Written By Steven Jones (Count Stex)

One of the things which changed most when I moved in with my girlfriend, some eleven years ago now, was the shift from gaming being a largely solitary experience with occasional online forays and becoming a far more social and shared one. And it was in this area that console gaming had a definite advantage with it’s multi-port controllers and split screen action, something which PC gaming rarely, even to this day, offers. It’s that ‘same room’ gameplay that consoles always provided, and which the Wii has taken to heart both widening it’s audience and alienating some of it’s long term supporters in a single move.

When we started out however, it was the days of the Nintendo 64, and we took to our partnered gaming which each title that came along. Even solo play experiences such as Zelda could be shared by a gaming couple, as one took the controls the other would play as ‘spotter’ looking for things which one could easily miss as focus was drawn to particular events that required concentration by the active player. And of course there was the competitive game play of titles such as 1080 Snowboarding, a game we spent a lot of time playing as a couple, helped by it’s simple gameplay and mixed avatars as we always tend to stick to our own sex in games, role-play more than role-reversal.

However this competitive gameplay is not always the best mix for a gaming couple. Sure when you are playing your friends or siblings, getting one up on them can be great fun, and the trash talking can keep you entertained for hours. Things are a little different when, rather than friends leaving or siblings returning to their own room, you end up sleeping in the same bed as the person you where just headshoting. That’s not to say our gaming has ever caused us any problems, but the victory is never particularly sweet. The whole point of a relationship is to share and to support each other, and competitive gameplay against each other is alien in that atmosphere. Of course competitiveness can still be made great use of in group situations, where you can form girls vs boys setups and bring the oldest battle of all into the gaming arena, but that’s the safety in numbers where any animosity is dispersed with the laughter of a good group of friends.

So as a couple, cooperative gameplay is generally the best solution, and thankfully in recent years this has taken off far more than ever before perhaps as a response to the first generations of life longer gamers growing up and wanting a richer experience than just always trying to kill each other. That said, just sticking a second character on the screen and doubling the enemies isn’t always the best of solutions. Sure such ideas allow you to play with a friend and do enrich the general gameplay even if done without all that much care, however the are several factors which can raise a game from just supporting a co-op experience to really excelling at it.

On of the games series that have really stood out in this area are the Lego games. The series that started out with two titles based on the Star Wars franchise, and then progressed through Indiana Jones and Batman and is now looking to plunge into the Harry Potter books. Now these games are generally regarded as very well made and rated quite highly but always with the caveat that they are ‘childrens’ games with relatively simplistic gameplay and puzzle solving, and rather dismissed by the more core gamer, or at best only played with their own kids. However I think where these reviews and opinions go wrong is in trying to play these games solo. And to be fair I wouldn’t ever think of playing these on my own. I can imagine doing so, as an adult, to be a rather shallow affair, however as a couple they really do open out into a much greater world of fun and laughter that I can’t say we’ve truly had from any other franchise. If proof be needed of the effect these games have had on us it would be in our history with the titles. You see we first picked up the first Star Wars game on the PS2, and quickly followed that up with the Original trilogy game as soon as it was released. It was around this time that the Wii came along and saw the PS2 relegated to ‘disconnected’ status, however not wishing to loose out we picked up the Complete Saga collection of the Lego games for the Wii and played through the whole six episodes once more, having originally completed both PS2 games to 100%. Then as Indy and Batman where released we made sure to grab them on first sight and play through them too, out progress with Indy only slowed by wanting to intersperse the gameplay with watching the movies to ensure we would pick up on the plethora of in jokes that these games always include, both relating to the franchise being depicted and Lego itself. And truth be told, we’ve considered rebuying/borrowing them again on XBOX to grab some gamer points, knowing that we would have a great time doing so. That said the Wii really feels like the right home for Lego games, even though you play them all without using motion control really.. unless you have a Lightsaber.

So what is it that these Lego games bring to the table that few other games manage that makes them so very couple friendly? Well moving swiftly past the fact they are co-op games the first thing to consider is their no-fail system. In some ways that is an odd statement, many games would be very much lessened by anything of the sort, but Lego games are not about kick ass enemies and challenging kill boxes, they are about the adventure, or perhaps more accurately they are about the tale given the developer themselves, Travelers Tales! Actually the very fact that ‘dying’ in these games carries such a low price increases the fun that can be had just trying things out without the fear that doing something stupid will cost you the level or harm your general progress. Many is the time we’ve had ourselves in stitches laughing at each other as we completely fail to accurately complete a platforming section, or confuse which character you are and wonder why your partner is permanently running off a cliff edge only to realise it’s actually you. Secondly there is the drop-in drop-out aspect. It sounds like something which turns a game into a horrible mess of casualness. But this is the good casualness, not the sort that skimps on gameplay, but the sort that allows the gameplay to keep on rolling. What this allows is for some all-day gaming where having to get on with the real world events that inhabit your daily life as an adult don’t bring things to a crashing stand still. You can go put the laundry on, answer the phone, take toilet breaks, whilst the whole time one or the other continues with the game, with the AI taking over and helping you along. Maybe that sounds a bit sad, and the sort of story the tabloids would have a field day with, but it’s something that suits the life of a gaming couple. After all, gaming isn’t something we fit into our lives, it’s something around which our lives are based. Sure maybe not the only thing but certainty one of our cornerstones. The final aspect, and one that would be impossible for any other game to replicate, is that this is Lego for crying out loud! We grew up with the stuff, we know exactly how it works and these games play on that to great effect. We know you can’t kill Lego, anything that falls apart can always be put back together, it overcomes any negative feelings to destroying everything and and everyone and turns it into a playground that could be enjoyed by anyone from any age group.

I think there is plenty in the Lego titles that creators of games that would be considered more ‘core’ could learn from to make their games firstly more accessible, but mainly just more fun! Of course that doesn’t mean I want a whole load of Lego clones, but that more thought needs to go into cooperative games play than just allowing two people to have what is basically a solo player game, just you happen to be stood next to someone having the same solo game. Little touches can go a long way, even simple game mechanics like the buddy revival of Gears of War that encourage you to interact with each other can go a long way and in general things are definitely moving in the right direction. But this is something developers are going to have to become more and more aware of as gaming reaches out to a more mixed audience and becomes far more a part of accepted everyday life.