You Are The Wind Beneath My AC-130's Wings

So you and your friends are amped about a brand new game coming out and best of all, there's co-op.  You both coordinate your schedules to maximize your playing time together.  Once you put in the disc, you quickly realize that maybe it's better to just stay friends.  Here is a short guide to helping you find the ultimate partner in gaming.

It's always best to know your own gaming habits first.  Are you someone that only plays for 30 minutes or an hour at a time, or do you insist on powering through in one ten hour session?  Do you take frequent take breaks for food, phone calls, and socializing, or are you able to stay focused on the goal ?  Are you a talker or are you stickly business ?  Its important to understand what your gaming habits are so you can chose a co-op partner accordingly.

Something else to take into consideration is that it's usually much easier to run a co-op campaign from beginning to end with the same person.  Stopping in the middle and picking up with someone new can mean possibly missing parts of the mission or struggling to latch onto someone's very different play style.  If you find yourself playing with someone and it's not working out quite as well as you hoped, cut them loose sooner rather than later.  Getting off on the right foot with the right person might mean starting the campaign over from the beginning, so if you wait too long, you could be stuck with a junky playthrough or be replaying a huge portion of the game.

Not only is play style important, but make sure that your goals match up.  It's no secret that I like me some achievements, so I always try to find a partner in crime that wants the same thing.  If you happen to be looking for fellow achievement hunters, you can try www.Xbox360Achievements.org or over at the Facebook group Achievement/Trophy Hunters which services both the Xbox and PS3 players. 

No matter what your end goal is, make sure that you have fun.  If the other player(s) or even the game itself just isn't doing it for you, there's no reason to tough it out and no shame in walking away.  Its better to keep your friends than win the game.