I'm looking to find some sort of pc game my wife and I can play cooperatively, that doesn't require you to physically sit on your butt staring attentively at the screen for more than one hour at a time.
Some background:
She's a typical sanguine personality. She enjoys things like Zuma and Snood, but hates things like EQ. She likes Mario and Zelda but hates Unreal Tournament. I want to find something we could do a few times a week and both have fun at. Be it a board game or turn-based thing or an RTS, my question is this - what would be a good game to introduce the cooperative play aspect of gaming to someone that doesn't like anything a typical guy gamer would like?
When I've had the time to play a game I haven't played much other than EQ for the last 5 years, so for those of you with a broader range of experience, please assist!
My GF also dislikes FPS games and RTS games but she really enjoys point-and-click type games. Whenever we play co-op games, it's always something like Diablo II (PC) or Champions of Norrath (PS2). With those types of games you can put 30 minutes into it and still walk away with some progress.
Baldurs Gate 2 for the PS2 is a great mindlessly easy coop game. You may want to give COH a try. Its MMORPG, but its mindless easy fun and fast paced with short missions you can easily rifle off in 10 minutes or so. If you really want to give an RTS a shot, WC3 is probably your best bet, just let her play the tutorials and start out with the odds stacked heavily in your favor until she gets the hang of it. Otherwise, you might want to give a look at NWN.
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .
Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
A friend of mine that used to play EQ a lot would play Diablo with his wife to settle her gaming nerves. You can acomplish a lot in an hour and save anywhere. But, I dunno if that is considered like eq or like zelda or what heh, so maybe it doesnt work.
I have a copy of NWN we can try out. Is there a similar type game that doesn't have a fantasy setting? She seems to have a hangup about makebelieve creatures. Tips on overcoming said hangup also welcome
Have you looked at SWG? You can progress in the game and never kill a single thing depending on what carrer you choose. Its also very mission based, most if not all of them can be done in under 30 min. Its not near the pain starting up with money and gear as EQ was. You can be naked and nearly as effective as a fully armored player.
I have to chime in with the Settlers appreciation. It's one of my favorite board games. The Seafarer's expansion pack is fun, but the Knights & Cities is just too damn complicated.
