I play video games. Also, I'm married. Ying also plays video games. More than I do, even. Where are the games — besides WoW — that we can play together?
I know a couple of other guys who like to play games with their significant others. I really feel like the gaming generation has grown up at this point, but where are the grown-up games?
My favorite kind of video games are immersive, story-driven games with open worlds and a lot of flexibility. I am really digging The Witcher: Fewer Bugs Edition right now, but despite its "mature" and "philosophical" themes, it feels like a game written for a "mature" and "philosophical" adolescent male misfit rather than the usual vanilla adolescent male misfit. That's not really a black mark against this specific title - it in particular seems to pull off the stereotypical fantasy tropes very well.
While the independent gaming scene is a lot better in terms of raw originality, I haven't seen anything I can recall on TIGSource where I thought "That would be great to play with Ying."
This is mostly a rhetorical question (get to making those games, game-makers who are reading this!) but I would also be very happy to be proven wrong. If you leave a comment with a game we end up enjoying I'll definitely blog about this again.
I know a couple of other guys who like to play games with their significant others. I really feel like the gaming generation has grown up at this point, but where are the grown-up games?
My favorite kind of video games are immersive, story-driven games with open worlds and a lot of flexibility. I am really digging The Witcher: Fewer Bugs Edition right now, but despite its "mature" and "philosophical" themes, it feels like a game written for a "mature" and "philosophical" adolescent male misfit rather than the usual vanilla adolescent male misfit. That's not really a black mark against this specific title - it in particular seems to pull off the stereotypical fantasy tropes very well.
While the independent gaming scene is a lot better in terms of raw originality, I haven't seen anything I can recall on TIGSource where I thought "That would be great to play with Ying."
This is mostly a rhetorical question (get to making those games, game-makers who are reading this!) but I would also be very happy to be proven wrong. If you leave a comment with a game we end up enjoying I'll definitely blog about this again.
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5 comments:
Anything on the Wii? The games I've tried were awesome, and my non-gamer girlfriend enjoyed them too.
She beat the crap out of me in Wii Sports Boxing. Beginner's luck, I guess.
I'll second the wii. My wife likes it a lot. It is still a challenge to find games that are evenly balanced. I tend to be good at traditional games and she is good at the more unique games.
I also asked about consoles when Andrew told me about this entry, but his interpretation was that Glyph was looking for RPGs, and this seems more correct: "immersive, story-driven games with open worlds and a lot of flexibility". It also sounds like Ying has comparable or superior gaming investment and ability, so he doesn't really need games that cater to widely different tastes and ability, which is the speciality of the Wii party games.
I haven't played RPGs since the Baldur's Gate series (buying computer hardware is too far down my priorities list, at any given time I can often only play games that are 5 years old), so I'm not much help. Aside from arcade style console games, most of the stuff Andrew and I have played together in any sense has been simulators and strategy games, in which my role is the pedantic researcher of the best way up the tech tree, and Diablo II, in which his role is the pedantic researcher of new weapons.
I can highly recommend all the Lego games for 2 player simultaneous puzzle solving and action fun. Both players play at the same time and have to work together. Neither is really "in charge" and so it is equally fun for everyone. Lego indiana jones and lego batman are better than star wars, but mostly because they came later.
I also enjoy playing the WiiWare strongbad games with my wife, as well as Zak and Wiki on the Wii, but both of those require someone driving and the other helping verbally, but at least you can take turns.
On the PC the last game I managed to play co-op with Kim was Diablo 2.
I can only sympathise. I play Lord of the Rings Online with my wife, and a big chunk of our kin are couples. It works very well for an MMO, but there's very little else out there that would appeal to the missus.
That said, you could give LOTRO a look. It's nowhere near as grind-focused as WoW, and it's much more story-driven. That said it's still mostly about watching numbers increasing ;)
doug.
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