Cooperative Puzzle Play?

I was trying to get The Girl interested in Sims 2 on the PlayStation last night with some mixed results. It really does suffer in a few departments, not the least of which being control. You end up picking up and putting down the wrong thing constantly and cooking feels like a UI nightmare.

My main interest was to try out the two player mode, which we haven't tried yet (another fault is that I think we have to destroy this game and start a new one to try it). It got me thinking about cooperative forms of play which don't necessarily involve shooting. Atlas is being sidelined right now for a two player Defender clone, because the multiplayer concept is more important to me and I couldn't get past my own control issues with it. Still, that's just flying around and destroying stuff. Shooters, either 2D or 3D, lend themselves easily to coop because it's quite simple to duplicate out the mechanics for achieving the exact same goal.

What about puzzles though? Generally with adventure or logic style play, it's one person in control and the other one pointing things out verbally. Not really an integrated cooperative experience. I'm not familiar enough with Puzzle Pirates to know if there is any coop or if it's just competitive, but I'd think that would be one kind of format.

Are there other examples out there of two people actively trying to solve a problem or puzzle that doesn't involve firepower?




tagged: game, gaming