I recently finished The Last of Us 2. My girlfriend sometimes watches me play my games. And while I thought that TLoU would be a great game to follow, it was hard for her to watch (due to the violence). I wonder if there is a game that would be easy or even interesting for her to watch while I play, without it having to be something strictly “family friendly” , that also has fun gaming mechanics and isn’t just a walking simulator. Looking forward to any ideas! :)
There’s a whole channel that kinda answers this! Girlfriend Reviews started as a channel where the presenter reviewed what it was like to live with someone that played games - i.e. how good it was to watch someone else play. She’s started playing some of the games herself lately, but the point still stands.
In a recent video Should Your Boyfriend Play Spider-Man 2? she says it’s
the best game to watch someone else play this year
(at which point I paused to go find this post and see if anyone else had posted this channel already).
Yes, I just remembered this too!
Stray is great for an audience
The Outer Wilds is my vote. The kind of game that can be made much better with a spectator helping keep track of things and figuring out puzzles with you
Outer Wilds, not to be confused with The Outer Worlds!
Great suggestion. Me and my partner “play” a lot of games together where one of us controls but both get to have input and make decisions, and this is a fantastic example.
Play it takes two with her! :)
My wife played Pokemon and Mario Kart before we dated. After dating for a bit she took a bit of interest in what I was playing and even started playing some games on her own.
My wife liked watching:
- Witcher 3
- Red Dead Redemption
- Assassin’s Creed (pre-Origins style games)
- Portal
- Devil May Cry (besides DmC)
- Prototype
- Xenoblade Chronicles
- L.A. Noire
- Spiderman
She joined me or played some others on her own:
- Stardew Valley
- Rust (surprisingly)
- Conan Exiles
- Golf with Friends
- Animal Crossing
- Dinkum
- Core Keeper
- Terraria
- Truck Simulator
- Ori and the Blind Forest
- Assassin’s Creed Black Flag (she liked to gather supplies and do small secondary quests, or just sail around)
The all-time winner was Breath of the Wild, she loved to watch and play it, and sometimes I watched her play it too. She solved problems in very different ways than I did and it was interesting. Example: my primary way to kill Guardians was to deflect blasts, while she just rode her horse at them and cut them apart. You can imagine how nuts Tears of the Kingdom has been lol.
I feel it might be worth mentioning she did not enjoy watching or playing:
- Monster Hunter
- Any flight/space sims (Ace Combat, Elite Dangerous, etc.)
- Factorio
- Minecraft
- Remnant
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Vermintide/Darktide
- most Metroidvanias
- Civilization
If I had to guess at what these share in common, its a lack of story and NPC interactions, or pacing that makes it less interesting to watch.
Thank you for this personal recommendation. Was interesting to read from first-hand experience!
I dunno but many said ‘stray’ was good, but it’s defo also a walking sim in some ways
Play retro adventure games, or modern Telltale ones.
Days Gone. It’s basically a biker road movie set in a zombie apocalypse scenario playing out in rural Oregon. Strong story, beautiful graphics, and a healthy balance between scavenging/exploration and fighting.
If that’s still too violent, maybe the Hitman series. That’s basically 95% exploration / problem solving because you have to spend most of your time figuring out how to get close enough to your target so you can eliminate them without causing too much of a stir.
Also Deus Ex Human Revolution or Mankind Divided, for similar reasons. You’re pretty much always outnumbered and outgunned so you have figure out how to get around and complete your objectives without being detected and only pick your fights sparingly.
Horizon Zero Dawn. It actually got my wife to put her Switch away and watch. That’s saying something.
Subnautica maybe.
The Quantum games (Heavy Rain, Beyond:Two Souls, Detroit:Become Human) are great for that. Also the Life Is Strange series. Abzu, Journey are “cinematic games” of their own. Maybe Firewatch? Outer Wilds?
Second this. My girlfriend has absolutely not interest in playing games but enjoyed going through Detroit with me and helping choose different options as the game progressed. We even went back to replay some of it to get to different endings which is something I barely ever do when playing games by myself.
Life is Strange would be a great one! Just don’t get the remastered because it’s very buggy and has a worse art style in my opinion
Tetris Effect’s journey mode is awesome to watch as a spectator.
“Baba is you” the game induces the “ah-a” moment when you just came up with a solition to the puzzle. The player has perfect knowledge about the state of the game but they don’t know the solution. It could be played with two heads and one controller.
imo, the funniest part of the game is listening to the player(s) repeatedly stating things from the game like cavemen
“baba is you, rock is push, water is sink… what? ok ok, rock is float… AARGH”
I like the low ominous sound when you accidentally erase yourself.
“Ah, but what if baba is key? Oh…oh no”
I don’t know how it would be for active watching, but I had a girlfriend that liked to read or do some light work while I played. She was absolutely captivated from time to time by Shadow of the Colossus. There’s something about the momentum and the music, I think.
