At the start of 2009, our politics tag was fastened to a great many news posts here at Co-Optimus, and the reason was a horrible rash of layoffs and closings.

Arkanoid Live was release last week on the Xbox Live Arcade with a slick new co-op mode.  Most gamers seemed pretty happy with their purchase until they reached level 62, or the end of Episode 2.  Why?  At that point the game asks if you'd like to play Episode 3 and 4 you'll need to pony up an additional 400 , that is, after spending 800  already on the game.

Microsoft has announced a fresh batch of their platinum hits titles with very wallet friendly pricing.  Most titles will set you back $19.99, while a few still hover around the $29.99 mark.  There's also some fancy smancy new packaging available for these titles, so it's easy to distinguish between the normal priced titles and these.

Halo Wars has received a title update which adds a few new features and tweaks to the game.  Nothing really affects the co-op campaign, unless you include the ability to use your flaming Warthog in it an addition.  You can find the full details of the patch in the release notes.

We have a brand new trailer for the upcoming split screen co-op Terminator: Salvation game on the 360 and PS3.  There's two things I learned from this trailer.

Going through stacks of games for something old to play with someone new can deliver up some awesome experiences. But, in order to mix things up in the replay department I tend to suggest a cranked-up difficulty, which was the case recently with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. With Marvel: UA, the hard difficulty mode has to be unlocked by completing the game, and is probably not explored by many people.

GameTrailers has an exclusive trailer today that showcases co-op gameplay in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and it looks great!

Castle Crashers is one of the greatest co-op titles on Xbox Live Arcade.  Old School beat em up gameplay, charming, hilarious style, and 4 player co-op are a recipe for a good time.  Apparently there are many others who share our high opinion of the game.  In fact, that number is quite large: the Castle Crashers leaderboards include over 900,000 players!

The Serious Sam games have always been about good mindless cooperative fun.  Not only is Serious Sam an entertaining franchise, it's also a showcase for Croteam's Serious Engine.  It's been a few years now since we saw Serious Sam II but it appears everyone's favorite self promoting t-shirt wearing hero is about to make a comeback, and he's bringing a new 3D engine with him.

The Star Trek movie is doing amazing at the box office, and rightfully so.  Now the tie-in title hits the Xbox Live Arcade today with a six player co-op mode.

The 8-Bit aliens return in all their HD glory, complete with thumping techno soundtrack and four player cooperative mode.  We blast off and take a look at the latest iteration of the Space Invaders franchise for the Xbox Live.

Who's ready to mop the floor with some terrifying "Specimen" in the exciting new first person shooter/survival horror game, The Killing Floor? Oh, did we mention it was actually built around the bare essentials of co-op? Hopefully we have the attention of PC first person shooter fans, so here's the 411 on The Killing Floor.