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Hey y'all, welcome to the couch coop thread. This OP is going to be short overviews from the perspective of someone decent at games who coops with someone bad at games. Every game mentioned is recommended to some degree. There will be tons I miss, especially FPSes, and you should absolutely post your own perspective on those. Let's get to it. https://thumbs.gfycat.com/PotableOrneryBarb-mobile.mp4 This is what being bad looks like Couch Coop Chaos, or Overcooked-likes This genre is defined by -Simple controls (usually single joycon-able) -All players on a single unsplit screen -A good plan and communication is stronger than flawless execution of a weak plan -Generally played against the clock for points, other time pressure options are available. -Usually up to 4 players, often designed for at least 2 Overcooked Series (All) The genre definer, and still the greatest. All the pressure of working in a professional kitchen, with none of the pressure. All You Can Eat is an enhanced compilation with 1 and 2, all of the DLC, and a half dozen levels unique to it. Moving Out (All) Get everything into the moving truck as fast as possible, frequently by throwing the bed out of a second story window. A little more execution focused than Overcooked, but still very communicationy. Very Very Valet (Switch) A bunch of muppets are special agent valets. Not very communication focused, but by that token probably the best to play drunk out of your gourd. Tools Up (All) Interior decorator: the game. The most unique aspect is you can rotate the semi-fixed camera, and often have to in order to paint all of the walls. Not perfect, but you get a lot of game for your buck. Out of Space (All) Move into a proc-gen space apartment, clearing out hostile aliens as you go. Kind of light on content when I played it, but they've expanded it since. Arguably not CCC genre, but gently caress you, it's my post. Other CCC There are at least 4 straight up clones of Overcooked that I've seen, but Catastronauts is the only one that I think is worth playing. Think of the children is a nice way to spend a couple of hours. This Means Warp just released a demo. Unrailed was a bit too technical for us. Adventure Games It Takes Two (PC, PS, XB) A coop adventure where you play as two parents transformed into dolls. Every level has unique gimmicks, and none of the gimmicks outstay their welcome. Same company also made A Way Out, which I haven't played but is supposed to be good coop too. Phogs (All) Absolutely adorable. Solve puzzles as a tube of dog in a brightly colored dream world. Biped (All) A pair of quite cute robots finding their way through a world. Kind of Wall-e-y. Human Fall Flat (All) Marshmallow people trying to physics their way around the world. Lego series (All) There are approximately one thousand games in this long running series, largely unchanged since the PS360 era. Just pick up Lego City Undercover or an IP that sounds good to you. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (All) Pilot a spaceship and man turrets in order to save the universe. Chariot (All) Get the dead king's wheeled coffin to a burial place his ghost finds satisfactory. If you liked ninja roping in Worms you'll enjoy this. Other Nom Nom Galaxy (PC,PS) Build a soup factory while fighting off mercenaries from rival soup corporations. Eventually you can automate an impressive soup generating machine. Heave Ho (PC, Switch) Physics based game about throwing your friends to success. Got technical towards the end, but was good fun. Snipperclips (Switch) Take bites out of each other to make the right shape. Eventually opens into more dexterity based puzzles. Good Job! (Switch) Nepotism, yay! Do office tasks like install the fax machine, either while minimizing damage or breaking through walls and focusing on speed. My niece calls it "make a mess game" Stardew Valley (All) Pixel graphics Harvest Moon. I haven't played the coop, but many recommend it. Jackbox series Mostly not actually coop, these are collections of party games. I'm including them because the main goal is to have fun with friends, the points matter exactly as much as you want them to.
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Oct 2, 2021 21:17
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Well, there's the Borderlands series, allowing you to play through the entire campaign of all four games with a partner (though it is split screen and so the UI is a bit of a pain to navigate). The Earth Defense Force series as well lets you and someone else shoot thousands of giant insects, robots, frog aliens, diet Godzilla, UFO's, and bees with a wild array of weapons including a rocket that flies slower than walking speed that can level a city block, a machine gun that fires bullets faster than god, and what basically amounts to a handheld calliope. They're janky as hell, full of B-movie dialogue, and I love em.
