I had a lot of fun with A Way Out online.  It's a fairly poor game but an excellent co-op experience - would've been far less enjoyable if whole thing was more refined, the wonky gusto approach elevated the campaign massively.  It's so bad in places it ends up being perfect.  All the tropes; play it and you wouldn't settle for anything less.  Trust meee.

despite the light show that it looks like, DBZF is pretty accessible, as is the latest soul caliburing. by that i mean you can do quite fancy looking stuff with simple buttons.

i wouldn't put that on the accessible list tbh

Had a games night last night with five mates.

First up is Mario Chase which is now a bit of a games night staple. It's very tense and always goes down well, just a shame that there aren't more arenas. 5 player games on the Wii U is a great feature it's unfortunate not more games took advantage.

Goldeneye next. Spend about 20 minutes working out every ones favourite controller set up (solitaire) then realise that for mates who have never played it before the mental recalibration needed to work around one analogue stick is too off-putting.Had some decent games in the end, graphically I thought it would be worse to be honest, still functional. Soundtrack is awesome.

Micromachines 64 next. Terrible interface and tracks are too complex for 4 player especially the ones with narrow rulers!. Overall not worth the effort.

Virtual tennis 2: Always amazing great fun, massively accessible and still looks decent!

Overcooked: Trialled this one and seemed to go down well nice to see a co-op game that's not a shooter

Speedrunners: Played this at previous meet ups. Last night seemed buggy though as players avatars kept swapping over mid game. Is this usual?

Rocket League: Excellent as always

Topspin: Highlight of the night. Immediacy of Virtual Tennis with a nice level of tactical depth. Add to that the risk shot mechanic great graphics and friends of similar ability lead to some incredible 4 player match ups. Can't recommend this enough.

3 on 3 NHL Arcade (360), Broforce, Knight Squad, Runbow, Spelunky...

@Eric Out of interest, are you playing Goldeneye, Virtua Tennis, etc on the original consoles or using emulation?

Hell of a set up. I know what my ultimate goal is now anyway

for local multi chaos fun, i'd strongly recommend 'stick fight game'. very simple too so even younger kids can join in, as well as adults that aren't really gamers.

Cracked through several titles in the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle last night. Great fun, and interesting to see these titles progress over the years. 7 games in total, we got through 3 of them (The King of Dragons, Knights of the Round, Warriors of Fate which account for the 3rd-5th titles chronologically) and, of the three, there is only TKoD that I would probably suggest you skip. I can’t quite believe that one came out two years after Final Fight.

Most of the games offer at least a 3 player mode too, with only Final Fight topping out at 2 and Captain Commando and Battle Circuit offer 4 player. I’d absolutely recommend this compilation for same room fun.

Had some good Speedrunners fun last night and also tried out a new multiplayer game that I bought on Xbone recently: Inversus. It is vaguely similar to Geometry Wars and involves piloting a light or dark block which can navigate dark or light areas of an arena respectively. Your block can fire a beam that will turn parts of the arena into the shade which your block can navigate - if an opponent is in part of the arena that changes shade, it is destroyed. The aim is to shoot down enemies in co-op (two player) or shoot down opponents in versus mode (up to four players but only limited to two teams). It is quite frantic and difficult to keep track of everything that is going on at times, but quite good fun if somewhat limited.