Recommend me a 2-player game

[Dust]

I make this thread every 8 months or so, try a handful of the suggestions there, and generally give back in to utter despair.
My SigOther and I (going to avoid gendered pronouns because I discovered it influences suggestions, weirdly) like gaming with one another in theory, but in actual practice things rarely work out very well. Often our very different styles and skill levels conflict, and even though our relationship has no other real problems, finding something we can play together is a constant struggle.

I'm naturally quite good at whatever I put my hands on, and I don't mind PVP or at least competition. I don't get frustrated when I fail or when setbacks slow us down. I'm the sort who used to take a break from farming hard-mode endgame WoW content, to play Bomberman online (and win 95% of the games) because it was relaxing.

The other person I'm attempting to game with is rather the opposite; they like casual environments and wouldn't be considered a 'skilled' gamer in most ways due to slow reaction speeds. They fondly remember rpgs like Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu, Dark Cloud, Kingdom Hearts, button-mashers like God of War, and more relaxing games like Katamari Damacy. They're not a fan of the superhero genre and get performance anxiety when teaming up with other people online.

We both like RPGs and MMOs and generally avoid shooters, prefer things that we could try out for free before committing to a purchase since they often wind up just not working out, and award a decent investiture of time (or are generally decently long games) since we're looking for something long-term.
I use a powerful mac (with windows partitioned so that the brand name doesn't prevent me from gamin') and they a desktop PC that's more than a few years old. We have a PS3, a pair of DS'es and PSPs but haven't had much luck with console attempts in the past.
We're currently playing a Russian 'free-to-play' (which is a LIIIIEEEEEE) MMO called Allods that is unfortunately not working out because it takes literally weeks to level-up, we play against bots in co-op League of Legends, they're trying to talk me into signing up for two lifetime subscriptions of Star Trek Online, and I keep struggling to find old two-player Snes emulator games that can keep us occupied. Hunted: The Demon's Forge looks promising and it's probably next on our to-pick-up list if nothing in this thread opens my eyes to a brand new idea.

I know that's quite the block of text, but hopefully you can sense some of the desperation in my tone. We haven't found 'our game' yet, and we're both in agreement that playing entirely different things while five feet from one another is starting to be....well, a little bit weird.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[psilontech]

World of Tanks

... Because even after more than half a year, I'm still terribly addicted.

Unfortunately, you probably won't be playing together unless you pay for a premium account so that you can platoon up - But I HAVE heard rumors that they will be implementing free two-man platoons in the next patch.

Team Fortress 2 is free now. I know you said something against shooters or something, but it can be very forgiving to the... mouse-impaired in the case of the Engineer.

Outside of that... I dunno.

How are you guys for strategy games?
You guys can get Battle for Wesnoth(PC/MAC/Linux) for free and play against each other.
Master of Orion II hot-seat is fun.

Just sitting around watching each other play games can be fun as well, as I recall. Load up Final Fantasy Tactics and name a unit after each of you and kill things!:smallbiggrin:

[iyaerP]

portal 2 coop mode?


also Magicka. Although that one can be slightly unforgiving towards the very end of the game.

[factotum]

Given your different skill levels, have you considered trying out something turn-based? If the problem is purely that you have different levels of twitch reflexes, removing those from the equation would presumably even things out a bit. I'm not actually familiar with which turn-based games are playable multiplayer, though, so I can't suggest any!

[Trekkin]

Perhaps you would enjoy Shores of Hazeron. It's like a combined EVE and Dusk 514 with a much more accommodating player base, more customization and automated grinding. You guys could just build a little empire out in the middle of galactic nowhere and go on an interstellar rampage when you felt competitive.

[Deth Muncher]

Hunted: The Demon's Forge should be renamed This Game: It's a Trap.

Really.

Anyway. Two player games, eh? You both have DSes - why not give the Pokeymans a try? That gives you the ability to play alone and beat the story, but also fight each other and show who's got the coolest 'mons. Not to mention, if each of you gets a different version from the generation (i.e. one gets Black, one gets White) then not only will you be sure to get all the d00ds from that generation, but you'll always have a trade partner to get your better d00ds.

