Portal 1+2 - best game ever award?

[Poo Bear]

I replayed the first one with my 10year old daughter and she loved it - that is the sign of a very good game if it manages to hold her attention. The second one, fantastic too and again she loved it. It seemed to get harder than the first game fairly quickly so she would sit on my knee and play bits, but leave me to do a lot of it (with the aid of the Internet). That's when I realised it wasn't so much the gameplay that was interesting her, it was the story and exploring new spaces more than anything. That's what really hammered home how special that game actually is. The only other 'grown up' game that really held her attention for as long is Fable2.

The only problem now is I'm not sure what to try with her next. It has to be:

1. not too scary or violent or gory - it just turns her off.

2. not too hard (same goes for me really, I don't have the time and she doesn't have the patience).

3. not cliched - women with big boobs or the same-old storyline is right out.

4. interesting, fun, good story (either well voiced or a tiny amount of text), great characters.

I'm not really sure what fits the bill for that??

[Slyh]

Well, satisfying #4 is hard.

Psychonauts comes to mind, but I remember it as being quite hard sometimes.

Have you tried any of the Lego games? Not much of a story there, but quite fun and can be played with 2 controllers. (All Lego Star Wars games are excellent, Indiana Jones is only so-so, Batman is quite good so far.)

Fallout 3? Just Cause 2? ;-)

You guys already played Minecraft, right?

I also heard that Mr. Robot is a quite fun puzzle platformer. *g*

[Poo Bear]

Oh yes, she loves Minecraft, but like me she tired of it after a while (a long while though). She built a castle, swimming pool, greenhouse and a variety of deep mines - probably played longer than me I suspect.

Psychonauts would probably work on the cool story front, but difficulty is probably an issue.

I'd forgotten about the Lego games, if you can play with two controllers that might make up for any lack of story/character. I think she might yawn at StarWars though, I've made her watch the films too often Batman might work.

Fallout 3 is too shooty and too fiddly, she doesn't have the patience.

Just Cause looks very good, but I've only got an X360

Everyone in my house is sick of testing my games now - ho ho.

[Slyh]

[Rup]

Beyond Good and Evil? It's a bit old, but they re-released it for X360 last year (800 points). Cute, good fun, not much in the way of violence - maybe a little scary in places but not very. It's single player only, though.

[edit] Oh, I've just spotted it's rated 12+ for bad language, violence and gambling (!). I don't remember any bad language at all. Violence: IIRC the worst is you see a friendly character getting an electric shocks from the monsters just before you rescue him. Apart from that you get can get shot if you set off the security alarms. When you 'kill' enemy guards you're actually just breaking their oxygen tank and they fly off in a cartoony way, and I think by that point you know they're monsters in armour anyway and not humans. IIRC the only gambling is follow-the-ball-under-a-cup or betting 100 credits on a game of space hockey.

[edit 2] Googling "Beyond Good and Evil" "bad language" I found this review which says it was "Let's get the hell out of here!" as the start of a race (which I do remember now) and a few "Jesus!"es.

[Poo Bear]

Thanks guys, I shall check all those out.