Consoles have always been pretty good about letting people play games while sharing a couch, bowl of snacks, and refrigerated drinks. Local multiplayer is a dying art, but there are still plenty of games with shared- and split-screen options for those who prefer their multiplayer locally-sourced.
Xbox One’s catalog of games has plenty of titles you could enjoy this way, and below you’ll find a few of our picks, with older and never games alike, across several genres, to make it easier for you to find something that ignites your interest.
Game | Release | Genre | Developer | |
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Minecraft | 2011-11-18 | Action | Mojang Studios | |
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga | 2022-04-05 | Action-adventure | Traveller's Tales | |
Contra: Operation Galuga | 2024-03-12 | Arcade | WayForward | |
Diablo IV | 2023-06-06 | RPG | Blizzard Entertainment | |
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Next Level Edition | 2022-03-25 | Action role-playing | Gearbox Software | |
It Takes Two | 2021-03-26 | Platform | Hazelight Studios | |
A Way Out | 2019-03-23 | Adventure | Hazelight Studios | |
Ark Survival Evolved | 2015-06-02 | Adventure | Studio Wildcard | |
The Ascent (Xbox Series X/S, Windows 10) | 2021-07-29 | Cyberpunk | Neon Giant | |
EA SPORTS FC 24 | 2023-09-29 | Sports | EA Sports | |
Samurai Warriors 5 | 2021-07-27 | Action | KOEI TECMO GAMES CO. LTD. | |
Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse | 2021-03-16 | Action | Wideload Games, Aspyr, THQ Nordic | |
The Binding Of Isaac Rebirth | 2014-11-04 | Action & Shooter | Nicalis, Inc. | |
Crimsonland | 2014-06-11 | Adventure | 10tons | |
Cuphead | 2017-09-29 | Indie | Studio MDHR | |
Diablo 3 Eternal Collection | 2012-05-12 | Hack & Slash | Blizzard Entertainment | |
Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition | 2017-09-14 | Adventure | Larian Studios | |
FIFA 22 | 2021-09-26 | Sports | EA Sports | |
Enter The Gungeon | 2016-04-05 | Adventure | Dodge Roll | |
Forza Motorsport 7 | 2017-10-03 | Racing | Turn 10 Studios | |
Gears Of War 4 | 2016-10-11 | Adventure | The Coalition | |
Halo The Master Chief Collection | 2020-11-17 | Action & Shooter | 343 Industries | |
Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 | 2017-11-14 | Action | Traveller's Tales | |
Minecraft | 2011-11-18 | Action | Mojang Studios, Xbox Game Studios | |
Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate Edition | 2020-11-17 | Action | NetherRealm Studios | |
Overcooked | 2016-08-03 | Action & Shooter | Ghost Town Games | |
Overcooked 2 | 2018-08-07 | Indie | Team17, Ghost Town Games | |
Rayman Legends | 2013-08-29 | Adventure | Ubisoft Montpellier |
Minecraft
Release date: | 2011-11-18 |
Genre: | Action |
Developer: | Mojang Studios |
Minecraft is one of the most important games out there, its influence is undeniable. But underneath all that technical and design brilliance, Minecraft is also just plain fun to play, and, if your platform of choice is Xbox, you can even enjoy it side by side in split-screen multiplayer. Up to four people can play together, and all you need is four controllers and a TV big enough for everybody to get a good view.
What you do later is up to you. You could hop into a Survival mode and try to make a living together, or individually, building a safe home base, figuring out how to gather resources, and all that good survival genre stuff. Or you could go fully Creative mode, working together with infinite materials to build something cool and impressive or very silly. It’s always more fun with friends.
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ARK Survival Evolved
Release date: | 2017-08-29 |
Genre: | Adventure |
Developer: | Studio Wildcard |
Another notorious survival game, ARK is the one with all the dinosaurs. The game dumps you in a large, dangerous world with a few rags to covers your bits with and tells you to do your best to keep being alive. Tall task, but eventually the progression system will allow you to build impressive strongholds, make complex weaponry, and find interesting uses for all the dinosaurs you tamed.
