2 vs 1 Games?

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IdesofMarch

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Dec 2, 2012
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Hey, I've recently been finding myself in situations where I have 3 players and no games worth playing.

The problem is that a lot of the free for all games we've played tend to cater to a sort of conservative opportunist strategy where the first two to fight each other inevitably lose to the unmolested third, barring some giant gap in skill between players. This either makes the game very boring or forces the players to commit to a subpar strategy in order to keep it fun (which, naturally, is abandoned as soon as the game gets close).

Golf games are fine, I suppose, though they lack much in the way of interactivity. Ditto for a lot of racing games, kart racers largely excluded. Co-op is great, but we've played most of the well-known beat 'em ups to death by now, and the selection really tapers off outside of that category (I'm aware that co-op RPGs exist, but so far we've tried Secret of Mana and one of the old Gauntlet games and they were both pretty miserable experiences).

What I'd really like to find is a good 2v1 game that either has been balanced towards that mode intentionally by the developers or has some variable balance that can be used to make 2v1 interesting. When I was younger I'd always push for Scotland Yard in situations where we only had 3 players - cat and mouse is a favorite dynamic of mine and the conveyance of information between the police adds a lot to the game. Sadly, it's both a board game and a game that I no longer have.

In terms of actual video games, the best 2v1 matches I've had have been in some Advance Wars custom maps, which took a fair bit of fine tuning, and in that fairly sub-par Dreamcast Spawn game, which was unbalanced in such a way that it could create pretty interesting 2v1 scenarios simply by limiting character choice. I've tried a few other games with handicap options (Halo, Smash Bros., a few wrestlers, etc.) but generally have either missed the sweet spot or just felt that once the 2 player side figured out what to do it was impossible to lose.

This reminds me: we used to play a version of the original Halo where one player would ride a ghost and the other two would jump in the warthog, armed with rockets and grenades, and try to tip the first. Shields were set to max and the first player couldn't shoot, he just had to stay on for as long as possible. Shit was hilarious.

So basically what I'm asking is whether you guys have any favorite games or modes to play when you have 3 players. If this requires house rules, I'd love to hear them, though ideally I like the ones that don't rely on a tacit agreement not to do X (it's fine if it's explicit and discrete like "you must pick Ganondorf" or "you can't shoot", but "don't camp" is a shitstorm waiting to happen).
 

The_Blue_Rider

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Sep 4, 2009
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Get Borderlands, it's not a competitive game, but it and its sequel are two of the best co-op games around
 

Squilookle

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Nov 6, 2008
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Get games with bots. UT2004, Star Wars Battlefront 1 or 2, XIII, Nightfire, Perfect Dark. Problem solved. Now you can all play in the same match, have a hell of a time with no shortage of people to shoot, and player vs player encounters will be a lot more unpredictable, and less likely to be stacked unfairly one way or another.

Company of Heroes is the only game I can think of which actually works as a 2 vs 1 game properly.
 

gee666

One Sad Act
Nov 10, 2009
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Hidden is a mod for the PC, team armed with guns hunt down the nearly perfectly invisible mutant who is armed with a knife and a couple of grenades I have over simplified it but I will post a link to game play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNRRn2-zS0
 

Eclectic Dreck

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Sep 3, 2008
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Any of a variety of strategy games would work as they often have a free for all mode or cooperative versus some number of computer players. Beyond that, the only games I can think of are ancient. Alien vs. Predator (1999) was excellent in this regard as it had several "last man standing" modes where one player was given the role of Predator and the rest were marines. Even in a full game of 8, this was rarely fair as the Predator was the most egregious example of overpowered I can recall in video games.

