Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.  Surprise, surprise, Activision has just announced Skylanders Giants, the follow-up to the incredibly successful Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.  This new game is offering bigger and better toys, as well as a whole new digital quest.  Before you freak out:  yes, all of your original Skylanders figures will work with the new game, along with all of their upgrades and XP.  No, you don't need a new Portal of Power.  Got it?  Good.

This month here at Co-Optimus, several of the regular feature writers are swapping columns for the month. Normally, Tally, our resident MMO expert, brings you the latest on all the shiniest new massively multiplayer online games in this column. This month, you are stuck with me and my ten-year old son, as we explore the newly free-to-play superhero (or supervillain) quest fest DC Universe Online.

Only 21 short years after it took arcades by storm, The Simpsons Arcade game finally comes to consoles. Join Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa as they pound the fruit of Mr. Smithers (literally) in order to rescue little Maggie Simpson. But does the arcade game capture the awesomeness of seasons 3-9 or the mediocrity of seasons 10-onward?

So far we've had two batches of screenshots and we haven't seen a single damn flying horse.  What gives?  The Legends of Pegasus is a 4X strategy game from publisher Kalypso set in space.  While the latest screenshots don't show any aerial equestrians, they do show off some pretty explosions and space scenes to boot.

The desert is a desolate place (funny that) where people traditionally scrap a living from the few pockets of survivable habitat. That's unless you decide to build a giant city in the middle of it like Dubai. Spec Ops: The Line paints a 'what if' scenario where Dubai has been almost destroyed by a huge sand storm and troops have moved in for a tense stand off. New screens have arrived that suggest the game will be very moody - and very sandy.

The Darkness was a pretty decent game that came out about five years ago.  Maybe you played it - maybe you didn't.  Either way, the game did well enough to spawn a shiny new sequel, titled The Darkness II.  As an added bonus, this new game appears to have a rather fleshed-out co-op mode.  In the cooperative "Vendettas" mode, players will control four new characters as they brutalize their foes with Darkness infused weapons.  

Mixing an Action RPG and Tower Defense into one game has literally paid off for Trendy Entertainment as Dungeon Defenders has reached an amazing 1 million sales across Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam.

We're only a handful of weeks away from the PlayStation Vita launch, and one of the most unique looking co-op titles for the system is Army Corps of Hell.  The game is being published by Square-Enix and looks a bit similar to the Overlord games we've seen before.  In it you'll control hordes of goblins as you conquer monsters and other baddies all while thrashing to heavy metal music.  That last part I may have just made up, but after watching the latest trailer, I can't see it done any other way.

Alright! Now this is what I'm talking about!  We finally have more than one retail release coming out this week. There's even some downloadable games joining the mix!  Welcome to 2012, people.  It's time to get your game on.

Welcome back to another issues of On the Download. This month we're going to cover something we've only recently begun seeing in the demo space - persistent demos. What's a persistent demo you ask? Let me tell you.

It's a new year and a new format for our Beyond Co-Op series of non co-op reviews.  The staff has started to post their reviews over in our Blogs section, giving them a little more freedom to write up a review for all the other games we play.  We've also tweaked our scoring to match those of our co-op games, but without a score for co-op.  We simply use the Overall Score scale.

With money currently tighter than a screw after a World's Strongest Man DIY Challenge, a demo is a great way of checking out a game before buying it full price. On the Xbox 360, single player demos can be tried by all (eventually), but multiplayer demos are only accessible to Gold members. No Mass Effect 3 co-op demo for you! That is until Microsoft announced limited Gold access for Silver members who try out the Mass Effect 3 demo.