My Favourite Co-Op Games

I am sad that two-player split screen has been on the way out for so long, to be replaced by online communities and competitive play.  So many of my fondest memories in gaming, particularly multiplayer gaming, have come from times spent on the couch playing with my friends.

There is so much to be said for playing on a couch with your friends. The experience of being together, shouting at one another and having loud, rowdy fun is just difficult to match. I love couch gaming with my friends and some of my best social memories are with them!

I much prefer co-op to competitive gaming, because the act of working together toward a goal really builds the friendship and competitive can just get too heated sometime. It is nice to just unwind, kick back with a friend and a few snacks and play together. So without further ado, here are my favourite titles to play with friends on co-op!

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

This game is just excellent fun. I was introduced to this game by a close friend of mine who was a huge fan of Tomb Raider. The swashbuckling action is really well designed, as are the puzzles. I love the rolling-stone puzzles in particular and the way in which you can co-operate together to solve the different challenges is interesting and engaging. The top-down perspective, you wouldn’t expect to work so well with a Tomb Raider game, but here it works well, allowing interesting puzzle-solving opportunities in the context of the perspective of the game.

One of my issues with Guardian of Light is that it is a little bit on the repetitive side, however, especially as one works toward the endgame, and the difficulty can spike sometimes in an odd way, particularly when you are trying to work toward getting all of the collectibles, but overall it is a very fun experience when playing with friends and I would definitely recommend it.

Halo: Combat Evolved

I first was introduced to Halo by a friend of mine, just before the Xbox 360 came out. We stayed up all night with pizza and played co-operatively through the campaign, and then we binged Halo 2 the night after. If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about how enjoyable it is to co-op Halo then I don’t know what will, but I will certainly try!

The game is just fun, and the way you can approach the missions basically makes it a playground. The variety of weapons both Covenant and human enable you to have a lot of fun playing around and finding a playstyle that works. The driving sections are also a great demonstration of how the co-op works in Halo, where one person can be on the gun and the other driving. I have had many fun nights shouting at my friend’s driving while he was sending us careening off of cliffs.

Halo isn’t without its issues, and sometimes with how dated the combat is, it can feel a little clunky to aim at times, and some weapons are just overpowered to the point of breaking the game, and oftentimes the game can be too difficult in places, particularly with the Flood. There are certain levels around the mid-point of the game that can extend overlong, and the drab colour on show in these levels when compared to the vibrant designs of earlier stages just makes it that bit more of a slog, but overall as an experience the first Halo is an adventure through-and-through, especially when played together with a friend.

Diablo III:

Many dislike Diablo III because of how it simplified and streamlined the series’ gameplay, and a few of the business decisions around the game. Putting that aside for a second, I love playing Diablo III with my partner and her brother. We always love to play an action-RPG game together, and I found that this game had a really fun style.

I often played a tank style as the Crusader, and my partner would play as a Witch Doctor, while her brother used to play as a Demon Hunter. We had a lot of fun playing through the campaign together, and it was one of my favourite gaming memories.

I can’t say I would recommend Diablo III for everyone. There are some gamers that are annoyed by a lot of its design decisions and I think that they are valid complaints. However, I love how the combat is so fluid and rewarding, and the nature of being so instantly gratified by ever-increasing levels of loot is addictive and intoxicating. If you put aside Diablo’s shortcomings for the series, I think underneath is a genuinely enjoyable co-op experience.

Super Mario 3D World

Taking the insanity of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and applying it to a 3D formula on the Wii U was a stroke of genius. The platforming and controls are as tight as we have come to expect from Mario games and the aesthetic and graphic style looks phenomenal.

Super Mario 3D World is not just an excellent co-op game, but it is also an excellent all-around game, possibly one of the best in the current generation. Each level is full of wonderful secrets and Easter eggs, and it is impossible to play without smiling at the many cute and exciting references that there are on offer.

Some of the best times in the game are spent racing to get the green stars before other players, and frantically fighting for the best score and the right to wear a crown on one’s head during the levels. The love put into all aspects of Super Mario 3D World, the sound, the graphics, and the gameplay is wonderful, and if you can pick up a Wii U, I would recommend this game for anyone who is looking to play co-operatively with a friend. There may be elements of competitiveness, but overall the experience of 3D World will just leave you with a smile.  

Honourable mentions to Left 4 Dead, an enjoyable shooter but marred by some poor spikes in difficulty as a result of the AI director. An extremely fun game, especially as things get frantic. I also would recommend Gauntlet, a fun dungeon-crawler with easy-to-grasp, difficult-to-master gameplay, and Gears of War, which, while extremely violent and sometimes a little too tied into modern FPS tropes, is just a well-polished, well-made game that is very fun to play, especially the Horde mode. Portal 2 is one of the best examples of co-op in gaming, but I haven’t played it enough to justify putting it in the list for myself.

It is a shame that co-op isn’t as emphasised these days in game design, and more games are trying to become competitive online experiences. Competitive gaming is inherently confrontational and sometimes is a little less fun to play as it can become quite frustrating, so to have games out there that make people play together is always a good thing. I find that co-operative games, as a result, have a better online community and are nicer to play with others. I hope we never forget that familiar image of two or more people sat on a sofa together being loud and rowdy and just having fun playing games that they love.