Recommendations Requested: 4-person co-op multiplayer

Hi -- I need some recommendations. My brothers and I are burning out on WoW Classic and are looking for our next cooperative multiplayer game. There are 4 of us and we tend to run together (think of it as our "poker night" away from our wives). Diablo III is under consideration, but I would love some other suggestions. About the only thing off limits is the FPS genre (as one of my brothers gets motion sickness from shooters). Any points in the right direction would be appreciated.

Edgar Newt

The Division 2 is co-op and super cheap but it's third person shooting so I don't know how close to the line it gets for your brother's motion sickness. I don't know if you all are into RTS but we've been enjoying Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. Sea of Thieves is an interesting "be a pirate!" game but can be frustrating when you've progressed far on a treasure hunt and then someone blows up your ship. Elite: Dangerous is huge in scale and if you love flying spaceships it's great and you can pretty much play it however you want. It gains a lot from having a decent flight stick setup so it may be more of an investment than you all want.

Monster Hunter World

If you want a Souls-like with coop then give Remnant: From the Ashes a look.

Broforce

Final Fantasy XIV if you can stomach another mmo.

garion333 wrote:

Monster Hunter World

If you want a Souls-like with coop then give Remnant: From the Ashes a look.

Seconded I loved Monster Hunter World and It sounds like it fits your bill well, it takes a bit of investment in understanding the systems but it does a great job in introducing them.

Remnant was enjoyable too if you like the look of that.

As a final one if your looking for something quick and fun I had a real blast with Overcooked 2, it does online coop for 4.

If you want to look at something different I'd suggest looking at an open world sandbox type game. Something like ARK or Conan Exiles. I've been playing with a group of 3-4 people in these type of games for years now. Have over 2,000 hours in ARK and currently playing Atlas (ARK clone but kind of pirate themed). I've heard Conan Exiles has also had some great updates in the year since I've played it too. They can be tons of fun building up and trying to survive (or get other killed in creative ways).

Just a note that many steam games that only supported local multiplayer can now be played over the net and only one person needs the game.

Guys, great suggestions. Thank you.

One brother and I have Division 2. It’s on the list, but probably too close to the motion sickness line for one of the participants.

I gave my brothers Broforce a few years ago. We never played it. I may have to revisit that.

We’re HUGE Conan fans so will need to dig into that one as well.

Overcooked is too ripe with yelling at each other (but a great suggestion).

I am also going to look into Monaco and Monster Hunter World.

I really appreciate the prompt advice and recommendations! Thanks again.

I have to bring up Alienation, an incredible game you can play up to four players co-op. So, so, so good.

Sea of Thieves! It's the perfect 4 player co-op game!

Castle Crashers is a bit old, but should still be tons of fun. Should be a few similar beat-em-ups out there for four players as well.

Human Fall Flat
Divinity Original Sin 2
Mass Effect 2 ?

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is hilarious and brilliant if you're talking couch co-op.

We’ve played Lovers. Fantastic. Mass Effect 2 is an interesting idea.

Thanks for the beat em up suggestions. We’re looking for something a bit more co-op. We have enough competitiveness amongst the 4 of us.

Another vote here for Monaco. The style is crisp, modern, and dirty gangster all at the same time. What's not to love about a co-op heist full of pixels and danger?

These may be too casual for your group but:

Overcooked
Unrailed
Heave Ho

The last one at worst will set up hours of comedy gold and you should check it out. All 3 of those support remote play so whoever has the best internet connection can be the one purchase if you want to just try before buying. Heave Ho is actually only couch coop so the only way to play online is via Remote Play.

I have the latter 2 so can fire it up remote play with you if you want to try before buy.

Alien Swarm might fit the bill. It's a top-down perspective 4-person co-op shooter. It was released by Valve, and best of all, it's free. It gets repetitive after a while, but it should be good for a session.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/630/Alien_Swarm/

I disagree that Overcooked is too casual - you need to be a well (olive) oiled machine to hit some of those 3* requirements. Also, the ice level is the hardest of corez.

Overcooked 2 is a little more polished and a little more casual.

True.. casual may have been the wrong word.. after all Diablo is probably "easier" than all of those games I listed

Huh, i never equated casual with "easy", just easy to understand mechanics but don't need to go into analytics to master. Sometimes they can ramp up to hard as hell. For example I would throw Tetris into "casual". For each his own.

Thanks guys. I appreciate the recommendations continue to flow. Much appreciated.

Terraria! Such good co op and just loads of content. I'm getting ready to play again after several years. They'll be releasing a free new content patch this year too.

I don't think it's been suggested yet but "Helldivers" is definitely worth a look. It's a co-op, top down (kinda) alien shooter. A bit like Diablo 3 crossed with Starship Troopers. Also, it's been out for a while so you can normally pick it up cheap in Steam sales.

If you are into open world survival/build type games, you could try Raft. It's still in early access on steam, but has been a ton of fun playing and exploring with my 2 kids. It's easy to get into and learn the mechanics and I imagine it'd be a great game to catch up and talk in since there is no spoken story.

The best co-op experience I had was playing Star Wars: the Old Republic with my now wife. The multiplayer conversation system and class quest lines did a good job of giving us each spotlight time, and it was nice to be able to tag along and see each other's stories. I don't know firsthand how well that would scale up to 4 players, but gameplay-wise the game's group size is 4. So long as you have one tank and one healer among you, you can do all the content in the game except the end-game 8/16 person raids operations. One bonus to multiplayer play is if you're getting or turning in a quest, you don't have to have everyone there. Party members who aren't in range will show up as a hologram instead and participate in the conversation remotely. My wife and I used to split up to save time with that step, and it worked really well.

Looking through my Steam library, other candidates I see include:

Castle Crashers and River City Ransom: Underground are fun beat-em-ups that support 4 players.

The Magica games are fun if you like chaos and/or discovering broken spell combos.

The 2014 version of Gauntlet is good. It's by the same studio that did Magica so it's got some of the same feel, but with less chaos and wackiness.

Spelunky is a good platforming game that supports up to 4 players, though I have only played it solo myself.

I second Castle Crashers and Terraria. Would add Minecraft, too.

Path of Exile is a good alternative to Diablo and it is free. Online co-op only. Dauntless is the same general game as Monster Hunter World, but free.

Also check out Factorio. Great co op and puzzle solving.

Some very good ideas here..

Thanks. Right now we are trying out World of Warships. Only 3 at a time (unless you are doing an operation)...but the price is right. I would like to get them to xcom at some point.