Does anyone have any suggestions for PS4 Couch Coop Games?
Diablo 3
Divinity: Original Sin
It depends who you’re playing with and their tastes but I’d highly recommend:
- Overcooked
- Helldivers
- Rayman Legends/Origins
- Magicka 2
- Guacamelee
- Rocket League
- Cuphead (not for the faint of heart!)
- Towerfall
I hear great things about:
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
- Chariot
- Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
- Resident Evil 5
- Diablo 3
- Divinity: Original Sin
- Spelunky
Yeah, I’m with Will on Diablo 3 as a first pick. It’s a incredible translation to same-couch coop on the Playstation 4. For up to four players, by the way, and it effectively circumvents a lot of problems with same-couch coop.
Also, I heartily recommend this little gem:
-Tom
Not sure who your audience is, but my kids are nuts about Minecraft and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. The latter gives you some fun opportunities for teamwork.
Cuphead isn’t on PS4. And are you talking about PvZ Garden Warfare 2, or is there co-op in regular PvZ2?
Thanks for the tip on Blazerush.
Have you plaed Victor Vran on PS4?
Micro Machines is the first game that comes to mind that did that racing-game-same-screen-edge-KO thing.
I love that in SpeedRunners the outer boundary gets progressively smaller once a player gets knocked out which makes it more intense for the remaining players, more entertaining for the knocked out players and ultimately reduces the waiting time for them to jump back in. Great stuff.
Thanks for the tip on Blaze Rush; looks really cool, like Rock n’ Roll Racing meets Micro Machines with bouncy car physics.
@WhollySchmidt Oops, for some reason I thought Cuphead was on PS4 and, yes, I meant Garden Warfare 2! Amended.
Diablo 3 is great.
Borderlands 2 (if you don’t have an issue with split screens)
Alienation is fun the first play through, then quickly becomes tedious.
Played a bit of Tomb Raider - Temple of the Osiris, can’t remember why we stopped, but I think we got bored after a while.
Until Dawn - even if its technically not a co op, it´s a lot of fun to bring together a group of friends and take all the timed decisions together. This was a great co-op for me.
If you want to count in the Playlink games here, which you definitely should, Hidden Agenda is a real fun and short game, especially if you’re playing with 2 or more friends.
Also, of course, That’s you if you’re having a couch co-op involving alcohol.
And last but I’m hoping not least - A Way Out comes out March 23, a game where you HAVE to play with a friend.
I have not, but I have played it on the PC and it works beautifully with a controller!
-Tom
Yes to Borderlands 2.
Spelunky!
Oh hey, won’t Far Cry 5 have a couch co op-option?
Don’t Starve is a solid Couch Coop game as well.
Update: A Way Out is a great couch co-op game (only for 2 people though).
I’ve been thinking a lot about this the last couple of days since I’ve been spending some time with someone I want to couch co-op with.
Basically, I´ll have to buy another PS4 and another TV, put them next to each other and then start the good online co op-games.
Why, really, WHY do game developers think no one needs couch co-ops anymore?
It’s really a matter of that being an expensive feature to support. For games where both players are on screen at once, it’s simple, and these tend to support couch multiplayer. Diablo, Mortal Kombat, Snipper Clips, and so on. But if the characters can get away from each other, and the game requires split screen, it becomes a much more complicated question. A Way Out, or Brothers before it, resolves that question by being split screen in almost all circumstances. Most games are not structured that way. Rightly so, because while co-op is popular, it’s just a shadow of the single-player market. For most games, split screen is something that is only present for couch multiplayer.
Supporting split screen as a mode requires a significant engineering effort. If the game supports streaming, it must be ready to split disc access between both viewpoints and the background music, and potentially video streaming as well, which is beyond most game consoles’ capabilities. A texture LOD (level of detail) system will help with memory load, and to a lesser extent render time, but neither of these will be enough to meet the needs of rendering the world from 2 different perspectives every frame. So now you’re probably in the domain of reducing scene complexity, geometry LOD maybe, lower complexity shaders, reduced post-processing effects to get that all important frame time back. Because gameplay feel is important, this mode pretty much still needs to run at the same framerate as the normal game.
Let’s suppose you’ve done all that. You’ve spent a bunch of budget on a feature 15% of your audience will use. Now you’ve got a QA testing surface twice as large as the single-player game. All the problems of online, but now you have to performance test everything split screen as well. This corner of this level with both characters performing their ults with this many monsters on screen drops below the performance budget for 10 seconds before recovery!
Rendering time is something like 90% of where the CPU in games is going and 100% of the GPU. Fighting to stuff in all the art and effects is why game development is so expensive. Split screen aggravates the most sensitive area in the whole effort. With online gaming being so ubiquitous, it’s easy to see why it often gets cut.
My preference is they have both online and couch. If given one one choice, I would choose online over couch.
OK, thanks for a great explanation I haven’t thought about before.
But - I prefer couch co-ops that work in the same way as online multiplayer does. That is - I do NOT like split screen. The mechanics of Diablo, Division and Far Cry 5 amongst others in multiplayer (and couch co op for Diablo) is the one I prefer, and seeing how that is perfectly possible, I cannot really see why those games that have a perfectly working online multiplayer, cannot offer the same kind of game for couch co-op.
Sorry if I missed something in your explanation there.
How would you do the Division or Far Cry multiplayer (co-op or competitive) on a single television without split-screen?
Diablo is distinct from those others by constraining the play field to ensure that both characters are on screen simultaneously. That’s not a limitation you would be able to apply to a 1st person shooter, or really any game with direct camera control.
Overcooked is really fun.