It's time to get the flashlights out because we have our second mission from our Back 4 Blood preview. We set our sights on the "Tunnel of Blood" mission from "The Devil's Return" campaign.  

Earlier this week we had the opportunity to check out Back 4 Blood, the latest from Turtle Rock Studios. During their sneak peek event we played through a PVP session and a lengthy co-op campaign. My initial thought was "how do you improve on a pillar of co-op gaming like Left 4 Dead?" After playing for a couple hours, I can say it has a lot of cool things going for it.

What do you get when you mix historical figures from across the centuries and continents with a semi-humorous and semi-pointed message about the world’s excesses leading to its demise? To be quite honest, I’m not entirely sure, but Rocket City Studios has given us Second Chance Heroes as one possible interpretation. Blending a comic-book style with four-player action co-op, its an interesting beast, but one that has a good deal of promise.

2012 looks to be another great year for co-op gamers, at least initially. While in the past we always seemed to build slowly to a series of Fall releases, this year looks to reverse the trend with an action packed middle of the year. Are the summer doldrums a thing of the past? Locke and Nick take you on a magic carpet ride through 2012 in both written and video form.

At a recent EA event in NYC I got to go hands on with Shank 2 and it's new survival based co-op mode.  While the first Shank offered a short co-op campaign, developer Klei wanted to make something that had a bit more legs and replayability.  Alongside creating this brand new co-op mode with a bunch of different characters to choose from, rather than just two like the first game, the team managed to add online co-op to the mix.

2011 looks to be another huge year for co-op games. Already we have a full schedule of co-op titles planned to be released in every quarter this year. We've got a video preview showcasing some highlights as well as the full list of co-op releases currently slated for this year right ahead!

In the spirit of the 4th of July, we've found some awesome explosion action to tide you over until the real fireworks begin! That is to say, 'Splosion Man has finally shown us its Co-op colors! 'Splosion Man is sure to fulfill all your mad scientist, platforming needs. Various neon colors represent the 2-4 co-op "test subject" 'Splosion Men in their molten explosive forms.