Sometimes we find co-op in the most unexpected ways.  Take the gaming clan Tied the Leader.  A predominately versus clan, the folks cooked up a crazy idea - lets see how many medals we can get in one shot of the Spartan Laser in Halo 3.

The answer?  43.

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You're Invited!
What: Grunt Birthday Party - Official Xbox Live Co-Op Night
When: August 20th @ 8:00 PM Eastern
What to Bring: Your BR55 Battle Rifle

That's right, we're going back to our roots for this month's co-op night!  With all the talk of Halo 3: ODST it's time to get in the Spartan mood with the original Halo 3 and its four player co-op campaign.  Find out how to join us in our monthly Xbox Live Co-Op Night!

Dare we say he's even cooler in cartoon form?

More news coming for co-op fans straight out of Comic-con.  This time it's regarding some upcoming additions to the lofty Halo franchise.  First up is Halo Waypoint.  Described as the "a new destination for "Halo" fans on Xbox LIVE", it sounds like a channel devoted to Halo news, trailers, screenshots, and the like.  A career system with ranking based on both in and out of game goals should keep Halo fans busy.

Another announcement is Halo Legends, a series of animated shorts set in the Halo universe.  Some of the most acclaimed anime producers will be involved in the series.  You can check out a preview of Halo Legends on XBox Live today.  Of course, the series will be made available via Halo Waypoint.

This causes me a great moral dilemma.  My youngest son loves "Master Halo" (as you may already know), and seeing him in cartoon form would likely blow his mind.  Is there any chance the Halo anime will be remotely kid friendly?  I suppose I better hold off telling him about it until we know for sure.  Parenting: it's tougher than mowing down aliens in a Warthog.

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See this screenshot? This is one of the more artistic captured moments from my gallery; it was taken near the beginning of "The Ark" on Halo 3. I was playing the campaign in co-op, and this bad-to-the-bone ODST Marine was playing it smart while we were being slaughtered mercilessly by Grunts.

Wait...forget that last part.

Keep telling the tall tales while you can, Co-Optimers. Bungie has announced that The Hydra Contraption is in beta (select Bungie Pro members only) and will be available to the rest of us on July 7th (7/7, as they so fondly refer to it).

What is The Hydra Contraption? Good question -- it is a rendering service that (for a fee) will render your Halo 3 (and presumably, Halo 3 ODST) video clips in standard- or high-definition. A pay-as-you-go points system will allow you to save your favorite clips in Windows Media Video format (WMV).

So squeeze in all of the fantastic and incredulous stories you can muster, friends, because after July 7th, I get the feeling that we'll be verifying your melee-only Brute Chieftain kills on YouTube.

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The Halo 3 Mythic map pack was released this past week for the four player co-op shooter, and while the multiplayer maps don't offer anything new in co-op, they do offer something for Silver members.

To help promote the launch of the map pack (and encourage some Mythic purchases) Microsoft is allowing free online play for Silver members, including co-op, for Halo 3 this weekend.  This promotion ends at 9:30AM PST on April 13th.

The Mythic map pack contains three maps; Assembly, Sandbox, and Orbital, and will set you back 800 .

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For over a year now, we've been proclaiming the virtues of cooperative gameplay.  It appears that gamers and developers must be paying attention.  Want proof that co-op is the best way to game?  Check out the LIVE activity for last week.

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles

1    Halo 3
2    Call of Duty: WaW
3    Call of Duty 4
4    Gears of War 2
5    GTA IV
6    RESIDENT EVIL 5
7    Halo Wars
8    Left 4 Dead
9    FIFA 09
10  STREET FIGHTER IV

That right, Co-Optimus readers, SEVEN of the top ten most played games last week have co-op.  Halo is still going strong, with two titles on the list.  The Call of Duty juggernaut is impressive, as well.  Just imagine if Modern Warfare 2 had co-op!  And don't even give me "they didn't have to play co-op argument" - we already know it's the most popular Gears of War 2 mode!

All in all, a very impressive showing for some of our favorite co-op titles!

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This past week, our corner of the world (Southwest Missouri, USA) was hit by a pretty nasty ice/snow combo.  Our school was closed, which meant that my whole family was "stuck" at home for four straight days.  Don't you feel bad for me?  As you can imagine, there was a lot of video gaming going on.  The first priority was finishing off the campaign in Gears of War 2.  However, we did that on the first day (and it was awesome, for sure).  So, digging through the game drawer, we came upon another game we had only half-finished: Halo 3.  And so, taking on the role of "Master Halo and the Alien Guy", as named by my seven year old, we embarked on the co-op quest.

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With all the avatars and Netflix and overall slickness, you might have forgotten one long-awaited feature of the New Xbox Experience(tm).  Installing games to the hard drive to speed up loading was certainly overdue.  I know there are a few games I have that make the disc drive on my 360 sound like a jet engine.  It seems to be a good thing that Halo 3 isn't one of them.  Installing the game to the hard drive actually increases load times!  Wonder how that works?  Bungie's Chief Caching Officer Mat Noguchi (there's a catchy title) explains.

So when Halo 3 runs, if a HDD is present, we copy maps from the DVD to the utility partition (on the HDD). Think of it as an on demand install of Halo 3 to some scratch space on the HDD. Halo 3 doesn’t actually know where it’s running from, so it always assumes it’s running from a DVD. This is an unfortunate consequence of new features (namely, install to HDD) being added to the Xbox 360 after Halo 3 shipped. And as a result, it means that even if Halo 3 is already installed to the HDD, it will still copy maps to the utility partition.

Basically, it's having to read and write to the hard drive at the same time, as opposed to reading from the DVD drive and writing to the hard drive.  It all makes sense now, doesn't it?  Next time you're up for a little Co-Op Master Chief action, pop in the DVD and call it good.  And hope your 360 doesn't take off into the atmosphere.

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It's not co-op, but the game it's based on is.  Amazon is now listing the Halo Trilogy soundtrack as shipping December 2nd.  The box set will contain all 5 discs from Halo, Halo 2 and Halo 3.  It'll set you back just shy of $30, but it's a small price to pay for one of the best original scores in video game music.

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