Best cooperative pc games

It's possible get through each of the heists without raising an alarm, but it's bloody hard and you stand very little chance until you've unlocked some of the more advanced skills. Still, the possibility hangs there like a 24 carat carrot, nudging you all to have another go until you've perfected every scenario. Streets of Rogue is a chaotic playground at the best of times.

Adding more players makes it more so, but not just by mindlessly multiplying the destruction. While players are on the same 'side', the NPCs treat you all as separate entities - another person like them, not a faction they can magically recognise.

Combined with its systems-driven design already present in single player, it means that instead of blocking each other out, your options overlap to create more opportunities.

The usual friction between players who want to do things in different ways is reduced, as you can opt out of getting involved, or even exploit the other players' behaviour to give yourself more options.

You died, but someone playing as a shapeshifter possessed a hacker, then reprogrammed a slot machine to improve its odds while a third player tried to win enough money to pay for the resurrection. And even if you're all going full chaos, the rippling reactions to your rampage produce as many laughs out of sitting back and watching the aftermath. None of us know how we ended up with a loyal gorilla minion who joined a gang. The best example of asymmetry in co-op. It involves at least two players - one of you is defusing a bomb with judicious mouse clicks and cautious wire snips, the other is giving instructions from a bomb-defusing manual.

Neither player can look at what the other is doing. It's one of the most perfect set-ups for the destruction of a healthy relationship and a fantastic example of leaving the screen itself behind. You don't have to print out the manual to read from it you could just read the PDF file from a laptop but we think it's the best way to play.

You flip hurriedly through pages, trying to decipher the theory of these explosive devices. Then comes the challenge of communicating the quirks and symbols of the page in a way that won't be misunderstood. As the bomb handler, you're consistently double-checking and second-guessing your team mate as they stammer out their directions.

In the end, you've just got to trust them. Arma 3 takes place on a pair beautiful fictional Greek islands. It does have a single-player campaign, but it's that island, the vehicles, guns and mechanics, and the painstaking attention to detail, that makes Arma 3 great.

It's a platform for the community to create their own games upon, and there's enough community made content that if you get into it, you could be playing Arma 3's cooperative mode to the exclusion of any other game. There's something about Arma's design philosophy that makes it especially well suited to playing with other people. Partly there's the realism, which obviously lends itself well to the kinds of genuine squad tactics you can enact when playing with some dedicated friends or a committed community like ShackTac.

Partly it's the way in which the islands are designed in spite of you, not in service to you, making your steady journeys across the landscape with another person feel more satisfying than overcoming a set of contrived obstacles. Hopefully one of you is a good pilot. Now available for free to anyone who already owns Don't Starve, Don't Starve Together lets you try and survive its Burton-esque nightmare wilderness with friends. While you might think it would be easier to survive with someone to huddle up to by the night's fire, cooperation here won't just see you chopping up firewood twice as fast - the more players you have, the more competition there is for food.

The trick is to work together instead of fighting over scraps: one of you can cook while another places traps; someone else can be chopping wood ready to stoke the night's fire. With six players, there's plenty of scope for creating a sustainable base, so long as everyone sticks to their roles and shares resources.

Don't Starve was already a brilliant story generator and the stories only get better when you've got people to share them with by a campfire. Killing Floor 2 provides a familiar flavour of zombie wave defence or "Zeds", as the game calls them , tasking you and five other players with welding doors shut, swinging katanas and removing heads with panicked shotgun blasts.

What weapons you start with depends on the class, so while assault rifle equipped characters might be able to pick off Zeds at range, the Support class needs to stop undead that get close by removing half of their head with some buckshot. What makes Killing Floor 2 so great is the feedback: weapons punish trigger-happy players with recoil, body parts fly from enemies with each impact, and claret glistens on the ground, a bloody reminder of each skirmish.

Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead. You can play through the whole of Vegas 2's brilliant but flawed campaign with a friend, rappelling down walls, breaching windows and taking out terrorists in unison.

While that will keep you busy a while, it's Terrorist Hunt - a mode where you team up with three buddies to hunt down a set amount of enemies across large sandbox maps - that will keep you coming back.

Guns are powerful and fast; death comes faster. This makes methodically creeping through the maps as a unit, covering corners and assaulting defended positions, an incredibly tense affair. This only ramps up when your squad inevitably gets picked apart on the harder difficulties, right up until three of you are sat watching the lone survivor, the whole success of the mission pinned on them scraping through.

It could even be down to you and you'll feel the tension ramp up as you suddenly become aware of being judged. Borderlands 3 is classic "bigger is better" sequel design: everything you liked in Borderlands 2 still a great co-op romp in itself but with more. More gun variables, more character abilities, more locations, more vehicles, more rifles that grow legs and run around as a lead-spewing sidekick. The only thing it has less of is Claptrap, which is a blessing. And so it makes sense that co-op is the way to go in this bombastic FPS game.

