From Jacinto to Africa, when voice chat showed its value

I, personally, have always thought voice chat is incredible overrated and mostly useless, if not annoying.

90% of the people only scream, sing randomly, make bad jokes, racist comments, etc.

And, after all, why the hell would somebody want to random chat with a bunch on unknown guys?

Those were my thought until last week, when a possibility that hadn't crossed my mind happened:

What if you chat with somebody you know?

A good friend of mine (that studies in a different city) wanted to replay Gears f War 2, and since I had already done it on Insane, I decided to let him a hand and on the way get the nice achievement.

The result? Around 10 hours of godly co-op fun. Gears 2 campaign is smartly built for co-op play.

One week later came RE5, and after the shock because of the forced co-op, I convinced him to get it. We finished the whole game on Veteran and I'm glad we did it together. RE5 is a BLAST in co-op.

The point? I simply can't imagine how a co-op game would work without voice chat. Not only were the games themselves incredible fun in co-op, but also were the occasional jokes, anecdotes, and nonsense talk. The lack of actual contact would immediately cost the co-op experience half of its attractiveness.

We plan to play the first Gears, Army of Two and maybe RE5 again. The possibility to play all those games with a good buddy in such way makes Live more than worthy, imho.

Any suggestions of good co-op games?

Greetings to all.

I.B.