10 PS2 Games That Made Couch Co-Op Feel Like an Event

2 hours ago 1

Published Feb 4, 2026, 3:03 PM EST

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

The PlayStation 2 was the last PlayStation console to be tied down to just two physical controller ports, multitaps notwithstanding, before the PS3 switched to wireless inputs. While I didn’t personally know anyone who owned a multitap, remarkably, that didn’t really hinder the PS2’s capability as a viable console for couch co-op. Yeah, maybe you had to do some controller trading sometimes, but the strength of the console’s game library made it a worthwhile endeavor.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land Portal 2 It Takes Two Trine

11 Best Couch Co-op Games With A Story Mode

Story campaigns aren't only for solo players, plenty of games let you take the journey with a friend.

Indeed, those games, whether they were PS2-exclusive or not, were tons of fun to play with your buddies over any given weekend. I know I have plenty of happy memories of renting the latest hit from Blockbuster and calling my friends over to play the night away. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that these PS2 games were events in themselves, an impetus to gather around the TV with a big bowl of chips and entirely too much Mountain Dew.

10 Rock Band

Rock the Basement

The late 2000s were the prime age of plastic tat-powered rhythm games. The original Guitar Hero had made all the money in the known universe, and in an effort to get a little slice of the pie, Harmonix and MTV Games created Rock Band, one of the kings of party games. Rock Band came out on just about everything, including the newly-released PS3 and Xbox 360, but the PS2 still got some love as well.

Like its later-gen counterparts, the PS2 version of Rock Band allows you and up to three friends to rock out with two guitar controllers, a drum kit controller, and a microphone. The PS2 version was unfortunately missing some features like making custom characters, but the core game was the same and still just as enjoyable. You and your bandmates could play individual songs in free play mode, or play through the game’s career mode, touring the world and playing entire setlists.

Again, the PS2 version was a bit paired down in this regard, as you had to play premade setlists rather than making your own custom sets. On the bright side, the game did get the same expansion packs as the later-gen versions, albeit in the form of standalone expansion discs rather than DLC, since the PS2 couldn’t do DLC.

9 LEGO Star Wars

Co-Op with Your Kids is Still Co-Op

LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game

A co-op gaming event doesn’t necessarily need to be a big get-together with your friends. It could also be a fun afternoon spent with your kids or younger siblings. Of course, if you want to play a game with a young kid, you can’t really play anything too intensive, thematically or gameplay-wise. Luckily, that particular flavor of couch co-op was where the original LEGO Star Wars really shined.

The very first LEGO Star Wars game was an adaptation of the prequel trilogy films, plus a level based on episode 4. It was this game that pioneered Traveler’s Tales’ LEGO game framework, and its kid-friendly emphasis on easy drop-in co-op. Every level had at least two player characters running around at any given time; in solo play, you just swapped between them at will, but in co-op, both players got to choose who they wanted to be.

If you had a Star Wars-loving friend or family member, LEGO Star Wars was the perfect game to play with them. It was easy to pick up and understand with its simple mechanics, but its cute and colorful presentation and funny pantomime cutscenes made it a joy to experience. Honestly, I enjoyed playing this game more than actually watching The Phantom Menace.

8 Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (2005)

Clone Troopers Make Great Buddies

Star Wars Battlefront 2 2005 co-op gameplay

Speaking of Star Wars, the early-to-mid 2000s were when Star Wars was really reemerging in pop culture thanks to the prequel trilogy, which led to the creation of the original Star Wars: Battlefront duology. For those who wanted co-operative third-person shooter action, there were few games better than Star Wars Battlefront 2.

Battlefront 2 drops you and a buddy via splitscreen into a multitude of major conflicts from across the established Star Wars canon of the time, including both the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy. Players can choose a side in any given conflict, gaining access to several classes of troops like various Clone Troopers or Droids. Two players in co-op could join the same side and watch each other’s backs, as well as take driver and turret duty in both ground and spacefaring vehicles.

Battlefront 2 also introduced Heroes, a special class of soldier that periodically became available to either side, allowing one player to control a prominent combatant like Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. There could only be one active Hero at a time, though, which occasionally led to some co-op disagreements. No one said waging galactic war was easy.

7 Gauntlet Dark Legacy

Real Arcade Action

Gauntlet is, arguably, the original co-op dungeon-crawling experience, doing it in arcades well before the likes of Diablo made it cool. While it and its sequels are less expansive than Diablo, they were still a hoot with a full gang of pals, an appeal that carried over into the console sequels. On the PS2 in particular, the Gauntlet game of choice was Gauntlet Dark Legacy, a sort-of sequel, sort-of expansion on 1998’s Gauntlet Legends.

In Gauntlet Dark Legacy, you and a friend, plus two more friends with a multitap, can pick your favorite character classes and tackle an escalating series of fantasy dungeons. Dark Legacy added more complex combat mechanics to Legends’ basic formula, with a greater emphasis on varying attack speeds, defensive maneuvers, and most importantly, team-up turbo attacks players could perform by standing side-by-side.

You probably couldn’t finish Dark Legacy in one sitting despite its arcade origins, but it served as a good excuse to get the fellas together on several consecutive weekends, building up your preferred characters and gradually chipping away at the campaign.

6 We Love Katamari

“No, No, Turn it Clockwise!”

The original Katamari Damacy’s campaign was single-player only, with its multiplayer component segmented off for competitive roll-ups between the Prince’s various cousins. Its sequel, We Love Katamari, has the same competitive game modes, but in addition to that, you could also play through the main levels with a buddy as well.

