Did someone call for a power-armored samurai who can dual-wield miniguns?! Because Earth Defense Force 2025's new Fencer soldier can do that, and more. When he's not raining metal death on the Ravager hordes, this BAMF is equipped to get up close and personal with the giant bugs and robots. He's got an indestructible shield of saving, a giant hammer of thwacking, and a deadly spear of poking. He's also decked out with heavy artillery --lots and lots of heavy artillery. It's kind of ridiculous. It looks like someone shoved a mini-Gundam into EDF. I'm okay with that.

Airwolf was an awesome (and I'm using the word loosely) mid-80's TV series that focused on a high-tech military helicopter. According to the internet, the franchise spawned nine video games. Seriously. Blue Thunder was a 1983 film that featured "the most advanced helicopter in the world." It even had a TV series and video game tie-in. Thunder Wolves is a 2013 downloadable game that has nothing to do with either of these franchises, other than the fact that the words "thunder" and "wolves" are in the title. Oh yeah, there's also a crap-ton of badass helicopters. The point is... well, there isn't really a point. Watch the damn video. 

The latest entry to the God of War series, God of War: Ascension, has been out for almost a month now; providing players with plenty of opportunity to play against each other in its competitive multiplayer modes, or cooperatively in the "Trial of the Gods" mode. As with other games that have some combination of competitive and cooperative modes, your avatar's levels and progression carries over in both modes. So if you sharpen your blades in the competitive world and then decide co-op is more your pace, you don't have to start all over.

Modders are good at either stirring up controversy (how many nude patches for how many games are there, now?) or providing valuable/awesome additions to our games. This is a strong case of the latter. Modder M0tah recently released the Dark Souls Connectivity Fix for the Windows PC version of the game. The little bundle of code makes connecting to friends take priority over random players, meaning you can bring your pals in for battle without delay. Some other network connection fixes were also implemented, but apart from that, the mod doesn't touch the rest of the game. Simple, but useful!

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition's much anticipated update, Update 9, has finally arrived on XBLA. Though the ferocious Enderdragon is ready to be slain, we want players to be aware that some new game bugs have surfaced which 4J Studios is currently addressing.

If you are a frequent PC game player, and you own Steam, chances are you have seen the game Warframe pop up on your Steam browser at some point. Or, perhaps you have been following the game for some time, and were eager to give it a spin. Regardless of where you started Waframe, you and over one million players have become cyborg ninjas in just two weeks. Since the release of the Warframe open beta on March 18th, over one million players have signed on, spanning over 100 countries.

April has been, and will continue to be, a good month for co-op gaming. Unfortunately, the choices are a little slim this week. I guess I should say "choice," because there's only one co-op game coming out. At least it looks good. 

Looks like Sony is getting ready to bundle together PSN games and release them as a series of small collections! Secretive journalist types recently took a peek at ESRB listings and noticed a Best of PlayStation Network Volume 1 in the mix. Sneaky, right?

In this edition of MMO Co-Opportunities, we preview Wildstar from PAX East 2013. Of course, since this is MMO Co-Opportunities, we look at a couple of co-op specific aspects of the game and mull over their potential for the co-op MMO player.

If you're one of the Mac owners out there who purchased Borderlands 2 from the Mac App Store, you've probably noticed a few key features have been, well, almost completely missing. Aspyr Media is here to save the day with a brand new patch that brings things (mostly) up to speed, including achievements, a handful of miscellaneous fixes, and access to leaderboards, all through the safe little garden that is the Mac App Store.

You know you want it. Come on, you really do. All those hours spent playing Harvest Moon, wishing it were just the teensiest bit more realistic. And let's be honest, your most impressive Minecraft map is basically an automated wheat-producing machine. Time to drop the act and pick up a real man's farming game: Farming Simulator 2013. And we're only slightly joking when we make that statement.

Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, the weekly piece where we look at some of the biggest news around the gaming industry that may or may not pertain to cooperative gaming. This week's news is marred by the death of one of the oldest gaming studios out there and then turn around and highlighted by what the gaming industry has become - Kickstarter.  It seems all three news items today come from PC gaming roots.