Ibb & Obb

Here's a PSN game I beat in three sittings with Marissa. It was challenging, fun, and above all, a truly cooperative experience. This is a game absolutely designed for two players. Marissa has played several games with me before, from Donkey Kong to New Super Mario Bros., but she grows tired of them pretty quickly, generally. She'll complain that I'm often running ahead and just playing the game at my own, more experienced pace, making her feel like a burden when she dies and just pretty bored when I'm doing all the heavy lifting. But Marissa's not a terrible gamer - I mean, she managed to beat Ocarina of Time without Epona. And she shined at Ibb & Obb, where she was more or less equally responsible for all of our successes and solutions. (And I, for all of our failures and frustrations.)

Ibb & Obb has the look of a very straightforward platform game at first; you're limited by how high and how far you can jump, and if you run into the spiky black bad guys you will die. But there's a simple gameplay element that drastically changes the game; half of every level exists on the other side of a solid black line, where gravity works in the opposite direction. Little portals scattered throughout the stages allow you to transition from one gravity field to the other, and you can even get some slingshot-style jump combinations going. Most of the fifteen levels introduced at least one new gameplay quirk, which not only kept the game from growing stale, but also offered an ever-increasing array of challenges. We spent twenty or thirty minutes on a couple of puzzles, and ultimately had to consult a walkthrough two or three times, much to our chagrin. This was a very difficult game, but it was also a whole lot of fun. Try it out if you've got a PS3 and a willing gaming partner.