Like sands through the hour glass, so are the releases of Dynasty Warriors games.  I'm saying there's a lot of them.  After the umpteenth retelling of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, someone over at Koei decided the Gundam series had a story convoluted enough to make an acceptable plot for a  DW game.  So they added giant robots to the mix.  Enter Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3.  By now you know the drill.  If you are new to the DW franchise I'll sum up: Pick one of dozens of characters and fight hundreds, if not thousands of enemies by mashing the attack button.  Now with robots.  Amazingly, it's not as awesome as it sounds.  If you haven't played a DW game in a while it is nice to pick one up every now and then, if only to remind yourself of why you don't own all the DW games. (Confession: I loved DW 3 and 4.)

Today we're proud to announce some new site features and improvements for Co-Optimus.  These improvements aren't merely just cosmetic, they will hopefully be fun and useful to our awesome community of co-op gamers.  So lets take a look at what we've added.

It's been awhile since we've talked about Inversion, an upcoming sci-fi shooted from Saber Interactive (the folks who developed Timeshift). The last time we talked about the game, it was expected to release sometime in 2011. A few days ago, however, publisher Namco Bandai gave it a solid release date for Feb. 7, 2012. That's right - a year from today you may be spinning objects in gravity fields you've created using the Grappler weapon and hurling your body through space in zero gravity environments. The extra year will be used to give the game a suitable polish.

Joystiq.com has found a real treasure in the zombie/ninja/baby-maker quagmire that is Xbox LIVE's Indie Games library.  The game is titled Corrupted, and supports four player local co-op.  Corrupted charges you and three friends with capturing princesses.  You're play as the bad guy.  Well, a pawn of the real bad guy. More than just a twin-stick-shooter affair, you can upgrade and customize your character as you progress through the game.  Stat categories include Damage, Blocking, Combos, and Range.  As you fill up your Corruption meter you can dish out special moves against hordes of enemies.

PC gamers who preorder the Bulletstorm Limited Edition from the EA Store will recieve a free digital copy of  Shank.  The offers begins today, February 7th, and it is available until Bulletstorm's release date, February 22. We gave Shank, a stylish side-scrolling brawler, a 3 out of 5 in our Co-Op review.  

Magicka is an ambitious title which puts players in the shoes of a wizard with the powers of eight elements at their finger tips. You'll carefully craft your own method of destruction from these by yourself or with three other friends in co-op. We take this PC title for a spin in our latest review

The Resistance series has been one of the most highly regarding on Sony's Playstation 3.  This fall, the third entry into the franchise, aptly named Resistance 3, will be released.  This time around, the seperate 8-player co-op mode has been dropped in favor of the two player local/online co-op campaign that we enjoyed in Resistance: Fall of Man.  A couple trailers have been released into the interwebs.  The first is a bit more cinematic, while the second features four minutes of actual gameplay, along with the explosions, guns, and ape-like cyborg aliens you'd expect.  It's definitely worth checking out for PS3 owners.

We've all heard of movies based on video games; Resident Evil and Prince of Persia are two recent examples, and of course there are the Halo rumors, too.  But the next big video game movie might not be inspired by relatively new games.  Apparently, a script based on SNES/Genesis era classic Zombies Ate My Neighbors is being shopped around.  It's described as "Superbad plus Zombieland plus Home Alone" which actually sounds like a pretty good movie, once you think about it. 

This month in MMOCO we take a look at Aion. Rather than point out some unique co-opportunities of it, Tally shares her history with the game as well as the improvements that have been made to it since its release.

This week's Xbox Live Deals focus on "Retro Shooters" - with many of them offering co-op play.  Here's what you can snag for at least 50% off the normal Microsoft Moon Buck price.

Kick, punch, it's all in the mind

Magicka received another patch this weekend, making it the 8th since the game was released two weeks ago.  This patch was a major one though with a primary focus on network optimizations.  This means your co-op games are less likely to drop/lag/suck.  As always the patches are auto applied once you fire up Steam.