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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?"
http://www.subspacehq.com/
Free download, free play, tons of fun. Got my GF hooked.
If you can find it, I think you'd both like Marathon. Really more of a puzzle than a FPS--it's not nearly as competitive as, say, Unreal--it has a nice blend of "How do I open that door" with twitch fragging. I would often clear a level, and then go back to figure out all the puzzles. Really, one of the best games of it's class, although now the graphics are dated. It gave a Mac-gamer hope in a dark day...but I'm not going to believe Halo is actually shipping for the Mac until I install it.
(Marathon also was available for the PC, but not nearly as widely known as it was on the Mac. And, good luck finding it, especially for the PC--but I'll warrant any Mac user from 98 still has a copy lying around somewhere.)
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$tar -xvf
Halo. My wife didn't even want me to get Halo, but when she watched her nephews playing it she got hooked. We played it in cooperative mode and had a blast. Way too many 2am bedtimes because of Halo! :-) I suspect that over Christmas we'll give it another go at a higher level.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Not sure if a non-combat game would be your cup of tea, but our game has what I believe is the highest proportion of female players of all MMORPGs. 27% if you're counting based on paid accounts, and 40% if you're counting by hours played. (Yes, women tend to play more hours than men.) Anecdotally, I find that people almost always play a character of their gender. I've talked to dozens of guys who have said "This is the first computer game my wife/girlfriend will play with me."
We have Windows and Linux clients, and it's free for 24 hours. (We don't even ask for a credit card upfront.) If you check it out, do a "/chat pharaoh" in game and let me know.
Games that my wife and I have spent a lot of time playing together:
Diablo II
SimCity
The Sims
various Zeldas
Animal Crossing
Mario Kart: Double Dash
I'm not sure what it is about Diablo II -- it's certainly not a traditional female-friendly game -- but for some reason my wife really loved it and burned serious hours playing it. Now that I think about it, my girlfriend is even less of a gamer than my wife, but for some reason she too is a huge Diablo II fan. It might have to do with the collecting & accessorizing aspect of the game.
The co-op mode in Mario Kart: DD is GREAT for spousal involvement. My wife rides on the back of the cart, helping me dodge things and using items, so she feels very involved and will happily sit and play for hours. But because I'm doing the driving, and therefore most of the success/failure rests on me, she doesn't feel extremely pressured. With my wife, at least, her main turn-off when it comes to video games is pressure: if she gets flustered while playing a game, she won't touch it again. Every single game my wife has ever gotten into has been low pressure, and generally also low-conflict.
I would say that in general Nintendo makes the best gender-neutral games. Buy a GameCube if you don't already have one.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
I submitted a similar question several months ago. You might want to check it out. It was more geared towards the PS2 and consoles, but there were a lot of good suggestions all over the board.
On that note, by the way, consider a console. I never saw the point in them, as I've been playing computer games for twenty years. But then I got married, and (as you're discovering) the computer games are not nearly as social as the consoles. Consoles are geared towards multiple players, whereas there are very, very few games out there that utilize multiple players on a computer.
On a highlight, there's always something like ePSXe and other console emulators. Get one set up and go rent some PS1 games! They're cheap to buy, now too, and almost any modern computer emulates the PS1 with cycles to spare. Get a couple of joysticks, (or buy PS1 pads and the converters -- they're out there but I have not tried them).
There are also plenty of good old arcade games, so as another poster mentioned, MAME is a great idea. You can, of course, find ROMS online if you are so inclined. Golden Axe, Gauntlet, Double Dragon, Xenophobe. These may not be the best examples, but they're out there.
So in short, I'm clueless for computer games per se. But for PS2/Xbox, my favorite is Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. It's simultaneous two player, cooperative, not split screen, contains plenty of shopping for new items (my wife loves that part -- seriously), and although it's not phenomenally long, it has pretty good replayability. The sequel comes out in the next couple months, too.