The Top 10 Co-Op Games of All Time

I've always felt that cooperative modes have gotten the short end of the stick. Everyone laughs them off in favor of competitive multiplayer, but I know Daniel and I had some great times growing up playing many a co-op mode. There is something uniquely satisfying about combining our unique and vast powers together to form some kind of unstoppable team (cue high-fives). Note that I have not included any sports games--since there are so many and I think of co-op more in terms of completing some sort of campaign mode rather then playing on a sports team--or any games where you play together mostly in arcade mode as opposed to story mode (something like Turok: Rage Wars comes to mind). Anyways, we're off!

10.) Guitar Hero series: Not the most notable co-op ever (can you tell I'm straining to include entries?), co-op in the Guitar Hero series meant that one person played lead guitar (the highly sought-after spot which I often hogged) and the other had to play either bass (shit-tastic) or rhythm guitar (pretty close to it). I had some good times with Mike as we tried to beat all the songs in the game ("Hangar 18" of course proved particularly challenging, and as I remember we were only able to beat it with me playing the bass part for whatever reason). This is pretty fun to play on the hardest songs, where it's a fight for survival. Another thing we tried to do was beat "Through the Fire and Flames," and we made it up to the end of the solo, but as both rhythm and lead parts have to solo a lot--and as the solos are easily the hardest in the entire series--we were never able to pass this. At least we made it past the intro, which is more than most teams could say. I would love one day to have a competitive team so that we could battle other teams and perhaps have matching uniforms.
9.) Batman Forever: Do I remember that much about the co-op on this? Not really. You could make a case that I shouldn't include it on this list since I really can't say much about it, but one thing I do remember about Batman Forever (on the Genesis) is that it made me want to go out to a toy store and find Batman's gadget belt, complete with smoke pellets, grappling hook, and the plethora of other gadgets he used in this underrated SEGA game. Daniel and I undoubtedly didn't make it very far, but we tried our hardest (not really).
8.) X-Wing: Not often on a co-op best-of list do you see a PC game that doesn't offer online co-op. No--we played co-op ON THE SAME KEYBOARD. Haha. Our system revolved around (I believe) Daniel controlling the mouse and me hitting a random button to fire at spaceships in this Star Wars-themed space simulator. This was a very early period in our gaming lives, but a rich one. Complete with the soothing sounds of the Z104 radio station in the background (playing such notables as "Waterfalls," the entire soundtrack from Romeo+Juliet [most importantly "Lovefool"], and of course, the oft-mentioned No Doubt), this was a great experience that, like many of our early gaming and other life-experiences, didn't really make sense. We probably didn't beat many levels, and we certainly didn't know how to play the game correctly, but we did have a great time and I look back on this pre-CD-ROM computer game with fondness.
7.) Twisted Metal: Black: A period not spoken of too often, since I gave the game back eventually to whoever rightly owned it (a Round Hill kid perhaps?), Daniel and I almost beat this game during a quick run that we made at the game's co-op mode. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to beat the bosses, and ultimately we were never able to outwit the final boss of this game. If only we had had more time with the game, undoubtedly we would've solved this bitch of a boss, but unfortunately we will forever remain the bitches.
6.) Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy: like X-Wing (although that is really supposed to be only a one-player game), this is a co-op game where you and your friend both control different parts of the same character. In this case, one person controls your character's movement, while the other controls his psychic powers (which was the selling point of this sadly underplayed game). Daniel and I were always players willing to give interesting or underappreciated games the benefit of the doubt, and this is no exception. Because both of us controlled various aspects of the same person, this actually did require quite a bit of teamwork, which added to the fun of an already interesting story mode (complete with various bad guys representing different psi-powers and trips to such interesting places as the Caspian Sea and God knows where else).
5.) TimeSplitters 2: This is just a classic FPS that allows you to relieve the glories of single-player mode with a friend. It raises the question of why more shooters don't have this feature. This was a game from the classic PS2 renaissance of freshman-junior years for Daniel, Greg, and me. We were somehow able to recapture the glory days of the N64 in the tremendous variety of games that the PS2 offered us. TimeSplitters is one of the most iconic games of this time period, and we basically did all that you could do in this game. We did story mode, we did arcade mode, we did fucking Virus mode for hours on end, and we did co-op. I love that classic first level, the Dam, an obvious parody of the first GoldenEye level. I love how you steadily push deeper and discover darker secrets (Aliens and of course the Aliens rip-off level in the first Halo), and finally fight your way out with flamethrowers as time runs out (again, Aliens). Don't forget about the Gothic feel of the Notre Dame level, complete with spooky characters shrouded in hoods and pouring rain. And of course the brilliance of the Atom Smasher level, which was like a videogame version of the campy 1960's Batman show. I was only ever able to beat the challenging Robot Factory level with Daniel's help.
4.) Rock Band series: This is what co-op is all about. Nothing is as primal in videogames as a bunch of drunk people playing "Creep" by Radiohead, everyone repeatedly saving that wasted drummer who keeps failing out of the song. Clearly the go-to game for any sort of social event.
3.) LEGO Indiana Jones: Daniel mentioned in another entry that Banjo-Kazooie is best described as "joy." The same could be said for this game, which by the way comes free with the Xbox 360. Co-op, and basically the game itself, is such pure, heavenly fluff that you can't help falling in love with it after you've played it enough. Cynical people who prefer more macho first-person shooters to satisfy their ghastly needs personally frighten timid old me. I prefer to sit back and listen to the comforting music of John Williams as Jake repeatedly tries to look up hints online to find that last gold thing so we can beat the damn game completely.
2.) Two Crude Dudes: Daniel summarized this pretty well in his post "Children of the Systems Part 1," so I won't take away from his solid descriptions of this post-apocalyptic wasteland (perhaps a social critique about the state urban America was in by the mid-'90s) full of nipple-sucking and crack-smoking. I loved that one level where you climbed up and down ladders on various parts of the screen, so you could be about a few feet above or below your compatriot--what the fuck was the point of all these sub-levels? Also, did I mention the nipple-sucking?
1.) Halo: Combat Evolved (and I suppose by extension, Halo 2): I might never have gotten into the Halo series like the rest of the planet, but if there's one thing this game does right (and I won't lie and say there's only one--this game had perfect controls too), it's the co-op mode. Like TimeSplitters 2, it's nothing fancy. Just add goddamn co-op to a solid one-player game, and you turn it into something great. The scope of this game made it natural to add another player to the campaign mode. Only in Halo can it take three-plus hours to beat a single level with your friend (as Daniel and I proved on a recent excursion in the snow level on Legendary). That's about how long it took to beat the entire Two Crude Dudes co-op campaign (although there was a much greater risk in that, since if you died too many times or wanted to puss out, you had to start the game all over--no save mode).

I have some great, great memories of going through this multiple times with Daniel (at the moment we're working on it on Legendary). It's so much fun to drive Daniel around as he shoots a machine gun wildly in the backseat, preferrably with a friendly, albeit stupid bot in the passenger seat also shooting wildly. Other games should learn something from the co-op of the Halo series: you don't have to make it fancy; just include the damn thing. (I decided to include Halo 2 along with the original, since they essentially have the same type of co-op experience, but let it be known that the campaign mode in the sequel is so much less memorable than the original.)

--Edward