Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4 sits last because I am still making up my mind. The fit is obvious. Squads of up to four Vault Hunters grapple, glide and dash across a big open map, and a friend who joins late is useful within minutes, which matters when everyone has different bedtimes. The loot hits are as satisfying as ever, and you can chase them for twenty minutes or two hours. Launch performance problems dented its reputation, and the game has needed patches since. If you played Borderlands with friends before, this is the obvious next step.

Borderlands 4 is a looter shooter in the most literal sense: guns fall out of every container and half of them are worth picking up. The campaign scales cleanly for two to four players. Loot rarely causes friction, since everyone rolls their own drops. I never finished Diablo IV solo, the grind felt hollow without anyone to share it with. A looter shooter with three friends on comms is a different animal entirely. Vault Hunter banter fills the long stretches between fights. It is not reinventing a loop Borderlands has run since 2009, but if that loop still works for your group, it still works.

I never finished Diablo IV. Looter grinding solo just didn't hold me the way it's supposed to. Hand a second controller to the person next to you, though, and loot-shooters turn into something else, comparing drops out loud, arguing over who gets the better gun. Borderlands 4's two-player split-screen campaign is why this made the list over older entries in the series, since co-op here is a genuine focus rather than an afterthought. It's the newest mainline release, and it earns that under our own latest-installment rule. The layout does get busy, two players' loot and skill menus stacked on one TV. Give it an evening anyway. It settles into a genuinely fun way to burn through side missions.

Borderlands 4 is the game on this list I'd hand a controller to someone who's never played an RPG before. Split-screen still works, which feels almost rebellious in 2026 when most publishers have quietly dropped it. Four skill trees per vault hunter give you enough build room to specialize without needing a wiki open on a second monitor, and the loot chase is exactly as chaotic and satisfying as the series has always promised. The story is the weakest part. Always has been, since the second game. Play it for the guns and the skill trees, not the plot, and bring a couch buddy if you can.

I have been a Borderlands fan since the loot-shooter formula was still a novelty, and Borderlands 4 is the version of that formula built for how my group actually plays now: four people, mixed platforms, dropping in and out across a weekend. Crossplay runs through the SHiFT account system. The SHiFT sign-in step is mildly annoying. But it works reliably once it is set up, and the campaign is built around squad-friendly builds, so someone can specialize in crowd control while someone else goes pure damage. Once everyone is past the login screen, sessions run smoothly for hours. It is loud, chaotic, and if you have played any prior Borderlands, none of this needs an explanation.

My regular LAN sessions run on laptops, one machine per person, so split-screen rarely enters the picture for that group. Borderlands 4 is the reminder of why it still matters for two people sharing one TV and one console. Drop in with a second controller and the screen divides cleanly into two vertical halves, loot notifications popping in both sides without slowing anything down. The chaos that makes Borderlands work, guns raining out of every enemy, skill trees nobody quite agrees on, survives the move to a single screen better than I expected. It's not as clean as Split Fiction. Menus get cramped once loot starts stacking up in both halves at once. Stick to two players and it holds together fine.

Borderlands 4 is borderline for a list like this, and I mean that literally. It leans looter shooter more than traditional RPG, but the class trees and skill choices are real enough that calling it an RPG holds up. Four players, four classes. Chaos on screen, loot raining down after every fight. It is a genuinely fun game to have running at a LAN party, and the co-op is built for exactly that kind of drop-in group energy rather than solo grinding. Where it loses ground on this list is depth: the build systems are shallower than Grim Dawn or Divinity. Nobody at your table needs a build guide to have fun here, and that ease of entry is worth something on its own.

I never finished Diablo IV. I've made peace with that. Borderlands 4 is a different proposition, built to be played with someone next to you, splitting the screen and the loot. The campaign runs long, well past 30 hours with side content, and a co-op partner turns that length into a feature rather than a slog. Split-screen costs visual space on a smaller TV, and enemy tells get harder to read in busy fights. Two players is the local cap, not four, so this isn't the group game Minecraft or Shredder's Revenge are further up the list. What it does, it does at a scale nothing else matches: full campaign, full loot, full skill trees, shared by two people on one console.

Borderlands 4 is the newest entry on this list and the one with the least settled reputation. The series has always treated couch co-op as a core mode rather than an afterthought, and the loot loop is designed for exactly the kind of session where you and a friend both want to come away with something to show for the evening. Two-player split-screen campaign, deep character builds, and enough variety in the gun roster to keep things interesting across many sessions. Whether it earns a permanent spot here depends on how it ages. Right now it is the freshest split-screen looter-shooter available and worth the gamble.

Borderlands 4 does the thing the series has always done well and does it better than its predecessors: drop-in co-op that works whether your squad is coordinated or chaotic. Someone joins halfway through a mission, gets swept along by the loot economy, and by the end of the session they are already comparing builds. That casual friction-free structure is why the series has always been a go-to for groups on different platforms trying to play together without a long setup ritual. A proper 2025 release with full crossplay makes it the obvious series pick right now over Borderlands 3, which ends up in honorable mentions as a result.

The looter shooter slot on this list belongs to Borderlands 4. I was a Borderlands 3 regular for a long time, so stepping into 4 with a fresh campaign and updated movement felt like a genuine upgrade rather than a roster shuffle. The core formula works because it was always built for co-op. Someone finds a legendary weapon, the rest of the squad wants to know where, and suddenly you are three missions past where you planned to stop. The loot chase keeps sessions going longer than they probably should. It sits at three rather than higher because the best co-op shooters above it require more active teamwork. Here, you are mostly running the same direction and comparing numbers. That is fine, sometimes it is exactly what you want.

Borderlands 4 released in September 2025 and belongs on any honest 2026 PS5 co-op list. Four Vault Hunters, crossplay with Xbox and PC, two-player couch plus four-player online, and loot scaling that keeps players of different levels from being carried rather than contributing. It narrowly missed the top ten because its co-op design, while genuinely good, is a refinement of a formula that has existed for over a decade. For a group that loves loot shooters and wants a long campaign to work through together across platforms, it is an easy recommendation.