At any one time one friend could be ordering a giant battle ant into the fray while another hops into a Titanfall-ish mech suit, a third activates a drone and a holographic double and the fourth performs psychic powerbombs in the middle of it all.

The way these character skills can be further differentiated means you never really know which version of each character you'll be rubbing shoulders with, turning co-operative sessions into a showcase for builds. Of course, the main takeaway is always: I want my own battle ant. Importantly, it's a friendlier co-op game than Borderlands 2, too.

With instanced loot drops, players don't have to fight over the same spoils of war, and the difficulty scales to each combatant, so a casual dabbler can comfortably leap into an old pro's game. Divinity: Original Sin let you create a character and then suggested it might be fun if you took a friend along. It was fun, because you got to do all sorts of silly things.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 wants you to consider the possibility of playing with multiple friends. It supports up to four players but rather than simply increasing the size of the party, it does something far smarter and more insidious.

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. This might not be quite as welcoming to newcomers as regular players are so insistent to insist, but stick with it and Monster Hunter World is huge amounts of fun as you take down big monsters as a team.

Who doesn't want to be a tiny kiwi bird who just got hired to work a post office? No-one, that's who. KeyWe sees you working as kiwi birds Jeff and Debra to get all sorts of mail delivered. Make sure packages have the right stamps and address labels, decode messages, send letters of your own. It's a big job and it's going to take two of you to do it. Did we mention there are unlockable outfits? After years of updates and additions, it has become and expansive digital playground of things to do with friends.

Everything from team games to bank heists, races, stunt courses and more. Completing Phogs definitely requires plenty of co-operation as you and your pal will take control of a two-headed sausage dog - each of you taking one of its heads, connected together by a long, stretchy body.

Together you'll have to bite, bounce, and bark your way through a series of puzzles set across three unique worlds. Each one is utterly adorable, and is themed around a phog's favourite things - Food, Sleep, and Play.

As you work your way through them, it's easy to appreciate the fact each world - and the levels within it - offers a unique way to utilize your good phog abilities and your co-op power. It's a delight that also feels like going on a walk in a cheese dream with a friend. Just wait until you see the hat shops too. Stardew Valley hands you the keys to a run-down farm in a small, lazy town and asks you to turn its fortunes around. You can chop up wood and plant crops, fish and trade, craft and scavenge, or you can just wander around town chatting to the pleasant townsfolk.

This game became famous for its relaxing singleplayer mode, but the online co-op is, in our opinion, the best way to play. With up to three co-op partners, you can come up with freeform projects, dividing up tasks to hasten production. Taking on the roles of tough girls Nessa and Demelza, Knight and Bikes sees you exploring Penfurzy Island in a Goonies-inspired tale where bikes are king, and mischief is paramount.

It's made by Moo Yu and Rex Crowle, who are both ex-Media Molecule, so, as you can imagine, it's infused with quirk, cuteness, and the kind of spirit you can only find in a Famous Five book. Yes, the gameplay is about puzzle solving, mini-games of crazy golf, and riding your bike as fast as you can humanly pedal, but it's also a heartfelt adventure about two kids that offers the kind of gameplay experience that you can rarely have.

And it's even better with a real-world friend by your side. Although you can play Sea of Thieves solo, this is very much a game that encourages you to tell stories, and, more importantly, create those tales with other people. Galleons can be sailed by crews of up to four, with adventures spinning out from the various voyages you undertake. That might be finding buried treasure, collecting goods to trade with the merchants, or hunting down undead pirate captains.

Or, you know, fighting a Kraken or taking on a huge Skeleton Fort. At their heart, the Diablo games have always been about the pursuit of ever-shinier loot. Having someone to share your latest, shiniest ring with makes those rare finds all the more thrilling, and being able to share drops between your party makes it easier to create powerful characters. Bungie's sci-fi epic is built on the ability to join up with other players as much as possible.

Part FPS, part MMO, Destiny 2 's outstanding shooting mechanics and tempting loot grinds will keep you and your friends in for the long run, or at least until Destiny 3 inevitably comes out and everyone jumps ship. Not only are there a ton of Adventures, Strikes, Nightfalls, and six-person raids to participate in, but you'll also find yourself working with random players you encounter in the world.

Public Events literally fall out of the sky, tasking you and anyone nearby to fight off hordes of enemies for that extra piece of loot. If you've somehow never jumped on the Destiny train, you still have time to find and friend and become a Guardian pf the galaxy today.

The newest entry in one of the most wholesome series ever made feels like the perfect game to play in self-isolation. Pick up sticks. Shake trees for fruit. Decorate your home. Then, when you go off home, you can send them a thank-you postcard. The process for inviting friends is slightly convoluted — head to the island airport to get started — but it keeps unwanted randoms from joining your game. Weapons include firearms, chainsaws, axes, and even a deadly cast iron frying pan.

