Cave Clutter: Co-op Galore
Past Cave Clutter posts have been about MMOs or single player games, but this time it’s something different: co-op games. You see, I met a British fellow (aka Lord Crumb) online who has since become my partner-in-gaming of a sort. Neither of us have really had someone to play those kind of games with so it’s been a delightfully new experience.
We started off with Left 4 Dead 2 since both of us had it on Steam and the whole gameplay revolves around co-op. I had played L4D 1 and 2 previously on Xbox 360, but that was over 5 years ago and I was never very good at console controls (“spray and pray” is my philosophy when it comes to console FPSs). It turns out that L4D 2 on PC also includes the first game’s campaigns and characters so we were able to play through all of them without him having to buy L4D 1. I’m not sure if that’s part of a DLC or just came standard with the game. Luckily I have much better accuracy playing on PC rather than console, although Lord Crumb is still a better shot than me. We were usually able to complete each campaign with just one or two playthroughs, except for Cold Stream which we were just having the worst time with. Our only attempt where someone survived ended with only me dashing through hordes of zombies to get to the helicopter at the top of a tower. Your sacrifice was a noble one, Lord Crumb.
Next was the 2 player campaign in Portal 2. Two heads really are better than one at solving puzzles and we went through the campaign at a good pace, even with the optional “art” chapters. It’s a great story too and includes the wonderful Portal humor of course.
Then it was the first Borderlands with all its assorted DLC. Lord Crumb had played it before but he was happy to go through it again with me. He played as Roland the Solider and I was Mordecai the Hunter. I found out that I loved sniper rifles in Mass Effect so playing a sniper seemed like a no brainer. I did do quite a lot of evil cackling when I would blow the heads off enemies. This only got worse once I found elemental weapons and discovered that I could set them on fire, melt them with acid, or reduce their entire bodies to meaty chunks with explosive rounds. This really should be a hint that I’m not quite right in the head.
We really did make quite a good team. It wasn’t long before he found a class mod that gave us both ammo regen and I found one that gave us health regen. I put points into the skill that let me bypass shields so I was great against strong, heavily shielded enemies (Eridian killing was my specialty) , while he was much better against packs of unshielded ones (and he could also take more hits than me). Having someone who’s able to revive you in the middle of battle is also really nice. We saved a lot on respawn money just by chain-reviving each other. We also didn’t have to worry about fighting over upgrades since I used sniper rifles (and some SMGs towards the beginning) while he favored shotguns and assault rifles.
I’ve found Borderlands to be a fun game, although all of the running back and forth for quests can get rather repetitive (why didn’t you tell us to kill that guy BEFORE we went in there?) I wouldn’t have enjoyed the game nearly as much if I had played it solo. Although I did discover that Lord Crumb is never allowed to drive me anywhere. Ever. Because while driving a vehicle in game, he was constantly crashing into things and getting our vehicles stuck together. Mostly on purpose but still.
I’m still not entirely clear how he managed to do this though:
I guess that’s what happens when you’re used to driving on the wrong side of the road. 😉
We’ve also dabbled in Terraria, Starbound, Hammerwatch, Majesty, and Ibb & Obb. And we’re searching for and stockpiling co-op games, enough to keep us entertained for months. Currently though, we are playing Divinity: Original Sin together, which is another game that’s set up perfectly for co-op. Even if it does have female armor that makes me facepalm so hard. I’m hoping it will get better over time.
In summary, co-op gaming is awesome and I can’t recommend it enough. Just be careful when deciding who gets to drive.