.

It is, however, not easy. Which might be a downside. I played it with someone who was already a gamer, but probably not as “into” games as I am (skill level included) and we both had a blast.

Could be hard to find; wasn’t exactly a triple A title. But if you can/are willing to find a copy I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Also, cutesy bunnies can’t hurt, right?

18

Yeah, I bought Cookies and Cream based on glowing recommendations here in a similar thread a while back.

If the other person is a non-gamer, don’t do it. The game is not newbie friendly at all. Too many platform/jumping/etc. elements to make it n00b-friendly. If the other person is also a gamer, it’s cool. But I traded it back in.

Racing games like GT3 are great for coop with casual and non-gamers, since they’re very easy to pick up.

19

Hmm, you may have a point. I play old-school shooters religiously and found Ikaruga to be - not quite a walk in the park, but pretty close. Compare it to Blazing Star, or the best PC freeware games like rRootage, Noiz2SA, Tumiki Fighters and Cho Ren Sha… Ikaruga is just easy to me. But in my experience, the game throws out two immediate “hooks” that can entrance a newbie gamer: the gameplay mechanics are simple, and the game’s graphics is very good.

Put it another way - when I showed my current girlfriend (who had never played any video game not called Dance Dance Revolution) Fallout, she was rather unimpressed. “So it’s like a board game?” “Ooh, you get to kill rats! OMG, THERE’S ANOTHER RAT, YOU’RE GONNA DIEEEEE!” “You really weren’t joking about how bland it looks.” “At least the music doesn’t suck.”

Hmm, “completely unimpressed” might be more like it. =(

But Devil May Cry? She absolutely HAD to play it. Right now. It didn’t matter that she was and still is terrible at it - the game was immediately rewarding to play because it looks so good, and even though the combat is intricate and very hard to master, you can still button-mash and watch your character do awesome things. Almost immediately, DMC rewards even crappy players with a lot of cool stuff.

Somehow I bet that a noob’s first impressions of Ikaruga would be much more like DMC than Fallout.

20

Hmm, you may have a point. I play old-school shooters religiously and found Ikaruga to be - not quite a walk in the park, but pretty close. Compare it to Blazing Star, or the best PC freeware games like rRootage, Noiz2SA, Tumiki Fighters and Cho Ren Sha… Ikaruga is just easy to me. But in my experience, the game throws out two immediate “hooks” that can entrance a newbie gamer: the gameplay mechanics are simple, and the game’s graphics is very good.

Put it another way - when I showed my current girlfriend (who had never played any video game not called Dance Dance Revolution) Fallout, she was rather unimpressed. “So it’s like a board game?” “Ooh, you get to kill rats! OMG, THERE’S ANOTHER RAT, YOU’RE GONNA DIEEEEE!” “You really weren’t joking about how bland it looks.” “At least the music doesn’t suck.”

Hmm, “completely unimpressed” might be more like it. =(

But Devil May Cry? She absolutely HAD to play it. Right now. It didn’t matter that she was and still is terrible at it - the game was immediately rewarding to play because it looks so good, and even though the combat is intricate and very hard to master, you can still button-mash and watch your character do awesome things. Almost immediately, DMC rewards even crappy players with a lot of cool stuff.

Somehow I bet that a noob’s first impressions of Ikaruga would be much more like DMC than Fallout.[/quote]

Actually, I think someone who wasn’t into games at all, let alone shooters, would play Ikaruga for about five minutes and think “Wow. In this game, all you do is get blown up. As soon as you get onto the screen, you blow up. Power off.”