Games For Both Of Us?

Truist writes "My wife and I have started playing games together (side by side at the computer) recently, and we're having a hard time finding games that we both like. Specifically, I tend to like FPS games (Quake) and she tends to like puzzle games (Myst), but we're both happy to meet in the middle. She doesn't seem to like Worms, but Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a huge success for both of us. What are your suggestions for good games that we can play together, and that we'll both enjoy?"

Adventure...

[S. Traaken]

Sam and Max, the Monkey Island series, Day of the Tentacle (Lucasarts adventures in general) have worked for my wife and I.

Civilization series

[CanSpice]

My girlfriend and I have had a few games of Civ3 against each other. You could try out one of that series (including Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, of course).

Games that the wifey & I play

[MichaelKVance]

My wife and I play a few games together:

- Diablo II (Mac)
- Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Xbox)
- Dynasty Warriors 3/4 (PS2)
- Time Crisis 2/3, Vampire Nights (PS2)
- House Of The Dead 2 (DC)
- Super Puzzle Fighter II (GBA)

She's sort of an exception to the norm, though. She also enjoys Animal Crossing quite a bit, and doesn't mind watching me play through Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GC), or Knights Of The Old Republic (Xbox).

m.

Tetris or Double Dash

[EarwigTC]

I've found Tetris to be a head-to-head favorite with smart ladies everywhere.

For the girlfriends who aren't as interested in the competitive aspect of multiplayer gaming, the new Mario Kart: Double Dash lets you cooperate, set in a theme that's not pushed towards a particular gender.

Side note: Tried the four-Game Cube link-up. Incredible.

Natural Selection

[magic]

Natural Selection [natural-selection.org] is a combined RTS/FPS for multiple players set in the future. One player is the 'commander', who is managing an economy, researching technologies, and devising a strategy to combat an alien infestation (this is the part your wife might like). The other players are space marines who run around in a first person view following orders and killing aliens (this is what you might like).

You can also play on the alien side, where there is no commander. Different alien subspecies have different roles. I like playing the 'gorge' and 'lerk' subspecies that have support roles like healing and building new alien structures. Other players enjoy the front-line combat alien subspecies.

-m

Heroes

[webscathe]

Heroes of Might and Magic. Not just Might and Magic, but Heroes of Might and Magic. Awesome game. My wife and I started playing it when it was at number II and now it's at IV and we still play it. It's basically an animated map that you go around and collect resources, build up your castle, when you fight it moves to a full featured fight screen. Awesome game, I highly recommend it. It's really fun to go coop style on maps that support it as we don't care to fight eachother. Download.com has the demo [com.com].

competitive or cooperative

[mzs]

Depending on our mood my wife and I played either cooperatively or competitively. Currently we play some Frogger game on GC. We take turns each trying to advance farther in the game. Other games that we liked in the past that we took turns to advance were the Abe Oddworld and Rayman games on PS.

The Zelda games did not work well because they took too much time in large chunks to get anywhere, the same with the Final Fantasy games.

We went through a long phase of playing competitively against one another. Some examples here that we liked were Puyo Puyo, Chu Chu Rocket, and Mario Kart. There was also some wierd circles color matching game for PS that I cannot remember the name of. I am ashamed to admit that we even played pong for the PS addictively in two player mode. That was a terrible game but there was just something about yelling, "Take that you stupid rod!"

Now the only thing we play competitively is Mario Party 3, but that is a whole lot more fun when my brother and his girl friend come over.

Since you are married, you should already know what games you like to play together. If you have no video games you both enjoy, it may be the medium. Try some real world games. When we were really competive we liked Risk and Scrabble (in both English and Polish). Now we like doing cross word puzzles together and we have an electronic trivial pursuit that we try to beat our high score in. Outside we liked tennis and swimming. Now we like roller blading and bike rides. The kids like the bike rides too.

Our list

[StocDred]

A short list of the games that my wife and I have enjoyed together over the past few years:

Adventures of Cookies & Cream (PS2) **
Amplitude (PS2)
Animal Crossing (GCN)
Crash Team Racing (PS1)
Dance Dance Revolution (PS2) **
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN) **
Mario Kart: Double Dash (GCN) **
Mario Party 1-5 (1-3 N64, 4-5 GCN)
Parappa the Rapper (PS1)
Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
Pokemon Snap (N64)
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (all) **
Soul Calibur 2 (all)
Starsky & Hutch (PS2) **
Super Monkey Ball (GCN)
Super Smash Bros. Melee (GCN) **

**One concept that always works for the codependant gamer is co-op play over competition play, as many posters have pointed out. That way it's not a huge humilating blowout if one player is better than the other. My wife really liked playing Tingle in Wind Waker because she could help me out if I got lost or needed a hint.

Another trick is to try out games that don't come off as overwhelming, like FPS and RTS games often do. Like Parappa, Double Dash, or Animal Crossing.

Games my girlfriend and I play...

[AntiGenX]

My girlfriend and I play together very often, almost nightly in fact. We tend to get something new to play about once every three months. As we add games to our collection we can rotate around the ones we like. I tried the whole FPS thing, it was a no go; System Shock 2, Half-Life, and Halo fell flat on their faces. Interestingly though, she enjoyed watching hours of Star Wars: KOTOR. She was able to help with the interactive story-line and character alignment direction; while I took care of all the fighting. In fact, one of my good friends, also female and definitely not the video game type, came over and "played" too. It seems, to them, it was like watching an interactive soap opera. (If you've played the game, you might think so too.) This past weekend, she enjoyed watching me demolish XIII, a FPS with a damn good plot (starring David Duchovny).

However, the games that we truely play together or even competitively, are of a different vein.

We recommend:

Jardinians [jardinains.com] - "Like Breakout, But With More Gnome Bouncing", Fun to play competitively, and you can make your own levels to challenge each other. (Just make sure you can beat your own level)

Text Twist [gamehouse.com] - Kind of a word jumble game. There's a free trial, give it a chance, it's a addictive. Fun to play cooperatively.

Super Collapse 2 [gamehouse.com] This is an interesting puzzle game which is best played solo.

Spider Solitare - This one was free courtesy of Microsoft. Sure it's solitare, but you can play cooperatively too.

Monopoly Party [gamespy.com] - This old stand-by never dies. We stick to classic, not the weird "party mode". The CPU's are kind of stupid, but it's still a good time, especially with more people. The best part is, nobody has to be the bank, so games go sooo much faster.

Old NES ROMS - We have a hacked xbox that has a ROM emulator loaded on it and we love to play Super Mario 2 and some of the classics. And now we're talking about building a MAME/XNES Cabinet.

...now if only I could break her into Linux.