WORMS
While they’ve tried to take the series in other, more technologically fancy directions, the series was never better than when you were just four cartoon worms using cartoon weapons to make perfectly circular holes in some cartoon terrain in an attempt to destroy opposing groups of four cartoon worms.
The best thing about the ‘Worms‘ games is that, regardless of the number of players you have, you only need the one controller, and the fact that they’re turn-based means you have ample time between turns to drink and shit-talk.
There’s a bunch out there but my personal favourite is ‘Worms World Party‘. You’ll still have a pretty good time with whichever one you choose to get your hands on though.
MARIO PARTY
I mean, it’s in the bloody name, isn’t it. One of the OG party games, ‘Mario Party‘ lets you run around a board with a character of your choice and become steadily more infuriated with your friends as they kick your ass in various minigames.
The games change enough that no one can dominate too much by being super good at a particular game, and anyone that does dominate too much can just be kicked out of the room IRL until they promise to be less good.
Honestly, the most recent one of these I played was ‘Mario Party 3‘ on the 64, but man I bet they’ve added some cool shit in the 17 years since then.
JACKBOX PARTY PACK
There are a couple of these and they’re all great. Nearly all of the Jackbox games work by having a shared element up on the TV, with input provided by each player through the web browser on their phone, meaning that answers are kept secret and that different players can be shown different things at different times.
My personal favourite is ‘Jackbox Party Pack 2‘, which has got a game similar to ‘Cards Against Humanity‘, a game similar to ‘Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes‘, a weirdly addictive drawing game, and even more great shit.
CASTLE CRASHERS
For those of you who can cast your mind back to the Newgrounds days, you might know the people behind ‘Castle Crashers‘ as the geniuses who made the seminal Flash-based sidescroller ‘Alien Hominid‘. Similar to ‘Alien Hominid‘, ‘Castle Crashers‘ is an easy to play, very slick, very easy on the eyes game that is mondo fun to play.
It’s pretty straightforward: you and up to three of your mates pick a knight (as you play through the game, you unlock a bunch of different shit you can play as as well) and run around hitting shit until, eventually, you finish. (I mean, I assume, I’ve always been too drunk to make it that far.)
Unlike the previous entry, not a lot of brain power required in this one, and it’s almost entirely cooperative, so there’s very little chance for deep rifts in friendship to occur thanks to your in-game shenanigans.
TEKKEN
Remember the days of loading up a fighting game and round robin-ing through it with your mates for hours? Those days can be right now, because fighting games still exist. Pretty much any one will do, but I chose the ‘Tekken‘ series because ‘Street Fighter‘ feels way too involved and ‘Dead or Alive‘ was always too preoccupied with boob physics to make particularly amazing games.
I always tend to lean towards ‘Tekken 3‘, but that’s just because it’s the one I played the most (my Eddy skills are unmatched).
SUPER SMASH BROS.
There was no way this wasn’t going to end up in here. ‘Super Smash Bros.‘ has been consistently pumping out arguably the best multiplayer games in existence. The good thing about ‘SSB‘ is that pretty much everyone (except for weirdos) is at least vaguely acquainted with the point of the game and the rough control scheme, and the changes between generations aren’t enough to really fuck anyone up.
They’ve all been heaps of fun – I tend to favour ‘Super Smash Bros. Melee‘, but any of the others will do if you haven’t got a GameCube stashed in a cupboard somewhere.
NBA JAM
Probably no game in the world makes me as consistently furiously angry as ‘NBA Jam‘ but, I mean, it’s in a good way. This arcade / SNES classic really perfected a mix of simplicity of gameplay with latitude for incredible levels of skill. It is brutally fast paced and very, very unforgiving.
If (weirdly) you haven’t got an ‘NBA Jam‘ cabinet or SNES, there was a re-release done on the PS3 and Xbox 360 that pretty much just updated the graphics and left everything else well alone.
HALO 3
Unlike a lot of the other games on this list, I’m singling out a single entry in the series for inclusion. To me, ‘Halo 3‘ had the best balance of letting you do cool shit with the multiplayer without overcomplicating it. It’s a fun dumb shooter with lots of stuff that explodes, and it’s incredibly satisfying to kill your mates with a sword (I implore you not to try this in real life).
Fun tip: an extremely fun game mode to set up for yourself is changing it so that everyone except the person winning is invisible and has swords only, it is extremely anxiety inducing and punishes you for being good at the game.
MARIO KART
Everyone knows what ‘Mario Kart‘ is: a racing game with shells and banana peels that massively favours people who are losing. There’s so much rubber banding going on, you really have to suck for the game to be unenjoyable.
Every iteration of this game has been a perfect gem. ‘Mario Kart 8‘ looks amazing, gives you a weird amount of control over your racer / kart combo, and features a bunch of hectic new modes, but, I mean, I still get a huge kick out of playing ‘Mario Kart 64‘, so you can’t really go wrong.
MARIO TENNIS
What can I say? Nintendo is just extremely good at making games that are fun to play with friends. It’s tennis, but with Mario characters, what else do you need? Nothing, that’s what.
Fun fact: this game saw the introduction of Waluigi, who is my homie forever.
