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Co-Op Couples: Suburban Sidekicks

Our guest co-op couple shows you the path to victory.

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For me and my partner, our co-op adventures began slowly; up until a couple of years ago my gaming adventures had been solo RPG adventures and the odd bit of competitive gaming with friends, but after a while - and with me going to sit in my corner for my PC gaming fix - something had to change.

We had a simple yet entertaining dive into the world of Lego Indy II with it's superb split-screen options but didn't really think it would become much of a permanent thing, we collected many a Lego brick and whipped our way thought most of the game.

We were then lucky enough to win our self an Xbox 360 in a competition, which led to some occasional Soul Calibur...and so we did that for a while.

One night after we both decided that we can't stand watching TV in general. Neither of us watch "the soaps" or much beyond Top Gear, QI and Doctor Who, which leaves a large gap in our TV schedule, with a child in the house (now 5 years old) and cartoons on in the day time, we needed something to unwind and a way of spending our evenings together, shooting things seemed like a great solution and by now I had built my self a small collection of games that I had been playing on my own, so I joked I could teach her to play Halo 3... she accepted the challenge.

So after a few hours of "sky, ground, sky, ground" camera troubles, dying and retrying, we finally figured out she should be playing with inverted controls. This was a revelation for her so it wasn't long before she had finished her first campaign mission and we joined forces for some co-op.

And so it all began...

Before long her technique of standing way back, picking enemies off with a rifle and being my far too regular re-spawn point, whilst I run in arms and guns flailing beating enemies shields for her to take them out. With me generally dying a lot from reckless abandon we started to compliment each other and the missions started flying by. The campaign was completed and soon after was started all over again on Heroic, then Legendary. Before long we were both chasing achievements, racking up high scores and playing 100's of games in multi-player with our matching armour and colour schemes, then on occasions also joining forces with our co-op couple friends Lee & Leanne who live in Wales, to bring our fight to the world, or of course to them and plenty 4 player campaign though all the Halo games the console would allow.

We worked our way through all the modes and difficulties on offer throughout the Halo series and still play Halo Reach a few nights a week, we've both become better players and almost always play as a team. But this wasn't enough, now we had the bug for gaming together and had to expand our games collection.

We have invested in many more games over the last two years, starting with Resident Evil 5, a game that was "OK" at best for me on my own, but with a partner, the endless in game taunts and on the couch yelling at each other about incoming enemies with chainsaws was an absolute joy. Again another game that took up many an evening playing through Mercenaries mode and various DLC, it still gets an occasional play, in the hope we finish the last two levels on professional mode.



 
Reads: 4811
 
Author
Peter Donnell
Guest Author

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aeiah
8:11 AM
9/2/2011

We bought our 2nd xbox last weekend and spent far too long messing around in dead rising 2. One problem we have with 2 xbox's side-by-side is sound. We're currently using headphones, but xbox mics make things weird because of the delay as it passes through the network, so we resulted to just shouting at eachother.

I'm currently building a little box for realtime mic communication and ill post it in these here forums for other folks with two consoles


Biohzrd451
9:35 AM
9/2/2011

Great write up, reminds me alot of how I got my wife into gaming on the xbox. Dead Island is going to be our next adventure into the realm of co-op together and I hope it will revive the passion my wife had for gaming .


Guitarse
10:43 AM
9/2/2011

aeiah, if it's just voice chat, Just mute the person opposite person on your xbox and vice versa, we run xbox 1 through the tv and the second xbox through my pc monitor that I put next to the tv and the sound for that through an ipod dock.

I know what you mean about mixed audio in cut scenes and stuff though, but because we have a ipod dock under the monitor I can just hit the volume on that with my shoe lol.

Thanks again for publishing my article co-optimus

I have a little guide on how we do it on my blog http://guitarse.wordpress.com but I hadn't thought about the sound issue, but I will be doing an in depth setup guide in the next few days, will happily add in any suggestions about sound that people have

Peter and Ruth.


Jenks
11:58 AM
9/2/2011

We do 2 xboxes, but in the same room so mics are not an issue. She uses the TV, I use a monitor. When we play online and use mics to communicate with other people, we just mute each other.


TenFresh
1:58 PM
9/2/2011

Yup, Jenks has the right idea. If you invest in two pairs of moderately priced turtle beach headsets you can then each listen to your respective systems and not have to deal with two games audio being out loud and slightly out of sync.

