Best Co-Op Games on Game Pass

It Takes Two is the only co-op campaign my wife and I have ever finished together, and she is not a gamer. That tells you most of what you need to know. It was built for exactly two players, and every chapter swaps the rules: one stretch has you skating around a snow globe, another has you bending time inside a clock tower. Controls never need explaining, and the story pulls you forward when the puzzles stall. Play it on the couch if you can. The only real limit is the number two, and once the credits roll there is not much to replay.

After too many nights of Helldivers 2, my squad drifted into Deep Rock Galactic and found it even better. Four classes, four jobs. The Engineer drops platforms, the Scout lights caves with flares, the Gunner strings a zipline, and the Driller carves new routes through the rock. Lose one of them and you feel it within minutes, which is why it rewards real teamwork instead of four people shooting in the same direction. Rock and Stone gets shouted a lot on our headsets. It is online only and first-person, and the first few runs feel messy before the roles click.

Grounded shrinks you until a backyard becomes a survival map, and the first spider you meet teaches you to respect it. There is an arachnophobia setting if that sounds like your group. Four players share one base, so someone farms, someone builds, someone drags back ant parts for armour and weapons. I am usually allergic to survival games that nag about hunger every five minutes, and Grounded keeps that pressure forgiving enough that I stayed. It wants more evenings than the lighter picks on this list, and the early hours are slow. After that it opens up. No couch mode here.

Someone is on the helm, someone is wrestling the sails, someone is bailing water. That is a normal evening in Sea of Thieves. Being pirates together is just a lot of fun, and the stories come as much from other crews as from the voyages. They will sink you with the treasure still on deck. My crew has never once agreed on which island we were sailing to. Voice chat is close to mandatory, so bring the headsets. It ranks fourth because onboarding is looser than anything above it, and a bad hour of ambushes can sour a new crew.

Halo Infinite is the newer game, and the Master Chief Collection is still the better co-op pick. Six campaigns, and the Warthog turns every escape into slapstick, one of you driving badly and the other shooting worse. I always finish a shooter campaign before touching multiplayer, and this is the package that rewards that habit. Split-screen works on the couch, and online play covers up to four depending on the game. Menus are a mess. Onboarding is inconsistent across the six, so pick one campaign and start there.

I would not hand Gears 5 to my wife. Cover shooting, rolling, melee, and a controller full of context buttons ask for a fluency she has no reason to build, and she would be lost in ten minutes. For regular gamers, though, this is the safest big-budget co-op campaign on the service. Up to three players fight through the story, Horde mode takes five, and the Game of the Year package includes the Hivebusters campaign. It is less inventive than the top picks, because it mostly asks you to shoot things well together. Plays on console, PC, and cloud, with local co-op on console.

I started Diablo IV on my own and never finished it. The loot loop did not hold me when nobody else was watching the drops. With company it makes more sense. Four can team up online, and on console two can share a couch, which is rare for a game this size. Dungeons are easy to drop in and out of, so a spare hour is enough. That is also the limit: teamwork mostly means killing things at the same time, and the seasonal grind and cosmetic shop are the live-service habits I tend to distrust. It sits seventh for that reason.

I expected an Overcooked clone and was wrong within one run. PlateUp! hands you a restaurant to design. Between days you pick a new appliance or rule, and over a run the kitchen turns into a machine you and your partners built, then keep patching when it starts to jam. Up to four can work the floor, online or on the couch, and the onboarding is quick enough that a mixed-skill pair can be serving customers in minutes. The art is plain, and the game as a whole is not as polished as the entries above it. The depth sneaks up on you.

Stardew Valley is not co-op in the sense that you have to work together. You farm next to each other more than with each other. It gets better with company anyway, and it is a very relaxing game to share. Up to four play on one farm with a shared wallet by default, and the day only ends when everyone is in bed. Someone always stays up fishing. This is where I go to switch off after a long day, and a second person at the next plot makes the evening easier. It ranks ninth because teamwork is optional here.

Overcooked! 2 is one of the games my LAN group keeps coming back to. It is chaotic and fun, and it does not work unless you talk. Somebody has to call out who is chopping and who is on plates, or the soup burns and the level is gone. Kitchens slide apart and shift under your feet. Up to four play online or on the couch, and the controls fit in a single sentence. It lands tenth because the content is thinner than the entries above, and the shine fades after a handful of evenings.