Edit: This community is amazing, thank you all for all of your suggestions. Feel free to keep them coming. I have a Google doc full of ideas with my comments that I'm going to drop on him. I was trying to respond to everyone and then discovered that Tildes will rate limit you. So if I don't respond to you, I'm sorry but I definitely read your comment and checked out your suggestions!

My friend suffers from depression and lives 6 hours away from me so the happiest I see him is when we are regularly gaming together. The problem is that I haven't been able to find a game we both wanted to play for a while.

I just cannot get into all the survival crafting games that seem to dominate co-op gaming these days. I am looking for suggestions for anything else. Also, it needs to be an online co-op instead of a couch co-op.

His computer isn't the best so that needs to be a consideration, nothing wrong with older games. Ideally we are talking about PC games on Steam.

Examples:

• we played a ton of Risk of Rain 2, probably the last game we played a lot together
• we have played through Halo co-op a bunch of times.

Who has ideas for me?

We're trying to start a Gamecircle (kind of like a Bookcircle) with friends and accuintances and I'm looking for some good Games to start. It is a daunting task to be honest, as there will be some first time gamers taking part. And for me as a singleplayer for year (mostly factorio and some round and grand strategy games) I dont even know where to start looking.
I'm looking for something like mario kart, which is easy to understand and fun for everybody to play, for the first months. Not cost more than 10$, be aviable through steam or gog or itch.io, preferably cross-platform (steam play works fine too).

On another note, has someboy tried something like this? how did/does it work out? What would be your Advice?

I'm a huge fan of co-op games and have played over 100 by now, sometimes I stumble on a little co-op game I had never heard of and give it a go, I'm curious to hear about them.

I'm going to throw in Clandestine, which is an asymmetric infiltration game where one player is a field operative in a 3rd person stealth shooter, and the other player is a hacker that has to control a little avatar on the network, manage CCTV cameras so the field operative isn't spotted, crack door key codes, direct the field operative to mission objectives, disable guards by overloading power and water utilities, and even call in for body cleanup and ammo/health drops.

I love the asymmetric cooperative nature of the game and Hacktag appears to be similar, though I've never tried it. I'm played through the whole campaign as a field operative and now I'm going through as the hacker and finding myself enjoying a whole new way to play the game, which has been challenging.

My friends and I just finished our first run through EDF 4.1, and we had a blast. We each accumulated about 60 hours in the game doing so. Some of that was probably spent goofing around on other classes or strengthening up a bit for the three or four missions we got stuck on. All in all though, I'm amazed that it took us that long to get through.

Actually, I'd say that's my response to this game in general. For something I had never really heard of, it was surprisingly good. The game was ridiculous at the start with the giant bugs but as it went it somehow just got crazier and crazier. The scale of the game was just fantastic in terms of enemy variety and size. The hilarity of the B movie writing paired with the outrageous gameplay made it an uproar between the four of us.

The progression system was decent and probably the weakest point. The sheer amount of equipment was a big plus, since it's always exciting to see something new at the end of a mission and find out if it's any good or not, but it was pretty easy to identify an optimal strategy for each mission. There were some classes of weapons (for ranger at least) that were outright useless in a practical sense, which is disappointing. The variety in weapon design is great, but it's unfortunate that it couldn't be more balanced.

Are there any other games that really scratch this itch? I can think of a lot of four-player co-op games that don't really fill that void. EDF is too fast-paced, has too many good "wtf moments", and has too enjoyable a progression system. For those of y'all on ~ who have played it: what other games did you enjoy that were sort of alike to EDF 4.1?

I've been really enjoying Sea of Thieves lately, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about the new update coming on Tuesday. Anyone else feeling the same?
I've only got a couple people who I play with from time to time, so if anyone would like to crew up, just add me. My Xbox tag is the same as my Tildes username.