Gaming Favorite Co-Op Games

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

Hey guys. Well, recently a friend of mine bought the limited edition see-through green X-Box that comes with Halo (I have an X-Box but not Halo). And I totally forgot just how much fun the co-op mode in that game is! It's fantastic!

Anyway, it seems that lately all the games (besides Ninja Gaiden and Beyond Good and Evil) I've been playing are co-op games. And I realized that a co-op mode is the most "sure thing" when it comes to making a game fun to play. Much more of a "sure thing" than something like a deathmatch thrown in as an afterthought (as in Banjo Tooie or DK64 or something).

Here are my favorite Co-Op games of all time:

Halo - I'm not thrilled by anything in the game except the co-op mode. I care nothing for the enemies, the weapon lineup is booooring, the level design is piss-poor, and there is no customizeability worth jack. "I'll be teal. Oh? Well [i]I'll[/i] be white." But the co-op mode is just such good fun... I think it's mostly because lots of funny stuff happens while you're playing the mission mode, and having a buddy there makes it that much more meaningful. The other day my character got hit by a grenade and flew approximately 300 yards into a wall. It was ridiculous, and it was hilarious because my buddy saw it on his screen.

TNMT 3 - This one is a classic. I swear it's the best TNMT game out there (TNMT 4 was ok but it was such a copy of TNMT 3, yet with worse music, that I don't like it as much). It was so much fun being Raphael with 1 hit point left and just doing the drill move back and forth across the screen killing everything.

Lifeforce - Best arcade shooter ever. If you've played it you'll agree.

Freelancer - This game isn't technically co-op, because it's so open-ended, but I played it co-op with my roommate last year for two nights straight. It was 20 hours of awesome dogfighting, close calls, and cheap money-making. I was a freighter and my roommate was a fighter protecting my sorry butt as I transported very profitable cargo from one end of the universe to the other. I hear this game is coming out on X-Box, and if it has a split-screen multiplayer mode I'm gonna crap my pants for a week straight.

Currently I'm playing: FFCC, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu, Super Smash Bros. Melee (I play it 2v2 with a friend of mine against 2 level 9 comps sometimes, and that's fun), Mario Kart Double Dash (2 people per kart)
I want to get: Everything or Nothing (I hear it has a great co-op mode), Pikmin 2 (co-op!), Halo 2

What are your favorite co-op games? Are they your favorite kind of game (well, there are tons of genres)?

[Gohan Egret]

Conflict: Desert Storm was not [i]that[/i] bad of a game (even though it could stand to be better), but the co-op mostly made up for it. It was quite fun taking an AI to come clear out a room while my brother and his AI would cover us/take out a tank/snipe/etc.

And who can forget those old school scrolling arcade fighter plane-shooters like Raystorm? Just boot up and blast away.

[Tasrai]

[SIZE=1]My favorite game on Co-op is James Bond: Everything or Nothing.
usually I don't get into the James Bond games, but this one rocks, especially in co-op mode my friend and I play for hours on that game when ever I go over to his house. The levels are somewhat challenging and the graphics are awesome. just like in Halo, it is realy fun because the most ridiculous things happen. I just really love this one, they did really well on this one.

My second favorite game with co-op is Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
I liked the first game LOTR: The Two Towers also, but adding co-op to this one makes it soooo much funner to play. This way you can enjoy beating up orcs with a friend instead of by yourself...^-^

If I had a third it would probably be Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. I know, I know...at first it didn't seem like it would be that good...but when me and my friend got out our link cables and GBAs it was awesome, though it is repetitive, it's always fun to go out on a journey to save a town of super cute people and creatures and beat up monsters with your best friend.[/SIZE]

[SoapyShoes]

Have you guys heard of Guerilla War for the NES? Holy crap that game was awesome! It's a top down shooter and you could never lose because it gives you infinite continues.

Secret of Mana is also a great co-op game. It probably had some sort of influence on FFCC...whateva.

[Desbreko]

[color=indigo]I know the game doesn't technically have a co-op mode, but I remember when I first started playing video games, me and my brother would co-operate in Super Mario Kart on the SNES. Me, being four years younger than him, obviously would've had no chance at winning if he had had me in his sights, so we would both team up to totally kick the butts of the CPU players. (Not until I'd been playing the game for at least a year was I able to hold my own against my brother and his friend, but when that time finally came, I gave just as good as I got).

Now with Mario Kart: Double Dash!! I can finally play a real co-operative Mario Kart grand prix, and it's tons of fun. Trying to switch back and forth in the middle of races while still trying frantically to make it around the curves and dodge items is so chaotic. Co-operative grand prix is definitely the best multi-player mode in the game.

