Multiplayer PC games for 4
August 16, 2014 7:01 AM

Myself and three friends have been online gaming on PC for years now, I am looking for games we haven't tried yet. Ideally things that play in around an hour or less.

Games we play/have played and enjoyed include:

Red Alert 2, Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, Halo (back when we had an xbox available), Left for Dead 1 and 2, Defcon (although we always had trouble getting it to work), Worms, Dungeon Defenders and Magicka.

We are all UK based and skype while playing. Things that are easy to pick up and play are good. We have quite varied interests so feel free to be inventive!
posted by Cannon Fodder to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (12 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
My husband and his friends love DOTA. I could grasp the basics quick enough, but like chess it is not easy to master so encourages replaying. A match can take around an hour. It's not a perfect match for your requirements but it sounded like you were open to ideas.
posted by wwax at 7:27 AM on August 16, 2014


Star Conflict is a f2p multiplayer space dogfighting game on steam I quite enjoy.
posted by Muttoneer at 8:33 AM on August 16, 2014


I'd add Borderlands 2 and Diablo 3 to your list. Both games take 20+ hours to complete and are playable in one hour chunks. Of the things you listed, most similar to L4D.

If you like PvP, wwax's suggestion of DotA 2 is good. So is League of Legends. They're both 5 person teams but you can queue up as four players and they'll just add one random to your team.
posted by Nelson at 8:49 AM on August 16, 2014


Payday 2 is a lot of fun as well
posted by troll on a pony at 8:53 AM on August 16, 2014


Monaco: What's yours is mine! Monaco is a fantastic 1-4 player co-op heist game. Brilliant fun in multiplayer. Quick to play - my husband and I played it together. Some nights we'd beat 3 or 4 levels, and some levels took us many many tries over multiple days. SO much fun. It's hilarious, but not in a "the devs are good at writing jokes" sort of way - the hilarity comes from your friends screwing up and your heist plan going all to hell in .5 seconds.

Steam link for Monaco
posted by WowLookStars at 9:15 AM on August 16, 2014


Also Terraria is pretty great if you're interested in a more sandbox-ish game. There's a storyline / progression of sorts (similar to Minecraft in that you craft better gear and can kill nastier meanies), but it's super fast to hop in and out of.
posted by WowLookStars at 9:23 AM on August 16, 2014


Mount your friends!

...that's a game, not a suggestion. Er it's a suggestion for a game, not for life.
posted by Lemurrhea at 9:46 AM on August 16, 2014


Supreme Commander (or number 2) are RTSes. They are 3D games with a very flexible zoom, so you can mousewheel your way all the way out and see icons instead of units. I would avoid the very large maps to keep your session time down.

Shoot Many Robots is a co-op side-scroller. There are a lot of weapons and equipment, and your choices persist between levels. Which is good, because you all start with the same character model and have to differentiate by wearing wings and dead gnomes.
posted by squinty at 12:50 PM on August 16, 2014


Risk of Rain is a roguelike set in space. The difficulty ramps up the longer you play- completing a game usually takes a little less than an hour.
posted by Dr. Grue at 12:55 PM on August 16, 2014


Guns of Icarus is a steampunk-themed airship combat game. Each airship is crewed by four people--a pilot, a gunner, and two engineers. Battles are made of three crews to a side, set among the clouds. There's a discounted 4-Pack on steam for $7.49 right now.
posted by troll at 3:42 PM on August 16, 2014


I like Payday/Payday 2 a lot, although they can get grindy at times. It's basically Left 4 Dead except the "zombies" are cops. It's possible to stealth some heists, which can be satisfying to pull off successfully. I'd warn you that the series is pretty amoral, but I see you're already nuking the entire planet with your friends, so...

Borderlands 2 is also good shooty shooty fun times. I don't really recommend the first one, 2 is much better.

The Serious Sam games (specifically, the Serious Sam HD re-releases and Serious Sam 3: BFE, which are all pretty similar to each other) are also some good old-school mindless FPS fun in co-op. I actually find them physically exhausting to play, not because they're terribly challenging but because there's so much stuff to shoot, all the time.

Monaco: What's yours is mine! Monaco is a fantastic 1-4 player co-op heist game. Brilliant fun in multiplayer. [...] It's hilarious, but not in a "the devs are good at writing jokes" sort of way - the hilarity comes from your friends screwing up and your heist plan going all to hell in .5 seconds.

Seconded. In single-player it's basically a 2D stealth game, but once more players become involved it gets really ridiculous really fast.
posted by neckro23 at 3:20 AM on August 17, 2014


Thanks for that, some good suggestions! I missed Monaco off our list, have had a lot of fun with it! DOTA has always been a bit too intimidating to me I'm afraid!
posted by Cannon Fodder at 11:02 AM on August 17, 2014


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