Deep Rock Galactic. Divinity: Original Sin 2. ARK: Survival Evolved. Overcooked 2. Halo Infinite. Back 4 Blood. BattleBlock Theater. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. Grand Theft Auto Online. A stirring example of a game that hit the ground stumbling but really caught the wind in its sails over the last two years. Sea of Thieves tasks up to four players with manning a ship, and sailing around a vibrant, cartoon Caribbean-style set of islands in search of plunder, adventure and notoriety.
You follow maps to skeleton-infested coves, fight mythical sea creatures, and take on other player-controlled ships and crews. There's even a story mode to get stuck into in the form of Tall Tales.
Sea of Thieves is the ultimate freewheeling pirate fantasy, designed purposely to be played alongside a motley crew of scurvy-infested sea rats you call your friends. The game includes an adventure mode outside the main campaign that allows players to roam through every available region in the game to collect loot. The high-risk decision to make this prison-break adventure an exclusively co-op game paid off for developer Hazelight.
You can play this theatrical adventure split-screen or online, with you and a friend controlling two prisoners who slowly form a bond and plot their freedom.
From playing Connect-4 to working out, all the way through to covering each other in life-and-death skirmishes, A Way Out is one of the weirdest, most endearing co-op games out there. Overcooked is back, with all new challenges, recipes, and characters. In a bid to defeat the 'Un-bread' zombie baked goods , you and up to three other players must prepare a variety of recipes including sushi, pizza, and burgers while working in increasingly chaotic restaurants.
To add to the frantic fun, you must battle obstacles including random fires, collapsing floors, and interfering passers by, all while getting your orders out to the pass in time. Things get complicated incredibly quickly, and relationships, friendships, and family bonds will be tested as you work together to complete your recipes on time, making it a fun and challenging couch co-op game that will make you truly understand the meaning of "too many cooks spoil the broth.
What began as a barebones online mode some seven years ago has grown into one of the best co-op games of or any year. You can run around the world freely causing general mayhem or take on competing crews in dedicated missions.
The best co-op experiences, however, are in the game's multi-part heists. Whether you're fighting off Brutes with a shotgun or cruising around in a Warthog running over Grunts, the Halo series is undeniably leagues more enjoyable with friends.
You can experience co-op both locally and over internet in the Halo archives, lovingly packaged as The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One. Now PC players are getting in on the fun, but sadly without local co-op. They can still play online, though. Divinity: Original Sin 2 goes one better, and makes co-op arguably the best way to play the campaign.
You can stick together as a unit, maximizing your chances during the deep turn-based combat, or split up to try to find your own ways of solving a given quest. In addition, there are in-game conversations between player-characters that shape their personality and ultimately how you play through the game. The long-running oddball series finally grabbed the attention of the whole world with its latest instalment, refining many of the more awkward bits while doubling-down on making its primordial Jurassic world a hostile joy to explore and one of the best co-op games in Although perhaps a little fiddlier to set up than would be ideal, you can group up with your friends and hunt scaled-up versions of formidable dinosaur-like beasts together.
The sheer variety of weapons offers many tactical opportunities; for instance, assign someone to buff the squad while one player shoots from afar and the others get stuck into the melee with their swords and spears.
Monster Hunter: World 's dynamic world means that the unexpected can always happen; another monster may join the fray or the ground may collapse beneath your feet. Borderlands 3 may not be our favorite Borderlands game overall, but we think it's the best for co-op play. At its heart, Borderlands 3 is a shooter, but it offers RPG elements such as gaining experience and leveling up your character. Developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games, players set out on a quest to take down a pair of cult-leading twins who are trying to harness the power Pandora's Vaults to wreak havoc.
This time around, Divinity wants you to consider what might happen if your friends were no longer your friends. They're colleagues, perhaps, and sometimes they're rivals. And thus the competitive-cooperative RPG is born. You can take on quests with contradictory objectives, kill that one NPC your best mate really needs to talk to if she's ever going to get closure on her character's personal backstory, or poison all of the health potions and then share them with the party after the next battle.
It's a brilliant game however many people you play with, but it's at its best when you're playing with a group of your very best frenemies. Monster Hunter: World is arguably the best and slickest Monster Hunter game yet. This is a game that made a concerted effort to smooth out previously obtuse mechanics and controls and move from partitioned monster arenas to open playpens that encourage exciting chases and allow surprise clashes as angry bits of the ecosystem butt heads - all without sacrificing the weapon mastery or crating trees that keep you playing for months.
When hunting alongside friends, you're rewarded for teamwork. Some weapon classes offer extra support, like blowing a stat-buffing boogie on the hunting horn or blasting friends with a bowgun's healing shots, but really it's about everyone knowing their tool and beating down the monster at every opportunity.
What elevates it above most co-op games is the way it taps into the camaraderie of real-world team activities. Not just the main event, but the rituals that build up around them. Meeting in a tavern, having a slap-up meal prepared by a giant cat , comparing the latest hobbyist gear Also: the incredibly fussy lobby system, with its invites and quest noticeboard, feels a lot like dads trying to work out the intricacies of Facebook.
It's well worth muddling through the archaic kinks. While many are purists when it comes to From Software's masterful action RPG, refusing to summon help or forcing themselves to equip just underwear whilst wielding only an overgrown twig, Dark Souls is fantastic in co-op.
You can jump in with a friend, with a bit of planning, taking turns to help each other through each section. Even without friends, though, Dark Souls will have you forming bonds with silent strangers. There's an unwritten etiquette to the Souls games that sees people treating each other with respect, bowing to each other once summoned and waving each other off or cheering after a defeated boss.
