Everything's better in co-op, and that includes 3D platformers. Boti: Byteland Overclocked from Purple Ray Studio and Untold Tales is one such game, a robot and technology-themed platformer that debuted on Steam last year. Now Boti is getting ready to head to consoles in January, and it will include both 2-player local and online co-op.
Gal Guardians: Demon Purge was one of my favorite games of 2023, featuring tight Castlevania III-style gameplay and great local co-op. This must be my lucky day, as Inti Creates and PQUBE have just announced a sequel called Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark. The new game will be a full-fledged Metroidvania platformer with support for both local and online co-op, and it's coming to all platforms in March.
Of all the nostalgic beat 'em ups to follow in TMNT: Shredder's Revenge's footsteps in the last couple of years, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind has been the most promising. It features excellent pixel art, 6-player local co-op, and online play. Rita's Rewind has finally arrived on consoles and Steam just in time for the holidays, and it's making good on most of its promises, though some versions don't have online play just yet.
Since MultiVersus fully launched in May, the game has gone through 3 "seasons," adding new characters and content around a seasonal battle pass. Season 4 is due to start on November 12, and it will add Raven, a fan-favorite character from Teen Titans, and Marceline, the vampire queen from Adventure Time to the roster of unlockable characters. The update also promises a new team-based competitive mode called Arena and two new maps.
Following the success of the Capcom Fighting Collection and Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle, Capcom has finally bundled all of their Marvel fighters onto modern platforms as Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. And what’s more, the 1994 co-op beat ‘em up The Punisher is included as well. ...
We've been waiting for Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age, the upcoming fighting game from Maximum Entertainment, for almost a year now. You just don't see many cooperative fighting games, after all. Well, gamers won't have to wait too much longer for Diesel Legacy, as the game will be launching on consoles and PC on December 3. That's just a couple of months away!
While The Behemoth is best known for their Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers franchises, once upon a time, the studio made a really unique platformer called BattleBlock Theater. Well, the Steam version of BattleBlock Theater is getting a nice update soon. That's really cool, but even better, the game will be coming to modern consoles as well!
Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age is an upcoming fighting game from Maximum Entertainment. Through a couple of public playtests, we've been able to try out several of the co-op fighter's unique steampunk characters. There's no public playtest at present (other than an event demo at this weekend's Evo fighting game tournament), but a fresh trailer shows off a sultry new character named Damkina and teases an additional female fighter. Diesel Legacy needs to hurry up and come out!
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night will always be remembered as the game that popularized the Metroidvania genre, and one of its key contributors is Koji Igarashi. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Igarashi and his studio, ArtPlay, along with 505 Games, released Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night in 2019. Bloodstained is a 2.5D ...
Today's Nintendo direct was home to all sorts of cool announcements. For me, the coolest of them all was Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, an upcoming collection of 7 of Capcom's classic Marvel arcade games. Six of those are fighting games, but the seventh is the co-op The Punisher beat 'em up! The collection is coming to PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. Xbox, for some strange reason, was left out of today's announcement.
The original Shovel Knight was a popular platformer with local co-op and a great retro art style. Yacht Club Games ended up offering that first game as both Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (all DLC included) and Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope (just the main game). That's not confusing! Also not confusing is today's announcement of Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope DX, a remake of the original game that adds 2-player online co-op and many other choice features. So far, we only know it's coming to Steam, but other platforms shouldn't be far behind.
When Warner Bros' and Player First's MultiVersus fully launched in May, the game was not without technical issues. Frame rate stutters and "desync" errors (disconnects) have occasionally marred an otherwise enjoyable Super Smash Bros.-style fighting experience. Thankfully, the version 1.2 update that arrived this week aims to address these issues, hopefully bringing an improved experience to all.
