Recommendations for X-Box games? (esp. co-op campaigns)

[econ21]

My son has persuaded me to buy him an X-box 360, to play Halo 3 in the first instance. I've never really seen the point of an X-box - as most of the games seem available on Pc eventually.

Anyone got any recommendations for X-box games? I know Halo is regarded as a standout X-box game. What are the other classics? Are there some fun ones that can be played co-operatively? I've rashly agreed to do the Halo 3 campaign with him. Anything with a campaign type feature, linked by a cinematic story or RPG-type levelling/looting, would be potentially interesting. I find standalone skirmishes get dull.

[Fragony]

How old is he? Gears of War is fun to play coop, but it's rather graphic.

[econ21]

How old is he? Gears of War is fun to play coop, but it's rather graphic.

He's a mature 13, but he eventually persuaded me to let him play my copy of Vampires Bloodlines (an 18 game) on his PC and he found nothing disturbing in it. I think dismemberment would be a no-no for both us (I have just read Monk's comments about COD:WOW, which sparks this thought). And I don't think he would want to watch anything equivalent to a horror movie, although Vampire Bloodlines apparently fell far short of that.

I found a good list of co-op Xbox games on Wikipedia, but not many caught my eye:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cooperative_games_for_the_Xbox_360

Gears of War and Gears of War 2 do look to be among the more promising titles with co-op campaigns.

[Monk]

How old is he? Gears of War is fun to play coop, but it's rather graphic.

Gears of War 2 features co-op, as well as the ability to turn off the strong language and a lot of the more graphic violence. However it really just amounts to a switch that anyone can flip, and one look in the options menu would all it would take to discover how graphic it is. :sweatdrop:

Looking at my 360 collection it's quite astounding how many games I have that are solely single player experiences. I thought about recommending Call of Duty: World at War (as it has co-op) but i've already talked about that game's gore in the COD4 thread and elsewhere. Not to mention they use the word :daisy: like it was a socially acceptable adjective. I honestly can't remember if CoD4 has Co-op but I would lean toward no..

As for "gold standards" for the 360, look into Mass Effect, it's pretty cheap now-days as is Assassin's Creed. Both games are single-player only though but are gaming experiences not to be missed.

Edit: skip Gears of War 1 if you have to choose. I can sum it up for you. Guns, bad things happened, terrible graphics. For all of 2's faults it's a thousand times better.

[pevergreen]

CoD 4 has no co op. Storyline can't handle it.

Theres some good original XBOX games, but many of them don't make the port...

[Fragony]

He's a mature 13, but he eventually persuaded me to let him play my copy of Vampires Bloodlines (an 18 game) on his PC and he found nothing disturbing in it. I think dismemberment would be a no-no for both us (I have just read Monk's comments about COD4, which sparks this thought). And I don't think he would want to watch anything equivalent to a horror movie, although Vampire Bloodlines apparently fell far short of that.

I found a good list of co-op Xbox games on Wikipedia, but not many caught my eye:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cooperative_games_for_the_Xbox_360

Gears of War and Gears of War 2 do look to be among the more promising titles with co-op campaigns.

COD world at war is indeed grotesquely gory, I don't mind that much it serves purpose, WOW is about war being hell. COD 4 isn't that bad though, some story elements may disturb you but it isn't anywhere as graphic as WOW where dead just isn't enough.

[Sjakihata]

If he (and you) like the Halo universe, you can consider buying Halo Wars. It has some of the unit types you find the the shooter Halo but is a strategic game. You can play together building a base, ordering units around etc. Just a suggestion, if all the FPS action might bore you and you like the Halo universe. It's controls are actually quite good for a console, however, you wont find the in-depth detail in it as you would for a PC game. It's not bad though.

[Hooahguy]

Ranbow 6 Vegas 2 has a good coop campaign. but only one guy can issue the orders and the other guy has to follow them.

[frogbeastegg]

For side by side co-op Koei's Warriors series is very good fun. Bear with me past the first paragraph.