Some of them you can use as mounts, or hungry, hungry guards for your slice of land, but you might even be able big a small base on a certain dino’s back. Legends say it still only counts as one if somebody kills the dino. ARK can only handle two people in local multiplayer, but you can combo it with two more people online. Since the world is not particularly forgiving, there is strength in numbers.
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LEGO Star Wars: the Skywalker Saga
Release date: | 2022-04-05 |
Genre: | Action-adventure |
Developer: | Traveller's Tales |
The LEGO games have a long and glorious tradition of being excellent co-op split screen experience and it will be a cold day in hell before it changes. The Skywalker Saga, a LEGO version of all nine core Star Wars movies (or three trilogies, if you want to count this way) certainly don’t buck the trend and your adventures in the galaxy far away can be accompanied by another person sharing the couch.
The game is a grand tour of the most iconic locations from the movies, with a large selection of familiar characters to play as, and a surprisingly well-developed melee combat system. It’s a real treat for Star Wars fans, especially those who like poking good-natured fun at the franchise. The Skywalker Saga even lets you switch between normal dialogues and mumbled lines from earlier LEGO games.
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Contra: Operation Galuga
Release date: | 2024-03-12 |
Genre: | Arcade |
Developer: | WayForward |
Contra is an absolute classic. The series dates back to the late 80s, and the original game is many people’s formative gaming memory. Now a new instalment came out, Contra: Operation Galuga, and it has captured the side-scrolling running and gunning of the original, with a modern graphics that manage to still feel nostalgically old-school.
Operation Galuga’s local co-op can handle up to four players at once, and while it’s more of a shared screen than split screen, the game is easily fun enough to overlook this minor detail. Between gloriously old-school character, level, and boss designs, fast-paced action, and guns spilling streams of improssible projectiles and beams, being able to tackles the game’s challenges with friends is a blast.
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Diablo IV
Release date: | 2023-06-06 |
Genre: | RPG |
Developer: | Blizzard Entertainment |
Diablo has always been a multiplayer-friendly adventure, and the latest entry in the hack’n’slash series isn’t any different. In fact, if you play on Xbox (or PlayStation, but ignore that for a moment) you can play locally with one other person, as long as they log into their own Battle.net account. Once that step is complete, you can both grab the controllers, sit back and go slay some monsters.
As for the game itself, it’s Diablo going back to form. The series is fully back in the gritty, dark fantasy aesthetic. The plot revolves around Lilith, freshly returned from the void and enacting her ambitious plans for Sanctuary, by any means necessary. Which, of course, leaves a lot of room for a bunch of violent vagabonds known as player characters to slice and dice hordes of enemies.
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EA Sports FC 24
Release date: | 2023-09-29 |
Genre: | Sports |
Developer: | EA Romania |
The latest instalment of EA Sport’s long-running football simulator might have a different title than most of the series, but despite missing the FIFA license it has all the technical polish and quality achieved by the franchise over the decades of its existence. At this point it’s hard to imagine what further improvements could be brought to the table outside of updated teams.
And yet, improvement were made, via a new edition of the HyperMotion system, which ensures that digital players move and behave as realistically and true to the real players as possible. The similarities are uncanny, and at times the game looks barely different from a broadcast from a real match. But of course, it’s unlikely the biggest clubs in the world would play against your favorite local team.
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It Takes Two
Release date: | 2021-03-26 |
Genre: | action-adventure |
Developer: | Hazelight Studios |
It Takes Two is quite deceptive. It looks cute, but gets unreasonably, almost comically dark at many points. At first glance it looks like a run-of-the-mill platform game with a co-op gimmick, but no individual screen can show you the incredible diversity of experiences offered by this game. In some ways every region is like a separate game in its own right as far as gameplay and style goes.
It Takes Two is exclusively co-operative. Just like the Hazelight Studios’ previous game, A Way Out it requires two players, no more, no less. The game’s theme is working together and communicating, and, by Dr. Hakim’s bodacious pages, the gameplay does enforce it. The protagonists, Cody and May, aren’t fully symmetrical either: each gets different tools to play with every stage.
