When you're ordering countless soldiers to death on the blood-stained sands of the cruel RTS fields, it's better if those particular guys are total jerks. That way you don't have to endure any crisis of conscious after an artillery strike wipes them all out. Introducing the third faction for Act of Aggression: the Cartel. The Cartel operates as a PMC with some of the most advanced tech in the entire game, which is entirely the opposite of what I figured it would be. I thought the Cartel would field a bunch of drug runners with gold-plated desert eagles, funded entirely by the drug trade. I was not expecting supersoldiers blazing through Marines with laser rifles.

One of my favorite gaming memories was running cargo for someone, or being a mercenary for hire in Privateer. While the in development Star Citizen is the same designer and promises much of the same, it also seems like it's all a bit much. Fortunately, there appears to be a game that offers the same concept with more straightforward twin-stick shooter mechanics in Cashtronauts.

Soup. It's what runs the universe. In a place where steaming hot monobrew is as good as gold, you find yourself crash landing on a planet ripe with tasty ingredients. Now all you need to do is build a factory, harvest stuff, defend your base, and send your soup creations to other planets so you can corner the market. All in a day's work in ...

This month for MMO Co-Opportunities, we’ll be previewing the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion. Contained within will be my preliminary impressions of the expansion, based on my experience during the first beta weekend....

There are some great looking games out there, but strangely many of the prettiest forgo the latest 3D graphics and instead build upon the look and feel of the 2D generation.  Trine is such a series and the third game; Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power, looks like the best looking yet and even goes as far as adding the third dimension.

After what felt like the world's fastest week, we return with another edition of Weekend in Gaming.  Due to the relatively light assortment of newly released games, we're all retreating back into our ur-caves to play the games we already know and love.  Sports entertainment will also serve as a point of interest, with both soccer and the stadium-filling DotA 2 on display.  Who cares about all that, though, when we've got Trine 2 heading directly into our retinas thanks to Eric and the F.A.L.C.O squad!  Be sure to check 'em out this evening.

Everyone will die, sooner or later.  For most folks, it'll just be the one time, but for those with, say, a cup for a head, or a body made of meat, it'll happen over and over and over until the creature controlling their fate is either overcome with mercy or screams and breaks their controller.  Sometimes both.  It's inevitable, regardless.  The pain.  The loneliness.  The overwhelming cold.

The grim universe of Dark Souls might best be described as "fantasy horror," though murdering a shambling undead for the trillionth time might diminish some of the "horror" element and turn it into boring ol' fantasy. That skeleton with a sword won't stay scary forever; he's gotta go to Spook School and learn some new methods of fright. From Software, not to be outdone by their previous entries, set out to up the terror quotient with Dark Souls 3. 

Chester McSlappy curiously levitates out the door of his office, the beam of light which so ominously appeared in his office dissipating after its message of encouragement. The ever mysterious board was pleased, though not overly so. The North Irishman levitates out to the parking lot of the Shrimper's home stadium, the Loading Dock, slipping on a fitted paper hat and dragging a grill from the back of his weathered van. He sets the charcoal ablaze and hefts a chipped, two-sided sandwhich board into view. 

We've kicked off a new series of streams on our Twitch channel called Friday Awesomely Live Co-Op or F.A.L.C.O. if pronounceable acronyms are your thing. For now, we're playing every Friday night at 9PM Central, although we may adjust times as needed. We'll play a variety of games but we'll be focusing on games that emphasize co-operation.

Western RPG fans, rejoice!  The critically acclaimed RPG (and runner-up of Co-optimus' Indie Game of the Year Award), Divinity: Original Sin, is ever closer to arriving on your console of choice.  That's right, the very console that your significant other uses to endlessly browse Netflix can now be utilized for open-world exploration and slick tactics battles.

Co-Optimus has been around now for almost 8 years, and as is with anything on the internet, things change and evolve over time quite rapidly. The site has seen many great staff members come and go, move on to bigger things or simply have life get in the way. But like a good co-op partner our staff remains close and in constant communication, always talking about the latest and greatest in co-op gaming. It's time to expand that circle!