An AI director in Left 4 Dead 2 tailors the game to match your performance by adapting the enemy population, weather, and more. The director also ensures a different experience each time the game is played, making it the best coop game for PC to play over and over.

Its multiplayer cooperative gameplay format has been widely praised. It is set in a shared world where groups of players frequently encounter other groups and interact in both negative and positive ways. In Sea of Thieves, players complete voyages or missions with a treasure map or riddle for guidance. Missions include locating goods and treasure and then delivering them in order to earn a legendary pirate reputation.

Since you are a pirate, you may also wish to play aggressively and plunder stolen goods from other ships. However, part of the joy of playing Sea of Thieves is you can play aggressively, defensively, or play just to explore the large and detailed world of pirates on the high seas.

Players can play musical instruments together to form a complete band. They can enjoy a drink at a pub or engage in many other activities besides raiding ships and looting treasure, so this is a very versatile game to play. Sear of Thieves is one of the best co-op games for PC for those who want to enjoy many hours of fun. Because you encounter new groups of players each time, this game is always unpredictable. In Diablo III, the protective Worldstone, which was meant to keep Sanctuary safe from the demonic forces, has been destroyed.

A new generation of heroes must retrieve the legendary Black Soulstone created by the crazed warlock known as Zltan Kulle to trap the souls of seven Lords of Hell and destroy them for all eternity. Players can choose their characters from five classes with a choice of gender and abilities. Choices include a barbarian, a witch doctor, a wizard, a monk, a demon hunter, a necromancer, and a crusader. In Diablo III cooperative play, the loot goes to individual players and no player can view what other players received.

Players are encouraged to trade and share, which can be done for two hours after loot is dropped. You can also draw on the earnings of loot from fallen enemies and use it to buy helpful armor and weapons, or have artisans forge weapons to fill out your arsenal.

There are new quests in new locations and different loot to claim in each game, so no two games will be the same as you try to defend Sanctuary from annihilation from aggressive demon invaders. Diablo III can only be played online and does not feature an offline solo player version. However, when it comes to cooperative play, Diablo III is one of the best co-op games for PC, and one that you can experience over and over again. This game has an immense open-world environment to explore and manipulate at will, as well as a rich, engaging storyline and plenty of action as players use skills and magic spells to overcome opponents.

Divinity: Original Sin is a turn-based role-playing game in the early style of cooperative games that many consider to be classic. In this game, players can choose a pre-made character or design their main character of choice by choosing a race, gender, story of origin, and stats.

Up to three companion characters may also be chosen for assistance, and each is fully playable and interact with the environment in unique ways. Divinity: Original Sin has local player modes, and online mode in competitive and cooperative games.

Divinity: Original Sin is set in Rivellon, an imaginary world ruled by seven gods who have invested some of their powers into Lucian the Divine in order to protect the world from the mysterious void, which is full of powerful and frightening creatures.

Lucian, however, died before the beginning of the game, resulting in an invasion of monsters into Rivellon. By using a combination of physical moves and spells, players can combat creatures to achieve objectives as well as collect helpful inventory to complete quests.

Quests overlap, and players may find hidden keys in one quest that aid them in another. Divinity: Original Sin also has plenty of engaging non-player characters and side activities, as well as endless opportunities to explore. You most likely haven't played them all, so here is a chance to learn about some you may have overlooked. Cooperative games are those games with multiplayer options that let you play with friends and family members no matter where they are.

You might also encounter real-life players who can become your greatest on screen-enemies as your wits and skills clash in epic combat, stealthy looting, and more. If you are ready to choose one of the best co-op games for PC so you can embark on your next rollicking rampage through the high seas, or a scavenging trip through a post-zombie apocalypse world, we have put together the perfect list for you.

These are some of the most legendary cooperative adventure games available today. Cooperative games—affectionately called co-op games—are most often offered as an alternative to a single-player game mode. The multiplayer co-op mode will typically involve two or more additional players completing the story mode which will run in a way that is a variation on the single-player version.

It may be very similar or substantially different. In most games, you team up with one to four other players to achieve an objective or solve a mission together while battling AI-operated enemies.

In some cases, you may be competing against each other, as in multiplayer formats. The PC platform is one of the best ways to enjoy cooperative gaming, either the couch co-op or one with online players. Side missions can be much more fun and entertaining in cooperative games. In games with vast open-world maps to explore, having a friend or sidekick can make exploring even more fun and can open the door to creating your own adventures and storylines.

Sandbox games are also some of the best co-op games for PC, as you can team up with another player to collect resources, build structures, fortresses, forge weapons and much more. No matter how much gaming experience you might have, exploring the best co-op games for PC with a friend or partner, can put a new twist on an old favorite, or open the door to explore a brand new, unchartered world—and not have to do it alone!

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