Co-op play doesn’t work quite how you might expect, however. Rather than both players getting their own Katamari to roll stuff up with, the two of you are in control of a single Katamari, pushing it simultaneously from two sides. Rolling a Katamari normally already takes a degree of coordination, so trying to do this with two people was a bit of a balancing act. The game did give you some extra time on the clock for each level to compensate for this, and once you and your friend got on the same page, it made for both a fun time and a decent team-building exercise.

It’s the kind of co-op experience that was both enjoyable with a friend you coordinated well with, and fun to inflict upon your two least-compatible friends while you had a laugh at their expense.

5 Destroy All Humans 2

Ravage the World with a Buddy

The premise of the Destroy All Humans games is that Furon invader Cryptosporidium is harvesting pure human DNA to replenish his species’ cache of their own DNA for cloning purposes. Every time you die in both the first and second games, you get a fresh Crypto clone with an incrementally higher number. At least as far as I can tell, there’s no rule that says there can’t be two of the same Furon alive at the same time, which was as good a justification as any for Destroy All Humans 2 to have split-screen co-op.

Destroy All Humans 2 features full drop-in co-op for its main campaign. At any time, another Crypto can just pop up for another player to control, and you can either tackle story missions or just bum around the open world, wreaking nonspecific havoc. There’s no particular story justification for this, but it’s not a game that takes itself especially seriously, so it’s not like there needs to be.

10 Best Co-Op Games for Players Tired of Open World Bloat

Tired of those slog open world games? Try these co-op games out for a notch instead!

In addition to the regular gameplay modes, playing in co-op also gives you access to a few nifty mini-games. There’s a Duel mode if you just want to shoot each other dead for laughs, as well as PK Tennis, where you smack a bouncing ball back and forth with the help of Crypto’s psychic abilities.

4 Half-Life: Decay

A PS2-Exclusive Expansion

When you think Half-Life, you probably think about PC gaming first and foremost. Indeed, Valve’s classic physics shooter was the patron game of the PC scene in its age, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have vacation homes elsewhere. Indeed, Half-Life also released on PS2 a few years later, alongside a console-exclusive expansion for co-op play, Half-Life: Decay.

Half-Life: Decay has its own story set around the same time as Gordon Freeman’s little escapade, not unlike the game’s other expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. The difference is that Decay is a co-op-only affair, wherein you and a friend control two Black Mesa researchers, Gina Cross and Colette Green, as they try to run damage control after the infamous resonance cascade.

Compared to the main game, Decay is a little more traditional in its gameplay, with a dedicated mission structure and occasional interactions with NPCs requiring you to escort or protect them. You can’t just rush into a firefight like Gordon, SMG blazing; you need to coordinate with your partner and keep each other safe from both soldiers and invading aliens.

3 Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Four Heroes on the Scene

Returning to the subject of dungeon-crawlers, the height of the PS2’s years happened to coincide with the ramping up of Marvel characters in the public consciousness, thanks largely to the success of pre-MCU Marvel films like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. With heroes rising in popularity, it was the perfect time for four-hero co-op in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a Diablo-like dungeon-crawler where you control a team of four superheroes and supervillains from across the Marvel Comics canon to bust baddies. While a solo player normally controlled all four characters through swapping, up to four players could take control of an individual character and share a screen for simultaneous action. Character upgrades and stats are saved to the console, so everyone can pick their favorite and carry over their preferred setup between sittings.

Interestingly, the game’s campaign has several pivotal story moments and plot-critical sidequests, which affect the overall ending you receive. If you were playing with friends, you had to have a little debate about which path you wanted to take, and then get a free pass to slug each other in the shoulder when your choice ended up having rippling consequences. If only this game could get a proper remaster...

2 Ratchet: Deadlocked

Why Did We Only Do This Once?

The Ratchet & Clank series of third-person shooters have largely been exclusively single-player affairs, not including the deathmatch modes in Up Your Arsenal. However, the fourth entry in the series, Ratchet: Deadlocked (Ratchet: Gladiator if you prefer the PAL name) decided to take things in a slightly different direction, with a concentrated emphasis on two-player co-op.

Technically, Deadlocked could be played solo, with a couple of combat robots following Ratchet and handling various map tasks that require at least two sets of hands. The game’s ideal means of play, though, is two-player co-op, with player one controlling Ratchet and player two controlling Clank’s buffer stand-in, Alpha Clank.

As the premise of the game is that Ratchet is being forced to compete in gladiatorial games by a bomb collar, there are various limitations in place that force both players to cooperate carefully. Both players share a pool of ammo and can’t use the same weapon simultaneously, and if you get too far apart, a countdown starts until both of your collars pop your heads. It was a bit of a departure from the previous games, but with the right buddy, it was a lot of fun. Makes me wonder why the series only did it once.

1 TimeSplitters 2

One of the Definitive PS2 Co-Op Shooters

When it comes to FPSes to enjoy on the PS2, one of the first and foremost recommendations almost anyone will give you is the cult classic TimeSplitters 2. If you had a friend you were always playing PS2 with, you owned TimeSplitters 2. It was like a rule of society, one we were all too happy to abide by.

TimeSplitters 2 has both a campaign and various multiplayer modes. The campaign, specifically, features split-screen co-op, and is largely unchanged from the single-player version. The only discernable difference is that, in order to accommodate for your doubled firepower, both players’ health bars are slightly lower than usual, so you have to try a little harder to not get shot.

The multiplayer modes are noteworthy for being System Link compatible, allowing you to network several PS2s together for up to sixteen-player simultaneous play. There were plenty of team battle modes to enjoy, like Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, and you could even use a built-in level builder to make your own stages. Custom stages, unfortunately, couldn’t be played in co-op, but you could always just make a stupidly difficult stage and force your friend to play it for your amusement.