Recommend me some Co-Op Games

[Eternal_Freedom]

My brother and I have been playing (and thoroughly enjoying) the Portal 2 Co-Op mode of late. Having completed it, we'd like to find some other fun co-op games that we can try. There are however a few limitations:

1. The game(s) should not be any Call of Duty variants; we both dislike that series.
2. The game(s) should be available on Steam
3. While we are quite happy to play FPS games, we would prefer something other than pure combat
4. My brother's PC is kinda old, so nothing more recent than, say, 2010 or so if possible.

So...what does SDN recommend for us?

[Mr Bean]

First head on over to Steam, go to search then tag "co-op" to see a giant list of steam games like here

But off your request... lets see

The Diablo sorts, Magicka 1/2, Torchlight 1/2
Borderlands 1/2/Pre Sequal
Some Splinter Cell's had Co-op and are right in your timeframe as is Rainbow 6
Left 4 Dead 1/2 are defined by Co-op
And I hear good things about Contagion and Castle Crashers

Farcry 3 and beyond have co-op but are disqualified by your 2010 requirement
Everything else I know fails because of requirement 4

[TheFeniX]

Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 is a great co-op experience. That said, DO NOT buy it for PC. Ubisoft left a game-breaking co-op bug where details can be found here. There is no fix or patch because Ubisoft sucks shit and the game should be sold with a huge disclaimer that the co-op experience is bugged enough to be labeled almost unplayable. I mean, unless you like hearing stacking machine-gun audio during your play experience.

Define "Call of Duty variant." Either way, COD: World at War has some of the best "real" co-op of any game. You can play almost the entire campaign co-op, with the exception of 2 solo missions only available in SP. There is also competitive co-op which is incredibly fun. Not to mention Nazi Zombies. Resident Evil 5 is another good game that actually adds something to the PC port. Functions well on PC as does RE6.

I have no idea if Gears of War for PC still functions at all WRT to co-op, but the console co-op is great. Payday 2 is a bit of a DLC cash-grab, but it pretty fun co-op wise.

7 Days to Die is still pretty ugly, but is easy to setup a server and survive the zombie apocalypse. There is also Terraria and some of it's derivatives. Minecraft too I guess. Killing Floor is a co-op multiplayer FPS. No story, just killing zombies though.

Saint's Row 3+ are fully co-op integrated and are good GTA alternatives. You can TRY getting SR2's co-op to function, but it's buggy as Hell. They are newer games (3+) but you can really crank the settings down on them. StarCraft 2 is also in this vein as Blizzard games tend to run on toasters pretty well. That said, there is no true co-op in SC2 but they did finally add Archon mode (2 players control the same units and resources).

Burnout Paradise is a shitty PC port, but it manages to function ok. Even though it's 2008, it uses more resources and isn't well optimized. YMMV. It's newer and sucks, but if you're desperate enough Fable 3 is right around the 2010 break-off.

[Mr Bean]

No Payday 2, reason 4, Payday 2 kicks under computers in the face and keeps kicking them when they are down. Depending on your bro's GPU he's likely to end up with "acceptable" performance (30-40s fps) or single digits even with everything at minimum settings. Also steam sale is coming in just two weeks if your brother can buy a 750 ti or better Payday 2 is a great choice for co-op. Get all the DLC in a big sale bag.

[orbitingpluto]

My brother and I also coop, so after asking him I have a few recommendations:

Minecraft: It's not on steam, but it's damn fun, and having a trusty blood-bound lad there with you makes it even better.

Borderlands: Seconded. Though I kinda got Borderlands-out on the Playstation and didn't play it too much on the PC.

Left 4 Dead 1&2: Seconded. It's all about that coop, though you can abandon your teammates if your not careful. I had a recent incident in the second game where I stepped onto a boat while attempting to cover my brother as he tried to catch up with me- and unintentionally completed the level and the boat left with just me on it. L4D 2 is the one to purchase, since it contains all the content of the first game, IIRC.

Don't Starve Together: We've only played it a few times so far, but it's a fun survival game. It's after 2010, but the requirements should be okay.

