Casual Xbox360 games to play with my girlfriend?

March 10, 2012 1:45 PM

Looking for Xbox360 casual game recommendations

I'm looking for game recommendations for my girlfriend and I to play together on the Xbox360. I have seen this question, but I'm looking for something a little narrower.

In the past we have enjoyed playing games together that are less gamer-games, and are more casual. So we enjoyed Guitar Hero/Rock Band, and we've played through pretty much all of the Lego games. Ideally we'd be after something similar to Lego (easy interface, can pick up for a short session, and fun). She is not keen on first-person style games and the associated two-joystick control scheme. This is true even for slower, non-FPS games like Portal.

So which games fit this description?

posted by sah to sports, hobbies, & recreation (12 answers total)

Do you have a Kinect? Because Dance Central is amazingly fun (from the same people behind Guitar Hero/Rock Band), and there's little better than looking extremely awkward beside your SO. It is easily as addicting as Rock Band.
posted by subject_verb_remainder at 2:26 PM on March 10, 2012

i find ilo/milo to be one of the cutest, sweetest couple games ever.
posted by nadawi at 2:32 PM on March 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Viva Pinata
posted by amyms at 2:42 PM on March 10, 2012

Oops, disregard Viva Pinata, it's not a two-player game. Sorry.
posted by amyms at 2:44 PM on March 10, 2012

Carcassonne?
posted by rmd1023 at 2:57 PM on March 10, 2012

Peggle
posted by Yowser at 4:14 PM on March 10, 2012

Warp is good, and while it theoretically uses the right joystick, it happens very, very rarely, so the game is effectively controlled with one joystick and one or two buttons.
posted by yellowcandy at 4:16 PM on March 10, 2012

My girlfriend and I really loved Splosionman and Ms. Splosionman, they are extremely underrated. The games are puzzle platformers on XBox Live Arcade and they have a really nice two player co-op mode. The controls mainly consist of just the left stick and a "splode" button that acts to both jump and activate various buttons and whatnot. The co-op levels are completely different than the single player ones, and usually involve coordination between the two players to solve the puzzles. Plus Twisted Pixel is a really great company that really puts a lot of humor and silliness into their games. Overall we liked them even better than Portal 2's co-op mode, which is saying something. And they both have free trials on XBLA I believe so it's free to try out the gameplay before you buy it.
posted by burnmp3s at 4:37 PM on March 10, 2012 [2 favorites]

Deathspank is a Diablo clone with a good sense of humor and drop in/drop out co-op. The second player is an optional support character and the main player does all of the RPG-related equipment management and NPC dialog. Fortunately the writing is funny enough that my second player doesn't mind sitting through it.

Also check out http://www.co-optimus.com/ for a complete list of two-player games for any system - you can do an advanced search that shows only XBox 360 Arcade games with two-player local co-op, for example.
posted by Gortuk at 7:10 AM on March 11, 2012

Castle Crashers is an old school style side-scrolling beat-em-up that's a lot of fun with two or more players.
posted by MegoSteve at 10:01 AM on March 11, 2012

I love pinball so I'm a big fan of Pinball Hall of Fame. Two buttons, short games and a small learning curve.
posted by iscavenger at 12:34 PM on March 11, 2012

The second Viva Pinata game, Trouble in Paradise is a two-player game. It's incredibly cute and has a lot of things to do and collect without being particularly complicated, so it might be worth a go.
posted by daysocks at 3:48 PM on March 11, 2012