What are the best co-op games you enjoy? Anything from the modern games, to the old games.
For me, I’m aiming for PC games, or a game that can be easily emulated like PS2 games or GameBoy Advance.
Main focus, is that you are supposed to play 2 players or more (and are actually fun to play) with little to no internet. (Trying to prepare in advance)
Couch co-op:
- Castle Crushers
- Trine games
- Lego games
Online co-op:
- Warframe
- Sniper Elite games (always a good thing to prepare yourself to kill nazis)
- Vermintide / Darktide
- Helldivers 2
- zombie bashing games (Left4dead, Killing Floor, World War Z, …)
- Strange Brigade (action and puzzles)
- Torchlight 2 has a co-op mod if you like Diablo
- a bunch of shooters with campaign co-op (Borderlands, Gears Of War, …)
Regarding the “Trying to prepare in advance” part. Download a complete SNES Rom collection from archive.org and an installer for SNES9x. The collections are around 1GB and include hundreds of games. Lots of them with Co-Op or two player modes.
I never even thought of this. Thank you! Bonus points for saving storage!
Castle Crashers It Takes Two Contra Gears of War Halo Untitled Goose Game
If you are going to emulate then go for the Sega Dreamcast!
Virtua Tennis Power Stone 1&2 Toy Commander Quake Gauntlet Legends San Francisco Rush 2049 ChuChu Rocket Soul Calibur
Goose Game
slapshonks
Something I would quite like are coop games that don’t require anyone else to buy the game. Keep talking and nobody explodes works well for that, can have more people too as most of it is communication rather than control inputs but only 1 person is holding the mouse/controller.
I have a steam controller and can stream my PC to the TV with steam link. Apparently some games can be played with multiple controllers but I don’t have any others and they don’t make steam controllers any more. Not even sure how well that even works on Linux as it is something I have never tried.
My wife and I beat Unravel Two.
That was a fun little game.
This is an older pull, but the Army of Two series was a ton of fun. Coop third person shooters with no more plot than your average action movie. It’s great, lol
In contrast to the party games everyone else is listing, I’m gonna say Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. They’re more long haul affairs, but still make for great lan gaming.
Crawl - technically pvp, arcade game Overcooked - try to manage a kitchen together Duck Game - completely pvp, ducks with guns, very fun
I always bring up Crawl in these threads because it’s so good, and I rarely ever see anyone talking about it! The way that players are always ‘switching teams’ is so fun!
Borderlands. The first one. The game is amazing by yourself and slightly better with friends. It’s not meant to be worse either way. It’s just a lot of fun.
The later BL games were made the same way, but I haven’t found any of the sequels (/“Pre-Sequel”) to be as engaging as the original. They are bigger and more ambitious, though, with BL2 being a fan favorite. I just really like the Soldier (Roland) from the first game. The other games don’t have a character I like playing as much as him, so I’d rather join the original rather than settle for a lesser character.
Actually, the best co-op game is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It’s played with your left hand and your right hand. I’m being a bit of a smartass, but technically it does qualify as co-op because two characters on the screen are being independently controlled and they must work together. But it is specifically designed to be played by one person. Your dominant hand should control the older brother, with the analog stick moving him and either trigger doing the action, whatever that may be (it’s basically a one-button game, plus the stick). Your other hand controls the younger brother, same thing. So naturally the older brother runs straight and does what you expect but the little brother tends to stumble and waver. All intentional. Also, don’t bother with the remake. It breaks a few things and honestly doesn’t look much better. Different art style, not better. Just play the original. You can get it on GOG on sale all the time for like $2-3. Also, it’ll take ~4 hours to complete and you’ll probably never want to play it again (but recommend it to everyone). I actually bought the remake (mistake) and had my wife play it. For the hell of it, I speed ran both of them (this was on Xbox) for the achievements. Then I did the same on the original. Interestingly, you do not have to complete the game to get all the achievements! You don’t even have to complete the final fight, or do the climactic scene before the final fight. Before you’re even aware the climactic scene is coming, you sit on a bench and blip, there’s the last achievement, if you’re doing an Achievement% run, that’s when you call time. (I’m not a competitive speed runner. I just did the runs to pop the achievements before uninstalling them.)
Added to wishlist! Great recommendation!
Nucleus Coop (for Windows only unfortunately) makes lots of games that ordinarily don’t have offline splitscreen to work in that way.
Don’t worry. Linux has Wine and can often emulate windows games. Few occasions its even better framerate than actual windows. But not as common to see :P Great recommendation!
Spelunky2 is good, up to 4 players.
Very hard but definitely worth persevering with.
My girlfriend and I play (mostly local) co-op sometimes. Some games that we enjoyed so far were (local unless otherwise indicated):
- Divinity: Original Sin 2
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Portal 2
- Diablo 3
- It Takes Two
- A Way Out
- Minecraft (online)
- Stardew Valley (online, may also work locally now)
Love Portal 2 coop mode and Minecraft!
I really enjoyed It Takes Two.
Highly recommend
I’ve gotten multiple non gamers to enjoy portal 2. The portals draw them in.
Diablo 3
My wife, two friends, and I all played Diablo IV online together. We beat the main campaign together and had a lot of fun with it. We’re trying to beat the expansion campaign too, but my wife and one friend dropped out, so it’s just been me and a buddy powering through it.
That’s a game where you can just have fun dicking around in the world, even if there isn’t an objective. And it has plenty of endgame content to keep you entertained after you beat the campaign.
do we include arcade games? because the xmen and golden axe2 were big ones to play with a friend using only one quarter. The old baldurs gate for consoles from the aughts was a great two player co-op.
I second Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 1 and 2, and would also like to mention Champions of Norrath and Champions: Return to Arms for really similar PS2 games.
Rainbow Six 1 (GOG) and 3 (Steam) are both playable via LAN and some of my favorite co-op games ever. The first game may require hacking some easy-to-read level config files to make them finishable, but 3 doesn’t have that problem. Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear isn’t available for purchase anymore. I hear SWAT 4 (GOG) is great for scratching this itch too, but I haven’t played it myself.
While not so story focused, you could also co-op Star Wars: Battlefront II; the good one, from 2005 (GOG).
Where is Raft in these lists?
