The Co-op Wars

In my teenage years I had a best friend and I had some angry parents, who hated said best friend with a passion. He dropped out of school, he was a fat and lazy bastard and I looked like a real catch next to him. But I wasn't friends with him because he made me look good. He was my best friend, because we both loved junk food and video games. This is the kind of stuff that makes everyone love those Pegg/Frost movies. Because you look at these guys and think, "Yeah, that's us." At the very least, you'll cry a bit on the inside and wish you had a friendship like that with someone. You know, Shaun of the Dead and all that.
Having a best friend was mandatory in the 8 and 16bit era. Golden Axe, Double Dragon, Turtles in Time, Secret of Mana, Knights of the Round - you could only truly enjoy these games with a friend. Not any friend, not some item-hogging, teamkilling bastard, but a guy who wouldn't hesitate to give his last extra life for you. Someone just as stupid and nerdy as you, who would live these games, fight by your side until the credit roll. No homo!

Teamplay and gaming skills were not the only requirement for this kind of special bond. One would also have to sport a healthy dose of tolerance. Among guys, it's perfectly normal to wake up on the couch one morning at 2pm, find your gamer friend sleeping on the floor in only his underpants, his face stuck in a half-empty pizza carton, his butt raised up into the air. He would respond to your kicking with a loud fart. A sign of life, which also meant: "I'm ready for more gaming, let me just eat the rest of my pizza and grab another beer." Men don't need words.
Sadly, some people grow up, get a job, start a family and then they have to be all mature. No weekend-long gaming sessions, no beating the piss out of Death Adder, no more battles against the Foot Clan. And once we took video games out of the picture, it turned out we had very little in common and my best friend was a pretty dumb, boring fucker. No hard feelings.

Being the lucky bastard that I am, the whole 'get a job or spend all day gaming' issue has pretty much fixed itself for me. As for having a talented gaming partner for all those cooperative multiplayer games, well...

I got it covered. Maybe it's time for a better camera, though.

Please take note that she is not licking a fucking gamepad and/or biting the cord on this picture.
Now, I'm not gonna give you any of this 'hurrdurr my gaming buddy has a vagina and I'm allowed to touch it' bullcrap. Whenever people do this to me, I automatically assume they're either full of shit or the girl they're referring to is hideously ugly.
So yeah, in a way we've got the old Pegg/Frost thing going, with one pair of tits being slightly less fat and hairy, but with all the pizza, farting, underpants gaming and all the disgusting guy stuff, that suddenly turns borderline sexy or into some kind of fetish when there's a girl involved. Not the farting. I really wish she wouldn't do that all the time.

Ironically, whenever my family decides to contact me, they do so with no end of pity and self-entitled compassion. They consider me some kind of cave-dwelling underachiever, who will never get to enjoy the finer things in life, such as driving around Italy in a fancy sports car or ordering a Spanish maid to clean my four bathrooms. Yes, my parents used to be wealthy like that and I'm a bit of a bad apple, if you get my meaning.
Well. I'm preparing for the Bioware Live Stream, eating tasty Serrano Ham straight out of the packet and scratching my nuts (with the OTHER hand!), because I refuse to wear pants in my office. Fuck Italy, fuck living in a big, fancy house, fuck slaving away in an office 12 hours a day. Cheers!

Alas, not everything is perfect in our happy gamer relationship. And that's because women, much unlike men, are not designed to be cooperative in any shape, form or way. Anyone who has ever witnessed a pack of lady-hyenas chatting about a female coworker on any average day at the office will know.
"That's the third time she's wearing that dress! I wouldn't dare walk around like that if my legs were so fat!"
-"She could at least shave them. And, just between us, that also goes for her face."
"What do you mean?"
-"Didn't you see? She's growing a beard! She's not a real blonde and her dark hair is starting to grow all over her upper lip. Ewwww!"
And this goes on and on and on until that very same coworker enters the room. And then...
"HiiIIIiiiii sweetie! How are you? Is everything alright?"

Men don't hate in secret. They're very open and gratuitious with that kind of thing and sometimes they punch each other in the face a bit and sort their problems that way. We don't do 'passive-agressive'. And that's why they're so great at playing cooperative games. If they're not currently shouting at you or punching you in the face, they're probably on your side and you can team up and achieve great things together, working against a common enemy and watching your back and all that.
Women don't bring their hatred out into the open. They also refuse to forget and let things go. If you cannot magically guess what's bothering them, you're already fucked.
You've all asked a girl once what's bothering her and you've all been told, "Nothing!". The most annoying, most blatant lie that all chicks tell their guys on a daily basis.

And with Claire being perfectly happy and 'nothing' being wrong, this is what happens when we play cooperative games. Note: She's Tails (on top), I'm Metal Sonic (bottom), we're a team and we're supposed to beat Sonic in a race:

You know, when she shot me, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She might have been aiming for Sonic. But when she rammed me and pushed me off the road, causing both of us to lose the race, I couldn't help but feel that whatever grudge she's holding against me is bigger than her desire to beat this game.

One might argue that kart racers are a bit unpredictable and accidents happen. Perhaps the controls were a bit wonky. Surely, any other game would yield different results, right? Maybe something we all grew up playing, something every gamer knows by heart, something where it's impossible to fuck up on accident. Something like Mario Bros.

Claire is Luigi. Bitch.
It's one thing pacing through the level at the speed of light, hoping to get me killed by moving me off-screen. It's another to stomp my fucking face when I finally catch up, ultimately dooming me to die. Cooperative gaming, my fucking ass.

And if you think this kind of stuff only happens in games, where it's actually possible to kill your team mates, you're sorely mistaken. If I get too far ahead on the scoreboard on Mass Effect 3, Claire will go rogue. Meaning, she'll ignore all mission objectives, cease to support me as I try and fulfill the team goals on my own and just start shooting whole spawns of baddies, leaving me to die. She'll go as far as wasting all her nukes in an attempt to carpet-bomb every last enemy on the map to outscore me, even if it means we'll fail and die. Because scoring 1st place on a game over screen is that much more rewarding than 2nd place on a successful mission.
I like to believe that our relationship is healthy, happy and stable. But when it comes to multiplayer gaming, I think we'll stick to Street Fighter.

-Cat