Good games for a new gamer?

[Anowyn]

Long story short, my fiancee and I are away from each other for about 4 days a week for the summer and she has a lot more spare time than I do. She is not a "gamer" by any means. She has played WoW, and she still does off and on, but her limited experience with video games in general leads her to feel overwhelmed by the vast availability and expansiveness of a game like WoW.

She has played and enjoyed games like old school mario, mario kart, mario party, animal crossing, and tycoon style games. Many of those games from my experience are not too terribly engaging and often leave you not wanting to play too long. I'd like to try and introduce her to a more immersible style of video game, where it has longer playability, but also not overwhelm her.

I grew up playing video games since I was about 1993, so I kind of grew with the immersion of gaming today. I don't really know how to "ease someone in" so to speak, since I just kinda eased in as the games advanced.

I'm looking for something for her to play that allows for some more immersion, a longer play value, and a moderate difficulty. Nothing that would require her to be extremely quick or coordinated to start with, because I don't want her to feel like its too hard and just give up. But I also don't want something so simple that it gets old after a couple of hours and she never wants to touch it again.

She played Final Fantasy X for quite a while, but I was mostly there with her to help her learn it. We just got Little Big Planet off the PSN as one of our free "welcome back" downloads, so she is going to give that a try as well.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And thanks a bunch for taking the time to read the situation, whether you have any ideas for me or not. :P

----EDIT----

I have a lot of consoles...
NES
SNES
N64
GameCube w/ GameBoy Advanced expansion thingy
Wii
Xbox 360
PS1
PS3
Nintendo DS

She also has her own computer with pretty decent specs, so PC games are a go as well. Thanks again!

[Dorkins]

If she liked FFX she should try 7, 8, 9, and 12 too.

[ohshift]

to play alone?

[numhtak]

oblivion
/10

[JustintimeSS]

PORTAL 1/2

My wife is a big gamer but was not much for FPSish games... until she tried those 2 games. Now she is a FPS fiend.

[Echohunter]

Pokemon, lots and lots of Pokemon. It is simple and straight forward yet always fun to play.. and has a high replay value.

Or perhaps something like Fable. Open, without being overwhelmingly vast and also a bit more difficult.

[Anowyn]

If she liked FFX she should try 7, 8, 9, and 12 too.

I think she very well may like those games also, but as I said I was there with her to help her with FFX, so I'm not sure but I will suggest her trying 7 or 8, as I have both at home. Thanks for quick input, I appreciate it.

to play alone?

Primarily solo play games I think. She isn't too into playing games with people she doesn't know, which I think is one thing that really overwhelms her about WoW. WoW is a very social game and it can feel a lot less interesting if you just play alone. However, she's pretty shy around people she doesn't know, so I think online games are off the table right now, because they would probably just overwhelm her :P


---------- Post added 2011-06-20 at 04:18 AM ----------

Pokemon, lots and lots of Pokemon. It is simple and straight forward yet always fun to play.. and has a high replay value.

Or perhaps something like Fable. Open, without being overwhelmingly vast and also a bit more difficult.

Lmao wow, why didn't I think of Pokemon? You're so right about it being straight forward with great replay value. I played the hell out of Pokemon back in the Red/Blue/Yellow and the Gold/Silver days. Also Fable is a good suggestion actually. Fable 2 is a lot more open, I think Fable 1 would be a better option for her.

Thanks for the input so far guys! I really appreciate it. Anyway, I'm off to bed though. Early day tomorrow! I'll check back in tomorrow after work. Thanks again.

[Mechazod]

the Mario RPG games (Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario series/Mario&Luigi series)