Fink About It

Let’s be honest: Gaming is fun. But gaming in Coop¹ is even more fun. The problem, however, is that there are not too many games out there that’ll actually work in coop against bots. Sometimes it’s because of technical difficulties, sometimes it’s because of design mistakes which can kill the fun. As I have tried a lot of different games with both native and mod-injected coop functionality, here is a list of what did and did not work out for me.

All of these games do have bots, which is important if you’re playing as a pair. A list of great multiplayer titles for a LAN party with more people is coming up in my next article.

Ego-Shooter
Game	Pros & Cons
	+ runs smooth on older PCs + good AI + up to 64 players + big maps (freedom) - big maps (provokes going solo) - no story
	+ interesting “story” + survival level as challenge - patches have to be applied first
	+ cool characters and story + runs smooth on PC + sometimes everyone has to fight on his/her own + becomes more challenging as story progresses
	+ up to 4 players + further maps & campaigns available for donwload² - technical complications [instructions on this will follow]
	+ great challenge with up to 4 players in Coop + shared XP with rewards (new equipment) + clever AI - needs a good PC
	+ bombastic graphics + motivating story - 2 players only
	+ challenging AI + up to 4 players - no respawn
	+ runs smooth on old PCs + only one copy for install needed, then stand-alone thanks to patch + massive skins and stuff to download for - beginners have to quickly pick up the pace, because you’ll need fast reflexes

Strategy
Game	Pros & Cons
	+ great graphics - patches have to be applied to balance game
	+ great challenge - AI blackouts

BLACKLIST – Don’t try this at home

I’ve also tried out the following things and came up with frustrating results. Coop gaming with them is no fun at all³.

Far Cry with Bot Modification
- Hard to install
- stupid AI
- performance decreases massively
FEAR 1 Coop Warfare 0.8
+ Easy to install
- performance unstable
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
- empty levels
- bugs
- too many keys and functions have to be learnt

that is multiplayer mode: players vs. AI bots [↩]
see l4dmods.com [↩]
therefore I won’t put in any links to the modifications [↩]

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Hicham says:
September 19, 2009 at 08:51

I do not play games in ‘Coop’ like you do but I recall “Commandos” in all versions, it was amazing at the time of my teenage!

[Reply]

A-kasse says:
November 6, 2009 at 04:41

I already did play all the games you mentioned here and it was all great. Games like this with cooperation was really a good thing to do to have good bonding with your friends and co-players. Although it is not Massive like MMORPG. This games can build up good team up specially if there is an Cyber games competitions.