Guy's weekend co-op game advice...

[rrmorton]

So I've got a friend coming down from Boston tonight for a bachelor weekend which typically includes good food, drink, music, and video games. I just looked over my shelf of games and realized basically everything I've bought lately is predominantly single player. I'm sure he'll enjoy taking a spin around Just Cause 2 or Red Dead Redemption, but I also wanted to find some "pick up and play" games we could play together.

I'm planning to hit Gamestop later this afternoon for a few co-op or competitive games we could play. The only idea I have so far is Street Fighter IV which I've been looking for an excuse to buy. Any other recommendations? PC, 360, Wii, iPad, and PS3 titles welcome. Thanks!

[Skipper]

Company of Heroes co-op is nice and also challenging. Demigod. Saints Row 2 is loads of fun co-op but unless you have two 360's do not try it on the PC, it's buggy.

Just about any sports title works for a guys co-op night.

[Matt Bowyer]

If you like sports, Madden is a good way to play against each other and shout expletives. Soul Calibur IV is a good pick-up-and-play fighting game. Racing games are also good -- I'm assuming Blur and Split/Second have same system head-to-head races. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a good beat-em-up. New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii is a great way to hate each other by the end of the night.

[Adam Altmann]

Tiger Woods PGA Tour? Borderlands? Mario Kart?

[awdougherty]

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory or Conviction for the co-op campaigns.

Borderlands

ArmA/ArmA2/Flashpoint if you're into that sort of thing.

[rrmorton]

I should mention I'm not much into sports games, except golf.

Blur or Split/Second are good thoughts... The Burnout series has treated us well in the past. Same with SSX, though we just took turns passing the gamepad back and forth rather than doing any head-to-head play.

[rrmorton]

How does the Splinter Cell Conviction co-op campaign work? Split screen? Ditto Borderlands.

[awdougherty]

I'm almost positive that Conviction can do split screen co-op and Borderlands definitely can.

edit: yes, Conviction does have split screen

I haven't played co-op Conviction, but my time with Chaos Theory in co-op was one of the best experiences I've had teaming up with a friend (Borderlands has also occupied my XBox Live group for months).

[Mrenda]

My friends who are into console co-op stuff had a blast playing Gears of War.

Also, but I don't know if there's a suitable version available, Worms in any form should be top of the list. It's the ultimate seat switching, nail biting, expletive screaming multi-player game.

[Shellfishguy]

Super Smash Bros is a great head to head and also has co-op

[rrmorton]

The problem with Worms is that I've spent thousands of hours playing it and he's never touched it once. No can do. :)

I have Gears of War 2 still in shrink wrap... been meaning to try the horde mode. Maybe that would be a good one for us.

[Erik J.]

I was able to get a couple friends who have no interest in soccer into FIFA _big_ time. The draw is they didn't have to play against me, and we could all work together on a team. They enjoyed it quite a bit and now request that it gets brought over when we have gaming days.

Erik J.

[kerzain]

Wii:
Tetris Party
Super Mario Kart Wii

PC:
Demigod (Games canl take 30-60 minutes each if you're both new, also you're only legally required to own one copy if you want to play via Lan)


xBox 360:
I'd use this as an excuse to buy Super Street Fighter 4, even if you don't own specialized controllers for it yet. This shouldn't matter since you'd both be relatively new to it.

XBLA's Catan if you have more than one 360 console/tv, but I'm guessing not.

[Alan Au]

For the PC, you basically have 3 types of games that make for good coop: shooters (e.g. Borderlands, Serious Sam HD), RTS games (e.g. Company of Heroes, Dawn of War), and Diablo-like games (e.g. Titan Quest).

Well, I guess you might be able to find a few RPGs that allow coop, but those are more involved. Oh, and I guess there are some turn-based strategy games that could work, but again, they're pretty involved.

Rock Band would also work great, but it's a bit of an investment if you don't already have the kit.

- Alan

[distauma]

Earthworm Jim HD for the xbla has co-op. I haven't checked it out but I did enjoy playing through the game again in single player...

[kerzain]

I considered mentioning Titan Quest because it's a great co-op game, but it doesn't seem to have as quick of a reward as games that features matches instead of long maps and campaigns

[Rock8man]

I have Gears of War 2 still in shrink wrap... been meaning to try the horde mode. Maybe that would be a good one for us.

Oh yeah. You two are in for a treat if you haven't tried Horde mode. I've never tried it on the same console though. Do you have two 360s with their own TVs you can use? Split screen, even when it's allowed, can mute the fun a bit sometimes. But yeah, Horde mode is absolutely awesome. All the copy-cat modes in other games since then have never matched the brilliance of the original Horde mode. Day One is a good map to start on, I'd say. It's fairly open, but you learn quickly where the major weapons are, and where you should hole up.

[malkav11]

For PCs, are we talking networked or same screen? There's a couple of good games with coop (Shadowgrounds, Trine) that I've never been able to try because they do same screen coop on PC and my PC coop partner lives in California.