I got a bonus recently and thought to use a bit of it and treat myself to a PlayStation 4 console. I am almost exclusively a PC gamer but a console is more convenient when friends come over. Also, there are several games you can only play on it that I have wanted to try. That and the new, more powerful hardware clinches it for me.
Unfortunately my girlfriend (who lives with me) is not into gaming. She’s fine with me doing it but for her part she has little interest. That said I’d like to be able to play some PS4 games with her on occasion. If I can find something that grabs her interest that’d be great.
She will not do anything that requires twitch gaming (nothing where sharp reflexes are needed) but something like Mario Kart might be ok for her (I know, different system, just an example). Also, she is somewhat averse to violence. Shooting blocks or Space Invaders is fine but nothing overly graphic.
She likes good stories and mysteries but it cannot be too complex (i.e. figuring out how to min/max a character in Final Fantasy VII is not something she’d like).
I know that is a lot of restrictions but go ahead and recommend whatever if you think it is interesting. Preferably something we can play together but single player is fine too.
Here’s what I get with Mrs. Cups who’s pretty much the same way:
All the Lego Games: I think, right now, all that’s available on 4 is Lego Harry Potter, Marvel somethingorother and Jurassic Park. Either way, the games are fun, easy and don’t require much in the way of “skill” (although platform jumping can get really frustrating). Bonus points if you’re a fan of one of the properties, it makes it way more fun. The only word of warning I have for the newer Lego games is they’re pretty open world and you don’t have to be in the same area to play them. So the screen can get a bit confusing.
The Sims 4: It’s the Sims (I’m sure you’re aware of it). It’s fun to create a character between the two of you and you can dictate their life. It’s not a traditional 2-player game, but it’s one you can easily play together.
EA Sports Golf: This is easily the most feast-or-famine of the group because if ya’ll don’t like sports or golf then, well, nevermind. But if you’re both OK with it, there isn’t much of the fast-twitch kind of things in golf like in football or basketball. You only need to be able to move the thumbstick back and forward. It’ll also easily tell you what club to use and how far the ball will go and etc.
L.A. Noire: Again, not a 2-player game per se, but the game consistes of you being a detective and solving crimes. There are some shoot-y elements to it, but most of the game is centered on your ability to discern who is lying, gathering evidence and figuring out the crime.
I really enjoyed it. There’s no shooting, or any other twitch stuff like platforming. You simply explore the forest and mountains and make decisions about where the conversation will go. Beautiful and totally immersive.
The LEGO games are a good suggestion, and if she wants to try something a bit more sophisticated, look at Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. It’s a compilation of the first three Uncharted games, which are actually all PS3 games, remastered, but are a good introduction to that kind of game, and have an “Explorer” difficulty mode where the combat is minimized and simplified, and the emphasis is mainly on exploring and solving the puzzles. There’s a free demo available.
You could look at games by Telltale. Many of them are based on stories/franchises you/she may already be familiar with, e.g. Jurassic Park, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, and Batman, among others, and are almost completely story-based; very little to zero twitchy gameplay, they’re very much like choose-your-own-adventure graphic novels.
LA Noire is awesome, one of my favorite games ever, and only requires “twitch” skills in a few scenes. Worst case scenario, you might need to help her through those parts. But there are very few of them and if I remember right they’re very late in the game.
Multiplayer is combat only, but it’s far from graphic, and the rest of the time the second (and third, and fourth, if you want) player just gets to relax and watch the story. But the game is substantially more fun with multiple people in the battle. Also, it’s hands down the best Tales game of the past decade.
Stardew Valley! My wife has played only one other computer game in the ~20 years I’ve known her, a couple of hours of Diablo 2 before she got bored with it. But she’s put dozens of hours into Stardew Valley. And it’s in multiplayer beta on PCs now, with multiplayer on consoles planned.
Almost no twitch gaming.
Violence is confined to one optional part of the game (exploring the mines–if you don’t want to do that, you can set your farm in the hills, and not have to go to the mines at all), and the violence is very cartoonish and gentle, like the above-ground violence in the original Zelda game.
It’s an incredible game, deserving all the accolades it’s gotten.
Stardew Valley also has really simple combat, which mostly consists of “walk up to an enemy and hit a button to attack”. (Okay there’s a little more complexity than that but not much more.) And even that feels like more farming than fighting; you’re just using a sword rather than a hoe and what you’re farming is moving around and can hurt you.
I am a SV fan, my daughter who’s 11 enjoys it too.
I’ll also recommend the PS3 **LittleBigPlanet **games. They’re platformers with a ridiculously charming little main character. The controls are easy, the platforming scales on a pretty easy curve, there are a lot of collectibles and replayability. I’ve heard some complaints that the controls are too “floaty”, but I think that’s a positive in this situation. For me, “floaty” means “forgiving”. (In actuality, the reason for the “floatiness” is because the game engine reduced gravity to about 80%. I actually like it.)
Don’t quite agree with that. If you don’t like South Park or its style of humor, definitely stay away. But if you don’t mind it, then I think there’s a good core game here, too, with a lot of variations that make it more fun that than the sequel.
The actual game play is Paper Mario style, except maybe easier, due to the mechanic of being able to fight and heal on the same term. There are action commands, but they aren’t entirely necessary, especially if you play as the Jew class and use a lot of debuffs.
My wife is not much of a gamer, and she has really enjoyed the “Walking Simulator” style of games, where you poke around and figure out what’s going on in a story without any real urgency. Firewatch (mentioned earlier) is one such. She also really liked Night in the Woods and Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture (might have the name slightly wrong on that last one).
I’m only a casual console gamer at best, and we’ve really enjoyed playing two games together (that could not be more different): The Witness, in which you wander around and explore a mysterious island. Beautiful puzzle-solving, no action or twitching at all, and more atmosphere than plot (but you do have to enjoy solving puzzles). Overcooked, a casual cooperative cooking game in which you are dashing around a kitchen together trying to assemble ingredients into recipes as fast as possible.
Don’t Starve Together: multiplayer version of Don’t Starve; hand-drawn, 2.5D survival game. There is some combat and hostiles, but there can be as much or as little of that as you want, just adjust the World Settings at the start of the game. A lot of the game is really a puzzle, just figuring out how things work, as there are little to no instructions. You will die a lot at first, but eventually you will learn. I realize it doesn’t sound like that much fun from that description, but it is.
Came in here to recommend it, I’ve gotten plenty of non-gamers interested in it. Though they might be a bit frustrated at the later levels which do require some controller skill.