The five best games to play online (even if you’re terrible at them)

Sure, everyone likes to win. If that’s your thing, there are dozens of highly competitive online games that you can fruitlessly grind away at until you reach the impenetrable wall of try-hards at the top, but not everyone is into that.

Sometimes you just want to mess around, and sometimes you don’t want to have to worry about whether or not you’re actually any good at the game you’re playing, just whether or not it’s fun.

Well if you’re that kind of player, we’ve got you covered.

Team Fortress 2

Yes, Team Fortress 2 is a first-person shooter with a bunch of classes and lots of moving parts, but don’t be fooled — this is a no-holds-barred, hilarious, slapstick game of silliness and tomfoolery. The game is balanced, not terribly competitive, and where else can you kill someone with a jar of your own urine while wearing a crocodile on your head?

There are tons of custom servers with weird and wacky rules and lots of people who are more concerned with screwing around and collecting hats than winning or trying super hard. Just make sure that you don’t accidentally join a competitive server and you’ll be fine.

Rocket League

Sure, there are some people who take Rocket League very seriously, but let’s be honest: they’re doing it wrong.

As long as you’re staying away from ranked, this is one of the best games around for just having fun and screwing around. Especially if you’re playing with friends — good friends, the kind that won’t pitch a fit on their mic after your seventh own goal — then you are likely to have a good time, and you can contribute and even pull off some cool stuff in Rocket League without actually being any good at it. 

Grand Theft Auto Online

I mean, this one kind of speaks for itself — it’s Grand Theft Auto, but it’s online! Yeah, cars cost money, so you can’t just drive terribly and smash into things willy-nilly, but you’ve got pretty unlimited freedom, so if riding bikes in your underwear, driving the wrong way down the highway, or robbing everything in sight sound like fun to you, then this is a great game to get your jollies from.

It only works better with friends, unless you’re the kind of jerk who likes to ruin other people’s fun, in which case this is still a great game for you, but you should probably stick to irritating strangers.

Super Smash Brothers

Finally, a fighting game where you don’t actually have to be any good to win and have fun. The key here is to play with four people and turn ALL THE ITEMS ON. Don’t worry about being good, it won’t matter when you get smacked with a random bob-omb from across the map or have the wrong Pokemon sprout up right beneath you.

Enjoy the chaotic, random, good-time fun of watching your favorite video game characters pummel each other to death.

Minecraft

Finally, there’s always Minecraft. There might not be a better game out there for just messing around, playing terribly, and just goofing off with your friends. There are tons of multiplayer servers where you can mess around by yourself or with others, including some ridiculous competitive ones, or you can just make one yourself.

If you die, no big deal, and if you manage to lure some creepers into the house that your friend spent the last few hours building, well, there’s always more blocks where those came from.

Of course, any online game can be played badly, and you might even have fun, but don’t blame us if your team in DOTA2 doesn’t think it’s as funny as you do. Have fun, and don’t be good!