You can always get a mind-numbingly hard game like Demons Souls and swap out whenever you die. Also, there's a Katamari for PS3 if you can hunt it down - should have co-op mode.

Also, by the way, let me let you in on a little insider secret: Game Stop's return policy lets you return any USED game once, for either a full refund or a one-time swap to another game. Thus, let's say you got used copies of Pokeymans B&W, and you hate them - return them for all your money back (within 7 days, including day of purchase). (Assuming you make your gaming purchases at that particular store.)

[Toastkart]

Have you tried Guild Wars? All three campaigns and the expansion can be picked up relatively cheaply, and it's free to play afterwards. It's not a persistent mmo, but rather a co-op rpg online. Given its age, the system requirements aren't high.

The game is based on group play, and all areas outside the starter/tutorial zone can have a group size of 4-8. Don't worry about being forced to find other players, though, as there are henchmen, who are static ai npcs that you can add to your party, and heroes, who are henchman that you can assign skills and upgrade their armor/weapons. Every outpost has henchmen, but heroes are tied to your character and, unless you start in the Nightfall campaign, the earliest they can be gotten is lvl 10, if you have the expansion.

GW is also very friendly. The level cap is 20 and shouldn't take more than a day or two of playing to reach, depending on which campaign you start in. Factions is fastest, Prophecies is slowest, and Nightfall is somewhere in between. Getting max level weapons/ armor is relatively easy once you hit the lvl cap. Getting the specific skin you want can be more difficult.

There are ten professions, six core and two for each of the new campaigns (Factions and Nightfall). There are hundreds of skills for each profession, and literally millions of combinations of builds thanks to dual classing. That being said, the vast majority of skills aren't going to be worth your time. This is mostly because they're more effective against you the player than they will be against the mobs you'll be fighting. With the exception of some exclusive monster skills, the mobs in the game draw from the same skill pool that you do.

The story doesn't hold a candle to some of the great single player rpgs out there, but it's still a good story, better than most mmo and multiplayer focused games out there.

I've greatly enjoyed the game for the six years it's been out. Given that there is no monthly fee, I can play for a while until I get bored with the game, leave it alone for a few months, and come right back to where I left off with no trouble.

[Winthur]

Any Heroes of Might and Magic game, particularly the third one, is a perfect hot-seat action. They're ridiculously addicting and not hard to pick up. I mean, I've spent hours on hot seats of this game, just getting new castles and beating the heroes invading my domain or whose domain I invade. You can ally or fight against each other, too.

If I had friends, I would be playing Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat 2 with them, but I have no friends. :smallfrown:

[Brother Oni]

The various lego games on the PS3 are fairly easy and relaxed to play, with enough challenge for the better players to keep interest with less skilled ones (I play it with my daughter).

There are a number of games on Steam which you may enjoy; Magicka was suggested.
Sanctum, which is a FP shooter tower defence game, sounds like it's tailor made as the less skilled player sits on a nice vantage point and shoots anything that moves while the more skilled player runs around sorting out problem spots.
Plants versus zombies is another one - I think the co-op version is available on Steam (I have the 360 version).
There's also Terraria, although it's more a sandbox rather than a structured game.

[Grif]

Any Heroes of Might and Magic game, particularly the third one, is a perfect hot-seat action. They're ridiculously addicting and not hard to pick up. I mean, I've spent hours on hot seats of this game, just getting new castles and beating the heroes invading my domain or whose domain I invade. You can ally or fight against each other, too.

If I had friends, I would be playing Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat 2 with them, but I have no friends. :smallfrown:

Yes, I second this. HoMM games are ridiculous fun for hot-seat. Or if you prefer, LAN play is also supported, but its really a more elegant version of the hotseat, since you need to wait for the other players to finish their turns. There's also a sheer variety of maps to play with, ranging anything from four 2-player teams duking it out with each other to a free-for-all fest on a Small map.

[Forbiddenwar]

Game that I have played and enjoyed with my SigOther:
Any HOMM
Any Civilization
ALPHA CENTARI (buy it now from GOG!)

