LAN Co-op games?

[extarbags]

Two friends and myself sort of fell into a co-op game of Serious Sam today, and it was so fun that we're going to do it every Saturday afternoon. Play a co-op game, that is.

So what should we play? We're open to pretty much any genre, but the stipulations are these:

- the games must be for PC, and playable over LAN
- the games must be ideal for exactly three players
- the games must run on low-spec machines... for instance, Neverwinter Nights is very probably too high-end. I honestly have no idea how Serious Sam even ran at all on my laptop.

And that's it. We were thinking about Icewind Dale 2 for our next game, but that might be too tough for only three guys. What should we play?

[tronnc]

Operation Flashpoint? Diablo 2? Trying to think of game that will run on older systems.

[awdougherty]

Hidden and dangerous deluxe (free but frustrating), Flashpoint, Icewind Dale 1 and 2 (each player can control two pcs if that will help), any of the Rainbow Six games, Diablo 2

[BooTx]

How about Age of Empires 2?

[Alan Au]

Ghost Recon would probably run just fine, as would almost any RTS.

- Alan

[Alan Dunkin]

Any game in the Rainbow Six series I think should work..

No One Lives Forever (or was it NOLF2? Good for one sitting.)

Doom :)

--- Alan

[Union Carbide]

Rise of Nations vs computer opponents can be fun

[Alan Au]

No One Lives Forever (or was it NOLF2? Good for one sitting.)
I think both games allowed for cooperative play, although it was only for a handful of stand-alone missions.

How about some SWAT3? Diablo 2? Freespace 2? Mechwarrior 4?

- Alan

[Kunikos]

i can't believe nobody has mentioned sven co-op for half-life...

[Shmtur]

No One Lives Forever (or was it NOLF2? Good for one sitting.)
I think both games allowed for cooperative play, although it was only for a handful of stand-alone missions.

How about some SWAT3? Diablo 2? Freespace 2? Mechwarrior 4?

- Alan

NOLF 2 was the only one with co-op missions. The first one only had deathmatch, I think. But at the same time, I highly doubt that game would run on a system that is lucky to run Serious Sam.

[JD]

I second Hidden&Dangerous Deluxe. Free and playing the campain in coop mode is great fun. (Something that cannot be said about the singleplayer mode.) Can be difficult sometimes, but it always motivated us enough to try it again with a different tactical approach.

-Julian

[CustodianV131]

Had a lot of fun with Dungeon Siege as a beer & pretzels party/coop game.

Quit a few fun mods out for it also.

[Nellie]

Our LAN list (or the ones that seem to fit your critera) currently runs:

Insane
H&D
Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear/Raven Shield
Total Annhilation

[Sean Hargraves]

If you and your friends were ever fans of the table-top Battletech game I suggest this: http://megamek.sourceforge.net/idx.php?pg=main

You can play cooperatively against a bot. I'd suggest each of you control 1 mek, and have a bot control the fourth for your team, then have a bot control 4 meks to fight against. I only suggest this as the bot takes forever to make choices when the number of units in play is higher than 8 or 16, I can't remember which.

[awdougherty]

I'll second Dungeon Siege, that was a blast. There's no way to instantly save your progress though. Freelancer can be fun to just fly around mindlessly in the sandbox of space.

[extarbags]

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

Half Life - Fuck Half Life.

Tom Clancy's X - I've never been a big fan of these games, but then again I've never played them multiplayer. I'm putting one of these in the stack.

Icewind Dale 1/2 - I didn't know if you could have each player control two chars or not. That puts it solidly into the "probably will play" column. Thanks.

Diablo - Pass. Sorry, I just don't like this game :/.

Dungeon Siege - already thought of this, but it's going to be too much for these machines, I'm afraid.

NOLF 2 - No way it'll run, I'm sure.

Rise of Nations - also too high-spec for my laptop; I actually tried playing it before, and it ran, but it was much too slow to be worthwhile.

Also, if we're going to bust out an old RTS, it's going to be Starcraft, I think.

For a point of reference, my laptop is limited by the video processor: a Via S3 with 32MB of shared RAM. One of the other guys is limited both by his ATI RAGE 16MB and his P3 1 ghz processor. Like I said, extremely lucky to run Serious Sam.

Keep 'em coming, guys.

[Jasper Phillips]

Myth 1 and 2 both allow their campaigns to be played in co-op.

[Kalle]

Myth 1 and 2 both allow their campaigns to be played in co-op.

How does that work?

Split armies?

Everyone can give commands to everyone?

[Jasper Phillips]

I never actually tried, just watched wistfully at co-op games from the lobby. I imagine it works the same way that team games do, which I fuzzily recall left with one player (per side) with control over all units, and the ability to designate groups of units for other players to control. In practice this meant that each player had a group of units that he controlled as he saw fit, with everyone sharing information about what their units saw.

There was also a neat little minimap "crayon coloring" feature, usefull for discussing strategy.

[Supertanker]

Half Life - Fuck Half Life.

With low-end machines, you really should look at Sven Co-op. http://www.svencoop.com/

[unbongwah]

Icewind Dale 1/2 - I didn't know if you could have each player control two chars or not. That puts it solidly into the "probably will play" column.
I believe both IWD and both Baldur's Gate games allow for coop play (though you may wish to double-check that on BG2). I don't remember exactly how it works, but I think you assign each character to a different player when you start the game - so two chars per player would seem ideal for you guys. The IWD games are more coop-friendly, IMHO, because they're much more of a dungeon crawl than the BG games; plus the games seem balanced for a full party.

NWN is pretty scalable, as far as performance options go. I've gotten it to run acceptably on a P3/700 with a GeForce2 MX, so you may want to test it out. Plus you should be able to find a copy of the original game for $10. There are a ton of great user mods out there, too, so you can get a lot of play time out of it if you like the NWN system.

As far as RTS games go, in addition to the usual suspects, I recommend Kohan and Kohan AG. Those should be dirt-cheap and I enjoyed playing skirmishes vs the CPU with a friend.

I dunno how hard it is to find, but I remember Heretic II being a lot of fun coop. So was System Shock 2 - when it worked right, at least. :? Or you can kick it really old-school with early FPSs like Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Blood (personal favorite), etc. - assuming you can find them and still get them to run, of course.

*sigh* Now you got me waxing nostalgic about the "good ol' days" of these games...

[GuildBoss]

Ghost Recon would probably run just fine, as would almost any RTS.

GR is great if you're looking for a bit more realism and a much slower pace than Serious Sam.

Doom 2

Age of Wonders 1 or 2 - turn-based but with simultaneous turns. Co-op tactical combat is a blast.