There's nothing quite like the feeling of relief when a summoned co-op partner helps you finally beat Ornstein and Smough - the only thing that comes close is paying it back later, becoming the saviour in someone else's story. Adam said it best in our review : "It's superb, populating an already haunted world with phantoms and memories, and providing an eventual gateway by which to become an all-but anonymous hero or villain.
Spelunky is a moreish 2D platformer with roguelike elements that kicks your arse until it straightens your spine. Although the geometry might be constantly shifting with each frequent death, the rules that govern the enemy types remain constant. After a while, reflexes handle the enemies of The Mines - it's like peeking into another dimension, but instead of losing your mind you become Neo. Can you dodge bullets? Co-op changes the rules, making it perfect for seasoned players to team up.
You might think things would be easier with more health and attack power, but stunning, whipping and blowing each other up will be a regular occurrence in the claustrophobic confines of the levels. More players only add more complication and four player co-op is chaos, creating more hilarious ways to fail. Timing, as ever, is key. Now see if you can make it to Hell with friends.
Diablo 3 is a beast of a game and it's playable from start to finish with three friends. Not only is it absolutely huge, but there's replayability in the different classes and combinations, not to mention the difficulty levels. On lower difficulties it's kind of meditative - you just explore colourful environments bashing things as the world reacts to your destructive force and you pick up sweeter gear. Like this, it's one of the best social games around, requiring little in the way of planning while you chat to your friends and get on with bashing skeletons.
Crank it up, though, and your party is in for a world of hurt if you're not planning, talking about the fight and working together - providing buffs, healing and prioritising targets is essential to victory. It's easy to pick up, difficult to master and even harder to put down. Los Santos is a gorgeous playground, each bend in the road bringing you level with a postcard view - every angle feels scrutinised.
Trace a route from the peak of Mt Chiliad, driving down through the dusty plains of the Grand Senora Desert, snaking by the hilltop mansions of Vinewood Hills, cruising on through the twinkling city itself and finally coming to stop at Vespucci Beach - all this, including the skies above and the sea beyond, is your online playground.
Grand Theft Auto Online is stuffed full of co-op scenarios, but the best experiences are found in the Heists. These multi-part missions ask you and three other players to take part in everything from the setup - casing the joint and grabbing getaway vehicles - all the way to the caper itself. While not all of them are literal heists, each one does an incredible job of making sure all four players are busy.
Everyone has their own job to do, sometimes all together, sometimes in pairs and sometimes alone. This, along with the randomness of the open-world's systems, gives each one massive replay value. The only real downside is that you really need to play with three friends to get the most out of it. With each heist taking a couple of hours from setup to execution, it can be as difficult to organise as an actual heist. Nobody knew how huge Minecraft would be when the alpha released in , but there were hints of it even from the first few hours, when the game's initial players started building rudimentary shapes and sharing screenshots of what they'd created.
Today, Minecraft is played by people of all ages. Part of its appeal, aside from its openness, is the social aspect. Whether helping your child stave off monsters as you build a fantasy land together or collaborating with a group of adults to make a working hard drive , there's something for everyone.
You can even play it as an RPG, killing mobs with your co-op partner, levelling up and building equipment to grow stronger, with the eventual goal of taking on the final boss, the Ender Dragon. Minecraft is whatever you want it to be and you can play it all with friends. Panicking with friends can be sublime. That shared fear and desperation, the yells and shrieks of people facing the same horde, each convinced they're moments from being overwhelmed.
In a sense, they already are. Horror games reach into your lizard brain and convince your amygdala that you're in trouble. Left 4 Dead 2 is one of the best, because it's built around saving your friends from that state. When the necrotic tongue of a Smoker comes grasping for your mate, you get to save the day with a well placed shot. When a Hunter pounces on your pal who's straggling at the back, there you are with a punch and shotgun blast.
When a Tank jumps right into the middle of your group That's part of what makes triumph taste so sweet. You're pulling together against an AI director that keeps you on your toes, sending in hordes when it thinks you can take them, but rarely throwing so much at you that it feels unfair. Every level is an appropriately intense ordeal, where cries of frustration can quickly turn into tears of laughter. Ten years on, Valve are still the kings of co-op horror.
Especially if you play Versus mode, and know the Hunter tearing into you is your mate Dave. What happens when you take a single-player game about traversing intricate puzzle rooms with portals, and then double everything? It becomes twice as complicated and twice as satisfying. Portal 2 already expands on everything introduced in the bite-sized Portal, adding things like Excursion Funnels, Thermal Discouragement Beams, Propulsion Gel and other fancy sounding words, but the addition of another player changes things the most.
Four portals make each room more confusing to explore, especially when you consider both players need to reach the exit. In essence, many rooms require two solutions. Some puzzles require both thought and dexterity, and firing your friend across a chasm by moving a portal while they freefall through another eventually becomes as normal as walking. There's a lot of personality in the design of the two robotic protagonists, too - the Laurel and Hardy of shiny metal. When you're working together, you'll be high fiving each other's metal hands and barking possible solutions through your headset.
If you're not using chat, Valve were kind enough to provide lots of ways to communicate in-game, with players able to place markers and emote. Every puzzle solution is punctuated by a dance. Portal 2's co-op is an experience you can't quite replicate, its systems a perfect balance of cooperation and friendly rivalry. Grab a friend and become the most stupid pair of geniuses around. The Anacrusis is so much more than a sci-fi Left 4 Dead-like. Valorant's new agent Neon breaks the game's pacing, but in a good way.
God of War PC performance, recommended specs and the best settings to use. Have you ever played a game for hours? Monster Hunter Rise is on PC now, but not without hiccups.
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