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The Ascent
Release date: | 2021-07-29 |
Genre: | Action RPG |
Developer: | Neon Giant |
The Ascent is a game in a genre which has always been great at split-screen co-op: a twin-stick shooter. It has all the hallmarks: an isometric view, tons of enemies trying to kill you every waking second of your life, and many ways to dispose of them. Better yet, it welcomes up to four players even in local co-op, so you know that things can get quite flashy here.
The game is cyberpunk to the max, with corporate overlords, alien planets, cybernetic augmentations, and inevitable street-level strife between gangs and factions. The story serves as a perfect excuse to go around the metropolis, shooting people who try to take control of your home district for their own greedy ambitions.
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Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Release date: | 2022-03-25 |
Genre: | Action RPG |
Developer: | Gearbox Software |
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a full-blown, stand-alone sequel to a Borderlands 2 DLC Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. The original DLC was a riff on Dungeons & Dragons, and it’s popularity was enough to have the idea spun off into a separate game. And wouldn’t you know, it turns out that it’s awesome too! It’s also split-screen and local co-op friendly, because it IS Borderlands, after all.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands mixes Borderlands’ love for guns and wacky humor with fantasy stylings to create an explosively fun game. The map is 50% appropriate minis and terrain and 50% whatever junk Tiny Tina had lying around, something any Game Master will understand. The game can handle two players locally on Xbox One, but Xbox Series manages a full party of 4 players.
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Samurai Warriors 5
Release date: | 2021-07-27 |
Genre: | Action |
Developer: | KOEI TECMO GAMES CO. LTD. |
The musou games are a very mixed bag of gameplay. They are both over-the-top slashers featuring vibrant characters, AND often rather tactically-minded because completing all the objectives requires paying attention to the battlefield. Samurai Warriors 5 is a worthy successor to this tradition, and as the title suggest it puts you in control of a whole host of historical figures of the Sengoku period.
Of course, they are suitably redesigned and turned into one-person armies, but that’s just the style of the Warriors games. Samurai Warriors 5 features a 2-player local co-op, which might make it less stressful to complete the missions. Don’t worry about the other person stealing your kills, because like always they go into hundreds and don’t matter all that much anyway.
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Stubbs the Zombie Remaster
Release date: | 2005-11-15 |
Genre: | Comedy, Reverse Horror |
Developer: | Wideload Games |
Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse is a rare opportunity to play as a zombie. Better yet: the game is mostly comedic in nature, so while you’re shambling around doing undead things, most of them is played for laughs. You can eat people’s brains, use your body parts as weapons, and command your own undead hordes for revenge. That’s right, you have a grudge to settle.
As you might have gathered by now, Stubbs the Zombie features a co-op mode, which gives the second player a once in an unlife-time opportunity to play Scrubbs’ buddy: Grubbs. Together you’ll be able to wreak chaos you wouldn’t be able to on your own. The 1950s town of Punchbowl has no chance to survive against the combined might of two zombies.
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Rocket League
Release date: | 2015-07-07 |
Genre: | Indie |
Developer: | Psyonix |
Rocket League is an excellent game in many different ways. The premise, rocket-powered cars playing football, is very fun and unique. The matches are fast-paced and never take more than a few minutes. There’s a lot of customization. But, for the purposes of this list, the key feature is that it allows a 4-player local split-screen multiplayer, either together against another team, or in local 2v2.
Another notable aspect of Rocket League is that its skill ceiling is very high, and it will take some determination to reach it. There are also ice hockey and basketball-inspired variants, as well as custom modes with player-defined parameters if football (wheelball?) doesn’t appeal to you. It’s an amazing game if you have a few spare controllers and like games about cars and sports.
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Gang Beasts
Release date: | 2014-08-29 |
Genre: | Adventure |
Developer: | Boneloaf |
Although the original launch of Gang Beasts happened in 2017, the game wouldn’t come to Xbox (One) until 2019, which makes it a bit fresher on that platform. What is Gang Beasts? It’s possibly the least malicious, and one of the funniest, fighting games in modern memory. The fighters are very clumsy, floppy, humanoid blobs who can not only throw a punch, but also grab enemies or environment.
