Cooperative Gaming

[Arr0nax]

I was wondering why there aren't more games that propose a cooperative mode to play with a few mates. With the advent of online and multiplayer gaming, we have literally been flooded with competitive gaming, and MMORPGs. But a category of multiplayer playing remains desperately ignored, at least on PC : cooperative gaming, as in, plays almost like a solo game, except you're not alone to beat it.

I've often encountered games where I was clearly frustrated not to be able to experience a cooperative mode, a way to go trough the challenge with some partners to support me.

Arcanum : the only way to play this game in multiplayer was in a standalone mod completely different from the main campaign, which was a shame.
MechCommander : aaaah, tactical games ! Such a pleasure to play alone, but how the possibilities would be increased if we could play them in team.

As for games that actually propose a cooperative mode, the only ones I had the chance to discover and appreciate are the Commando series, and Baldur's Gate.
Commando is really the perfect type of game for that kind of mode, and having a partner really help in setting some ambushes and coordinating all the characters. You have to set up a plan before doing anything, which is interesting. It's also a lot of fun when one of the two fucks up said plan. It's even funnier when someone fuck up and you have to try to get the situation back on tracks anyway. The result is a chaotic combination of stress, shouting to your partner, desperate clicks while the germans shout "ALARMMM" and run to you to kick both asses, and laughing.

So, the question of this thread would be : did you play a cooperative game in particular that left you some good memories, and what was it ?

 

[SkuLL]

Back in the day, I used to play UNREAL TOURNAMENT (correction: used to kick some serious ass!). The first one. It had the Assault mode: big map with a set of objectives where one team defends and one team works their way through the objectives towards the finale. After X minutes (or completion of all objectives), the teams swap. Fun. And it was the first time I really played with someone else online.

I liked what HALO did with mission-based co-op - played it at a friend's house a few times, using splitscreen. I can see how the game got so popular, though it was never entirely to my liking. Driving a car while your friend shoots the mounted gun was quite epic, nonetheless.

My favourite would have to be LEFT 4 DEAD (1 and 2). Truly enjoyable co-op, where you really want to (and on higher difficulties have to) help your mates through. Thousands of zombies, adrenaline, teamwork. To me, this is the best cooperative gaming experience.

 

[Hassknecht]

Oh yeah, the UT assault mode kicked so much ass, I was so pissed when they cut it in UT2003... Well, got it back in UT2004, fair enough.

 

[The Vault Dweller]

It's great that I've found this thread and even more so since a few weeks ago I discovered the game that tops my co-op list.

Besides the already mentioned Unreal Tournament and Halo I would suggest Sven co-op for the original HL. It's a fan made mod that is still used even after all these years and has an incredible number of fan-made maps some of which are decent adventures like HL and some are entirely unique unto there own.

Let me emphasize something though. I only play FPS casually usually one or two a year being the best "story" one and the best "multiplayer" one. In most cases there isn't coop or it's either a tacked on mode often fan-made.

To date there has only been one game developed that was meant to be coop from the start. Not only is that enough to make it much better coop than anything ever before, but it's made by Valve. The game is Left 4 Dead.

I haven't played the second, but as the SkuLL says it must be just as good or better.

In L4D teamwork isn't a good benefit, but a necessity. There are frequently opportunities where having one person do something together with someone else can easily avoid one person being damaged whereas alone they would get hurt.

I could give you lots of examples, but it would spoil it. I'm certain you'll get it so just buy it.

Also the setting and gameplay are perfect for a zombie apocalypse besides being for coop. That just goes to show you how great Valve is. They didn't just settle for excellent and innovative gameplay, but gave us a great backdrop for it.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller

 

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

I'm a HUGE fan of coop. I love nothing better than raping a game to pieces with a friend or two. Unfortunately, with the PC being my primary gaming platform for such endeavors, the list of titles is rather limited compared to consoles. There's still plenty of gems though.

Here's a few of the best of the best when it comes to coop games I've beaten with friends. I'll only list the games where you can go through the full campaign in coop mode, not ones with tacked on "missions" or shit like that.



FPS

First up... Gears of War!

It's a console port, yeah, but they did a great job with it. If you've never played it before, and like shooters; DEFINITELY give this one a try. You won't be disappointed.



Next... THE ENTIRE HALF LIFE SERIES.

With Sven Coop (Half Life) or Synergy Mod (Half Life 2, Ep 1, Ep 2), you can play through the entire Half Life series with several friends. Enjoy State of the Art Crowbar Combat™, fucking each other over on jumping puzzles, murdering friendly scientists, and grav-gunning cacti and strider brains at Alyx during heartfelt cutscenes.


Time to get serious with... Serious Sam 2!