Resident Evil 5: You can play over the internet, or split screen; we played it split screen with ps3 controllers, if you got that route you'll need to do some set up to get the controllers to work within windows, ask if you want details. It's cheaper split screen, since you only need one copy, and in our case, we already had controllers lying around. Xbox controllers shouldn't need set up as far as I know, and controllers made for Windows in the first place should be fine, depending on manufacturer.

Garry's Mod: I fondly remember some stuff we've done, but I often question the amount of time I spend playing this game and the amount of stuff I've downloaded for it. If Minecraft is like playing with Lego, Garry's Mod is like having an entire toybox of neat stuff to goof around with.

Unturned: Romping around on some islands in Canada, surviving amongst zombies. It's free, and has low system requirements though it's over your cutoff.

Payday 1 or 2: As my brother said to me "it's fun until it gets frustrating", Payday 1 has a demo to see if it works well and if the gameplay is something you both like. It really benefits from having more people playing the game, and two sometimes feels like too few sometimes, but it's fun for the most part.


That's it for now, though I could think up more or get more suggestions from my bro.

[KroLazuxy_87]

I game on my laptop (Dell Latitude E6330) because I'm a cheap bastard and don't mind turning all the graphics to 2005.

If you want to play around together in an MMO, try out Dragon Nest or Firefall. Both free. H1Z1 is one of the newer zombie apocalypse games. I think it's the best one right now and it's still being developed. Sadly, not free.

If you want some old school hack'N'slash, try Gauntlet. The matchmaking system has been changed a couple times and can be buggy, but if you already got a friend it's less of a concern.

If you guys are itching for Minecraft/Terraria gameplay, I highly recommend StarBound.

Others:
Team Fortress 2 - Fast and Fun FPS with unique and varied classes
War Thunder/World of Tanks - WW2 tank combat
Warframe - Space. Ninjas.
Sins of a Solar Empire - 4X Real-time strategy in space

[Esquire]

Space Engineers, as a long pick - every three weeks or so the devs break something really important, but they usually fix it right up and in between times you can play space Minecraft.

[Borgholio]

I have to say that the old co-op games are often the best. Diablo 1 and 2 are great. Lots of fun, cheap, easy to run on new hardware, and while they're not Steam, at least with D2 and D3 you can download digitally from Blizzard.

[Zaune]

Fistful of Frags, if you like Westerns.

[Executor32]

Space Engineers, as a long pick - every three weeks or so the devs break something really important, but they usually fix it right up and in between times you can play space Minecraft.

On that note, Medieval Engineers, by the same developer. It's like Space Engineers with peasants, castles, and siege weapons instead of astronauts, spaceships, and pew-pews.

I've also been hearing nothing but good things about ARK: Survival Evolved, and its minimum specs are a 2 GHz dual-core CPU, 4 GB RAM, a DX10-compatible video card with 1GB VRAM, and Windows 7 64-bit, so it might run all right on your brother's PC.

[bilateralrope]

4. My brother's PC is kinda old, so nothing more recent than, say, 2010 or so if possible.

With so many indie games out there that use way less resources than AAA games, giving a year as a cutoff point isn't really helpful. Instead, what are the specs of your brothers computer ?

The game(s) should be available on Steam

Why are you only willing to play games that are on Steam ?

[KroLazuxy_87]

I've also been hearing nothing but good things about ARK: Survival Evolved, and its minimum specs are a 2 GHz dual-core CPU, 4 GB RAM, a DX10-compatible video card with 1GB VRAM, and Windows 7 64-bit, so it might run all right on your brother's PC.

That's the next game I'm looking at getting. Apparently the devs are crazy awesome - releasing updates almost hourly and engaging the player community. I haven't gotten it yet though because the negative reviews all say the same thing: optimization isn't complete yet. The devs have acknowledged this though and fixes are already underway, so I'm psyched.

[Eternal_Freedom]

4. My brother's PC is kinda old, so nothing more recent than, say, 2010 or so if possible.

With so many indie games out there that use way less resources than AAA games, giving a year as a cutoff point isn't really helpful. Instead, what are the specs of your brothers computer ?

Hmm, ok, I dunno the specs off-hand, but it was only just able to run GTA 4.

The game(s) should be available on Steam

Why are you only willing to play games that are on Steam ?

Because my brother is very much a casual gamer and using Steam is about as advanced as he's gotten.