{"id":180270,"date":"2024-02-16T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/?p=180270"},"modified":"2024-02-15T18:41:34","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T00:41:34","slug":"video-game-perfect-couch-co-op","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/2024\/02\/16\/video-game-perfect-couch-co-op\/","title":{"rendered":"What video games, new or old, have perfected the couch co-op experience?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s cold Midwest weather that has me thinking about cozy couch games, maybe it’s the recent sense that Love is in the Air<\/a> — whatever the case, I’ve recently been musing on how few solid couch co-op games currently exist (at least in mainstream gaming). That’s not to say couch co-op games don’t exist at all nowadays; Diablo 4<\/em><\/a> offers a genuinely solid Diablo<\/em> experience with its group play, and Baldur’s Gate 3<\/em><\/a> translates an immaculate single-player experience into a solid-if-buggy multiplayer journey that’s still impossible to put down.<\/p>\n

Of course, to say either of those games has “perfected” the couch co-op experience might be a stretch. Diablo 4<\/em>, while very consistent an experience, doesn’t offer a very different<\/em> experience for couch co-op. And Baldur’s Gate 3<\/em>, well… look, I love the game. I do. But I would not recommend couch co-op if you have two computers that can handle the game. Playing on console as a whole isn’t nearly as robust as on PC, but coupled with half a screen and several<\/em> bugs, it’s just not the same by a large margin. (That said, who’s to say you can’t play side-by-side on laptops on a couch? There’s the ideal couch co-op experience for BG3<\/em>!)<\/p>\n

Mind you, I’ve been spoiled by 2021’s It Takes Two<\/em>. The game is quite literally built as a co-op experience — to the point where it has effectively turned “couch co-op” into a genre of its own, rather than an adaptation of a game (regardless of genre). As such, it’s kind of at the top of my “perfect couch co-op video games” list.<\/p>\n

But! I have to give shout-outs to the classics, which feel like a relic of an older time. Halo: CE<\/em> and Halo 2<\/em>? Few couch co-op experiences come close to eliciting the nostalgia I feel when I think about my time playing both of those back when they were each new. Likewise, Gauntlet Dark Legacy<\/em> is, for a number of reasons, burned into my memory for all the right reasons.<\/p>\n

How about you, though? What couch co-op games — regardless of release — have the perfect experience? What makes them so wonderful? Sound off below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s cold Midwest weather that has me thinking about cozy couch games, maybe it’s the recent sense that Love is in the Air — whatever the case, I’ve recently been musing on how few solid couch co-op games currently exist (at least in mainstream gaming). That’s not to say couch co-op games don’t exist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":149102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,66854],"tags":[78227,78225,78226,76935],"yst_prominent_words":[47240,47232,53773,8180,24303,9572,8743,53774,8886,8263,15075,19568],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180272,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180270\/revisions\/180272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180270"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=180270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}