Portal 2 Co-Op, SpaceChem

[tuftears]

Played through the Portal 2 Co-Op with kagetsume. Fun! We had a lot of headaches to get it to work in the beginning... which went away when he updated his Linux router and Windows OS from XP to Win7, so you should be sure you're updated.

If you enjoyed the Portal 2 fun and you have a friend who likes it as well, you'd definitely have fun doing it together, but it's best for two people who haven't beaten the coop missions before, IMO.

SpaceChem also stands out as a great indie game to pick up. It was on 50% sale a few weeks ago, so if you missed it, it's now $15, but there's a demo as well. It's great fun and absolutely fair, requires no reflexes, just brains, but you should have an affinity for programming and engineering. Despite the name, no knowledge of chemistry is needed! Apparently I spent some 40 hours with it, so it was money well spent.

Portal 2 comparatively got 30 hours... But I don't begrudge the price difference. Portal 2 offers a lot of unique, fun content. It's like criticizing movies for being as expensive as books but only running 90 minutes to 2 hours when one can take a much longer time to read a book.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I think I'm about halfway through Portal 2 Co-Op, with Digital_Rampage. (Gwendel, alas, just isn't interested.) Cooperative play is a lot of fun, and makes for a very different experience than single-player!

Now, I wish that Half-Life could have cooperative play. (Sure, there's the "Sven Co-op" mod content, but that's pretty clunky. Last I checked, if you don't have everyone aware of where the transition points are, and standing in the right place before someone crosses a boundary zone to the next area, you get people deposited into empty space or weirder results once someone forces the new zone-load for everyone.) Sure, that might make it less of a challenge if there's someone else to provide additional firepower, but when cooperative play is involved, I'm honestly more interested in the cooperative experience than any "real challenge."

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Actually, come to think of it, I'm kind of surprised Bioshock doesn't have co-op play. Bioshock is so similar to System Shock 2 in terms of mechanics, and System Shock 2 was the first FPS I was introduced to where people could play cooperatively and focus on different roles (e.g., close combat, ranged, hacking, psionics...). I know anything other than solo would make little sense *story-wise* for Bioshock 1 or 2, and the limited resources would stretch thin, but it'd be neat to be able to revisit a game I've played in single-player, this time with a group.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed the System Shock 2 cooperative mod! It turned the game from a survival horror into a buddy movie, me and my friend against Shodan. I never tried Left 4 Dead 2, since it doesn't seem to be much of an adventure/story, which is a big draw for me - Portal 2 excelled at story, and even SpaceChem, which is heavy puzzle-oriented, had a weird story to make you wonder what's coming next, and tied the story into some of its puzzles.

Glad to hear you're playing through the coop missions with Digital_Rampage, it's a definitely interesting and fun experience!