Editorial

5:06 PM on 8/10/2010 by Katrina Pawlowski

Admit it, there are a lot of games on the market, and not a lot of time or money to go around. You really want the most bang for your buck, but who do you trust to give you the best possible recommendation. We give you our reviews, as well as other sites you may or may not trust, but who should really get the final say?

I say you should, the user, the one spending the money and taking the time. The best possible way to make that final decision is easy: Demo the game. A lot of full retail title games have Demos, but not all of them. Downloadable games have the benefit to have a requirement to show off a little bit of trial game.

Whether you’re a Playstation Network player, or an Xbox 360 Arcader, you’ll be given the opportunity to check out each game via brief demo. Some demos give you a taste of the full action, some check out a small aspect of the title you’re checking out, and some even allow you to play with a buddy, or two, or four.

Co-op in game demos is something that we’ve really come to appreciate, whether the budget is tight at home, time is limited, or you just want to try before you buy. I personally spent 3 days recently downloading and trying many, many games on the PSN and XBLA digital downloads just to see if the demo had co-op.

Here’s a brief (not even close to complete, at all) list of games that feature co-op in their free trial game:

Arkanoid LIVE: 2 player co-op available, local only XBLA
Bubble Bobble Neo: 2 player local co-op available, XBLA
Gauntlet: 4 player local co-op, XBLA
Zombie Apocalypse - 4 player shared screen local co-op, PSN, XBLA

What is the best way to find out if a demo has co-op in it? Check our game listing, of course. In each games listing, there is a box to the right of the game that says “Find it.” This will allow you to find the game easily online, but at the bottom of the box it also says “Co-op Enabled” if the demo or trial game has co-op in it.

This is where you come in. There are a lot of games on both networks that require confirmation on the co-op. Now, that doesn’t mean multiplayer versus, it actually means gaming together. We’ve put a lot of time into updating our database, but need your help if you see that we’re missing something.

On every database page here at Co-optimus you’re given the opportunity to give us a tip - these demo confirmations are valuable tips to us, and we’re happy to update our list to be the most accurate. Now, go out there and try out your games before you buy them.

Author

Katrina Pawlowski
Former Editor

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