Co-op FPS games with Great Story/Plot

[notneps]

Me and my wife enjoy co-op games. I'm looking for something with a great story/campaign that we can play side by side. Most games that I've found have that have a great story usually have it confined to single-player mode, and have a multiplayer that's either versus, or you have to use some buggy third-party mod to play the campaign as a coop.

Looking for something like:
Left 4 Dead, Portal 2, Bioshock games (storywise, it would be great if it had a co-op campaign)

I'm not looking for:
Huge multiplayer-fests like CS/Team Fortress. Not looking for a persistent-world MMO either.

Puzzles are great, but mindless zombie shooters would be fine as well. And other suggestions about awesome coop games that aren't exactly FPS would be appreciated too.

 

[Pinhedd]

Me and my wife enjoy co-op games. I'm looking for something with a great story/campaign that we can play side by side. Most games that I've found have that have a great story usually have it confined to single-player mode, and have a multiplayer that's either versus, or you have to use some buggy third-party mod to play the campaign as a coop.

Looking for something like:
Left 4 Dead, Portal 2, Bioshock games (storywise, it would be great if it had a co-op campaign)

I'm not looking for:
Huge multiplayer-fests like CS/Team Fortress. Not looking for a persistent-world MMO either.

Puzzles are great, but mindless zombie shooters would be fine as well. And other suggestions about awesome coop games that aren't exactly FPS would be appreciated too.

The Halo series has always had excellent Co-op. I have some very fond memories from playing them on Legendary difficulty with my friends. Don't be put off by the age of the games, they're quality!

Call of Duty has had some auxiliary co-op components. The Spec-ops missions in Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 were tons of fun with some of the gameplay modes being incredibly innovative and quite tough. In one mission, one player gets to man an AC130 gunship and cover the other player from the air while they are pursued on foot. Black Ops has a Nazi Zombies mode which is supposedly fun.

The Gears of War series are not FPS games, but they do have excellent co-op and are quite fun.

EDIT: Borderlands!

 

[Vynavill]

+1 for Halo, as the storyline is nice to follow through all its episodes, and the co-op value is absolutely amazing.
I kinda disagree on CoDs tho...if I recall correctly, the last game of the series that had true co-op gameplay was World at War, and a quite fun one too (although it lacked a personal storyline, since it was following WW2 events).
The rest of the episodes feature what essentially are "endless survival" (against zombies or humans), "objective modes" (against aliens) or "time attack" modes without any kind of backstory, which can become very boring very fast.

To fill in on pinhedd's edit, Borderlands is definitely one hell of a co-op game. It's intended to be one, and on higher difficulties (which are mandatory to get your character level maxed out or good equipment, unless you want to spend months at it and provided you buy the DLCs) you'll want and sometimes even NEED a teammate to get on; at certain points you would either team up, overlevel or "find a broken a** combination of loot", to quote a character in the game
As an added plus, they're hilarious.
IMO, 1 and 2 are a must for any co-op player, and pre-sequel is entirely your choice, depending on whether you want to know some of the backstory or not; Tales from the Borderlands is a graphic adventure, so it doesn't qualify for your needs.

Nothing else comes to mind at the moment, unless you wanted to go for retrogaming; in that case, Metal Slug games would make a nice addition too, and shouldn't cost much either.

 

[chimera201]

Divinity: Original Sin is an RPG with turn based combat but you can play the campaign in coop mode.

Other:
Borderlands 2
Torchlight II

 

[Pinhedd]

Divinity: Original Sin is an RPG with turn based combat but you can play the campaign in coop mode.

Other:
Borderlands 2
Torchlight II

Hey, I was actually eyeballing Divinity a few weeks ago. It looks interesting, what's your opinion on it?

