Rumors are flying around the interweb this January, like bullets in a gritty YouTube style computer game. If the concept of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or Thief co-op game was not enough, the mill-that-is-rumor has just ground out a new tip in the form of SquareEnix trademarking the term 'Sleeping Dogs'. Is this their attempt at rivalling Nintendogs? Possibly, but more likely a follow up to Kane and Lynch: Dog Days. Finally an answer to the question; who let the dogs out? It was SquareEnix and IO Interactive.

Board games have made quite the resurgence in the last decade since the importing of Settler's of Catan to everyone in North America.  We here at Co-Optimus love tabletop gaming as much as video games and ePawn is bringing a product that will bridge the gap between board game and digital entertainment.

When Scarygirl launched on Xbox Live Arcade last week, many thought the 1200 MS Point ($15) price a little too steep. It looks like somebody at either Microsoft or Square Enix agreed, albeit belatedly. The Playstation Network version launched this week at $9.99, and now the XBLA version has dropped down to the equivalent 800 Points as well. That certainly makes the teen goth platformer more palatable.

Domain name registrations often give away the titles of upcoming games and other properties. To that end, the super sleuths at Fusible have dug up a spicy bit of news: Activision just registered a ton of Skylanders domains. From these we discover that the next Skylanders game will very likely be called Skylanders Giants.

Last week, developer Ninja Bee held a little poll to let gamers choose the theme of the next A World of Keflings DLC expansion. The choices: Graveyard, Pirates, and Candy. I was a bit scared that the current zombie fad would cause the Graveyard theme to win out, but I worried for naught. Keflings players like bright, happy stuff it seems, as 'Candy for Keflings' (my pick as well) won the vote. Let's all eat some candy to celebrate!

Word from Major Nelson's Blog puts the Syndicate co-op demo's release date for January 31st on Xbox Live.  The demo should also be out on the PlayStation Network the same day.  The demo was officially announced last week and it features one of the nine co-op missions available in the full game.  It'll support four player online co-op.

Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham City was pretty ace, but there was a certain something missing - co-op! Robin was there, so was Catwoman, but rather than teaming up with the Dark Knight, they had their own adventures. With the success of the Batman games behind them, it makes sense for Rocksteady to stick with DC, but new rumors have dropped like a hero in a half (bomb)shell. Could Rocksteady be developing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game? And will it be co-op?

Everyone knows the story of the Fellowship of the Ring, however, not many have heard the story of the other fellowship that helped save Middle Earth. Thankfully, SnowBlind Studios have done a stellar job at telling us that story in The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. We're teaming up with Xbox Live to bring you a co-op night to relive that story on Thursday, January 26th at 8-11PM Eastern.

Today, Riot Games announced its newest update for their smash hit title, League of Legends, specifically on the Bot’s AI, difficulty levels, and character selection within co-op gameplay.

It was just before Thanksgiving and the holiday season hit that we announced Cadenza Interactive's next co-op title, Retrovirus. Described as a "six degrees of freedom" shooter (think Descent) with a full-length co-op campaign that places players into the roles of an antivirus program out to save its host computer, the game is a complete departure from their initial debut into the world of co-op games, the action-oriented tower defense Sol Survivor. Thus far, there hasn't been too many details on Retrovirus or what that "six degrees of freedom" gameplay will look like, but Cadenza has just announced that they'll be demoing the game, live, tomorrow night. What's more, they'll be conducting these live streams on a regular basis going forward as a means of hearing from, and interacting with, the gaming community as a whole.

It was back in September that we told you that Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad was released sans co-op, despite the official description of the game saying the feature was included.  There's no longer mention of the co-op mode on the Steam page, but we've been assured by Tripwire's Alan Wilson that a co-op mode is still being planned.

Today only, you can snag Dead Island on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 for only $25.  This GoldBox deal features one of our favorite games from last year for less than half the retail price.  It's a game we awarded the best of E3 2011 as well as an Editor's Choice, so for $25, it's quite a steal.