How has this thread been up for half a damn day and no one has mentioned the Borderlands series (Smoogy@kbin.social at least mentioned Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, but that was just a Borderlands 2 DLC which got re-released as a standalone.)

My wife and I put tons of hours into most of the the Borderlands series. I recommend playing them in release order.

1. Borderlands is a fun shoot n'loot that's got a loose plot, but it's not terribly deep. It's like a sci-fi road warrior feel. It's a fun co-op game with plenty of DLC and replay value. My personal favorite.

2. Borderlands 2 is all the fun of the first but they went all in on the writing and voice acting as well. It's tons of fun. Arguably the best of the series in every aspect. It's also tons of fun in couch co-op.

3. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is the third game but canonically it's the second. It's the same concept but with new anti-gravity mechanics and lasers. It's like Mad Max on the moon. I believe this started life as a DLC for BL2 before Gearbox decided to turn it into a fully fledged standalone game.

4. Borderlands 3: It was a fun game with some really great level design, but the writing seemed forced. Worth a playthrough to see where they take the storyline.

5. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - Borderlands meets DnD. A spin-off of the aforementioned Assault on Dragon Keep DLC. The game itself is a lot of fun, but it's a miserable split screen co-op experience thanks to the terrible menu and inventory management system.