Another fond co-operative memory that I have is when me and my brother rented Perfect Dark on the N64 and played through the entire game in co-operative mode. Him, being the GoldenEye veteran, would always take point and I, being "okay" at FPS's, would watch our backs and provide cover fire. By the time we got to the end of the game, we barely needed to communicate at all -- we both just knew what we were supposed to be doing, and we did it. . . . Well, except for those crazy, unexpected fights with a bunch of enemies and no cover to be had. Those could result in shouting and confusion sometimes, heh.

Playing the combat simulator challenges together was also lots of fun. Me, my brother, and occasionally his friend would try over and over and over again on some of the later ones until we finally managed to beat it. And then, of course, we'd repeat the process with the next challenge. Though, despite our countless attempts, we still never have managed to beat all of them. Once you get into the #40s, you hit that "almost impossible" difficulty level.

Lately though, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles has been my co-op game of choice. My friend bought it when it was first released, and we've been getting together every now and then to play it ever since. Even with only two people it's lots of fun, fighting tooth and nail and just managing to scrape by using hit-and-run tactics, heh. (We've only stopped to level up once, for a year -- all the rest of the time, we've just been pressing onward to new dungeons).

I'm actually glad the game is as difficult as it is, though, because that's part of what makes it so fun. The puzzles, enemies, bosses . . . pretty much everything requires the use of teamwork, and if you don't work well enough as a team, you [i]will[/i] die. Especially against strong enemies that require the fusion of spells to beat, such as those dang ghost Flans I talked about in a myOtaku post a while ago. First you gotta cast Holy on 'em in order to do any decent amount of damage to them, and then you have to be very liberal with the Cure spells while fighting them. And then when a Behemoth is thrown in with four of them. . . . I still wonder how we ever managed to get through that fight, heh.[/color]

[DeadSeraphim]

[COLOR=Indigo][SIZE=1][FONT=Arial Narrow]My favourite co-op game I remember playing is Final Fantasy 9. I don't know if anyone ever attempted this, but you could set certain characters to Controller 2, thus letting a friend control people (and giving you a reason as to why that boss whipped you - 'You should've used flare!!!!') Its a lot of fun to coordinate team-up moves with a friend, or toss different stratedgies around mid-battle.

I also enjoyed Sonic and Tails on Sega. Though not really versatile in its co-op mode, seeing the look of pure frustration on a friend playing Tail's face is priceless as ou - playing Sonic- drag the screen away from him.

My final favourite co-op game is Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. kicking major orcish and elephant arse is so rewarding when a friend is there to help...

~CrH~[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

[BlueYoshi]

My favourite co-op game, or genre more like, would have to be the old-school beat 'em ups such as Final Fight or Rival Turf. I'd play forever with friends, just the two of us taking on hordes of thugs that all looked alike, to finally reach the end of level boss, who was just as tall or muscular as any other baddie, then start all over again. Though the ultimate goal was almost always to rescue the damsel in distress and was the biggest cliché back in the day. I can still remember the arguments we had over it, heh, they were just as fun as the game itself, they usually sounded like: "Why did you hit me?!" or "That was my power up!!!", lol.

Another classic was Super Bomberman on the SNES where co-op mode consisted of up to four players. Sadly, I never had a multi-tap but the game owned and the laughs were legendary. The most enjoyable part, and not to mention most annoying, was when you had to find the portal at the end of each level by blowing up the blocks with bombs, where you would have blown up all the blocks and were down to the last one in a race against the clock, only to have your bomb not go off in time, leaving you to repeat the whole level again... but what can I say besides 'bitter-sweet memories'.

[satan665]

Contra for NES is amazingly fun, and you have to watch each others back. Its also good if you want to kill off the other player you can rush through levels and kill the other person by advancing the screen too far. Oh, and steal lives! You'd have to have played it.

Twisted Metal 2 was the coop game that I played the most ever. You always ran out of weapons fast and had to ram cars around (I used Axel for the max effect). It's the best TM game on playstation by far, and a blast even though the graphics are pretty poor nowdays. Somehow it was OK to be able to turn your car around in midair too.

Tecmo bowl in all of its incarnations, and the EA hockey games 94-98 while it was still on genesis and super nintendo are the most fun sports games. They were simple enough that you didn't have to know anything about hockey to play, and I lived for the occasional fights. I forget which year, but the Tampa bay lightning had three or four guys with 90-100 fighting rating (they were also slow and shot crappy) and I would beat my friends into submission with them and usually win the game too!

[Shwa]

Mines would have to be:

Halo- I love playing with my friends on missions or just eachother (missions are better). We get to go through the stroy on the very hard level trying to figure a way to defeate the hardest monsters and their machines and stuff.

Fighting Force- This game was a classic for PS2 i thought and I loved to rent it every time we (my family and I) went to BlockBusters. Same Storyline, evil person and an evil organization you have to stop...I think you were cops but I forget. Havn't played in the longest have to admit :laugh: