The Top Cooperative Games for the 2016 Holidays

Greetings, gamers! With Halloween behind us and the election no longer here to distract us, it’s time we turn our attention to the upcoming games for the holidays – and considering the results of the election, this is perfect time for some quality digital escapism. As we look closer though realizing that presumptive coop powerhouse titles like Crackdown 3, Cuphead, or the console version of Shadow Warrior 2 got bumped to next year, this holiday looks particularly bleak for cooperative gamers. There are a few titles to track, but this list is thin.

Here now are the cooperative titles to check out this holiday season.

Watch Dogs 2 (Nov 15^th) – PS4, Xbox One, PC

The original Watch Dogs was a relatively well-designed game that failed to live up to the hype of early trailers and canned gameplay videos (very much like Ubisoft’s other open world multiplayer title this year, The Division). Consensus was the missions were lackluster and protagonist Aiden Pearce was an uninteresting asshole, but early reviews of Watch Dogs 2 say Ubisoft seems to have learned from their mistakes and Marcus Holloway is not only interesting but brings much needed levity to the game’s narrative.

Even better, the game features a few always-online multiplayer components. You can stumble upon other players to enlist to help you or perhaps they’ll work to hack your character stealing, I dunno, your Netflix password or something. There are also an infinite number of cooperative missions you can play with a buddy and with an expansive skill tree to unlock you could easily spend several quality cooperative hours here.

Considering the drought of coop games you’ll see in the rest of this list, Watch Dogs 2 could be the go-to game this season.

We can’t wait to hack for all the LULz and AK47s with a buddy

Killing Floor 2 (Nov 18) – PS4, PC

We thoroughly missed the original game when it game out nearly a decade ago as an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod and later as a standalone retail game in 2009, but early hype and videos of the sequel launching later this week have us intrigued.

Essentially gameplay is a mashup of Left 4 Dead and the horde mode from Gears of War. You and your friends take on waves and waves of zombies (called “Zeds” here) until you take on a final randomized boss that requires cooperation to take down. It’s a twitch style game that often shows up on PC but thankfully arrives on consoles via the PS4 this week.

Somehow blowing zombies apart never seems to get old

Final Fantasy XV (Nov 29^th) – Xbox One and PS4

We’ll be the first to admit that we’re not the intended audience for this game. We checked out on the Final Fantasy craze after Cloud Strife and the rest of the FF7 crew (though Final Fantasy 2 was a formative game for us growing up), but the latest game is certainly piquing our curiosity.

Yes, the game still features mopey teens with ridiculous hair so fans of the series will feel right at home. The early demos and videos look technically impressive but what has us interested was the late breaking news of a cooperative mode as an upcoming DLC. Granted this requires a season pass and there’s little info so far about how significant this mode will be, but we are intrigued such a massive franchise would introduce a cooperative element for the first time in nearly 30 years of its existence.

We’re looking forward to all the teenage angst in coop

Steep (Dec 2^nd) – Xbox One, PS4, PC

Can you tell we’re stretching to find cooperative games? Steep is an “open world extreme sports game.” Wait, don’t scroll down just yet. The game appears to be an open world multiplayer experience very much like, well, The Division or Watch Dogs 2 also from Ubisoft.

I mean, we haven’t really enjoyed a skiing game since SSX Tricky or, perhaps, FreeSki, but Ubisoft is getting more and more creative with these always on multiplayer games. Maybe there are some truly memorable extreme sports cooperative experiences we need to try.

Here’s hoping they include a mode for The Most Dangerous Game as upcoming DLC

Dead Rising 4 (Dec 6^th) – Xbox One, PC

Let’s wrap up with perhaps the only significant coop experience still to come out this year – Dead Rising 4. This is a controversial game as Capcom is changing the long-standing formula a lot this time. Per their devs, playtesting of previous titles has suggested some much needed changes including dropping any sense of a time limit this time and by trying to make returning protagonist Frank West a lot sillier this time.

We’re glad to hear that their looking to iterate based on feedback but we’re not sure how a Dead Rising game will feel without those long standing drawbacks like timers or seeking more Zombrex. Regardless, the news we can explore this title with up to 4 players at once sounds good to us. We’ve played through every other Dead Rising title so far and while they’re never really outstanding, the inclusion of coop since Dead Rising 2 has made these games worth seeking out ever since. We can’t wait to check this one out this holiday.

So Dead Rising certainly needs to shake it up – maybe not THIS much but we’ll see

What else did we miss? We’re curious about The Wild Eight and are eager to get our hands on a console release of Neurovoider. If there’s something else we’re overlooking this holiday, let us know in the comments below!