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Oct 3, 2021 07:50
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Castle Crashers is a great beat em up for coop. Helldivers is pretty fun though it works better online where each player can have their own screen. A lot of people like the quick and dumb action of Broforce but I don't personally enjoy it.
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Oct 3, 2021 12:17
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Streets of Rage 4 is an amazing co-op brawler and should be on everyone's radar.
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Oct 3, 2021 12:40
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I played through ibb and opp with a buddy, and that was super fun. It’s a cute, chill platformer with some gimmicks
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Oct 3, 2021 13:11
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Ultimate Chicken Horse was a great breath of fresh air for my group after completely exhausting Overcooked and Jackbox. Requires a little bit of platforming but is an extremely goofy and fun time that doesn't over extend its welcome. The thing for games like Overcooked and Helldivers that I dislike is how they get progressively more difficult and takes actual coordination to complete. Lots of times it would be great at the beginning but then people start to get upset if you fail a couple times and need to really be serious gamers to beat.
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Oct 3, 2021 17:55
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I love how tough Overcooked/Helldivers can get but I agree that they ramp up to that level too quickly. I'd prefer a lot more levels that can be played casually with separate challenge campaigns for when we want to really test our group. Oh yeah, also add Cuphead to the list for the more difficult cooperative games.
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Oct 3, 2021 19:34
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Awesome, we’re always hunting for good couch co-op games! I have a few to recommend (hopefully others can help flesh out the descriptions a bit): RPG
Platformer
Action
TACD fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Oct 3, 2021 |
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Oct 3, 2021 22:27
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There's a ton of games that draw on Gauntlet type mechanics, ranging from your very corporate polished Diablo 3 (note that the remaster of Diablo 2 does NOT have couch co-op), to the hip indie pixel art Children of Morta. Good times.
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Oct 3, 2021 22:33
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Pikmin 3 split screen co-op was great. Also Warriors/Musou games are nice chill split-screen co-op where you don't have to coordinate closely but both players can be off in different parts of the map completing different objectives but feeling like you are both contributing. Split-screen in some levels of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity felt like it was killing the Switch though.
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Oct 4, 2021 13:55
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There weren't many episodes with Couch Coop I don't think, but here's one that was particularly stylish
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Oct 4, 2021 14:16
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Item Getter posted:Pikmin 3 split screen co-op was great. Many of the Musou games handle split screen by significantly reducing the number of on-screen enemies which kind of defeats the point of a Musou game  My friend and I were both very into them but we would buy each new one and excitedly sit down to play co-op and end up thinking "Well this kind of sucks" when we would each only have 5-10 enemies on our screen at a time. It leads to a lot of situations where you do things like stand around a lot waiting for more enemies to appear on-screen so you can kill them, and fights against enemy generals often involve all the regular enemies disappearing until the officer dies. I wish I had a better sense of which ones handled it well so I could suggest them but I can't even find a list online, so if you're going to pick up a musou game for co-op I would suggest reading up on what co-op is like in that game first. There are some that are particularly worth avoiding co-op in. Warriors Orochi 3 for example - player 2 can't manage characters, leveling, equipment or switching weapons plus all the text and character portraits cover their screen almost completely.But that being said yeah they're fun as hell co-op games if you're playing one of the ones that handled it well. I remember us getting really into Warriors Orochi 4 in particular but it definitely had enemy pop-in problems in co-op. e: I think the spinoff IP games are particularly bad about co-op and the mainline Dynasty/Samurai/Warriors Orochi games are better for it (in general) because the spinoffs have a ton of other things going on to eat up system resources, but someone correct me if I'm wrong and there's a spinoff one that doesn't kill the console like Hyrule Warriors does. Persona Strikers might be a good co-op example (Haven't tried it) because it has fairly low-ish enemy counts in the first place and is more about making each fight a bit more nuanced than spamming you with larger numbers. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Oct 4, 2021 |
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Oct 4, 2021 14:26
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Persona 5 Strikers doesn't have any coop at all - wouldn't really work, given how it's less a Musou and more a standard RPG with Musou-like combat.
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Oct 4, 2021 14:51
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deep dish peat moss posted:Many of the Musou games handle split screen by significantly reducing the number of on-screen enemies which kind of defeats the point of a Musou game Only ones we have played are Samurai Warriors 4 and Age of Calamity. Didn't notice any issues with SW4.
