I’ve been playing some Gears of War 2 Horde co-op with jaytee. We haven’t revisited it since several months ago, and ever since I’ve upgraded my Xbox LIVE subscription (a whole two days ago) we’ve been giving Horde a bash.

I used to go through a couple of rounds by myself or locally whenever I had a mate over, and it was good fun for a while, but ultimately it fell into that weird grey area between casual (”I don’t normally do this”) and mediocre (”This gun is shit, the designers had no fucking idea”).

Now that the whole experience thing has been implemented and we’ve both got a bit of experience, I can say that co-ordinated co-op gameplay is where it’s at.

You know what I’m talking about. Starting up that third or fourth session of Left 4 Dead with some friends, barking out alerts when you see major zombies, and standing in a room for several minutes planning how you’re going to take on the incoming horde. It’s beyond just a casual session where everyone shoots what they want, when they want. There’s cohesion and a symbiosis. It’s as if we’d transcended all those group mentality phases and jumped straight into the Performing stage.

Our latest Gears of War 2 session felt like it clicked. We were pulling off flanks with devastating effect. We were baiting and switching, covering and co-supplying. We were instinctively informing each other using Mumble (which, by the way, is fantastic and free).

It’s nice when things just…work.