There's not much to say here besides: It's hilarious, it's completely brainless, and it's fun as hell. If you couldn't give two fucks about a coherent story, and just want to blow shit up with some friends, this is your game.


Bringing the FPS category to a close is the awesome RPFPS... BORDERLANDS!

Borderlands is a first person shooter with experience/leveling, a diablo-esque loot grind, four classes to choose from (each with three talent trees to spend points in), vehicular combat, a fairly large open world, and lots of humor. It does a lot of things at once, and does them all quite well. This is a game that was built 100% for coop, and it shows.


I'll do a write up on other genres if people are actually interested in this. There's just too many awesome coop games to cover in one post.

 

[Dead Guy]

During the great co-op depression, some games that always allowed for it throughout the campaign were soldier FPS like Ghost Recon and Operation Flashpoint.

GRAW2 and OF: Dragon Rising are pretty great 4-player games imo.

 

[SkuLL]

The game is Left 4 Dead.

I haven't played the second, but as the SkuLL says it must be just as good or better.

Depends what you like. I can honestly say that the games are equally good, depending on your taste at the moment.

L4D1 is way more 'realistic' (as far as killing thousands of zombies can be called realistic), and as such it fits more into the style of your classic zombie movie - the locations are more atmospheric and the lack of melee weapons gives it an extra kick of adrenaline in some parts. For some reason, it plays a bit nicer for me, I'm not sure why (probably because there are more hardcore fans on the public servers).

L4D2 focuses a lot more on the fun part - there's more zombies and zombie types, and melee weapons, which means that sometimes you're literally slashing your way through a seemingly endless river of zombies. The locations are wackier too - especially the amusement park. L4D2 also receives a bit more love from Valve, in the form of cool weekly Mutations and updates. Also, chainsaw.

First up... Gears of War!
Next... THE ENTIRE HALF LIFE SERIES.
Time to get serious with... Serious Sam 2!
Bringing the FPS category to a close is the awesome RPFPS... BORDERLANDS!

Nice list - never played Half-Life or Serious Sam in co-op, but I can imagine it being an extremely satisfying experience. Is there a lot of public servers out there for that sort of fun?

Played Borderlands in singleplayer and that was boring - at every step I could see how it could actually be fun if there were other players.

 

[Arr0nax]

Okay, I guess then I have a good list of FPS to try in coop mode.

But I was also wondering about other genre, like, the horror/scary types of game. I've been trying to play Amnesia lately and have been asking myself what this kind of game could feel with a partner.

For example, when I imagine a Dead Space playable in two, my imagination just goes wild. It would inevitably be *a little* less scary, but you don't have to allow the two players to stick together the whole game : you can plot a way to separate them and force them to communicate only by radio, for example. That could multiply the scare-the-shit-out-of-you potential....

Any entries in the genre ? Apart from L4D1&2 ?

 

[Alphadrop]

Well aside from all the ones already on the list Rainbow Six Vegas 1/2 are some of my favourite games co-op.
The terrorist hunt multiplayer mode pits 4 players against an area of bad guys and if you don't work together to kill all of them you're scerwed. Inevitable hi-jinks ensure, usually when one of the players nades himself by accident of flash bangs the whole team. Usually the only player left is the one who has the riot shield and can only move at about 2 mph.
Also co-op sigleplayer is a laugh if you just leave the a.i companions in a closet and try to rambo it yourself with a mate.

 

[Puokki]

There are a few of those purely cooperative games where teamwork is practically always a better idea than soloing, but I've been hooked to the CoD WaW:s Nazi Zombie mode; zombie survival must be the best possible Co-op subject.

 

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

@Skull

There's a bunch of servers out there, but you're better off just hosting your own and having friends join; as you'd want to play from the beginning and be able to re-host at the level you left off at when you take a break.

Okay, I guess then I have a good list of FPS to try in coop mode.

But I was also wondering about other genre, like, the horror/scary types of game. I've been trying to play Amnesia lately and have been asking myself what this kind of game could feel with a partner.

For example, when I imagine a Dead Space playable in two, my imagination just goes wild. It would inevitably be *a little* less scary, but you don't have to allow the two players to stick together the whole game : you can plot a way to separate them and force them to communicate only by radio, for example. That could multiply the scare-the-shit-out-of-you potential....

Any entries in the genre ? Apart from L4D1&2 ?

There's only two 'scary' coop games I can think of, and that would be Doom 3 and System Shock 2. I was actually going to mention Doom 3 on my original list (It's REALLY fucking fun), but I ended up forgetting during the write-up of the other games.

I think the reason you don't see many scary coop games is because as soon as you add another person to the experience, it loses 90% of its scariness. Splitting people up like you said would certainly help in ratcheting up the intensity, but I don't think a game can ever be as scary with multiple people as it is when playing alone. I hope to be proved wrong, as there's nothing like a good scare.