Also, Over the shoulder playing exploration/puzzle games together works well. My SO and I make a great team, exploring an environment and breaking down puzzles, due to differences in our gaming experience. (Just never break the cardinal rule of playing ahead)
For example:
MYST Series
Portal (though my SigOther gets nauseous in FPS)
We may try Shadows of the colossus (Title check?) soon.

We have given up on finding "Our game for all time" I don't think they exist. Just look for "Our game for right now" On that, if a game costs $10 and you both play it and have fun for an hour, it's still a sound investment (and cheaper than the movies).

TF2 - good idea, but you said no to FPS and Online competition.

[Dust]

Thanks for the suggestions, folks! To sort of summarize:

World of Tanks: Didn't keep their interest...too bad, I was really hoping!
TF2" Nope, getting thrown into a game where the experience was 'build turret, get snipered/spy'd' got old for them quick
Portal 2: They hated Portal 1 so I haven't bothered, though it still blows my mind how such a thing could be possible.
Magicka: Been suggested a few times, might look into this next.
Shores of Hazeron: I'm actually the one against this idea, tried it and found it to be too much like a creative tool and too little like a game. Was crazy neat though.
Pokeymans: We did this and it was pretty fun.
Katamari: One of their favorite games, though the co-op mode is unfortunately lacking.
Guild Wars: Also really tempting. We decided between GW and the F2P mmo about four months back and figured we might just wait for Final Fantasy XIV to not be total garbage/released on the PS3 before shuffling mmorpgs, but that looks like it'll be a long way off or possibly never.
Sanctum: That looks awesome and I hadn't heard of it before. Thanks!
Lego Games: Again, the SigOther loves 'em but I get quickly bored, especially with their penchant to collect everything, no exceptions.
Plants VS Zombies: The co-op mode is generally a bad idea, with two cursors sharing resources in a game that's slow-paced enough not to need it. The versus mode is invariably one-sided.
Terraria: Looks like minecraft. We may give this a try.
Civilization: We both agree we'd love to play this. I have no idea which edition of the game to get, given that I fondly remember the original on the snes and they own the Ps3 version and we have no experience in-between.

Deth Muncher, that's a pretty great gamestop tip. Thanks. And Evrine, I really appreciate how in-depth you got with that. You guy all rock. :smallbiggrin:

[Brother Oni]

Terraria: Looks like minecraft. We may give this a try.
Civilization: We both agree we'd love to play this. I have no idea which edition of the game to get, given that I fondly remember the original on the snes and they own the Ps3 version and we have no experience in-between.


Terraria is more focused on combat and exploration than building, although the building element does feature.

With Civilisation, the latest version is 5, although you'll probably find great deals (ie cheap and less spec intensive) on 4 if you look around.

Another game I forgot about which might be fun for a quick blast around is Alien Swarm (also off Steam). It's a top down shooter which focuses on teamwork, so you have gunners holding off the attacking swarm while the mechanics frantically tries to burn through the door to the next area while the medic keeps everybody alive.
Good thing about this is that it's free, so if you or your partner don't like it, you've lost nothing save download bandwidth.

[Winthur]

With Civilisation, the latest version is 5, although you'll probably find great deals (ie cheap and less spec intensive) on 4 if you look around.

Get Civ4. Civ5 is a failed experiment which supports multiplayer very poorly, and I'm not only talking the internet one. Civ4 has a lot more fun mods to play and a more supportive community than its failed sequel. Get Civ4 Complete instead of Civ4 Colonization (important), though, Colonization is a failed remake of an older game and it has little to do with Civ4 other than the engine. With Civ4 Complete's expansion packs come a lot of cool scenarios and modules, and you can download some from fansites like CivFanatics. Civ5 is younger and doesn't have all of those. It's also a much worse game.

[psilontech]

Just to throw in my two cents as far as Civilization is concerned - My favorite still stands at Civ 2.

In the realm of the civilization series, as Forbiddenwar stated:
Alpha Centauri

Seriously.

Alpha Centauri

[Forbiddenwar]

Just to throw in my two cents as far as Civilization is concerned - My favorite still stands at Civ 2.

