Love thy Co-op Partner

So J3nn and I have been together for about a year and a half now, and for the most part, we (or at least I) couldn't be happier with the relationship. We had some rocky patches in the beginning, and we had a forced early move in, but other than that, the progression in our relationship has been grand.

A big difference with this relationship, that was sorely lacking in my past ones is partnership. On almost every level, J3nn is my partner. My partner in financial matters, my partner in raising the kids, and equally as important, my partner in hobbies.

J3nn and I met online, and a big part of what initially caught my interest was that she listed one of her interests as Video Games. There were other interests that we definitely shared, good television, a passion for reading, and probably a few others, but the Video Games was a huge draw. In almost all of my past relationships, I've tried to share my love of video games, with at best, middling success. Girls, for the most part, or at least the ones I've dated, just aren't into video games. I realize thats a broad generalization, as well as a generalization about broads, but thats based on my personal experiences. The girls I DID play video games with weren't very good, or didn't really show a lot interest, etc.

With J3nn, despite her claims of being a "Video Game" player, I found that she very much was the stereotypical gamer girl. She loved Kingdom Hearts, Jak and Daxter, and Mario, but not a lot else. She'd never tried an FPS's, didn't really know what an RTS was, and couldn't even keep her eyes from glazing over when being talked to about a JRPG. Add to that, her past experiences with co-op gaming had been less than stellar, and it was definitely an uphill battle.

Co-Op gaming has always been a huge attraction for me. There was a time in my past where I would relish the opportunity to have some friends over for a few rounds of Red Faction II, in which I would thoroughly trounce them, but as the console games started moving into the online realm, I quickly realized that if I wanted to hang with the big boys, it would take a lot more dedication than I had the desire to put into it. Single player games of course, have, and always will have their place in my gaming life, but Co-Op gaming is something that I can share with a friend, and build on thos shared relationships.

Enter J3nn. We started slow, easing into it. Because of the nature of the beast, Shooters were the easiest transition into the co-op genre, since there are so many to choose from. I realize that maybe something a bit more basic, a beat em up, etc, may have been a better choice, but we needed to see if this girl could hang or not. Halo was a game that I've always wanted to get into, partially because of the co-op element, partly because of the hype, but I never ended up playing through it. Now I had a potential lifelong co-op partner, and an excellent opportunity to get through this game. Halo was a good experience. It was a steep learning curve for J3nn, but she definitely stepped up, and kicked some ass. We finished Halo, and moved onto some other games. We tried Kane and Lynch, but found the camera was poor. Did Army of Two, and loved it. There were more, but that's not really the point.

Now that we had the co-op gaming under way, and a loooooong list of titles for us to work through, it was time for me to let J3nn spread her wings as a gamer. She still had some holdover titles from her single days, Katamari, the lego games, but there realy wasn't a lot for her to do on her own. I knew that J3nn was really coming in to her own as a gamer, and that there was a vast library of titles that she would really enjoy, but I think the prospect of entering new territory, without me to help her, was a bit intimidating.

Fable II was probably the break through title. The game that she actively wanted to play, on her own. I originally bought it for myself, or maybe for us to play together, since it was co-op, but the co-op camera made it almost impossible to play, and Fallout 3 came out soon afterwards, so it went to the wayside for me. J3nn however loved it. She couldn't get enough of it, and it didn't take long at all before she surpassed me in progress. It still remains one of the only games where she has a significant ammount more of achievements than I.

Fable was a nice entry point, but it was still too close to her former comfort zone. I needed to show her some variety, let her realize that she was a gamer now. I had been needling her to play Fallout 3 for a long time, because I knew she could. It was a first person, action RPG, that was rich with story, environment and flavour. It was right up her alley, but she was put off by the intimidation factor of having to learn a new genre.

It took the gamer competition between her and Kevin (germoid) to finally push her into it, as she needed a new game to get into. She started playing, and after a few hours, found she couldn't stop. Once she got into the wasteland and started meeting its inhabitants, exploring its locations, and killing its threats, I knew she was hooked. She's been playing every chance she gets, and has been loving every minute of it. She's almost caught up to me in time spent, she's more than halfway to my current characters level, and she's managed to pick up a few achievements I don't have yet.

The best thing about her playing, is that now we have another thing we can share. As much as Co-Op gaming has given us those shared experiences, they were just that, shared experiences. There were plenty of times in Saints Row or Army of Two where we would be driving around and re-create funny or tense moments in the game, and that was great, but with Fallout, we create our own personal experiences with the game, and then share them afterwards. We can trade strategies, exchange stories on how we dealt with certain situations, and pass on information of hidden items we found. Despite the fact that we're not playing together, its become one of favourite things to share.