Hey y'all, who would like to talk about co-op video games with me? Use this thread to talk about games that have a great co-op experience.
Cooperative gaming is a topic that seems to be underserved by the gaming press. I'm guessing this has to do with the nature of the job: it probably doesn't make any financial sense to assign two employees to review one game at the same time. Yet co-op is a staple of my gaming diet, as it is of all of the real life game players I know. The consequence of this missing perspective seems to be the mischaracterization of great co-op games as bad single player games. One touchstone is the comparison of Half Life 2 to Halo (I just heard this come up on a podcast I really enjoy). My memory of these games is that one is best played as an on rails cinematic single player game, and the other is best played as a very challenging and relatively open ended co-op game, but both games were being compared exclusively on the former terms. Both games are very good and very different! I replayed Halo 1 cooperatively just a few years ago: the game is still excellent!
Look, my least favourite game topic is dragging journalists for doing their jobs. My point is that there are a lot of very awesome co-op games that have been poorly remembered, forgotten, or never noticed at all. When I'm looking for a new co-op game I usually feel like I'm rooting around Steam's basement looking for lost treasures because there's not much information about what's fun to play. Let's remember some good co-op games here.
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Recently I've been co-opping **Resident Evil Revelations 2**, a game that I heard very little about before playing it. I don't think it's well remembered but maybe I missed the dialogue on this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnCjtWVRVM4&list=PLMyoprrqVo6CKXGDpWG91A4wbS7KFDiE4
Co-op gameplay in RER2 (I don't know who is playing, just pulled a random video for reference.)
What I really enjoy about this game is the asymmetric co-op. There are two character sets, but both sets have one character that plays like a normal RE protagonist, and another that serves an unconventional support role with limited combat ability. This might be a negative if both players care a lot about shooting guns, but I love playing with unconventional ability sets, especially when placed in an otherwise conventional game world like RE. I get to play half of this game as a little girl with psychic vision whose only combat ability is to throw a brick. It is very awesome.
The game is otherwise conventional but solid. We played this immediately coming off of RE6, and I am pretty sure that this game is _much better_. Even though the scope of the game is narrower, the experiences it puts you through still feel more varied and consistently fun than RE6. It can also feel genuinely challenging in moments that require co-operation between the ability sets. The story is not interesting but you will mostly be chatting with your buddy so who cares?
I'm not sure how they resolve the different roles in the single player experience, but I can imagine that the game might feel forgettable when played that way. When played as a co-op game, this is a really goofy sort of bizarro universe RE where your buddy has to carry you around on his back because you are a child that fell down too hard. It's also sold in short episodes which are routinely on sale for 3 dollars. It's an easy recommendation if you're looking for a co-op game to play.