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Oct 4, 2021 15:33
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It's a real bummer how rare split screen has become. A big one not mentioned yet is: Don't Starve Together. Over the past several years it's become my wife's favorite game. Then, during the pandemic, we played a ton of it with another couple. There's an annoying lack of split screen + online with another split screen. We've also done Castle Crashers and Nom Nom Galaxy which both support split screen/online.
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Oct 4, 2021 17:13
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My brother and I had been playing Kingdom Two Crowns while he was down and it's a pretty chill time. Very atmospheric and is very satisfying to build up a huge fort
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Oct 4, 2021 19:36
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DarkAvenger211 posted:My brother and I had been playing Kingdom Two Crowns while he was down and it's a pretty chill time. Very atmospheric and is very satisfying to build up a huge fort Yeah until you get a huge wave of enemies and impotently watch as they destroy your poo poo  drat those big guys. Though it's funny how much easier it is with two players. Being able to be in two places at once makes that game far more manageable. I think my gf and I are on the last island....really should finish it.
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Oct 6, 2021 15:18
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Nice, excited to follow this thread! I play a ton of coop games and always on the lookout for something new to try. I’m hilariously bad at platformers, so we avoid those which sometimes makes it really tough. I was going to mention the Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 as they are two of my favorite coop games, but see them mentioned already. One I don’t think I saw is Operation: Tango which is an asymmetrical coop game, where one person is the hacker and the other is the person running around inside. We’ve also played some escape room and ghost hunting games, but that’s not really the same as two player coop gameplay.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:32
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Surprised nobody mentioned A Way Out yet. Kind of a Shawshank Redemption vibe, good fun if a bit generic towards the end.
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Oct 8, 2021 01:39
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This thread is great! My wife and I loved playing both overcooked games together, and despite it being one of the only games she's ever played we managed to 3 star all the levels just through good communication and planning. We just finished untitled goose game, and were on the hunt for something else to play. Moving Out and It Takes 2 look like they're the top contenders. Which of these would be better for someone who is really pretty terrible at gaming?
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Oct 8, 2021 05:33
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I was combing through my steam library looking for a good co-op to play with my kid tonight, and I happened upon a game I don't remember ever seeing, let alone purchasing, called Fight'N Rage that was a surprisingly fun beat-em-up, which felt gameplay-wise like a mashup of Final Fight and Streets of Rage. We played through the whole thing in like an hour, but it appears there's a poo poo ton of endings and we got the worst one, so we'll probably play it through a few more times to unlock some more characters and modes and stuff. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a great pick if you can get 4 people in the same room, although I feel like it loses something if you don't have at least 3 people to play with.
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Oct 8, 2021 06:16
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External Organs posted:There's a ton of games that draw on Gauntlet type mechanics, ranging from your very corporate polished Diablo 3 (note that the remaster of Diablo 2 does NOT have couch co-op), to the hip indie pixel art Children of Morta. Does Diablo 2 at least have local co-op across multiple consoles? I'll settle for sitting together on the couch with our switches if that's a possibility.
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Oct 8, 2021 06:20
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We've been playing KeyWe, and it's fun but I can't help but feel like it needs just a little more generosity in the controls, or something.Bullet Proof posted:Moving Out and It Takes 2 look like they're the top contenders. Which of these would be better for someone who is really pretty terrible at gaming? If you can do Overcooked 3 stars, you can at least get through Moving Out. It Takes 2 had a couple of sections we had to swap controllers, but it never required both players to be good at the same time. Pragmatica posted:We’ve also played some escape room and ghost hunting games, but that’s not really the same as two player coop gameplay. I figure if it's a video game you play with people in the same room, or at least shouting range, it counts. Which reminds me of Spaceteam. Every player gets a control panel on their phone/tablet with technobabble labeled switches, and instructions pop up like "Set Flux Nozzle to 3". Most of the instructions are for someone else, so you end up shouting utter nonsense at each other.