The ability to grab onto stuff is crucial, because it allows you to grab into an enemy and throw them out of the arena, or, in fact, resist being thrown out. Whoever is the last fighter standing wins the match. The jelly people are customizable, their animations are delightfully and purposefully uncoordinated, and the game is too funny to make anyone mad over losing a match. Perfect.
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Crimsonland
Release date: | 2014-06-11 |
Genre: | Adventure |
Developer: | 10tons |
Crimsonland is a very simple game, and in this simplicity lies its strength. You are a space-age soldier plopped onto an area swarming with hostile and deadly aliens. Thankfully, you get new weapons, including fancy energy-shooters, and some perks which can substantially change how you complete each map. As you progress, the aliens get more dangerous, so it’s nice that friends can help you.
You can shoot aliens to death with up to three people joining, which means four times as many bullets and bolts of plasma, and a slightly higher chance of surviving against the more advanced swarms. Crimsonland doesn’t look like much, it’s graphics are very functional, but even solo it’s a great game to launch for a few quick runs. Played with friends, it becomes even better.
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Rayman Legends
Release date: | 2013-08-29 |
Genre: | Adventure |
Developer: | Ubisoft Montpellier |
Rayman is a series that’s been running around for decades at this point. Even though the disjointed protagonist isn’t as much of an icon as he used to be, his games are still great, and Rayman Legends is one of the coolest. It also has a solid local multiplayer in which each player controls a different character. It works even on Legends’ concept-levels.
There’s a few levels which synchronize music (such as a custom version of Eye of the Tiger) and level layout, so that you jump, slide, and smash to the music. It’s a great, family-friendly game, and running side by side, conquering levels together is very fun. There’s also a minigame, Kung Foot, which is another football-related option on this list: attack the ball to score goals. Simple, right?
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Diablo 3
Release date: | 2017-06-27 |
Genre: | Action RPG |
Developer: | Blizzard Entertainment |
The Diablo series is a timeless classic, And for good reasons. Carving the way through dusty dungeons and ruined villages, wading through legions of demons and undead is a time-honored tradition. While you’re perfectly capable of saving the world alone, masterfully wielding magic and weapons, there’s a unique appeal to doing it as an adventuring party of, for instance, 4 people.
Diablo 3 on Xbox allows 4 players to play together, occupying the same couch and sharing the same bunch of snacks. There are 7 classes, tons of loot, and seemingly endless supply of monsters to deal with. Although Diablo IV already exists, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to check out D3, it’s still a solid game with a lot to like about it and a lot of room for very specific class builds.
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LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2
Release date: | 2017-11-14 |
Genre: | Action |
Developer: | Traveller's Tale |
LEGO titles from Traveller’s Tales are always a reliable choice. Marvel Superheroes, but there are also LEGO games for fans of DC comics, Star Wars (like the Skywalker Saga described earlier), or Jurassic Park… In the case of Marvel Superheroes 2 the game gives you a rare chance to play characters absent from the movies, or wearing a cool costume from the old days.
If you want to play as an Old West version of Tony Stark alongside Agent Venom, you can! The game features a split-screen perfected over numerous LEGO game made by Traveller’s Tales. The world is filled with secrets, many of which only specific characters can discover thanks to their powers, and, like all LEGO games, Marvel Super Heroes 2 has a good, family-friendly sense of humor.
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Borderlands 3
Release date: | 2019-09-13 |
Genre: | Shooter |
Developer: | Gearbox Software |
The Borderlands series has always been at the height of its entertainment potential when you play with friends. It’s been true of the first game in the series, and it’s still true for the third. Borderlands 3 has the expected 4-player online co-op, but if you have an extra controller for your Xbox One, a friend can join you on the couch, and the other two players, perhaps also sharing a couch, can join online.
