No, Kevin Butler is not trying to force choke you.  If he was, you'd already be dead.  He's simply demonstrating a way for you to win some cash monies in a new Uncharted 3 contest.   If you have a webcam, some free time, and some rock-solid deltoids, you can win yourself $10,000 bucks.  That's right.  Ten. Thousand.  Dollars.  That's like a bazillion nickels, or all of the pennies in the whole world*!  Simply go to grabthering.com, register, start up your webcam, and grab that damn ring.  Then hold it for (as of this writing) at least 8 hours, 48 minutes, and 36 seconds.  You didn't thing it would be easy, did you?  

Confirming info from earlier this week - Ubisoft has officially announced the first details of the next Rainbow Six game.  Oddly, it's not called Rainbow Six, but rather Rainbow 6, replacing the word six with the number*.  All previous iterations of the franchise and novels used the full word.  As we previously reported, the name is Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots and yes...it has co-op.

Americans celebrated Halloween this past Monday and all manner of ghouls, goblins, and ghosts filled the streets searching for that which all unnatural things crave: candy. In movies and games, though, their appetites turn toward something a little more filling, and in Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone, that something is you.

Techland recently filed a trademark for the title "Dead World."  Cool titles get trademarked all the time, so what's the big deal?  I'll tell you:  Techland is the publisher of  Dead Island, and that is a big deal.  Dead Island is one of Co-Optimus' favorite titles of 2011, with its open world(-ish) gameplay, brutal melee combat, and most importantly, its four player online co-op.  The game has done very well, so a sequel seems inevitable.  Hopefully Dead World will have a smoother launch.  If it's anything like its predecessor, the debut trailer is going to be awesome.

Next year, Aliens Colonial: Marines will finally see the light of day on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.  The Gearbox developed co-op game set in the famous universe created by the Alien franchise has been on our radar since - well since Co-Optimus was in it's infancy back in 2008.  The game has had a long ride to where it is today, so hopefully it'll be worth it.

The Playstation Move’s similarity to the Wiimote makes it easy to port Wii games to the Playstation 3. We’ve already seen House of the Dead: Overkill and Dead Space Extraction make the trip (leaving the poor Xbox 360 behind). Now two more rail shooters, Capcom’s Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles are coming to PS3 with Move support.

When reviewing F1 2011, Co-Optimus pointed out that the game could be decent, but there were numerous co-op breaking bugs; the AI resetting to Amateur, tyres not wearing down and people being dropped positions at the end of the race.  Details of a new patch have just been released; can you guess which issues Codemasters are planning to fix?

Space Marine's free co-op mode, Exterminatus, has been live for all of one week (one day, for 360 owners), and THQ has just announced plans for additional co-op content.  The new DLC will include an Exterminatus campaign titled "Chaos Unleashed."  It will put players in the mighty boots of the Chaos Marines.  You'll face Orks and the Imperial Guard as the Space Marines' evil, and therefore cooler, counterparts.  You just know that all of the Chaos Marines are wearing goatees under their helmets and calling each other "Bro."

There are a lot of gaming masochists out there.  It seems that Dark Souls has shipped 1.5 million copies worldwide, which equals a whole Havel-load of  player deaths.  Multiplayer enthusiasts, be they versus or co-op players, will be happy to hear that the patch I mentioned last week is scheduled to go live on the Japanese version of Dark Souls today.  We can expect the patch to make its way to other regions, as well as the Xbox 360 version of the game, in the near future.

Lethal ketchup and mustard!  Do I need to say anything more?  The Dead Rising franchise is no stranger to bizarre costumes and powers, but this new downloadable outfit  for Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is delightfully ordinary.  The Chef Skill pack let's fat Frank West dress up like your standard backyard BBQer.  As usual, the new gear will grant Frank new abilities.  He can kill a zombie with condiments, slice and dice the undead with new knife skills, or melt a face off with a red hot frying pan.  Check out the video.  Mmm.  Smells like bacon.  The Chef skill pack will run you $2 bucks, or 160 MSP.

Good Co-Op, Bad Co-Op - a tale of two friends who love playing games together.  The man who gives the best upsidedown hugs, Sunflower4000 and the love wizard Locke have put their differences aside and teamed up cooperatively in a battle against fate.  

Writing for Co-Optimus has provided some unique co-op gaming opportunities for me. I now routinely play games that I would have waited for sales on or simply never picked up at all. A good example is Renegade Ops, an Xbox Live Arcade game that hadn’t been on my radar until it was chosen for our October Xbox Live Co-Op Night.