Best game(s) to help someone learn to play with twin sticks?

My mother has a hard time playing games with Twin Stick Control and I was wondering if there were any games that could help her get the hang of using them.

I guess the best thing would be geometry wars or something like that. I know that game is hard but it's very clear the link between the sticks and what it happening, so maybe that will help her understand the relationship between the controls and the game quickly.

Smash TV

Also, anyone find that the wiki page seems to contradict itself?

1) "In a twin stick control scheme, one stick controls the player character's movement while the other stick controls the aiming of the weapon."

2) "A method of controlling a vehicle or character via a pair of identical sticks. The control resembles that of a tank."

3) The main image is of Katamari Damacy, which requires both sticks for movement (there is no camera control/aiming as far as I know).

One that I really like for this is Renegade Ops, because of the momentum and stuff, it's a bit more interesting than your average twin stick shooter. This is kind of thinking you're going towards third person or first person games as an end goal though, not sure if that's the end goal. But either way it's a good one to intro on. I did with my little sister who had trouble getting into FPS games and I think it helped.

Is it an issue of getting used to the "traditional" model of "left stick moves, right stick looks", or is it a more a simple lack of experience coordinating both hands separately? Because if it's the latter, I could see something like Geometry Wars or Katamari Damacy (or maybe even something like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons) helping with that. Otherwise, you would probably want to go with a third-person game. In third-person, the player just needs to get the camera pointed in a general direction, as opposed to a first-person game where a lot of the mechanics depend on the player being able to accurately center the camera on targets.

Also, I don't know if this would be of any help, as I don't think there have been any new versions in the last 5-10 years (at least not any good ones), but the game that first got me comfortable with using 2 sticks was the original Ape Escape. In that game, the camera was still controlled by the shoulder buttons (or just one button that snapped to behind the character, I can't remember), but the right stick was used to control actions. The left stick always controlled character movement, but when you had the stun-baton thing or the net equipped, the character attacked in whatever direction you pushed the right stick. When you had the RC car equipped, the right stick controlled the car like a second character. With a hula hoop thing, you had to rotate the stick once or twice to activate it. That sort of stuff.

Ive tried to get my mom to play games before, and it's hilarious because she cannot grasp the concept of analog sticks. Also, watching her try to play LA noire was just a fantastic thing to watch (lots of vehicular manslaughter)

I remember getting my Xbox and trying to figure out the controls for Halo. I had to restart the game bumped down to easy and finish it that way before it really clicked, and I had been playing games for years.

Super Stardust HD, or perhaps consider playing a slower paced first person game set on the easiest difficulty (maybe Skyrim, although that game does have a lot of complex systems).

Cool of her to try; she'll quit, though.

Portal and/or Portal 2.

It gives you the first person controls, has an extensive tutorial and doesn't demand huge amounts of quick reactions. Plenty of time to take it slow and learn.

Minecraft or Portal.

Portal.

Ape Escape.
Serious answer, Portal, Geometry Wars, minecraft(or Total Miner, Xbox live Indie game, pretty much minecraft but dirt cheap and really good)

Maybe that game where you photograph animals.

a MFM threesome if it's a girl..or MMM if it's a guy. let 'em go to town

Buy the Midway Arcade Origins collection (it's super cheap) and have her play Smash T.V. and Total Carnage. Those are good introductions to the coordination portion of it, and then ease her in with some split screen deathmatch in Halo or something. An isolated environment where you can demonstrate things without AI or random players interfering.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I think I'll go with The Orange Box. It has Portal and some other games that I'll enjoy as well.

I tried to get my mom to play Gears of War 3 once. She kept getting stuck on the walls. Kinda reminding me of my first time playing a Gears game.

@thunderslash said:

Yeah, I agree. I'd call #1 a twin-stick shooter (actually "dual stick" is probably better since the sticks are serving different purposes, but that is definitely not the common name); twin stick controls like in #2 are different, Katamari Damacy works like this but the canonical example for me is Virtual On.