The series is as cheesy as a lump of stilton, and based around historical scenarios with wackiness applied. By wackiness I mean superheroes, magic, manga hair, and people firing laser beams of death out of fans. The voice acting is entirely dire, as in 'Bob-the-cleaner doing voiceovers on a bad day' dire. The writing is atrocious. The music varies from title to title, ranging between 'scrambling for the mute button' and 'I can live with it'. The enemy AI is as smart as a lump of coal on the lower difficulties and it doesn't get that much smarter on the higher levels, just meaner. A lot meaner. On the highest setting you need a levelled up, well equipped character and good skills to survive the easiest battles.

That's the bad. The good is huge battlefield with hundreds of soldiers and other heroes, simple to get into gameplay which reveals some added layers once you get into it, and billions of unlockables. The average Warriors title these days has something like 40 different playable characters and 30 different stages, plus skills to acquire and level, equipable items, 5 levels of weaponry per character, and some smaller side modes featuring things like an endurance test or a board game. There's good scope for character customisation, varying between the different titles.

The battlefields are unlike anything seen in another game. Each side has a set number of heroes placed at set points, and they will enact orders dictated by the 'historical' battle. There are hundreds of peons around the battlefield, sometimes a couple of thousand. Your offer is dropped in at the correct place for him, and off you go. It's up to you what you do then, and the tide of battle will change accordingly. If you rush off ahead and let your allies get beaten up then your side will lose morale and your general might die, causing defeat for you. If you play too defensively you might find yourself making no progress. Mixing the two is often the best strategy, running in to pick off a threatening enemy hero before heading off to another front in order to shore up the lines there.

The games are designed with co-op in mind. Each character's special attack becomes more powerful if you use it close to your friend's character, and if you both trigger yours at the same time it's death to anything which is not you.

Currently on the 360 you have a choice of:
Dynasty Warriors 6
Samurai Warriors 2
Warriors Orochi
Warriors Orochi 2
Samurai Warriors 2: Empires
Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires
Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires

The games with 'empires' in the title are a hybrid between a basic turn based strategy and the standard Warriors battlefield fighting. Simple, dumb, and incredibly good fun. Samurai Warriors is set during the sengoku period and you can take to the field as Oda Nobunaga and other notables. Dynasty Warriors are all set in the epic 'The Romance of the Three Kingdoms', so you use characters like Lu Bu and Cao Cao. The two Orochi games are a fantasy land scenario which brings together characters from the samurai and dynasty series, and I think that Warriors Orochi 1 is probably the best of the non-empires series. Samurai Warriors 2 and Warriors Orochi 1/2 have the most in-depth character growth systems. The Dynasty series tends to be a lot lighter on that aspect.

The Warriors series isn't pretty, it isn't smart, and it's riddled with flaws which appear in iteration after iteration. It is unique, stupidly good fun, and addictive. It says a lot IMO that Koei have been making these games for nearly a decade, and no other company has managed to make a game that's nearly as good. All attempts at imitation have failed.

[pevergreen]

The normal Dynasty Warriors 6 gets a bit boring fast. The stories were great, but I'd reccomend empires.

[frogbeastegg]

Yes, I think that overall the Empires part of the series is more fun. Definitely for singleplayer. Slumming it with a bog basic strategy game shouldn't so so much fun! When playing co-op IMO the Empires games aren't as good; only one player can control the turn based portion so the other is left waiting for a battle to begin. In the regular series both players are always active. The Empires battles are somewhat smaller, and there's a little less scope for character building because you can issue orders which create/level up items and characters.

[Krauser]

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. This game isn't co-op but you can take turns easily enough. It's kind of like Mario 64 except you don't start with all your moves at the beginning. As you finish levels and explore you get parts that you use to build vehicles. With all the various parts you can make boats, cars, and airplanes. The idea here being that you each take turns building your own vehicles (you can save hundreds of prebuilt vehicles) and compete with each other to see who's vehicle does best. I found it fun even though some would think it's kind of kiddy.