Like with movies and TV shows, the experience can be greatly enhanced by getting to experience them with other people. When watching something, this is easy, but when it comes to a game, both players need to be fully immersed in the story for it to have the greatest impact. Co-op games have come a long way over the years and can pull both players along in such a way that they get an incredible shared experience.
Updated on July 11, 2022 by Ritwik Mitra: There was a time when the very idea of telling a good story in a video game sounded absolutely unbelievable. However, as gaming has progressed over time, the depth of this entertainment medium has reached a level where a good narrative is almost critical to enjoying a video game. Even the realm of co-op gaming hasn’t escaped this, and thankfully this side of gaming is catching up with its fair share of story-driven video games that are a blast to play through. The best of the bunch are mentioned below.
10 Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley is one of the most popular farming simulators around right now, which is great since farming is just one of the many areas where this game excels. The amazing characters and the underlying narrative of this game are what make Stardew Valley such a beloved masterpiece from top to bottom.
As the icing on this loaded cake, Stardew Valley also has co-op support to help friends enjoy this masterful title. Players who want to zen out and not partake in the action-fest that most video games have become will have a great time with Stardew Valley, especially with friends!
9 Diablo 3
Activision Blizzard is easily one of the more heinous video game companies operating right now, with the recent release of Diablo Immortal showing just how nefarious their business practices really are. Thankfully, Diablo fans still have PC and console games to enjoy, with Diablo 3 being the most obvious recommendation in this regard.
Diablo 3 had an extremely rocky launch but has slowly stabilized over time to become one of the better dungeon crawlers out there. The fact that this game can be played with friends makes it even more engaging!
8 Dead Space 3
With phrases like “incredible narrative experience” usually make people think of something very moving and emotional, it can also mean making players absolutely wet themselves with jump scares and horrific imagery. It’s all a matter of taste.
Playing Dead Space 3 in co-op changes the experience somewhat. Rather than being all alone in a hostile environment, players have a partner to cling to and rely upon. It means both players get to take turns blundering first into the scary bits whilst the other one simultaneously laughs and panics about what they need to do.
7 Trine
The entire Trine series is full of sweet fairy-tale narratives, that have a hint of irony and satire that the best Disney/Pixar films hold dear. The gameplay makes great use of the narrative elements, allowing every character to work to their strengths, and a good team of three can become quite the well-oiled machine.
Pushing through that story brings the unwilling heroes together in the same way that the players will come together as they puzzle-platform their way through the world. Whether they’re looking for a grand treasure or trying to fix a prince’s broken psyche, there’s always a great adventure.
6 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Both this and the original Divinity: Original Sin are fantastic expansive RPG games, but for the full experience, they really should be played with other people. The solo experience is still a lot of fun, but there are elements like party balancing and weird shenanigans that can only be experienced with friends.
Pulling a party together where everyone has their specialties and experiences the adventure in a slightly different way is exactly what caused things like MMOs to become so popular. Place players like that in the world of Divinity, with deep lore and entertaining quest lines, and it’s a recipe for success.
5 Gears 5
It is admittedly a bit of a stretch to call Gears 5 a story-driven game, but the franchise wouldn’t have reached this point without a compelling narrative to frame all the bloodthirsty open-world shooting action. Blasting through such action with a partner makes it much more of a bloodbath, and therefore much more fun.
Even if it isn’t the main focus on gameplay, Gears 5 holds a narrative a lot of people care about, and the characters have been carefully constructed to this point in the franchise, Neither player will feel left out of the story because of it this.
4 A Way Out
To say Hazelight have perfected the cooperative narrative experience would be a huge understatement. Their first game, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, was an emotional ride that left a huge impact on everyone who played it, and years later their second major release, A Way Out did much the same.
Making co-operative play mandatory for the experience, A Way Out blended the narratives of two characters in a story that people are still talking about several years on. They found a unique way to build the gameplay in such a way that forced players to come together, and eventually tear them apart in one of gaming’s most memorable story moments.
3 Portal 2
Perhaps the most notorious co-op mode. Portal 2 gives co-op players an entire game-length campaign to play through on top of the singleplayer experience. It’s not as heavy on the narrative as the singleplayer campaign, but there is still bucket loads of charming Portal writing.
It’s genius design that ensures players have no choice but to co-operate to succeed, yet the tongue-in-cheek tone of Portal always leads to shenanigans between players. Devising silly scenarios that send a co-op partner to their doom is half the fun of the game mode.
2 We Were Here
An asymmetrical puzzle game, We Were Here allows the players to tell their own story as they try to escape. With one player locked in a library, and another locked in a series of challenges, communication is key to making sure both players get out alive.
A game like Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes does this well too, but there’s something about the atmosphere of We Were Here that makes it a much more immersive experience. Additionally, it throws in a little narrative kick right at the end, potentially forcing players to make a choice between who lives and who dies.
1 It Takes Two
Hazelight’s most recent game, and the one on everyone’s lips in 2021, It Takes Two took the co-op-specific gameplay elements of No Way Out and built upon them to a degree never seen before. It Takes Two takes advantage of a much more lighthearted tone to give players plenty of opportunities to have silly fun and play stupid games with each other.
It doesn’t skimp on the core gameplay either. Whether puzzle-platforming or battling creatures, players have to be in sync with each other at all times to move forward. This plays perfectly into the narrative of two lovers in a failing marriage reconnecting and relearning each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
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