Castle Crashers is one of the games we gush about a lot. The game is a darling to the Co-Optimus crew and, to be fair, we have a good reason to be excited about the game. It is a four player, Golden Axe-style game made by the Alien Hominid guys. That alone should get your heart a flutter. Our constant coverage of the game has made us (and hopefully you) more excited. We've discovered that the game will have 22 unlockable characters, fun stat-boosting "Animal Orbs," and both a cost and a release date.

Good news folks!  Not only did Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise get an significant feature upgrade with 4 player online and offline co-op, but it got a price reduction as well! 

Gamasutra recently interviewed the producer and director of Resident Evil 5.  The RE series is reknowned for its high quality, and the previous installment in the series, RE4, was many folks' choice for Game of the Year in 2005.  Resident Evil 5 will be the first RE for next gen (or is it current gen?) systems, which is notable in and of itself.  However, RE5 will feature co-op gameplay, which is a first for the series (not counting the two player co-op in the lightgun style offshoot RE: Umbrella Chronicles).  You might expect co-op to be a last minute afterthought, merely tacked on to the primary single player experience for such a title.  However, in this interview, the creators state that this is NOT the case:

It looks like somebody just ran out of gum.  As previously rumored it's now official; Duke Nukem 3D will be hitting Xbox Live Arcade "soon." 

And so the day is finally here when we can say that Too Human will be hitting store shelves tomorrow, August 19th.   Too Human is an Action/RPG title from Silicon Knights that features 2 player co-op through the entire story.  The game is very centered around character building and item collection which is sure to be right up any Diablo fan's alley.

Some of you might know the famous "odd and even rule" in the Star Trek movies, where the odd-numbered movies are inferior to the even-numbered ones. Well, Call of Duty has a similar type of rule, with the Infinity Ward games being rather good and the Treyarch ones being not so good. However, Treyarch is trying to bridge the gap with Call of Duty: World At War and are making some decent strides. One of the strides is co-op, which pleases the crew here at Co-Optimus. The game is still set in WWII, but a recent article by 1up sounds promising. The article discusses some of the featTures, like a destructive flamethrower (and flammable things, like grass huts and people) and an exotic locale (the Pacific).

A mere week ago, we reported a rumor via a leaked achievements list from Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise.  Today, that rumor has been confirmed: Viva Pinata 2 will support up to four co-op players, either locally or online.  This news makes the little gardener inside of me get a little woozy, I must admit.  The first game was great fun, and even my wife and kids liked to watch me play.  However, with up to four people being able to participate at once, I imagine this little game will stay in our 360's disc tray for quite a while.

Last week Lionhead's Fable 2 Pub Games were made available via Xbox Live.  While the games themselves will set you back 800 MS Points, those that pre-order the title receive them for free.  The games themselves don't offer any sort of co-op, but what happens in Pub Games is completely transferable to the 2 player co-op Fable 2 game when it's released in October.

We walked out of the theater, squinting in the brightness of the lobby.  The crowd rushed by, moviegoers headed off in different directions.  The smell of popcorn was strong.  Neon lights glared everywhere, and movie posters lined the wall.  My youngest son tugged on my arm.  "Hey Dad, can we play a game?"  Smiling, I nodded.  The little arcade in the movie theater was busy, full of children celebrating the last few days of summer break.  I walked over to the change machine, and the quarters clanked noisily down the chute in procession.  With a mild whoop, the two ran off to find a game.  Would it be the noisy, psychedelic DDR machine?  Perhaps the Air Hockey table would capture their interest.  I watched, curious as to what they would choose.  After a few moments hesitation at the mesmerizing electronic buffet, my oldest son led his brother to Area 51: Site 4, and they plunked in their quarters.

For those of you that don't know, GameDaily is a website from AOL that covers everything gaming and includes partner sites like Big Download and Joystiq.  The GameDaily HUD is a brand new feature on the website which features the most intelligent, important and sexiest voices in the games industry.  Will you look at that...there's me!

I know, you are sick to death of the Too Human coverage on Co-Optimus.  Months and months have gone by and you and your friends just want to get your paws on the latest action/rpg from Silicon Knights.   Well we have a way for you to do that, but not just anyway, how about a free copy of the game signed by Denis Dyack himself!

You will likely recall the recent hullabaloo over the change in art direction for upcoming blockbuster Diablo III.  If you were like me, you were too busy thinking about how much you wanted to play the game RIGHT NOW to worry about things like bright colors and rainbows.  However, as we reported earlier, a very vocal fanbase complained loudly.  A few rabid fans even whipped up some "new and improved" versions of the screenshots from Diablo III.  One of those can be seen above.  At this point, what was a laughable, fairly minor story took an odd twist.