In the realm of the civilization series, as Forbiddenwar stated:
Alpha Centauri

Seriously.

Alpha Centauri

I'll just leave this here:
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri

[warty goblin]

Hunted: The Demon's Forge should be renamed This Game: It's a Trap.

Really.

I really quite liked Hunted. I suspect it suffers because people see fantasy, they think it must be an RPG, which it absolutely is not. It's a fantasy third person shooter/brawler, more or less in the Gears of War vein, and if you approach it with that in mind it works quite well. The writing is pretty good as well. Nothing to write home about, but it's solid.

The two characters play very differently, which I rather like. There's a lot of mechanics that encourage co-op as well; many spells can be cast on your partner to supercharge them temporarily, and a lot of the others are very much geared towards allowing the other player to fight more efficiently, be it ice arrows to freeze dudes or a levitation spell to make them easier targets.


I ended up liking the First Templar, which is a very similar title, a little more, although that's based only only on the singleplayer. Although both are co-op focused Hunted is a bit more asymmetric about it, which could make it a better choice if co-op's your goal.

[Dust]

We're fiddling around with Spiral Knights at the moment.

[Lord Loss]

My dad and I are in a similar situation, except he loves shooters and I love just about anything, with the exception of Turn-Based Strategy games. We are, however, of widely different skill levels, as he's not a very fast shot. To solve this, I tried something that was a blast:

On Black Ops, I went into combat training, put the game on Free-For-All, set the number of players to maximum and the difficulty to recruit. This means that the "shooter" element isn't as vicious, we can both score high killstreaks quite easily and have a blast. Also, we can either team up, experiment with stuff like "knife-only" games, pistol only games, etc. or just go after one another, ignoring the AI enemies. It's really more of a "Playground" style game than a shooter and gives you space to practice tactics and whatnot. I'd give that a shot (assuming you already own the game), even if shooters aren't your thing.

[iyaerP]

Can't believe that this hasn't been mentioned before, but Minecraft.



Also, as far as hotseat games go, Audiosurf is really fun. Its an indie game on steam that plays like a cross between bejeweled and guitar hero.

The 2 person co-op for it is done with one person using mouse, the other using keyboard and you work togeather to build up combos. Also, it has a significant advantage over guitar hero and other games like it in that it works for any music you have. Literally any sound file of one of the major formats can be opened and played.

[Remmirath]

If you haven't already tried any of them - Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II can all be played by two quite well. Also, Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2.

Sadly, that's all I can think of in the way of RPGs that can be played multiplayer.

Unreal Tournament 2004 is, in my opinion, the most fun shooter around. Populous: The Beginning is a fun (and not very frustrating - I liked it when I usually still didn't like strategy games) strategy game. Tron 2.0 has rather limited multiplayer (basically, fighting and racing each other). Total War could be good if they like that sort of game, but unlike Populous, probably not if they don't (Rome's probably the best one to start with, though I believe Empire's the only one with full multiplayer). Other Unreal games are also fun, although in my opinion 2004 is the best.

If you run Linux, Koules is pretty fun. If you have a DOS computer or an emulator, maybe Wacky Wheels for a racing game.

There ends my knowledge of games with enjoyable multiplayer.

[deuxhero]

Pair of DSes? Not sure how it functions, but DQ9 has co-op as an option (You are effectively using 2 2 man parties instead of 1 4 man party, though there is bonus XP at minimum).

[Triaxx]

Dwarf Fortress is a great game to Hotseat. And it doesn't matter if your playing tendencies differ, you're going to lose anyway. That's the entire point and all the fun.

[Psyren]

What system(s) do you have? Littlebigplanet is fun, s/he'll love it!

[Brother Oni]

What system(s) do you have? Littlebigplanet is fun, s/he'll love it!

They listed them in their first post:



I use a powerful mac (with windows partitioned so that the brand name doesn't prevent me from gamin') and they a desktop PC that's more than a few years old. We have a PS3, a pair of DS'es and PSPs but haven't had much luck with console attempts in the past.