Age of Empires 2

Age of Empires 2 is pretty old game, but still it does offer a very good coop multiplayer.
The game offers direct play over internet, just by IP which is very good for coop games if you have a static IP address.

We had a 2 vs 6 hard AI game last night, here is how we do it.
 Map settings:

Maps: Fortress or Arena for faster and relatively easier games and Yucatan or Rivers for the hardest games (actually they can sometimes turn into nightmare).
Map size: Large is best although Arena sometimes is a way better on largest, as you might find yourself bordering with AIs wall-to-wall.
Mind that Map size also affects lag as well as the population limit.

The rest is mostly a matter of preference, but we mostly use those settings.






Races: The easiest ones are Koreans, Britons, Turks, Spanish, Mongols and Chinese as they all have good ranged units. Enemies can go with any race, although we always skip Britons as they are pretty annoying (you have to chase those archers the whole time).

Cooperative play - the game offers a unique feature - playing with two players controlling a single nation (you just have to set the same color when starting the game). This can be fun to play - you are best to assign duties for each player - the most common case is to have general and governor, where the general will be attacking and the governor will defend and manage the base and supply reinforcements. When some of the AIs are taken out the governor can also get out and attack.

AI - The AI actually does pretty well, especially with enough resources and relics. They can produce tons of units (2 vs 6 finishes with up to 4000 enemies killed). Always play on hard or insane of course. The two river maps are generally the hardest ones as the AI would also make tons of naval units, actually the AI often makes zounds of them which can turn the game into a really messy one :) Island maps are a bit easier as you don't have those land connections with the neighbors.

Finally, the game offers an excellent coop play, diversity, unique feature to control one nation with two players, low lag and stable play on internet. This is certainly one of the best RTS games for coop.
A battle report from the last night's game will follow soon, check it out :)

Facebook and games

As we all know Facebook (FB) got very, very popular. With it's growing popularity the platform became very suitable for various games. I actually signed up with FB because some of my friends started playing Mafia Wars - it actually turned out to be one of the most famous games there. Since then I tried a lot of facebook games - Mafia Wars, Castle Age, Farmville, Treasure Mania, Bejewed blitz and several others.
The first thing about FB that annoyed me was the fact that most games there push you into putting hundreds of people in your friend list and as side effect all those hundreds of people actually post tons of useless stuff on your wall, so basically if you want to use FB to communicate with real life friends or old schoolmates for example, then you better make a separate accounts as all those posts from the games literally take over :)
The second thing that got my attention is the fact that FB is actually filled up with numerous games that are pretty much just copied from each other as gameplay... Mafia wars, Mob wars, Space wars, Fashion wars, Sex games... they are all pretty much the same - you have energy, health and stamina - you do jobs, missions or whatever they call them to earn experience to level up, you fight other players that costs stamina and you buy items. In all games you need to have 501 friends playing the same game to be able to get to somewhere, because the battles are pretty much based on your team, mob, mafia, fleet size or whatever ... It is pretty much the same with some flash games like all those farmer games like Farm Town, Farmville,  Farm buddies and so on...
There are some good ideas in some games like the dragon summoning in Castle Age where you need to get your friends to help you kill the summoned creature and win big prizes - something you cannot do alone. Also I noticed that The Five Pillars - a well known Web Game has joined FB recently (it looks a bit crude now, bu I guess things will change quickly) which is just a prove that more games will look into FB as a good alternative to get a new fresh and rather large player base.
For me at this time FB is good only for casual gaming, maybe some day one of the best web games will be there.

Command and conquer Generals: ShockWave

Shockwave is the best and biggest mod to Command and Conquer Zero Hour. Featuring three new playable generals and tons of modifications to the other 9.
Me and Adepta (a best friend of mine) played quite a few games 2 vs 6 AI. I had to modify a few maps to make the game run faster as the mod significantly increases the lag. The tree new generals unfortunately doesn't have AI, so they can be used, but cannot be placed as opponents.
Changes to all the generals are so significant that the gameplay has almost completely changed. Artillery is now even more important than it was before especially with the fact that almost every general has strong long range artillery units to use.
There is one serious setback with the game - it seems there are some changes to the AI which is generally good, but unfortunately own units got a bit too aggressive and initiative and the chase enemies like never before getting in front of defenses and even charging up the overwhelming enemy, which makes it very hard to use tanks in defense.
I'll post two 2 vs 6 edited maps and one 1 vs 7 map. All those maps can also be used with the regular Zero Hour w/o any mods and contain the No Super Weapons INI file, which can be removed in case you enjoy doing the super weapon rush battle - e.g. try to build enough super weapons, so you can suppress the AI ones before it starts shooting at you.
You can also check some other mods on their website:
www.swr-productions.com.
Give it a try - it is worth it!

Cooperative play games part I

It seems cooperative play with a friend or several friends is not supported by most of today's games. Oddly enough there were more coop games in the times when internet wasn't very popular nor accessible. For example many of the old DOS games would offer coop play while their modern counterparts won't.
For any DOS games fan we have dosbox that would allow us to play old DOS games in Windows environment.
Fortunately nowadays we have internet and hamachi to help with games that doesn't support multilayer over internet or direct play by IP. Later on I'll post about hamachi and DOSBox - how to set them up and what games can be played.
Now to some of my most favorite coop play games:

• Diablo 2
  
• Age of Empires2
• Heroes of Might and Magic 3
• Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour and some mods
• Command and Conquer 3 - Kane's Wrath
  
• Warcraft 3
• Red Alert 2 Yuri's revenge and Final Alert
  

There are lots of other coop games, but that's the ones I've been playing the most so I'll start with them. Each one deserves it's own post with presentation, maps, ideas, saves and so on.

Starting up...

I have lots of ideas for this blog, but I'll start with presenting several games from various genre's and even ages... there are going to be some short reviews and presentations of some of my favorite games including some from the ages past (like some DOS games). I'd like to also present several web games (browser).

Of course I'll present quite a few cooperative games or ways to play certain games cooperatively with a friend or two. Unfortunately most of the PC games are not meant to be played this way and as such a bit of imagination and creativity is required to do so.

Everything on this blog with be from my point of view (sometimes influenced by lots of other people, especially my friends), it will often be a different way to look upon a game, a different way to play a game... or maybe some of you will actually find it to be their way also.