Playing With Your Friends
I played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for the very first time for this issue’s main feature with my two kids, and it reminded me of what a brilliant system the PlayStation 3 is for couch co-op.
I have such strong memories as a child playing games with my friends on systems like the Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2, and Gamecube, but often this was playing a party game like Mario Party or a game with a dedicated local multiplayer like Timesplitters or 007 Nightfire. The PlayStation 3 saw a good number of games that had a proper co-operative story mode. You could experience the full game as it was intended with your friend, and that to me was a game-changer. I sought out games specifically for this feature to play with my friends.
Haze
Haze was a sci-fi shooter exclusive to the PlayStation 3, and by itself, it is not a great game, but it became so much more enjoyable playing it with a friend in co-op. Despite a few glitches my friend and I encountered towards the end of the game that caused the game to crash every other reload, we managed to finish the game. Playing the whole campaign together added an extra layer of fun to an otherwise average game experience.
Lord of the Rings: War in the North
As a huge fan of the movie series and other tie-in games, I was extremely hyped for this game, and it didn’t live up to my hype, but the fact that it had co-op improved the experience a lot. However, I recall there was a problem where we started the game as two players with two different characters. Then I played the next chunk of the game by myself. When my friend came around again to continue the story, their character had not levelled up along with mine and was comically weak by comparison. I was constantly having to revive them.
Army of Two and Kane & Lynch
Both of these games were designed specifically with co-op in mind, featuring two main characters, and they were both successful enough to have a sequel each. In a lot of the two-player co-op games, player one is the main character, and the other player is often just some grunt who goes along and is never featured in the game, so these made a nice change that the characters were specifically part of the story.
Some other notable mentions are: Call of Duty: World at War, Borderlands series, Resistance 2 & 3, Killzone 3 and Lost Planet 2
Three and Four Players
There are even some games which boast a co-op mode that allows more than two players. I have already mentioned Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but there is also the Tales series of RPG games where each player controls a character in the party. The LittleBigPlanet series allows for a wonderfully chaotic co-op experience where four players can try and get through the level together, and there are even some secrets that require four players to unlock.
It’s worth mentioning that there are, of course, plenty of sports games, racing games, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and other party games which all support multiple local players.
Playing online certainly has its advantages, but on some special occasions, you just can’t beat playing with your friends and family in the same room. Some of the older systems like Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2 have that experience plus a retro hit, but managing a big enough room for groups of four and navigating the sea of cables that litter the floor often makes the experience trickier. The PlayStation 3’s controllers are wireless, and the console is capable of HDMI output, which is still an easy way to hook up to any modern system. Your only challenge is first being able to afford four controllers and then keeping them charged!