As much as I've loved having two xboxes to play co-op games with my BFF, lately I've been gravitating back to just how much damn fun couch co-op is. Been playing shared screen games like Little Big Planet, Trine, Dungeon Hunter, Dead Nation, and Pixel Junk Shooter. There really is something lost even just in separating to go to other sides of the same room.

I love the idea of the Sony TV that will use 3D technology so that two players can each see their own 2D image in the same screen at the same time. It would be a dream if those TVs could eventually process the input signals from two consoles this way, so that older games not designed specifically for the technology could support it. What a dream, the ultimate couch co-op split screen!


ong_elvin
3:43 AM
9/3/2011

"It would be a dream if those TVs could eventually process the input signals from two consoles this way, so that older games not designed specifically for the technology could support it."

No need to worry. If Sony doesn't do that, then you can expect a third party to come up with an adapter to solve your problem.


aeiah
4:22 AM
9/3/2011

well i guess everyone has different ways of dealing with the sound. we're sat right next to each other and both use HD 215 headphones. Note how the description says "excellent attenuation of ambient noise". Yea. We can't hear each other properly unless we shout

if we use mics normally, the echo/delay is a bit weird. ill hear her real, muffled voice, and then a second later ill hear her through the headphones. hopefully this mixer will solve that though.


Guitarse
4:43 AM
9/3/2011

Ah you see head phones are not a solution for us, because we have a child up stairs who if need be would need to be able to summon us to get a spider out of the bed room or fetch a drink of water lol.

We both joined 6 of our friends (they were online) did a few hours on BFBC2 last night. We do sit right next to each other as on an evening we have always pulled the couch forward, nice little 2 seater, so its about 8ft from the big screen, with my monitor at the side, the dual sound coming from both setups wasn't a problem for that, the only problem for us is I tend to have a loud voice and my partners headset picks up my voice also sometimes giving our friends an echo. Other than that we didn't have any problems.

Because we tend to play solo co-op 95% of the time though we don't wear the headsets often, we like being able to take to each other and not be encumbered by them.

I guess there is no perfect setup for cudding up and scoring head shots, the only true solutions are either headphones for both of you, or separate seating areas.


Guitarse
8:36 AM
9/3/2011

I posted a follow up article on dual console gamings dual audio problems today, let me know what you think.

this may be a double post, but for some reason I can't see my last post -/

http://guitarse.wordpress.com/


Mo-licious
9:55 PM
9/5/2011

Cheers to the article. I'm the gamer in the family and even though my husband has played in the past it wasn't until Halo that we started playing coop. Ever since we have very much enjoyed many couch coop sessions. Good times!
Thanks!


Guitarse
11:17 AM
9/15/2011

Gaming has definitely brought our house closer together, watching films is great but having the extra level of involvement and having to work together is great fun, plus the little one is really coming along well in picking up gaming, working his way through Toy Story 3 now


escritora84
1:55 PM
9/15/2011

Kudos to you guys! I'm single, but playing video games with my best friend has been a great way to bond, gossip, and let off some steam... we've worked our way through The Warriors, Little Big Planet, all the Lego games, and the Rainbow Six Vegas series. We're always on the lookout for more games to play together, so this is helpful!


filthyrob
10:06 AM
11/13/2011

Fantastic blog. Your story is the same as mine is. My girlfriend didn't really game... but was willing to give it a try. With much patience she became skilled and now we are a two system (ps3) group on the ravenous search for new games that work well for two.

Our game progression went something like this
-vegas six 2
-army of two (40 day)
-Borderlands (where she became a game lover)
-Resident Evil 5
-Unreal Tournament 3

And now we're searching again. We've tried several other games from the co-optimus database with some disappointments along the way.

Any recommendations from people?

Thinking of maybe lord of the North but over on gamespot it got a pretty lousy review.


Guitarse
4:29 PM
1/27/2012

Were waiting for lotr to drop in price, it looks ok at best. Roll on borderlands 2

What's unreal tournament 3 like on splitscreen and in general?

Untold legends dark kingdom can be picked up super cheap and is good for a bit of light coop hack and slash.


smurphster
5:24 PM
1/27/2012

--- Replying to Guitarse -----
i couldn't get into it... personally i wouldn't recommend it but i know others had a decent time with it. i'm sure it's cheap though!

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