So me and a bunch of buddies all live in different cities, and we're looking for games to play together, ideally pretty cheap. What would you recommend?

payback 2

monaco

l4d2

That splinter cell where you play spies v mercs

Left 4 Dead 2, Borderlands 2, Minecraft, Payday, a squad in Battlefield.

Multiplayer gaming is absolutely swimming in 4 player online co op these days.

What system are you guys playing on?

• Left 4 Dead 2
• Borderlands 2
• PayDay 2
• Magicka
• Torchlight II

L4D2 for sure.

It's not cheap but Starcraft 2 is a pretty versatile and fun game.

Alien Swarm is a freebie co-op game on Steam too that's kind of fun.

@believer258: The one platform we all have is PC (Steam), and we like some of the more esoteric stuff out there too.

I'm thinking about trying to get them to play the new Syndicate, because cyberpunk is my jam, but I'm not sure how well that will go over.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!

Renegade Ops

And check out Co-Optimus, sort by # of players online.

Samurai Gun and Crawl.

@novocaine: You can get an official free version from blizzard which lets you play in the arcade and I think lets you play MP with the original units in it.

Smokin' aces, Renegade Ops is the best. And Steam's version lets you play as Gordon Freeman and the muscle car. And if you all are into KB+M shooting, you can't go wrong with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It even has a four player co-op mode, which I think is part of the complete edition at this point (it used to be a 5 dollar expansion).

Some solid choices here, if you like mmos or that type of genre try out Star Trek Online, Neverwinter or Tera. All are free to play, fun to play in a group and can be played in short bursts.

I'm enjoying Warframe a lot right now. Every mission can hold up to 4 players and you can set it to 'invite only' so you only get your friends in.

In addition to some of the suggestions above I would say Wanderlust: Rebirth is a good choice for 4 people. I would suggest trying it out first to see if its something you guys would be into (I think there is a demo on the website), but I've had a lot of fun with it with some friends of mine.

• Diablo 3
• Borderlands 1 or 2
• Torchlight 2

I can't believe I'm the first person to recommend Left 4 Dead. You can play the campaigns in L4D2, but the handling is not as tight, the guns take up more screen space, there are too many hordes and it's not as balanced. It makes no sense that characters have pistols when they are incapacitated when they were carrying melee weapons. I almost always choose the L4D2 campaigns when I play L4D2.

You're not the first person to recommend it. Well, I guess technically you may have been the first person to recommend Left 4 Dead 1, but whatever.

That's what I meant. It's not a technicality.

Killing Floor.

Play Dota 2. It's *free.

*depending on how greatly you value your time.

@sadsadsad: Cooptimus looks super helpful, thanks!