Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.

Civilization V has received its first major update today of what's likely to be the start of many bug fixes, tweaks, and enhancements to the game.  The series has always be tinkered with over its life and been supported quite well by the developers based on community feedback, and it looks like Civ 5 is going to follow that tradition.

Straight out of Blizzcon comes word that Blizzard will be releasing official mods for StarCraft 2 for all owners of the game to enjoy.  The mods range from a quirky puzzle game, to a Defense of the Ancients mod,  to a cooking ingredient hunting game, to a co-op Left 4 Dead style romp.

Blizzcon is this weekend and while none of the staff are going we'll all be watching to get a taste of our Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft news.  Besides that many of us are buried in good games with Reach once again hitting just about all of our playlists.  What is it about those Spartans?

Blizzard have just taken the wraps off Diablo 3's fifth and final class at Blizzcon 2010.  The class is called the Demon Hunter, and she appears to be a ranger like support character who specializes in bow and knife attacks.  Five videos have been released of her special attacks - molten shot, boa, entangle, grenade, and fan of knives are all on display and impressive looking.

We got our hands on some sweet gaming headsets from Steel Series. The Spectrum 4XB and 5XB are made to work specifically with your Xbox 360, while still suppporting PC gaming and home theatre use. Are these the headsets you're looking for? Find out in our review.

From the better late then never category comes word that the PlayStation Network version of Blacklight: Tango Down will be releasing on October 26th for $15.  The game released over the summer on the Xbox 360 and PC to solid reviews, though we didn't care too much for the co-op mode.

Hockey is back! NHL 11 is upon us and EA's next entry into the series is a fully featured hockey simulation packed with new features. But what about the co-op? Last year there were slim pickins, did EA listen to our feedback and add in the much needed online mode? Read our review to find out.

Apologies for the late episode this week, but the wild lifestyle of our intrepid podcast hosts waits for no one! Well, actually, we had a great interview lined up and we didn't want to make you wait another two weeks to hear it. After Nick and Mike cover this week's co-op news, Andy Schatz from Pocketwatch Games joins us to chat about his upcoming co-op game, Monaco. We were big fans of its PAX demo and think you should keep an eye on this one. Interview Begins at the 54:45 Mark if you want to skip to the good stuff. :D For more on Monaco visit: http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/Monaco/

Hit the Podcast Page to Listen or Download

It's a double-whammy month as the Battlefield Report braves No Man's Land to bring you impressions of two of this month's hottest downloadable add-ons.

We got our copy of DJ Hero 2 into Co-Optimus HQ today - eager to checkout the game we fired it up - and after the first song we were quickly greeted with a lockup.  A fluke perhaps.  But after several more attempts at the game's career mode the lockups were consistently occurring between songs in a mix - I feared the worst - my Xbox 360 was going.  

In a style like that of the famous story "The Night Before Christmas," Rockstar games have crafted a poetic tale of how the undead hordes are going to relentlessly come after you and your friends in Red Dead Redemption's new co-op mode called Undead Overrun.