As Jim highlighted in his hands-on preview of Skate 3, the focus for the latest game in the Skate franchise is on teaming up with your friends. While at the Skate 3 Community Event, we had the opportunity to talk with Chris “Cuz” Parry, producer for all three Skate titles and a skater himself, about how the co-op came about, the rewards for building a team, and how you can still enjoy co-op with your friend even if he or she isn’t around.

Dundee, Scotland: home to the Tay Rail Bridge (seen above) and Crackdown 2 dev Ruffian Games

It seems that Ruffian Games will be showing off Crackdown 2, the sequel to the "still fun after all these years" Crackdown, to the general public next weekend at the NEoN Digital Arts Festival.  This is the first time the game will be shown and demoed outside of a major trade show event like E3 or TGS.  The catch?  The event is in Dundee, Scotland.  So unless you live in the area, have already acquired plane/event tickets, or are really good friends with Nightcrawler, you likely won't be amongst those lucky few that will get to check out this promising co-op title in person for the first time.  Fortunately, any new details that are shown will undoubtedly be disseminated across the Internet in less time than you can say "I wonder if the sequel will come with a Halo: Reach beta," and you can be sure we'll be posting all the latest and greatest co-op related news just as soon as it does.

Additional information about the NEoN Digital Arts Festival can be found at the following link.

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League of Legends, the team-vs-team title that was inspired by the Warcraft III Defense of the Ancients mod, was released last week and the good folks at Riot Games provided us with a package of goodies to give away to one lucky Co-Optimus reader.  Want to know what you can win and how to enter? Click the link for all the details.

Hop online right now to join in on some Sol Survivor fun with the devs

A new month starts today, and it brings with it new opportunities for  some co-op gaming.  A few of the developers from Cadenza Interactive, the guys that put together the co-op tower defense title Sol Survivor, along with a few folks from fellow gaming sites are holding an XBox LIVE Indie Game session today at 12:00 pm PST right now and their title of choice is... yep, you guessed it, Sol Survivor.  Gamertags for all of the devs and game site fellows can be found at this link.  As we highlighted in our recent review of the game, the title does have a few glitches, but the co-op modes, overall, are quite enjoyable.  So if you've bought the game and are looking for some relaxing, post-Halloween co-op in which to partake this afternoon, hop on now and to join in on the play sessions.

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Sol Survivor, the co-op tower defense title from developer Cadenza Interactive, was released over the XBox LIVE Indie Marketplace last month and we’ve been putting it through its paces ever since.  What are the results?  Read on, o ye lovers of co-op gaming, read on.

There is a phrase that is commonly linked with any discussion of the co-op in an RTS: "comp stomp."  The phrase refers to the typical situation that occurs when a group of players team up to take on one or more computer opponents and proceed to thrash them about the place.  This can be fun for a few matches, but the novelty quickly wears thin as the computer does nothing new or interesting each time you face it.  AI War, Arcen Games’ first outing into the gaming market, shatters this stale and repetitive formula to create something that’s not quite an RTS, not quite a 4X, but completely fun and, most importantly, completely co-op.

 AI War, the RTS/4x co-op title from Arcen Games, is out today on Steam. The game features full on-line and local, drop-in/drop-out co-op for up to eight players.  It also includes online leaderboards and 129 Steam achievements for players.  As an added bonus, Steam is running a special on the game through Oct. 27th.  Order it now and you can pick it up for just $15.  That's a lot of game for that price, believe me.  AI War has been out for some time through Impulse and Arcen Game's official site, but the Steam release marks a major milestone in the game's development.

As Christopher Park mentioned in our interview with him, the update from the previous version to this release version included alot of changes and pretty much all of them were done to ensure a solid co-op experience.  We also mentioned in that article that if you purchased the game from another outlet, such as Direct2Drive or Stardock's Impulse, that you'd still be able to utilize the "activate a product on Steam" feature.  We've heard from Christopher and he assures us that this feature should be available within the next couple of days.  Until then, be sure to tune in tomorrow for our review!

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The co-op friendly, independently developed, tower defense title Sol Survivor received a patch last night that added, amongst other things, a new co-op map for players.  Also included in this patch is a new version of the Trial Game that’s available to download from the XBox LIVE Indie Marketplace free of charge.  The Trial Game now includes an in-depth tutorial and a Challenge level that allows players to test their tower defense chops on a mid-campaign map set to medium difficulty.  A full list of all fixes from the patch can be found on the Sol Survior forums.  Be sure to tune into Co-Optimus next week for our review of the game!

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I can hear the cries now, "WHAAAAAAAAAAAATT???!! That game’s not co-op! Why don’t you go write for Solo-Optimus!?!"  Well, relax those troubled cries for one moment and read on.  What follows is not a description of some dude who sat down and played a traditionally single player game.  Nay.  What follows is a tale of making an old game new again, and a gamer remembering why he began co-op gaming in the first place.

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AI War, the co-op RTS/4x title from Arcen Games, LLC, has been out for some time now, but the game is about to hit a major milestone this Wednesday.  Not only will the game hit version 2.0, which will include new features and a few bug fixes, but it will also be available on Steam with 129 Steam achievements and online leaderboards.  We chatted with Christopher Park, CEO, Lead Programmer, and Lead Designer for Arcen, about this unique co-op game, how the taking on the AI with a group can be more satisfying than going alone, and the power of co-op gaming.