10 Cruel Tricks Video Games Played On Co-Op Players

There's perhaps no single crueller trick a co-op game can play than eventually forcing teammates to turn on one another in the final stretch.

This most infamously happened in yet another Josef Fares game, A Way Out, where players take control of escaped prisoners Leo and Vincent, only for the end of the game to reveal that Vincent was an undercover cop the whole time.

And so, the finale sees the two battling one another in an epic shootout, with it made explicitly clear that only one of them can survive, the players forced to turn their combat chops upon each other.

This is just the most recent example, though: Splinter Cell: Conviction's co-op campaign similarly forced players to duke it out at the end, as did classic beat 'em up Double Dragon.

It's an especially insidious trick considering that players have spent hours building up an in-game camaraderie together, only for the dynamic to be flipped on its head in the most violent and ultimate way, with there being no alternative method for beating the game no less.