To paraphrase a hotly debated quote in U.S. politics: "Never let a good Crysis go to waste."

Co-Optimus recently visited THQ corporate headquarters for a Warhammer 40k: Space Marine Community Event. I got to spend a few hours with both the single player campaign and the multiplayer versus modes. Here's what I saw.

This week we've got one more co-op release than we had last week, so that's something.  Two games!  Whoopee!  Have I mentioned that September is packed with co-op games?  Because it is.  I really wish publishers would spread the love...

Get ready to dive into WH40k: Space Marine.  A single player demo is launching on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC next week.  Xbox LIVE and PC players will be able to strap on Capt. Titus' big bad boots on  August 23rd.  The PSN will get into the action on the 24th.

The Battlefield 3 Blog has detailed EA's plans to require their new Origin download service and social platform as a requirement for Battlefield 3.  This includes both digital and retail copies of the game.  While there's been quite lot of chatter around such a requirement, mostly because PC gamers think only Steam should be allowed to do this, in reality it's a pretty ingenious marketing move on EA's part.

Some say the tower defense genre has overstayed its welcome, but games like Toy Soldiers: Cold War prove there's a lot of loving left to be had. We go hands on with the Summer of Arcade title on XBLA and dish the goods on the two player co-op strategy/action game.

Indie adventure co-op game Hamilton's Great Adventure has finally gotten a release date for PSN: August 24th. Released on PC at the end of May, the game has been praised for its family-friendly gameplay and impressive level design as well as likened to an Indiana Jones type of puzzle game. Since the PC version only featured local 2-player co-op for protagonist Ernest Hamilton and his pet bird Sasha, it's likely the PSN version will only have local as well. Hamilton's is priced at $10 on PC, so hopefully the PSN version will be similarly priced.

One of the most intriguing concepts of the past few years is Kickstarter.  For those who don't know, Kickstarter is a service for raising funding for all sorts of different projects.  Several board games have been successfully funded on Kickstarter in the past year, and now, there's an intriguing co-op board game coming.

The first screenshots of Borderlands 2 have leaked out.  There's no word on where Gamersmint got this grabs from, especially since Game Informer has a one month exclusive on the game going on right now on its site and latest issue.  Still the screens look pretty clear and don't appear to be scans, though they aren't really high resolution.

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

We look back at one of the best beat em up games of all time - Streets of Rage 2. This Sega Genesis classic saw ports to numerous platforms and featured solid cooperative play through and through.

Most of the staff are actually sitting at home pouting this weekend.  Why?  Because Andrew is at THQ right this second playing Space Marine.  To divert our attention from our sadness, we've taken upon playing numerous other titles - including some upcoming games that aren't out as well.  What?  Andrew can't have all the fun by himself.