Twitchless Online Gaming

November 4, 2012 9:21 PM

I like playing L4D with my friends on the other side of the world, but my ping is awful. What are some good, accessible PC games where this won't matter?

I've got a number of friends I keep up with (partly) by voice chatting with while playing L4D on weekends. Unfortunately, being halfway around the world my ping gets very bad by FPS standards, which makes things a bit frustrating. I'm looking for a replacement PC game. What I have in mind would:

- Play through in no more than an hour or two
- Not require a lot of practice to enjoy
- Be accommodating of slow ping times
- Work with 2-6 people

Steam is great but not a requirement. Cheap is a plus. Current things we've come up with are Torchlight II, Worms, and Dungeon Defenders, though we're looking for more.

Since we do have a few hours at a span together, I'm not looking for something completely turn-based (a lot of us are playing Diplomacy anyway).

posted by 23 to computers & internet (5 answers total)

Minecraft is very playable at less than 150 ms ping. Some people claim to be able to go as high as 300 ms.

While vanilla survival is not everyone's cup of tea, there are some really good pvp maps now, for example, Nail or even TF2 Dustbowl.
posted by bonehead at 9:46 PM on November 4, 2012

Dungeon Defenders, totally, came in to suggest this.

WoW/GW2 or whatever your poison are also pretty perfect for this sort of thing of course if that is something that you like.
posted by McSwaggers at 10:39 PM on November 4, 2012

Terraria! It's a sandbox game sort of middle between Zelda and Minecraft. You can drop in and out as you want from the hosts world. It doesn't really have an ending so sorry if that is actually a thing you need, but you can just stop so I included it.

Titan Quest.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:10 PM on November 4, 2012

Frozen Synapse is a turn-based, highly tactical combat game for two players which manages to be incredibly tense and fast-paced without requiring a speedy connection - or even for both players to be online at the same time.

It's great. Why not set up a little tournament among you and your friends?
posted by Ted Maul at 3:49 AM on November 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

New game that's not cheap yet, but Borderlands 2 is still shooty but more forgiving than Left 4 Dead.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 2:19 PM on November 5, 2012