What's Your Favorite Co-Op Game to Play With Loved Ones?
COMMUNITY QUESTION | It's a weekend all about spending time with family and friends, so let's hunker down and talk about our favorite co-op games!
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We survived another week. Hurray for us, and for all of you! But before we head off into the weekend, we have another Community Question to kick off.
For some, it's Easter weekend and the start of Passover. (Tomorrow, it's also the most apt day to get stoned en masse.) In celebration of spending time with our loved ones, whether it's over weed or food, we figure it's as good a time as any to ask this week's question. So let us know in the comments, what's your favorite co-op game to play with your loved ones?
Kat Bailey, Editor-in-Chief
This Community Question popped into my head because I just recently started a co-op game of Stardew Valley with my significant other. We've played a lot of games together through the years, from Soulcalibur to Lego Star Wars, but this is the first time that it feels like we're building something together in a game (unless you count the time we planned out a city in SimCity 3000). It's been pretty neat to sit with my Switch in handheld mode while she plays on the TV, doing chores together and planning the layout of our farm. I like that it's fostered communication and generally given us something to obsess over together (just now she called me over to talk about how we might array our Oak trees so we can get the maximum amount of Oak Resin). Something tells me that I've got another 100 hours of Stardew Valley waiting for me in the future.
Matt Kim, News Editor
Before rebranding into Visceral Games, EA Redwood Shores were making licensed games for popular IP like The Simpsons and James Bond. One such licensed title was a video game tie-in for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. It is, without a doubt, my favorite co-op game I've ever played.
I'm not even that big of a Lord of the Rings fan, but my best friend through high school and I would go to my house every day after class and play some more of The Return of the King until we beat it together. And it was hard. Some of the difficulty was earned, sometimes the camera wonked out and ended up trapping one of us off screen until we died. Either way we didn't care. It was such a great co-op experience, and each character felt balanced and complementary (I preferred playing as Legolas for the range).
Honestly, I'm just sad because it seems like the era of movie tie-in games are over. If we still made those kinds of games like we did in 2004, I'm sure there'd be bargain bins full of Avengers: Endgame video games right now.
Caty McCarthy, Features Editor
Apex Legends, because it's all I play now. I play it with friends, my partner, strangers. Everyone. It is the perfect co-op game because it necessitates working together, unlike other battle royale shooters. It's always a good time. I don't have siblings and my partner isn't huge on games like he used to be, so I sadly don't have any nice memories of co-op games. *world's smallest violin plays*