Top 5 Co-Op Games for the Rest of 2008
Editorial
There are literally over a dozen AAA Co-Op titles coming out from now until the year's end. While most of them have the moniker of "2" after the title, there are a handful of fresh new franchises on the rise. We've listed our top 5 most anticipated co-op titles for the rest of the year. Do you think your wallet can handle it?
Here are the Co-Optimus' Staff Picks for the Top 5 Co-Op Games for the Rest of 2008.
5. Fable 2 (360, Lionhead/Microsoft, October 21st)
Co-Op Experience: 2 Player Online and Offline Co-Op
While the original Fable may have over promised and under delivered, Fable 2 is going to do it's best to live up to the hype. On the co-op side of things, this game takes a unique stab at it. As you play the game you will come across spheres that represent you friends and where they are in the game. You walk up to the sphere and you can join their adventures and take on the trials together. When you want to leave you can easily go back to your campaign. It also sounds as if the visiting character will affect the host’s world unless a safety feature is turned on. Your dog will unfortunately not come with you.
4. Resistance 2 (PS3, Insomniac/Sony, November 4th) Co-Op Experience: 8 Player Online Co-Op This sequel comes to us with an 8-player co-op mode whose story differs from the single-player story. There are numerous character classes to choose from, all of which you can level up and unlock weapons and skills. (ala CoD4) The game will also feature full drop-in/drop-out support with scalable enemy difficulties based on the number of players. There will be some fierce competition between this and Gears of War 2, which releases a few days after. 
3. Rock Band 2(360/PS3/Wii/PS2, Harmonix/MTV/EA, Sept 14th 360, October 19th others) Co-Op Experience: 4 Player Online and Offline Co-Op Everyone’s music game darling comes around for a second wave and this time it you’ll be able to go through the World Tour section of the game with three other people cooperatively ONLINE. The biggest discerning feature for Rock Band 2? Almost all of the previous game's song will be backwards compatible, so if you own RB1 you can import you songs into 2 for $5. Also, all of your downloadable content will work the day you turn the game on. No doubt this will be a huge year for music games and now the instruments should be cross compatible as well.
2. Gears of War 2 (360, Epic/Microsoft, November 7th) Co-Op Experience: 2 Player Online/Offline Story Co-Op and 5 Player Online Co-Op Mode The original Gears of War brought the absolute best co-op experience to date on the Xbox 360 (just look at the ratings on this site for it). So it's no surprise we have high expectations for the latest title from Epic Games. Once again you'll be provided with a tightly integrated drop-in/drop-out 2-player co-op story mode. New this year is the addition of the 5-player co-op Horde mode where you face off against increasing waves of enemies together. It is just too bad there isn’t 4-player co-op through the campaign, but the Horde mode should tide us over. 
1. Left 4 Dead (360/PC, Valve/EA, November 20th)
Co-Op Experience: 4 Player Online Co-Op - 2 Player Split Screen on 360 Version as well as 4 Player Online.
This is the one game that was on everyone's list this year. Sporting a 4 player co-op story mode in which players attempt to survive the zombie onlsaught, Left 4 Dead has an atmosphere that is like no other game to date. The game was designed from the ground up for co-op play, and it's essential to use tactics and teamwork to survive. Even the game's vs. mode which allows 8 players to play online together has strong ties to co-op. After E3 and PAX this year, it's easy to see why this is our number one anticipate co-op game of the year.
Notable Mentions:
Guitar Hero: World Tour (Multiple Platforms, Neversoft/Vicarious Visions/Activision Blizzard, October 25th) - Guitar Hero's first foray into multiple instruments, can it survive the jump?
LittleBigPlanet (PS3, Media Molecue/Sony, October 21st) - It's yet to be seen just how much game is in LBP.
Red Alert 3 (PC/360, EA October 27th, 360 Novemeber 11th) - An RTS where every mission is designed to be played co-op. Risky.
Saint’s Row 2 (360/PS3/PC, Volition/THQ, October 14th) - Open world and goofy, drop in and drop out throughout the entire campaign. You can also dress as a hotdog.
On that list the only must have for me so far is LBP as a notable mention, but because I literally had NO idea what L4D was until I seen this post, it's now a must rent until I learn more.
justabaldguy, Castle Crashers is already available. This list is for games that haven't released as of September 07th.I can't say that I'm crazy about the Fable 2 co-op that's described, although it will be cool to see different uniquely customized characters...I'm wondering what happened to Call of Duty World at War; not even a notable mention! It's going to have a drop-in, drop-out four player online and local co-op campaign.
We did forget World at War. We had a hard enough time coming up with the amount of games we did, so missing one is not surprising. The one thing about World at War I am apprehensive about is that it is being made by Treyarch. Call of Duty 3 was okay, but nothing compared to the excellence that has been the Infinity Ward releases.
World at War has to prove to me that Treyarch can rival Infinity Ward's COD games before I'd put it anywhere near a "top" list.Left 4 Dead is definitely my number one, especially after the hands-on time we recently had with it at PAX.
But surely World at War is comparable...?I mean: what's the co-op track record for the Fable series? How about the Little Big Planet series? I'd say that Treyarch as a developer has more high notes than some of the other inexperienced studios featured in the list...What exactly is the criteria for being in the Top 5, anyway? I'm not arguing, I'm just curious. Because to be fair, none of these can be judged for quality, since they haven't been released. If you're going by overall hype, here are the "hype" ratings from Gamestats.com for reference:Fable 2 - 99.4Gears of War 2 - 99.2Rock Band 2 - 98.4Guitar Hero World Tour - 97.5Call of Duty World at War - 97.5Saints Row 2 - 94.7Resistance 2 - 94.5Little Big Planet - 93.2Left 4 Dead - 92.6Red Alert 3 - 79.8(For games with both X360 and PS3 versions, I chose the highest number of the two.)So were they picked based on your hands-on time at the conventions? Personal preference? Specific co-op features?DO YOU KNOW SOMETHING WE DON'T? Either way, though: nice article. Whether or not everyone agrees with the choices, at least we have a decent idea which games to expect Co-optimus members to be trying out at launch.
The reality is1) It's Treyarch. They don't have a good track record.2) Call of Duty has never had a co-op mode3) The strong point of CoD has always been it's cinematic moments, it'll be interesting to see what happens when they are split between 2 characters.As for how they were picked, at the time staff of the site voted for their top 5 most anticipated, and the more lists a game was on, and the higher on the list it was on, the higher it was on the overall list.
what other games did Treyarch develop that leads them to not have a good track record? I'm not too familiar with their games outside of CoD3, which personally, I liked, alot.
Well, there's Spider-man 3 and Minority Report...other than that, they seem to hold their own for the most part...
Good list. R2 is bumped for me though since I don't have a PS3. ;(
That could easily be rectified, just like the fact that I don't have a 360.
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Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 on Playstation 3
Super Smash Bros. Brawl on Wii
Gears of War (Windows) on PC
Castle Crashers on Xbox Live Arcade
Pixel Junk Monsters on Playstation Network
View the top Co-Op Games on Each Platform including our family friendly list!
Neat list but I can't agree with many of your selections. I don't have a PS3, so those are out. Fable 2 is likely to be my game of the year. Left 4 Dead looks amazingly awesome. GoW2 COULD be good, if they manage to get more out of it. GoW was disappointing to me. As for the rest, I'd honestly put Castle Crashers up to them as an alternate choice!!