BL3 divides the action, and the story, between three very different planets, one of which is, of course, Pandora. There’s also a new group of cool Vault Hunters ready to do whatever job is paying best, and to loot tons of procedurally generated guns. All character have their own skills, which include commanding beasts (FL4K) and manifesting astral arms to pummel enemies (Amara).
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Divinity: Original Sin 2
Release date: | 2017-09-14 |
Genre: | Adventure |
Developer: | Larian Studios |
Divinity: Original Sin 2 got a lot of publicity since release for many reasons, but one of them was the great way it does multiplayer. First of all, DOS2 offers two-player split screen, while two (or, in one case: three) more players can join online. Each player can create their own, unique character, or pick one of the pre-generated, Origin characters with their own stories and motivations.
Aside from featuring potentially deadly combat encounters, the game doesn’t prevent you at all from exploring the map on your own. Pursue your own goals, and occasionally rush to help your co-players with a difficult battle, or break them out of jail even as they try to find their own way out. Or you could poison a health potion and give it to another player, nobody will say you can’t do it.
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Overcooked! (2)
Release date: | 2018-08-07 |
Genre: | Indie |
Developer: | Ghost Town Games |
Overcooked is a game which does local multiplayer right. So much so, that it has an option for two players to use one gamepad, because controls are very simple. What is Overcooked! About, though? It’s about managing chaos inevitably consuming any kitchen with too many cooks. It doesn’t help that the kitchen can drastically change its layout without warning.
The final grade for a level depends on the number of orders you complete before it ends, and that involves good management. One person may be tasked with cutting ingredients, while another makes sure there’s always a clean plate ready, and yet another works the stove. You must also coordinate, so that no snarls appear in the workflow. They are inevitable, but planning makes things better.
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Mortal Kombat 11
Release date: | 2019-04-23 |
Genre: | Action |
Developer: | NetherRealm Studios |
Fighting games are some of the best games to play if you have a friend over, two controllers, and a thirst for digital blood. Especially the last part is going to be thoroughly quenched if you launch Mortal Kombat 11, one of the juiciest MK games to date. Of course, blood flowing freely isn’t the only reason MK11 is an excellent fighting game in its own right, benefitting from over two decades of devs’ experience.
There are almost 40 playable characters (25 without DLC), familiar and new, and they can be customized to a degree. The story is pleasantly convoluted, complete with time travel shenanigans, magic, gods, and Johnny Cage wincing at how awful he used to be as a younger man. All in all Mortal Kombat is a fantastic, if brutal and rather complex, fighting game, solo, online, and locally.
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Enter the Gungeon
Release date: | 2016-04-05 |
Genre: | Adventure |
Developer: | Dodge Roll |
That’s an easy choice to make: we have the cute and hilarious Enter the Gungeon, which also received an exquisitely named update called “Gungeons and Draguns”. If the name alone isn’t an endorsement you may not enjoy much of the game’s tone. EtG doesn’t take itself seriously at all, at least as far as the story is concerned, because the gameplay is polished, tight, and exciting. What is the game like, then?
In Enter the Gungeon you can team up with a friend to take on a randomly generated labyrinth filled with humanoid Bullets and Guns wielding more guns, discover random loot and tackle the dungeon’s imaginative and vicious bosses. Your screen will be frequently filled with all manners of projectiles, which require skillful dodges and maneuvering if you want to stay alive.
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Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
Release date: | 2014-11-04 |
Genre: | Action & Shooter |
Developer: | Nicalis, Inc. |
The Binding of Isaac is certainly a very odd game. Famous for its grim, yet cartoonish aesthetic filled with monstrosities, and its weird trailers, Binding of Isaac is something of a Rogue-Like Prime. It can still serve as something of a blueprint on how to make it right and how important it is to inject something of your own into the game. Even if that something amounts to an extended poop joke and mild blasphemy.
In the Afterbirth DLC, you can partner up with a friend to brave Isaac’s basement together, but be warned—in order to initiate the co-op, you’ll need to sacrifice one of your lives. You also have to carefully manage drops between the two of you. On the plus side, fewer things will be wasted. Sacrificing a life turns the co-op into an investment, as your partner functions like a power-up with a drawback.
