Great co-op experiences

[airtekh]

I like my singleplayer games and I'm partial to the odd bit of competitive multiplayer too, but the experience I've been craving more and more recently is for co-op. There's just something different and rewarding about working with other players to achieve a common goal.

By far the best gaming experience I've had so far this year has been in Portal 2's wonderful coop campaign. I enjoyed the single player, but the coop feels really unique and fresh. It adds a level of complexity, but it also adds that teamwork factor as well. It feels great solving puzzles as a team, trying different things out, mucking around with portals and then rejoicing when you finally solve it.

I'm currently playing Splinter Cell: Conviction's coop story mode, and it's also quite fun. It plays similarly to its single player but again the coop element just makes it that little bit more interesting. There was a great moment we had when my partner laid dying on the ground and I was being held in a choke hold by an enemy. We needed each other's help to continue, so while I elbowed my captor in the face to create a distraction, my partner sat up and shot him with his pistol. I was then able to help my partner up with the defibrillator.

What other coop experiences have you had that you've really enjoyed?

[Heliocentric]

If you're enjoying conviction you'll find chaos theory has a much richer if slower paced experience.

Swat 4 is the best first person shouter (not a typographical error) run in a room shout at people and shine a torch in their faces. My favoured "less than lethal tool" is an armour piercing round below the knee but more 'ethical' choices like pepper ball, beanbag shotgun and tazers exist. The expansion adds pistol whipping and a grenade launcher for when you need to deliver a flash bang 100 feet away from yourself.

Other candidates are alien swarm (the newer one is free on steam too.), Magicka (it's really different in coop, stray deaths matter less but my goodness do things go wrong), system shock 2 has coop (but I never tried to get it working though), trine (all on one pc, but up to 3 players,apparently more challenging than singleplayer).
Rainbow 6 Vegas (1& 2) are worthy of mention too.

[CMaster]

SWAT 4 as mentioned above is one of the "ultimate" coop experiences. The more friends you can get together the better, but regardless, it demands complex teamwork and coordination. You get overall a very tense and fun experience. TRAILERS!

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a fantastic coop experience, with some brilliant coop-centric puzzles, and demonstrations of how you do amazing "playable cutscenes" without quick time events. There are several crazy moments which you and your teammate will probably get through first time - but leave you both feeling like Indiana Jones, just scraping through by the end.

[SephKing]

Even though it's buggy as hell and is hard to get running smoothly, Saints Row 2 is one of the best coop experiences i've had. If I had to pick one coop game though it would probably be ARMA 2.

[Mihkel]

Dead Rising 2, Dead Island, PAYDAY: The Heist, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Killing Floor, Borderlands, ARMA 2, Dawn of War 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory are the recent things I've played in coop that I like in coop. Chaos Theory has an extremely good coop mode if you can look past the shitty netcode.

[Vexing Vision]

Magicka is an amazing co-op experience because of the friendly fire. It feels good if you send a death-ray whisking by your partner's head only to explode the monster behind him in the nick of time, because it could have gotten very very wrong!

And Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is an undeservedly underrated co-op game - amazing set-pieces, slightly asynchronous play and some of the best co-opting I had in ages.

[Peter Radiator Full Pig]

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Life. My friend and I got it for ps3 and it was well, well worth the money. Its one of the few games Id love some dlc for, just adding new levels.
The lego games are great, along with Borderlands and Diablo 2.
Play any of those games with another person and I think youd have to try very very hard not to have a great time.

[cowthief skank]

Even though it's buggy as hell and is hard to get running smoothly, Saints Row 2 is one of the best coop experiences i've had

I would agree on this. My friend and I just finished the story last night, having played it every weekend except maybe one for the last couple of months. Fortunately we didn't run into many critical bugs - plenty of minor bugs, generally quite amusing, but maybe two or three crashes or major problems in total. The game just seems to understand what we want from co-op - from the character personalisation, including seeing them in cut scenes, to being able to generally just dick around, even going so far as to have short competitive mini-games for those times when you just want to try and shoot each other.

Magicka and Left 4 Dead 2 (better than Left 4 Dead despite what some people say) are a couple of other favourites of ours.

[airtekh]

Hmm, I do own SWAT 4 and I quite liked it, but I've never played it in co-op before. One for me to investigate I think ...

Never played Magicka in co-op either. I didn't much like the single player and that kind of put me off it. Might give it a go at some point.

Similar thing happened to me with Guardian of Light, which I also didn't really like in single player. I tried a little of the local co-op with my cousin and it seems like a totally different game.

Trine is very different in co-op alright, the puzzles become much more involved. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel as it has online co-op in it.

[Taidan]

I've only ever played Baldur's Gate as a co-op game, it's a great experience that way if you can find the time. (And if it doesn't last nearly long enough, you can import your characters into BG2 and its expansion.) Titan Quest is a staple of my LAN sessions when there are 5/6 of us, as well.