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Oct 8, 2021 08:52
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Brain Curry posted:I played through ibb and opp with a buddy, and that was super fun. It’s a cute, chill platformer with some gimmicks lmfao
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Oct 8, 2021 16:26
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Bullet Proof posted:Moving Out and It Takes 2 look like they're the top contenders. Which of these would be better for someone who is really pretty terrible at gaming? My wife often gets frustrated with managing the camera in 3D games, but she and I have had a good time playing It Takes Two.
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Oct 8, 2021 17:01
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I love Overcooked but Moving Out didn't really do much for me personally, it just felt really dull and repetitive in a way that Overcooked doesn't. YMMV of course, maybe the pretty simple gameplay will make it a better fit for someone who's not that good at video games.
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Oct 8, 2021 17:14
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raditts posted:Does Diablo 2 at least have local co-op across multiple consoles? I'll settle for sitting together on the couch with our switches if that's a possibility. I don't believe so. They took out tcp/ip during development I think. I'm not 100% sure since I have it on Xbox, not switch.
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Oct 8, 2021 17:35
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Are there any farming games besides Stardew Valley with local coop? Especially ones without the 16 bit sprite look.
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Oct 14, 2021 20:29
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External Organs posted:(note that the remaster of Diablo 2 does NOT have couch co-op) Absolutely mind blowing to me and such a missed opportunity.
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Oct 14, 2021 23:55
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Unreal_One posted:Are there any farming games besides Stardew Valley with local coop? Especially ones without the 16 bit sprite look. Did a search for 'local coop farming' and whoops not the kinds of results I wanted (unless I wanted to find local farm co-ops in my area, which I did not). I'm not finding much that's local. There are a few multiplayer ones, but if you're looking share the same screen, you may be out of luck.
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Oct 15, 2021 03:21
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I still feel like Worms: Armageddon is a gold standard for this. You could and still can have a bunch of people huddled around one person's computer, new players won't necessarily be able to use the bread and butter bazooka and grenades well but can still have fun with less physics-influenced weapons, there's often funny poo poo happening, and people who aren't taking their turn can chill and shoot the poo poo.
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Oct 15, 2021 13:52
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Apparently Gears 5 on PC can do splitscreen coop for the campaign but when I tried it, it didn't seem to let us do it
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Oct 15, 2021 18:11
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Great thread idea. I'm gonna throw a link to it from the PS5 thread op. Also, here was a lagacy list of couch co-op games I had posted there. quote:
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Oct 16, 2021 11:34
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Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 and Unrailed are what we're mainly playing atm. CSD3 works great for remote play or locally with controllers / 1 player on keyboard, and Unrailed is very easy to pick up. I disliked Out of Space a lot.
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Oct 16, 2021 12:43
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oh wow, unrailed sounds like pure uncut goon-baitquote:Unrailed! is a cooperative rogue-like multiplayer game where you have to work together with your friends to build a railway track across endless procedurally generated worlds.
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Oct 17, 2021 19:46
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This thread only reminds me of how criminally rare it is to find splitscreen coop in today's major AAA games, especially for the PC platform. Off the top of my head, only some of the modern CODs and Gears 5 offers it when you're looking at the big mainstream offerings. Not even the upcoming Halo Infinite will have it. It's absolutely criminal. Despite Blizzard's horrendous background I am looking forward to Diablo 4 just for the same screen coop.
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Oct 17, 2021 20:04
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raditts posted:I love Overcooked but Moving Out didn't really do much for me personally, it just felt really dull and repetitive in a way that Overcooked doesn't. YMMV of course, maybe the pretty simple gameplay will make it a better fit for someone who's not that good at video games. Same, there's not enough variety in the things you do compared to Overcooked and too much of it is just coordinating with your team mate moving the same awkward box.
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Oct 17, 2021 20:25
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I had a lot of fun playing through Streets of Rogue co-op with my son. It is much easier than playing the game solo, since dying doesn't mean game over as long as the other player can revive you. Lots of different player characters give lots of possibilities for mayhem.
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Oct 18, 2021 04:10
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For something much more casual, Ibb & Obb is very charming and friendly to new players. It's a simple, chill co-op puzzle platformer with the core mechanic that the level mirrors across the middle and players must interact from one side to the other to get through.
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Oct 18, 2021 13:06
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Despite Blizzard's horrendous background I am looking forward to Diablo 4 just for the same screen coop.
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Oct 19, 2021 00:57
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