First thing I want to do is give a big thanks to Nick for covering Beyond Co-Op for the past few weeks. Things have been so hectic for me (the list is too long and no need to bore you) that it didn’t give me a chance to sit down and work on finding news and get this posted for a few weeks. Now it’s time to settle back into the groove, although Thanksgiving weekend may be hard with my brother-in-laws wedding.

The stories for this week:

- October NPD Data Released

- inFAMOUS May be Short

- Halo 3: Recon Short Too?

- Midway Cuts Jobs/Sheri Redstone Steps Down

- Last Week of Gaming Rush (except for Prince of Persia)

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Bungie's Community Manager, Brian Jarrad, sat down with Joystiq to answer some lingering questions about the recent announcement of Halo 3: Recon.  He explains that the game will have 4-player co-op in the campaign and that the game is built upon the Halo 3 engine, obviously refined to match up more with the passing of time from the last release.

The other big news is that the game will ship with new maps that can evidently be playable with a Halo 3 disc and will share space with the maps of those games.  What that means I don't know, but it sounds pretty cool.  Feel free to read the rest of the interview at the link below.

You could probably put that title in the "duh" category pretty easily considering any game played via co-op is better than playing it alone.  Am I right?  Kotaku comes to us with some co-op experiences from playing the game at the recent Tokyo Game Expo.  They basically say co-op is far more fun in this game than playing alone, although it does rely on some gimmick gameplay where you get across chasms together and they make an analogy to ICO with that.

They also want to stress that Resident Evil 5 should not be considered a "survivor horror" game and should be considered an "action game" like the author considers Resident Evil 4 to be.

Dan Aykroyd told a Dallas radio station this morning that the upcoming co-op friendly Ghostbusters game has been picked up by Atari (just recently wholly bought by Infogrames) and will be released in 2009.  Although there is no official word from the developers or the supposed publisher, chances are good that Aykroyd isn't making this up.  

The only sad news is that it is coming in 2009,  when it seemed to be pretty much done after Activision Blizzard decided not to pick it up.  This fall is busy enough, so I suppose it's not all bad.  Anyway, I ain't afraid of no ghosts.

If you haven't heard, there's a giant game festival going on in Leipzig, Germany right now.  Capcom has released what can best be described as a "kick ass" trailer for the upcoming co-op friendly Resident Evil 5.  How kick ass?  Well it's got: explosions, dirt bikes, mini guns, zombies, some big executionor with an axe and a weird dude in a bird mask.  Shall I go on?  Ok, there's exploding heads, slimy worm like creatures, decaptations, and a hot girl in a nurse outfit.  Yeah, I think that about covers it.

On top of the awesomeness that is that official trailer, GameTrailers has some video footage of the co-op play from the game.  After watching all this footage the game has gone from a "Yeah I'll buy that" to a "Must buy."

Watch both trailers after the read more link.

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Ah, Halo Wars. The folks at Ensemble Studios have a lot to live up to in making this game. After all, they are making a Halo RTS. The jump from FPS to RTS is a big one, but there are several ways to make the transition easier. The main one is "have features from previous games." So far Ensemble appears to be doing great there, as the game has co-op, many of the familiar Halo characters and vehicles, and so forth. However, Ensemble isn't done placating the Halo masses. Through their monthly update, they have revealed another familiar Halo feature: Legendary difficulty. The game will feature the accurately-titled difficulty mode, which has claimed untold hours of peoples lives, as well as too many broken controllers to count. Apparently Halo Wars version of Legendary is no slouch.

"Legendary will be a challenge that will be worthy for the most experienced players."

So, anyone excited about the news? Or were you, like me, expecting it?

Unveiled officially at the Microsoft Press Conference, Resident Evil 5's gameplay will be built entirely around co-op.  The co-op is a first for the series, one that traditionally is about lone wolf style survival, but it's a welcome addition.  The developers aren't cutting any corners either, making sure to design levels with co-op in mind.

One example showed Chris and his partner Sheva on the run from a horde of zombies.  As they ran up a broken down building they came across a chasm they couldn't jump across.  So Chris gave her a boost and launched her across.  Both players then continued to cover each other from afar as the zombie onslaught continued.  Other such enviornmental puzzles were shown, areas where the two would split up and the other character would need to unlock a door, or break down an area to allow the other person through. 

The game looked incredibly gorgeous set in a run down African town.  Even though there was lots of browns, the lighting just made everything pop.  There's no word on exactly what the co-op specific features are yet, only that it will be playable online.   Hopefully the game will support drop in and drop out play as well as split screen.  I don't want to limit my zombie killing options after all.

We've posted 10 new screenshots of Resident Evil 5 Co-Op for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 after the break.

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