Online PC games recommendations please!

[ShineBrightly]

Complete beginner at this lark, please be gentle!

My brother, who has been a pretty avid gamer since his teens, has moved to Australia. We're pretty close, and I miss hanging out with him, so wondered if anyone would have suggestions as to online games we could play together. Kind of like, hanging out in the game?

He uses various consoles, but I just have a PC laptop (he has an Apple laptop). Looking for mystery solving games rather than kill everyone in sight games :)

Any suggestions gratefully received, thanks guys!

[sibleymum]

If this is for a child, my kids safely enjoy minecraft, rec room and VR chat (available for PC too) Have fun!

[TheHighestSardine]

You might have a bit of trouble finding something you can both play - there's really not a lot which is "cross play" between different hardware platforms. Your best chance is laptop and Xbox One, I think, although there are some Mac/PC crossplatform games too. There you'll probably be limited also by the graphics ability of the laptops.

For the latter, I'd suggest...

Stardew Valley, sort of farm life sim with mystery and relationship building elements.

Portal 2, a truly fantastic puzzle game that needs some real lateral thinking. Excellent one player game too, but that'll work better if you play solo Portal 1 first (it's not long, about six hours).

Overcooked 2, flurry of activity kitchen game

There's a bunch of big MMOs that you could dig into - The Elder Scrolls Online is a personal favourite, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, no doubt plenty more.

Laptop/Xbox - Sea of Thieves maybe? Minecraft. Fortnite is actually a pretty good chat app, as 90% of the time you're just wandering about chatting (9% you're shooting/1% getting shot!).

www.co-optimus.com/ is a good source. The term "cross play" is useful for checking if a given game supports mixed hardware like you need.

An alternative might be to pick up an Xbox/PS4 plus an online pass, they're not hugely expensive... that'd give you tons of games.

[ShineBrightly]

Thank you both for the replies and suggestions! Something to revisit with time on our hands now.