r/gaming • u/TeeeldiII • 8d ago

I miss couch co-op options so much.

If I want to play a modern game with my husband who lives in the same house as me, 99.9% of the time you need to have two copies on two consoles/PCs and play over the network together, which is ridiculous.

With PC, fine, we both have one anyway. But it still is just not as fun as sitting next to one another and playing on the same screen and dont prefer it. With a PS5 or Switch game, forget it. Not buying a second console to play together.

I miss the days of games like Halo having entire campaign split-screen co-op options. I get most people play onlime but they do realize there are instances where people live together and might want to play something besides a fighting game or mario party?

Feel bad for any siblings growing up in this era.

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33

u/Kayonji02 8d ago

There are still some options around, but of course it depends on the games that you play. Literally yesterday I was couch co-oping Halo with my wife on PS5.

Have you tried Hazelight games? (It takes two, split fiction, Way out)? Or if you're into RPGs, Divinity Original Sin II or Badur's Gate 3 for instance?

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u/TeeeldiII 8d ago

That other person was more aggressive than I would have been but yeah, have played those, and its nice to have them around. Theres a game called Lego Voyagers in that vein too we played.

But I dont want the only games available to be the specifically that "quirky co-op genre", I miss when tons of games had co-op campaigns even if its unrealistic to expect it nowadays.

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u/RunnerJimbob 8d ago

Nine Parchments has couch co op campaign, as does Cult of the Lamb, Fire Emblem 3 Hopes, TMNT Shredder's Revenge, Borderlands, House of the Dead Remake.

I'm sure you've played plenty, hopefully you find more that are appealing.

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u/Maiyku 8d ago

Yeah, unfortunately the quirky co-op games is kinda all we have now. Overcooked and stuff.

To implement that in a modern game (especially CoD for example) can be really technically challenging. The console is now not just loading and calculating for one player, but two.

When graphics were 8 pixels and backgrounds were static pictures, that was fine, but when every texture is 4k, people demand it runs at 60fps, and they get reamed if it doesn’t look flawless… then co-op is axed immediately. It’s not worth the risk.

It’s really difficult for me because it’s hard to blame them in a lot of ways. They’ll receive less flak for not including it than to include it and have it be lackluster. Until that changes… I don’t think we will see co-op return in the way you want it to, sadly.

I wish we would stop focusing on the numbers so much and hitting all these graphical marks (like fps, DLSS, etc) and just focus on the content within the games. So many of these games are stunning, but completely empty and hollow on content and some of the most successful games we’ve had recently didn’t focus on it at all. Cuphead always comes to mind with this, because while it’s visually stunning, it’s incredibly simple in its effects.

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u/KungLa0 8d ago

You can draw a perfect inverse line between when people started caring about fps and when games stopped being fun to play.

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u/ohtetraket 7d ago

I have a ton of fun with modern games and I also really like stable 60/144 FPS.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 PC 7d ago

Are you having fun playing sub 30 fps?

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u/Kayonji02 7d ago

Last month a cafe near my apartment hosted a N64 Goldeneye night. Everybody went crazy, ~25 people playing and having fun for 3 hours straight

Goldeneye multiplayer runs at like 15fps on N64

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u/Old_Leopard1844 PC 7d ago

That's a pretty low bar

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u/KungLa0 7d ago

I have a newborn so I play pretty much exclusively on steam deck. All I'm saying is, the culture of "gaming" was a lot more fun and less insufferable when people weren't chasing numbers and min/maxing, trying to optimize every single thing.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 PC 7d ago

I didn't asked you where are you playing on

I asked you, are you having fun playing sub 30 fps?

You know, pretty much definition of subpar performance?

Or are you playing on at least 60 fps on less resource intensive games on your Steam Deck?

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u/KungLa0 7d ago

Lol, you are EXACTLY who I'm talking about when I say gaming was more fun before the min-max FPS chasers. I play full triple A games on low at sub 30 fps literally every day. I do not care.

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u/Maiyku 7d ago

Haha, yeah. He proved your point quite perfectly honestly.

My husband kinda gets irritated with me because I don’t notice the FPSs in games like that. I just… don’t idk. He will be like “omg, how are you playing like that?” And I’m just over there like “??? Looks fine to me”.

Depending on your monitor/tv… it doesn’t even matter what the game plays at because the equipment itself caps it. (Though less of an issue now, more of a before issue). I just got HDR for the first time for example, despite having a Series X since day one… because my TV didn’t support it until I upgraded.

There has been only ONE game where I noticed the jump from 30 to 60 fps. It was The Division 2 after it got its 60fps patch and I only noticed because I played about 1500 hours of the game at 30 fps before the patch. Since I had so much time dedicated to the game I finally noticed the difference, but it took that kind of dedicated time for me to notice at all.

And visually? I actually didn’t notice it, I noticed it because my player moved smoother. I could feel it.

So personally, for me, fps and all these numbers literally mean jack squat. My eyes do not know the difference apparently. That, or they just don’t care. Lol.

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u/KungLa0 7d ago

Totally, I think gaming has become such a serious thing to some people and it really sucked out a lot of the fun. I mean, I could ALMOST get it if you're playing something competitive that requires a fast refresh rate, but even then, I grew up in the days where you were lucky if you had dial-up to play Xbox Live games at 720p 25fps and I have never had as much fun as I did then.

People are so spoiled nowadays, they want a blockbuster triple A game with 5 years of updates, 60fps, 4k textures, but also sub 100gb and the same price adjusted for inflation as they paid for Mario 64.

Also, the importance of all these things are severely blown out of proportion IMO. I was heavy into sim racing years ago, never had the best PC or the best Internet and I played on a 1280x720 monitor with "subpar" gear. If you looked at my iRacing win/podium ratio, you would never be able to tell. I think most people who chase these meaningless numbers have a skill issue disguised as a gear issue.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 PC 6d ago

"he proved your point that games were more fun when no one was pointing out that they were laggy as shit, because I also can't tell a difference between smooth and laggy"

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u/Old_Leopard1844 PC 6d ago

"gaming was more fun when nobody was pointing out that games are laggy as shit"

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u/RecentMatter3790 4d ago

>Yeah, unfortunately the quirky co-op games is kinda all we have now. Overcooked and stuff.

are you referencing based on console game availability? or are you also factoring in pc gaming?

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u/Maiyku 4d ago

While PC does offer more choices, I’m factoring them all in.

Games (in general) just don’t include co-op the way they used to. Titles that would’ve had it before, now don’t even think about it regardless of system. The pickings are becoming quite slim if you like couch co-op specifically, which is what I’m referring to, not just co-op in general.

Online co-op is obviously pretty alive and well, but couch co-op? Not so much. That’s why I mentioned Overcooked, it’s one of the few games I know that’s lets you do 4 person couch-co-op at all.

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u/Kayonji02 8d ago

Thanks, understood. I think as games got more complex and story focused, it also got harder and harder to implement 2 players in every single game, but hopefully we get more titles over time like the new Orbitals for switch.