 

[otsego]

Co-op is one of my favorite options in a game.

A friend of mine and myself periodically revisit old games to play them through on co-op mode (Doom, Duke3D, Rainbow Six, etc). I'm not a competitive gamer so I enjoy playing with friends to beat a common goal, rather than against another player to win win win. So while I love Starcraft and all, I'd rather play with a bud against the AI and have a bit of fun rather than work out a solid strategy against a real-time player.

The Diablo series is a great set of games to fall back on when you feel like playing with some friends. I even played WOW for a while, and the only thing that kept me there was a group of mature people who worked together for a common goal.

Recently on consoles, Army of Two was a blast because it was basically designed for co-op play. Highly recommended

 

[Mad Max RW]

I've tried every zombie coop game and Killing Floor is the best bang for your buck. It uses the UE2 engine, so it's pretty much guaranteed to run flawlessly. There's tons of weapons and upgradeable classes with stats that permanently save to your player. Lots of maps. Different difficulty levels from easy mode to holy mother fuck mommy hold me this is impossibly hard mode. It also has a decent mod community with tons more maps and shit to download.

SvenCoop was pretty awesome, but the last couple releases kinda fucked it all up. They needlessly split certain weapons into two or more weak shit guns. It just doesn't feel right anymore. A new version just came out a few days ago so it might be better. There was also a RPG mod with stats on certain servers.

Borderlands is a lot of fun if you have an established group of friends to play with. Public servers are shit because they're dominated by laggy Germans with hacked gear. Most of the DLC is actually good and packed with content. The Gamespy based server browser still sucks ass. Before you start playing you have to edit a bunch of ini files to remedy the severe case of consolitis the game suffers all over the place. Once you get everything setup and start playing it can be addictive.

AvP Classic has a coop mode worth checking out. Up to 8 players (predators/marines) fight endless waves of aliens in a bunch of environments reminiscent of the original movies. There's no real goal other than to survive and ruin shit.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

Played both Gears of War with a friend over XBL. It was the shit.

 

[shihonage]

FPS

First up... Gears of War!

It's a console port, yeah, but they did a great job with it. If you've never played it before, and like shooters; DEFINITELY give this one a try. You won't be disappointed.

I LOVED Gears of War co-op on PC. Passed it with my cousin. It was EPIC.

But everyone else on the Internet hates the game, because they were playing it single-player. Boo-hoo.

P.S. and Epic/MS really fucked up the patching process. MS Live is malfunctioning in the box, you have to get an obscure manual patch before anything works.

 

[PainlessDocM]

The Gamespy based server browser still sucks ass. Before you start playing you have to edit a bunch of ini files to remedy the severe case of consolitis the game suffers all over the place. Once you get everything setup and start playing it can be addictive.

This is true and very annoying as this game is meant to be played online..., an easy solution is to use Gameranger. Works flawlessly haven't touched the build in Gamespy system since.

http://www.gameranger.com/

 

[Bal-Sagoth]

Dead Rising 2 comes out in about a week and will have online co-op. That is the the type of game where I feel co-op is not just a gimmick and will greatly increase it's value. Running around mindlessly killing thousands of zombies with random creations with a friend sounds like a blast.


And yeah obviously PS3/360 are the main platforms, not sure if it is getting a PC port or not.

 

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

It's coming out for the PC at the same time as the Consoles (in 9 days). I was pretty hyped for it originally, but after seeing that horrible paid demo in action; I'm not too impressed. Hopefully the real game delivers.

 

[mor]

I was wondering why there aren't more games that propose a cooperative mode to play with a few mates.

because most dont enjoy coop? since coop suggest that you need to have pp-l who actually cooperate! and unless you play hardcore with invites you will most likely to tear your hair off in frustration, because 99% of all FPS MP are 30 person deathmatch.

the only exception i know of is L4d, which was designed for coop and with steam social options you dont need go overboard to play, after a week you have more then enough for casual friends only games. (4-8 players its not 24-30)

Arcanum... Baldur's Gate.

in my opinion RPG's never meant to be played in coops, i prefer dev's spend more time on personalizing the experience for us, rather than make it even more generic and accommodate more pp-l in.

Back in the day, I used to play UNREAL TOURNAMENT (correction: used to kick some serious ass!). The first one. It had the Assault mode: big map with a set of objectives where one team defends and one team works their way through the objectives towards the finale. After X minutes (or completion of all objectives), the teams swap. Fun. And it was the first time I really played with someone else online.

i remember this one but for me its Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was the one.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Time to get serious with... Serious Sam 2!

Oh please, SS2 was utterly boring and uninspired, with repetitive levels. I'd suggest First and Second encounter instead.