Moist Disc World

Recapturing the joy of Mario Party

There will always be a higher level of entertainment for me if I’m playing with people in the same room. From early days playing Mario Kart, Mario Party and Rareware classics such as GoldenEye on the N64, I have never truly given up my joy for 4 player games. I would go so far as to say that I’ve derived the largest amount of enjoyment from games while on a lounge in the living room, screaming bloody murder over the theft of a star in Mario Party or screaming like Happy Gilmore because the ball just won’t go in the hole on Wii Sports golf.

So I hunt for games to play with friends and family, games that won’t force everyone I know to own a TV, console and copy to play, and try and bring back some of that split screen all-nighter bliss of the past.

A few stand-out games that fill these places that are currently in my Playstation library are:

Tricky Towers Overcooked Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris Broforce Rocket League

With some titles such as Mortal Kombat X & Super Meat Boy to pit people against one another either directly in hand to hand, or in speed runs of SMB levels you can have a great night in.

If you feel these titles don’t offer you enough chance to destroy your friends and family, then never fear, as Move or Die and Ultimate Chicken Horse are both on their way to release on all platforms this year.

Due to a recent sale on Steam, I finally began playing Telltale Studio’s highly acclaimed The Walking Dead series alongside my partner, as has become customary for pretty much every game, film, book, series etc within my life. Rather than wanting to find time alone to play, I now look for games that can be enjoyed together, either as a group or with just the two of us.

So, recently we have been sharing the responsibility of keeping our group of survivors alive each season of TWD game, with some success, many tough decisions and a few less than wonderful outcomes, but it’s been an enjoyable and unexpected journey.

Seeing as my partner and I are 2 separate humans, we won’t always make the same decisions, but this also makes the game interesting(or more so, as it is a stellar game), as a choice to save or not save someone drastically changes the outcome down the line and adds to the unknown element of the narrative. We have both agreed that we will individually plays the seasons at a later date, but I couldn’t be more pleased that my first experience with them is together. More than reading the same book or watching a film or series together, we are crafting an outcome and a story that will be unique to us.