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Forza Motorsport 7
Release date: | 2017-10-03 |
Genre: | Racing |
Developer: | Turn 10 Studios |
The latest Xbox One-friendly title in the long-standing series of fantastic racing games lives up to its status with the huge variety of locations, cars and game modes it offers. Forza Motorsport 7 features a full single-player campaign, so there’s stuff to do even when you’re not racing with friends and adds new vehicles and tracks on top of ones returning from Horizon 3.
The controls are great, the tracks are imaginative and varied, and cars have detailed, believable physics. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Motorsport 7 is gorgeous either, with dynamic weather which looks as lifelike as one could have hoped for in a racing game. If you are a fan of the genre, you shouldn’t sleep on Motorsport 7, because it is one of the better racing games on the platform.
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Cuphead
Release date: | 2017-09-29 |
Genre: | Indie |
Developer: | Studio MDHR |
Cuphead has a whole lot going for it. Great art style? Check. Satisfying and tight mechanics? Check. Great music? Check. Imaginative and unique designs? Check. Local co-op? Check, check, check! Made with fantastic care and attention to details, Cuphead is brimming with style, but at no point does that style overshadow the substance.
It’s a difficult game, but it fills the player with immense satisfaction after beating every level. In co-op, the second player controls the Luigi to Cuphead’s Mario—Mugman, and both players get the ability to revive each other in a short window of opportunity if one of them falls. Cuphead was one of 2017’s most acclaimed releases for very good reasons: the style and gameplay worked together perfectly well.
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Gears of War 4
Release date: | 2016-10-11 |
Genre: | Action & Shooter |
Developer: | The Coalition |
Not for the faint of heart, the Gears series is very much a power fantasy about burly soldiers with very big guns shooting at very scary aliens and occasionally cutting said aliens open with chainsaw bayonets. Subtlety isn’t a trait the Gears of War series cared about in the original trilogy, and doesn’t seem to care for in the new generation story that is Gears of War 4 and its direct sequel, Gears 5.
You can play the entire game in a local two-player coop in split-screen and there’s a surprising amount of plot and good dramatic tension, as Player 2 takes control of either Kait or Del. You can also play the improved horde mode with many new features, like classes and special abilities. Gears of War 4 is like a nice, full course meal—it will leave you with a sense of fulfillment every time you dig in.
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A Way Out
Release date: | 2018-03-18 |
Genre: | Adventure |
Developer: | Hazelight Studios |
A Way Out was designed from the ground up to be a cooperative experience. The game is automatically two-player split-screen, although there’s an option to play it with online multiplayer (but playing it with a friend locally is the best way to do it). There’s no way to play it alone. Whether online or locally, you won’t go anywhere without the second player. It’s quite unique that way (or was, until It Takes Two).
A Way Out is a game about trust. Its mechanics take the idea of a cooperative game to the next level and require conflict resolution skills from players. You need to work together to escape the prison, but that’s just the beginning of the journey. Made by the creator of Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons, A Way Out is a masterpiece of combining all elements that make a video game a cohesive whole.
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Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Release date: | 2020-11-17 |
Genre: | Action & Shooter |
Developer: | 343 Industries |
You’re technically getting a total of 4 exclusive titles for the price of one game. The Master Chief Collection includes anniversary editions of Combat Evolved and Halo 2, as well as Halo 3 and 4. All of them received major content updates to bring them up to modern standards. Each of the games in can be played in two player, split-screen co-op, with two more players able to connect online.
The Halo series is legendary for its tight gunplay, with each new iteration improving on the previous one. This purchase could easily serve for more than a year of friendly gatherings, and even if you’re on your own, the Halo series has a famously dramatic and engaging story. Halo: The Master Chief Collection is seriously tough to pass on for anybody owning Xbox One or Xbox Series X/S.
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Let’s play
That concludes the list of the best split- and shared-screen games for Xbox One. Hopefully you’ve found some titles which fits your and your friends’ gaming preferences and you’re going to have a lovely time arguing over who messed up and blaming the controllers!