 

[Sadlah]

Okay here's my list:

- Borderlands 1 - The presequeal
- Call of Duty WaW (The campaign is really fun with friends, also zombies is really fun)
- Castle Crashers
- DayZ
- Dead Island (Story isn't that fun)
- F.E.A.R 3
- Garry's Mod (Endless amounts of fun if two have computers)
- GTA 4
- Skate 3
- Payday 2
- Saints Row 3-4
- Civilization 5
- Terraria
- Minecraft
- Call of Duty Zombies

I know many are FPS but while looking through my library i realized they're aren't many good campaign multiplayer games

 

[Rationale]

Borderlands 2
Designed for cooperative play in every aspect. It's really big, really pretty, and has a surprisingly sufficient story. Widely recognized as the best cooperative shooter. My rating - 9/10

Zeno Clash 2
Cooperative, unique gameplay, good art direction, and an oddly mystical story. The problem is it's not very long and it's not super polished. It takes a reasonably good gamer only about 6 hours to complete, and has some stiff acting you wouldn't see in a larger budget game. Still, I generally had a lot of fun with it. My rating - 8/10

Dead Island 1 or 2
Not much of a story in this one, and IMO the game gets tedious after a while. Still, it's a decent game and it's completely cooperative all the way through. My rating - 6/10

Dead Space 3
This iteration of the Dead Space series features a cooperative story, and has more shooting than typical horror games. As a bonus, the graphics are great. Although the game tries to introduce new players to the story early in the game, ultimately you'll probably only get the full effect if you play 1 and 2 as well, but those don't have cooperative. My rating - 8/10

Resident Evil 5
Older now, and honestly it has quite a few problems. The story isn't the easiest to understand unless you play the others, and it was the beginning of Resident Evil's painful descent into crap quality and obscurity. Still, the graphics have aged well, it's still better than the newer RE games, and there's quite a bit of cooperative fun to be had if you communicate well with your partner. My rating - 7

Warframe
A cooperative free to play third person shooter. As it's technically an mmo, there's not an great story, but it still has a better plot than other MMOs, thanks to an inspired premise and a dedicated development team. It can be played solo or just with 2 players, since missions are carried out in squads. It's not an mmo in the same sense as other mmos. The art direction is good, the combat is fast and responsive, and the game is constantly improving. My rating - 8

 

[notneps]

I've heard a lot of good things about Borderlands 2, and it's on sale on Steam right now, guess I'll buy a couple of copies.

Would you suggest that I get the GOTY bundle with a whole bunch of DLC's? Is the extra content worth it? Or rather, will it be enjoyable without the DLC?

 

[Vynavill]

They do add a ludicrous amount of content, that's for sure, not to mention the "ultimate vault hunter packs" raise your max level too and add another difficulty, furtherly increasing the game's life, but it's definitely enjoyable without them too.

If you're not interested in the purely extra contents, you should just buy the game and the two ultimate vault hunter packs IMO; the GOTY is very nice for its price and for what it adds tho (mind that the GOTY includes only 1 of the 2 ultimate vault hunter packs)...
It's up to you in the end.

 

[Rationale]

The Borderlands 2 DLC is actually very good. However, the game is complete without it, so you don't need it to enjoy the full normal game.

 

[chimera201]

Divinity: Original Sin is an RPG with turn based combat but you can play the campaign in coop mode.

Other:
Borderlands 2
Torchlight II

Hey, I was actually eyeballing Divinity a few weeks ago. It looks interesting, what's your opinion on it?

Definitely has to be a PC GOTY this year. It has turn based combat so that might put off a few people from liking this game. I liked XCOM so i have no problems with turn based combat. But Divinity perfectly fits OP's requirements since he wants to play with his wife.The 2 players in this game can make decisions which can be friendly or unfriendly or even romantic and OP did want a story driven game

 

[Pinhedd]

Divinity: Original Sin is an RPG with turn based combat but you can play the campaign in coop mode.

Other:
Borderlands 2
Torchlight II

Hey, I was actually eyeballing Divinity a few weeks ago. It looks interesting, what's your opinion on it?

Definitely has to be a PC GOTY this year. It has turn based combat so that might put off a few people from liking this game. I liked XCOM so i have no problems with turn based combat. But Divinity perfectly fits OP's requirements since he wants to play with his wife.The 2 players in this game can make decisions which can be friendly or unfriendly or even romantic and OP did want a story driven game

XCOM is excellent. I love turn based combat, I'm going to check it out. Thanks for the heads up!