To put it in perspective, I got precisely two predator kills in all my time playing that game (likely more than 100 games). In one, a predator followed me as I fired frag grenades at my feet (they were timed detonation rather than impact) and after being hit by twelve he died. The second I waited outside as ship, lured the predator out and when he arrived, I sprayed him with more than 100 smartgun rounds while I made it back inside the ship. Then I placed proximity grenades all around the door. The predator shrugged that off to boot. He nearly healed as I was spraying him in the head with a pulse rifle only for me to remember the secondary grenade launcher. An additional two 25mm grenades to the head were sufficient. By contrast, every weapon the predator had could instantly kill a marine. No marine weapon, even a direct hit from the anti-vehicle rocket launcher, could say the same about a predator.
 

White Lightning

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Feb 9, 2012
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You should get a fourth person to play with. Like, just grab some chump off the street and drag him to your gaming area.

Other then that I can't think of any games other then co-op games.
 

zehydra

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Oct 25, 2009
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If you're interested in turn-based strategy (since you mentioned Advanced Wars), I highly recommend the Civilization games, which despite taking f***ing forever sometimes are fairly flexible with various numbers of human players.

And by "Civilization Games" I mean Civ V, because its the only one I've played.
 

Joccaren

Elite Member
Mar 29, 2011
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zehydra said:
If you're interested in turn-based strategy (since you mentioned Advanced Wars), I highly recommend the Civilization games, which despite taking f***ing forever sometimes are fairly flexible with various numbers of human players.

And by "Civilization Games" I mean Civ V, because its the only one I've played.
=O
GET CIV IV AND PLAY IT NOW!!!

But yeah, the Civilization series is great if you like 4X games - it pretty much defines the genre - although they seriously do take AGES to play [Unless you bum rush your friends at the start of the game whilst they're learning how to play, but that's a dick move].
Also, the AI caters to pretty much every skill level, so you can quite easily just add in an AI of appropriate skill and have it substitute a player for the guy on his own. Personally I'd recommend a game with 5-6 players overall, you three and 2-3 AI, simply for some variety in races, but not so many players that you'll bump into each other 5 turns into the game and have a constant battle for territory thanks to the largest maps in Civ generally shoving 3-4 players on the same "Continent" [Read: Large island] in 12-18 player matches. Shit gets hectic fast, and rapid expansion is the only way to victory.

Otherwise, get games with bots. Seriously, its the best way to do this.
BF 1942 is free at the moment {I think that deal is still going on}, and whilst old its still very fun. Jump on with your friends, put some bots in to balance the teams, and have fun.
If you want a slightly more modern and arguably better balanced and more fun BF game, play BF2. I wouldn't do BF3 as that is purely multiplayer matches online, with no bots, and I dislike most of the BF community TBH. Extremely Noob unfriendly, and whilst there are some that like to try and balance game's so they're fun, more prefer to unbalance games so their side can farm the other for points.
Note for BF2: Only get on PC. The console version is not the same and is meh in comparison.
 

Evil Smurf

Admin of Catoholics Anonymous
Nov 11, 2011
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Joccaren said:
zehydra said:
If you're interested in turn-based strategy (since you mentioned Advanced Wars), I highly recommend the Civilization games, which despite taking f***ing forever sometimes are fairly flexible with various numbers of human players.

And by "Civilization Games" I mean Civ V, because its the only one I've played.
=O
GET CIV IV AND PLAY IT NOW!!!

But yeah, the Civilization series is great if you like 4X games - it pretty much defines the genre - although they seriously do take AGES to play [Unless you bum rush your friends at the start of the game whilst they're learning how to play, but that's a dick move].
Also, the AI caters to pretty much every skill level, so you can quite easily just add in an AI of appropriate skill and have it substitute a player for the guy on his own. Personally I'd recommend a game with 5-6 players overall, you three and 2-3 AI, simply for some variety in races, but not so many players that you'll bump into each other 5 turns into the game and have a constant battle for territory thanks to the largest maps in Civ generally shoving 3-4 players on the same "Continent" [Read: Large island] in 12-18 player matches. Shit gets hectic fast, and rapid expansion is the only way to victory.

