Elden Ring with the seamless COOP mod has been very fun for my two friends and me. The experience isn’t 100% perfect (some bugs) but exploring the Lands Between with buddies and fighting the bosses together has easily been in my top 3 COOP experiences up until now.
If y’all have PS3, Lord of the Rings: War in the North. Specifically a 3 player co-op game. Like actually 3 player, not 4 player where you don’t need a 4th. I enjoyed it and have good memories playing with friends, it’s really fun and silly and the servers are still up.
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. A very complex RTS with a pretty steep learning curve and advanced strategy. Awesome game but not casual.
Alien vs predator games are specifically 3 player (marine, alien , predator). Not sure if there is a modern version. Interesting because each of the 3 play differently.
Stellaris allows many players if you like those types of games. Only the host needs dlc if you want to pool your cash and buy some. But yeah it can be expensive.
Since you mention Paradox titles, I’d add Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, and/or Hearts of Iron 4. Same rules apply for those games’ DLC, as well.
Streets of Rogue and Vagante are challenging roguelikes that scale effortlessly for co-op of various numbers of players. There's also Mercenary Kings, which I admit I enjoyed more than most, but it's like the cross section of Mega Man action with Monster Hunter structure. Much more recently, Baldur's Gate 3 probably hits its sweet spot at 3 human players, since you want to have an NPC slot around in your party of 4 for the story quests that are relevant to that NPC.
I'd just like to provide extra emphasis on Towerfall. One of the GOAT local multiplayer games and only gets better with a third, much like Smash Brothers, Power Stone, etc.
Unreal Tournament 2004, with few players it turns its normal frantic and fast paced gameplay into a suspensfull slower experience which is awesome.
I think you can get it on the internet archive as it stopped being sold on gog and steam this spring.
OpenRA - Do you remember the old classic series Command & Conquer ?
OpenRA takes the old original game, updates the controls to modern RTS controls, add new ai to play against, add support for modern resolutions and adds a good internet multiplayer system, all of this for free!
gaming
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.