Laptop friendly collaborative FPS?

December 29, 2008 3:00 AM

Game Filter: Please help this non-gaming lady find something to kill.

I've never been a gamer, but a recent house sitting experience that involved an xbox 360, helped me develop a love for first person shooter type games. It's the collaborative play mode that really does it for me. I found the slaying of the flood and locust hordes in Halo 3/Gears of War with boy bingoes exhilarating. Romantic even.
Trouble is we can't really get an xbox or any other type of console at the moment. But we both have pc laptops.
So, dear internet strangers, I was wondering if you might be able to recommend games that suit my particular needs?
My criteria in summary are:
1) Collaborative mode (don't wanna be fighting each other)
2) Campaign (want there to be some purposeful warfare)
3) Networked PC laptop appropriate
This previous question is useful, but I'll be happy to hear about fresh games.

posted by bingoes to sports, hobbies, & recreation (18 comments total)

I haven't got it myself, but depending on how powerful your laptops are, you might like Left4Dead, which is a co-op kill-the-zombies FPS based on the Half-Life engine - it's been getting some reasonably good reviews.

It's available through the Steam straight-to-computer system, and is on sale at the moment according to Savygamer as part of the Valve pack (the prices are given in sterling, but the US store is having a sale as well).

Of course, Steam is a gateway drug to a huge range of games deliverable for a few dollars straight to your computer without having to go to the stores. The bastards.
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 3:16 AM on December 29, 2008

Seconding Left4Dead, incredible game with great co-op play, with the added bonus of being able to become a co-op zombie team and try to take down the "survivors"!
posted by Grither at 3:55 AM on December 29, 2008

Seriously, get Left 4 Dead- your criteria fit it perfectly. The game's four scenarios have you and three other people fighting through the ruins of humanity to escape a flood of zombies. The scenarios are campaigns that are broken up into five smaller levels, each of which has its own smaller crescendo event leading up to a massive showdown at the end. It's tremendously fun, and there's a large number of MeFites playing at any given time. We'd love to have more people to kill zombies (and, as zombies, kill Survivors) with!
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:02 AM on December 29, 2008 [1 favorite]

To add to the Left 4 Dead chorus, the game has an "AI Director" that randomizes the locations of health packs, zombie spawn points, etc. so that you have a unique experience every time. The game also adjusts based on how well you're doing.
posted by mattholomew at 4:26 AM on December 29, 2008

It's not a first person shooter, but my husband and I used to play World of Warcraft together---as long as you both decide you have a character that is dedicated to only playing with the other person, then those characters will stay at the same level together. It was kinda fun for a while (I don't actually like games where the premise is go and kill things, it turns out, so we stopped doing it).

(I'm not sure if trying to complete levels counts as a campaign, but there are always various quests you are trying to complete, so there are things you're supposed to be doing at a given time, i.e., purpose.)
posted by leahwrenn at 4:37 AM on December 29, 2008

She'll need quite a powerful laptop to play L4D well won't she?
posted by pharm at 5:40 AM on December 29, 2008

Bit older, but unreal tournament 2004 has the "invasion" game mode which sounds pretty close to that.
posted by fvw at 5:46 AM on December 29, 2008

Halo I and II are available for PC, and you can play online together against other people, although there isn't any collaborative campaign for PC.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:35 AM on December 29, 2008

CounterStrike (which can be downloaded from Steam) is a team/mission based 3D shooter. One team plants a bomb and the other needs to disarm it. One team is holding hostages that the other team needs to rescue. One team has a VIP that must be escorted safely, while the other team attempts assassination...

It's round based, so you play a 5:00 round, then do it again, each round buying weapons and armor with the money you earned from the previous fight... It's pretty fun and considered by many to be the best shooter of all time.
posted by Glendale at 6:56 AM on December 29, 2008

L4D is something of a resource beast, and getting it play it on a laptop will be tough unless it's a fairly new laptop with a good graphics chipset.

My personal recommendation: Team Fortress 2. I've been playing it since it came out (15 months ago) and I still spend something like 10 hours a week with it. A big part of that is the fact that I found a community of people that I love to play with.

My wife never played PC games, let alone FPS, but she has been playing TF2 with me for about six months now and is hooked. I'll admit it's questionable as to whether it meets all of your goals. Here are my thoughts:

Collaborative: It's team-based. While there's direct competition against other people, you're working with your team against them.

Campaign: No, not really. It's strictly multi-player and round-based... there's no persistence or continuity.

Laptop: Certainly. It runs on just about anything. Minimum Requirements: 1.7 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX® 8 level Graphics Card, Windows® Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

Plus, right now it's only US$9.99 via Steam. If you're interested and would like more information or want to find a community to play with, drop me a line -- email's in my profile.
posted by ElDiabloConQueso at 7:14 AM on December 29, 2008

A used old skool Xbox can be had for under $50 these days, and I think there is collaborative play in both Halo and Halo 2. Not as pretty as the 360, but the gameplay is similar, and you can get the entire system with both games (and an extra controller) for less than $100. Not exactly chump change, but if you each can manage to save $2/day you'll have it in less than a month.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:26 AM on December 29, 2008

The problem with laptop gaming is that most laptops come with a cheap intel graphics adapter. Games require quite a bit more graphics horespower which usually translates into a nvidia or ati graphics adapter.

That doesnt mean youre out of luck. You can probably play most games from 2005 and older with only a few problems or modern games with very lax graphics requirements like the above-mentioned TF2. Even then you'll need to set these games to the lowest graphics settings and deal with slow framerates (which is a huge problem with online play) and lots of crashes.

This is one of the main reasons why its preferable to just buy a console. People are sick of hardware limitations, driver installs, etc.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:31 AM on December 29, 2008

BTW, youre not playing Halo II with that intel adapter. System requirements:

NVIDIA 6100, ATI X700, or above
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:34 AM on December 29, 2008

You should get TF2 and/or L4D and come join the MeFight Club! We are the best gaming group on the internet! We donate to charities, we share hardware amongst our members, and we exchange baked good through the mail. We also play the heck out of TF2 and L4D (among other games), and are very helpful and friendly to new players. You can even come on over to the forum and we'll help you determine how well your laptop will run these gamers before you buy.

Steam games are on sale until Jan 2. TF2 is 50% off, only $9.99! L4D is a new game, but still on sale for $37.49.

Come play!
posted by Liver at 8:26 AM on December 29, 2008

TF2 all the way.
posted by magikker at 8:34 AM on December 29, 2008

Yeah, laptop gaming is... tricky, at best, due to crappy graphics processors being so common. All of my own recommendations - Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, the Halo series - are 360-centric; PC versions of some exist but hoooboy will they not run on a non-gaming-centric laptop.

Also, the recent wave of co-op games, as much as I love it, is quite recent, spawned by Halo and Gears 2. For a long time, co-op seemed to be nearly dead; semi-recent stuff (probably) won't have it.

You could go old-school, though! Doom, Doom 2, Quake II... oooh, and Serious Sam! All should be super-cheap and not hard at all to find; I know Steam has Dooms for $1 right now, and may have the other stuff. Okay, not as graphically supershiny, but very, very fun.
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:50 AM on December 29, 2008

My laptop is from 2005 and plays Left 4 Dead cheerfully. Just check the system requirements and don't worry if you're only a bit over; Valve tends to inflate its requirements a bit.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:23 PM on December 29, 2008

Thanks for the suggestions all. Left 4 Dead really does sound about perfect, although I'm worried we won't have enough laptop juices to run it properly.
I'll give it a try, and will hopefully be seeing you all in mefight club.
posted by bingoes at 2:15 PM on December 29, 2008