Near is the far out feature that will allow PS Vita owners to play co-op with one another.  Sony have released a new video that gives us a taste of what the Vita has to offer and even provides a diagram explaining Near backed by some funky music.

RAGE is out now on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC with a two player co-op mode called Legends of the Wastelands - you can check out our review of the game right here. To celebrate the release we're running a contest, giving away one copy of the game on the platform of your choice along with a digital strategy guide supplied by Prima Games.  The guide covers single players, multiplayer and the co-op modes, and you can read a bit about the creation process of it over at the BethBlog.

All of this Dark Souls and Rage talk  is starting to desensitize me.  Time for a little something for the children.  Ah, here we go; Disney Universe is coming to a console near you on October 25th!  This LittleBigPlanet - ahem, homage -  will feature many of your favorite Disney and Pixar characters and locations.  Four local co-op buddies will outfit their character with one of over 40 costumes, each with a "specific tool that changes and grows in power as players adventure through the game."  I smell a platformer!

Savvy Co-Optimus readers took note yesterday when Payday: The Heist was conspicuously missing from our weekly co-op release alert. (Psyclops was especially devastated.)  We touched on this in the comments section, but here we're making it officially official.  Payday: The Heist has been delayed until later this month.  An exact date wasn't given, but we do expect to have our Payday before November.

We were told when Resistance 3 was still in the works that Playstation 3 games with some form of online/multiplayer aspect would likely require a "Online Pass" in order to access this content. It's been confirmed by Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) in a statement to Destructoid yesterday that everybody's favorite treasure hunter will also require one for the upcoming Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. What's more, he may not be the only one...

Forgive me a moment of self-indulging idiocy, but the first half of this Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One video evokes images from a certain partially slow-motion advertisement that ran about six years ago and is responsible - to this day - for periodically polluting my headspace with its catchy, bubbly music track. Now whenever I see cartoon characters jumping and flipping around in low gravity I can't help but murmur a few lines to myself.

Gears of War 3 packs an incredible amount of co-op content into one game. The game will get even bigger in just one month’s time. The 'Horde Command Pack' DLC lands on November 1 for 800 Microsoft Points. As expected, it will include new maps, characters, Achievements worth a total of 250 GamerScore, and lots more.

There's nothing like waiting till the last minute to announce your game has a cooperative mode.  That's just the case for Ace Combat: Assault Horizon on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 which has finally announced the details of its cooperative mode after months of speculation.  Just how close to release are we for the game?  It's out next week.

Last week’s massive Xbox Live Arcade game sale was probably the best ever from a co-op standpoint, with over 10 co-op games on sale for at least 50% off. This week XBLA sales aren’t overflowing with cooperative multiplayer titles, but they still include a few good ones: namely Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 and Doom II.

Thanks to some slick detective work by Joystiq, namely checking every online retailer known to man, they were able to lock down a solid release date for the upcoming four player co-op Ghost Recon: Future Soldier on the 360, PS3 and PC.  I know what you are saying, internet retailer release dates aren't anything concrete - even if they are all lining up together.  It's ok, I agree - but in this case Joystiq went a step further and confirmed directly with Ubisoft the date in question.

As we previously reported, Namco Bandai decided to switch the mini-guide in Dark Souls’ Limited Edition package from physical to digital a few months prior to release. While that change was disappointing for some, many gamers like me continued to look forward to the Limited Edition regardless. It seems that lots of those people will be disappointed today, as reports indicate that one or more retailers who offered the Dark Souls Limited Edition for preorder only received the standard edition to offer to customers.

I’m one of those people that consider id Software to be the father of the modern day shooter. Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake all raised the bar for the genre with their respective releases. Each game had a new 3D engine created by John Carmack that pushed the bounds of technology. After more than six years, we’re finally seeing a brand new game and a brand new engine from the studio. But is RAGE the game and engine to move the genre forward once again like it’s older brothers before him?