I considered writing this whole news post in alliteration, but for your sake, dear reader, I restrained myself.  Another huge weekend sale is here on Steam, this time featuring recently released remake Serious Sam HD.  A scandalously sizable 66% savings means you can pick up the game for a slim $6.67.  I was planning to purchase the as yet unreleased Xbox Live Arcade version, but with 16 player co-op and the big sale, I'll be glad to settle for the PC version.  Will cannons and enormous alien bulls be in your future this weekend?

The stories for this week (expanded because of time off):

We may finally get some concrete information on Halo Reach's cooperative mode in the next GameInformer - set to hit stands soon for their February issue.  If the cover art is any indication we may be looking at a 5 player co-op title, not 6 as previously thought.  

Halo Waypoint night tonight, so a lot of the staff will be busy with that.  But there's plenty of other gaming to have in the middle of winter.

The latest Crystal Chronicles game, The Crystal Bearers, mixes things up from the usual formula by introducing a whole new game design and limits the co-op experience to just two player. Was this a good change, or should Square Enix have stuck with the usual?

Users on the Xbox 360 version of Borderlands have really been enjoying the new DLC pack Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot. What's not to love when joining friends to survive waves of Borderlands insanity run by none other than Mad Moxxi?

Crackdown offered a challenge to those gamers who sought vertical thrills as a break from the every day busting up crime syndicate routines in the form of the Agency tower, a feat that promised some unintentional hilarity if you brought a buddy along.  Well it seems that Ruffian Games wasn’t content to let the tower be the highest point in Pacific City anymore, and has now increased the distance from the lowest point to the highest in the city from just under 400 meters (approx. 1312 feet), to over 1000 meters (approx. 3280 feet).  To put that in some perspective, the Empire State Building, with pinnacles and antennas, is roughly 440 meters tall and the current world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, stands at an impressive 828 meters.  Sounds like you and your buddies will have a lot more agility orbs to track down in order to make it to the top of the buildings in Crackdown 2; just try not to hit kick each other in the head along the way.

 Earlier this week we posted previews of the Co-Op Games of 2010 in two parts.  Above you can find the video version of the preview.  If you missed the first two parts you can read all the details about some of the great co-op titles coming in Part 1 and Part 2.

We've had quite a bit of fun at Band Hero's expense here at Co-Optimus. Is it a carbon copy clone of Guitar Hero, just another attempt by Activision to flood the game shelves? Or is it a kid-friendly, Top 40 music game that holds its own compared to other games in the genre?

Halo Legends is an eight part anime series that is produced by 343 Industries in coordination with some of the most popular and famous Japanese Anime creators like  Shinji Aramaki, Mamoru Oshii, Hideki Futamura, Tomoki Kyoda and Yasushi Muraki.  It features stories that explore the origin and historical events of the Halo universe. 

Last year we reviewed Dell's gigantic Alienware M17x gaming laptop.  It was a desktop replacement that pulled no punches in terms of performance and features.  Now Dell has announced a netbook version of the same laptop, and from the first hand accounts at CES, it's an excellent gaming machine capable of running games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at solid framerates and visuals. 

Back in the day when I worked at Gamestop, called Electronics Boutique then, we used to push Game Doctors and extended warranties on systems.  Now it seems times have changed, instead they are pushing A LOT of copies of Army of Two: The 40th Day.  To help with this they've enlisted Rios and Salem who lend their, uh, unique abilities to the customer service profession.