Otherwise, get games with bots. Seriously, its the best way to do this.
BF 1942 is free at the moment {I think that deal is still going on}, and whilst old its still very fun. Jump on with your friends, put some bots in to balance the teams, and have fun.
If you want a slightly more modern and arguably better balanced and more fun BF game, play BF2. I wouldn't do BF3 as that is purely multiplayer matches online, with no bots, and I dislike most of the BF community TBH. Extremely Noob unfriendly, and whilst there are some that like to try and balance game's so they're fun, more prefer to unbalance games so their side can farm the other for points.
Note for BF2: Only get on PC. The console version is not the same and is meh in comparison.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centuri is the best Civ game I have ever played.
 

Joccaren

Elite Member
Mar 29, 2011
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Evil Smurf said:
Sid Meier's Alpha Centuri is the best Civ game I have ever played.
And my mum swears CivNet is the best Civ game made. I love it how everyone has a different favourite Civ game. I've even seen a few who consider 3 the best, though I struggle to understand why. One thing we can all agree on though is that Civilization is just awesome =D
 

Evil Smurf

Admin of Catoholics Anonymous
Nov 11, 2011
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Joccaren said:
Evil Smurf said:
Sid Meier's Alpha Centuri is the best Civ game I have ever played.
And my mum swears CivNet is the best Civ game made. I love it how everyone has a different favourite Civ game. I've even seen a few who consider 3 the best, though I struggle to understand why. One thing we can all agree on though is that Civilization is just awesome =D
Yeah, Civ games are great like that, I do like Civ 4 better then 5 for the record, while I've not played Civ 1 - 3
 

King of Asgaard

Vae Victis, Woe to the Conquered
Oct 31, 2011
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Being really unlucky in Dark Souls, and being invaded by two people at the same time.
Conversely, being invaded while having back-up of your own.
 

Joccaren

Elite Member
Mar 29, 2011
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Evil Smurf said:
Yeah, Civ games are great like that, I do like Civ 4 better then 5 for the record, while I've not played Civ 1 - 3
Hehe, with Civ I being the first game I ever played at an age of 3, I'd have to kill myself if I hadn't played them all =P

Civ IV with BTS is my favourite overall, but 5 with G&K isn't bad, whilst the original V felt very lacking in systems compared to IV.
Civ I is a bit dated these days, and a lot simpler - except for your economy. I never got round to learning how to get a decent economy up and running in I, Net or II, but III and IV made it a lot easier, or maybe it was just that I was older and understood what was happening better =P. Net and II were definitely better than I, though the obsolete buildings mechanic got kinda annoying [All barracks built before anyone researches gunpowder become obsolete after gunpowder is researched, and give no bonuses. Best strategy is to sell them the turn before you research gunpowder, and re-build them afterwords so you keep your barracks and get some money on the side].
III was weird. It completely changed the way a number of things worked, and it was kinda confusing for the first part. That probably coloured my perception of it overall, and whilst it looked good for its day I didn't really enjoy it that much.

Gah, this has got me back in the mood for playing Civ. Time to install IV, BTS and FFH2 and get back into the 1 more turn syndrome.
 

TheTechnomancer

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Jul 6, 2011
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Overwatch mod for HL2 could be played on LAN with 3 players. Thats designed for a team of players to go against a single player so if you then got 2 more friends you could easily do 4v1.
If you know how to play HL2 and basic RTS unit control then you'll pick it up fine. I would play it more but uni internet...
 

Squilookle

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Nov 6, 2008
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Just a word of warning- BF1942 is free, allows up to 64 bots in a LAN match, and has enormous variety in level climates, size and design. Contains six armies.

BF2 isn't free, only allows a quarter of the number of bots '42 does, and has smaller levels that basically boil down to either 'Somewhere in China' or 'Somewhere in the Middle East'. Contains 3 armies.

I can further reccomend BF1942 based on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fWWTZ4lnm4