As Mihkel mention, Killing Floor is hilarious fun in co-op. It's like a slowed down, more thoughtful Left 4 Dead. Borderlands can be quite fun as well, with the right people, as can Serious Sam.

A lot of RTS games can be brilliant if played by teams of humans vs teams of AI players. A guilty pleasure among friends when I was younger was Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. (And if you're a big Star Wars fan, the "X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter: Balance of Power" co-op campaigns are a dream come true.)

Other than that, my favourite co-op experiences are usually related to MMOs. (And Guild Wars, which isn't technically an MMO, but is a great online co-op RPG.) There's some great "Free to play" stuff out there at the moment which are fantastic fun when played with friends.

[cowthief skank]

Never played Magicka in co-op either. I didn't much like the single player and that kind of put me off it. Might give it a go at some point.

I honestly can't imagine how Magicka could be all that fun single player having only played in co-op. So much of the enjoyment I got from that game is from playing it with another person - the frantic scramble to cast the right spell, the accidental casting of the wrong spell, the unfortunate lightning strike upon your partner's head...

I've only ever played Baldur's Gate as a co-op game, it's a great experience that way if you can find the time. (And if it doesn't last nearly long enough, you can import your characters into BG2 and its expansion.)

Is this true? Like, the whole game can be played in co-op exactly as it would be in single player? I never played Baldur's Gate when I was younger, and have been meaning to get round to it, but would love to play an RPG in co-op.

[GothicEmperor]

Rainbow Six Vegas 1&2 are both a lot of fun on co-op.

[Lightbulb]

I honestly can't imagine how Magicka could be all that fun single player having only played in co-op. So much of the enjoyment I got from that game is from playing it with another person - the frantic scramble to cast the right spell, the accidental casting of the wrong spell, the unfortunate lightning strike upon your partner's head...


Is this true? Like, the whole game can be played in co-op exactly as it would be in single player? I never played Baldur's Gate when I was younger, and have been meaning to get round to it, but would love to play an RPG in co-op.

Yup. The whole thing. Up to 6 players but you can control 1 to 5 each. You can either each make 1 character then recruit up to 4 others. Or just make a whole party of 6.

[Taidan]

Yup. The whole thing. Up to 6 players but you can control 1 to 5 each. You can either each make 1 character then recruit up to 4 others. Or just make a whole party of 6.

I was playing it with just one other person. (We started with 5, but couldn't schedule regularly enough to make it worth it, so we restarted.) and we went in with one character each. The game definitely shines if you leave space for a few of the NPC characters.

[jp0249107]

Dungeon Defenders

That game is more than worth the $15 you'll spend on it. It's got epic loot that you can upgrade, pets that compliment your skills, and a great tower defense element that balances all the classes with each other.

It's also got split screen coop ON THE PC! I hook my desktop up to the TV, plug in an extra controller and bam, I've got a great game to play with my wife. Not only is it coop, but you can bring the coop online with other people. It's a REALLY good game. I've played it more than BF3 (though mostly because BF3 is still pretty unstable at the moment and I'm crashing about ever 20 minutes....grrrr...)

[Wizardry]

Is this true? Like, the whole game can be played in co-op exactly as it would be in single player? I never played Baldur's Gate when I was younger, and have been meaning to get round to it, but would love to play an RPG in co-op.

Yeah. You can even recruit companions, see their banter and do their quests. Nothing is compromised.

[Mihkel]

A lot of RTS games can be brilliant if played by teams of humans vs teams of AI players. A guilty pleasure among friends when I was younger was Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. (And if you're a big Star Wars fan, the "X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter: Balance of Power" co-op campaigns are a dream come true.

Considering RTS genre I have to say I had fun in Red Alert 3 with a buddy of mine. Pretty nice coop experience in a RTS.

[metalangel]

I honestly can't imagine how Magicka could be all that fun single player having only played in co-op. So much of the enjoyment I got from that game is from playing it with another person - the frantic scramble to cast the right spell, the accidental casting of the wrong spell, the unfortunate lightning strike upon your partner's head...

I thought the whole point of the game was to cast Crash To Desktop on each other?

I recommend Saint's Row 2 for co-op hijinx.

Doom 3 with a partner could also be fun, provided you go all gung ho ooh rah. Do not attempt the same in System Shock 2's co-op.

[cowthief skank]

Yup. The whole thing. Up to 6 players but you can control 1 to 5 each. You can either each make 1 character then recruit up to 4 others. Or just make a whole party of 6.

Yeah. You can even recruit companions, see their banter and do their quests. Nothing is compromised.

This sounds great then, thanks for the replies. Will definitely have to schedule a time. Good to know that the experience is not compromised playing co-op.

[CMaster]

Similar thing happened to me with Guardian of Light, which I also didn't really like in single player. I tried a little of the local co-op with my cousin and it seems like a totally different game.

The coop "challenges" that crop up throughout the game are by far the highlight - the combat is perfectly serviceable and all, but where you have to work together, either as a puzzle, or as some quick-thinking, quick-moving challenge are by far the high points of the game.