Chances are you are not alone if you haven't heard of Orion: Dino Beatdown. A budgeted PC title that was released last year, Orion is a class-based cooperative game in which you survive hordes of dinosaurs using high tech weaponry. You can team up with up to four other players online to duke it out with prehistoric monstrosities. Sounds fun and different, right? Well, sad to say, we did not enjoy the game very much at all, giving it a very low score. Certainly the game was not recommended for play. To check out our review, take a look here.

Everyone loves spiders. Especially giant spiders --giant spiders with spiny legs that skitter around on needle-point claws, meticulously working bone-crushing chelicerae framed by sharp, venom-filled fangs, peering into your soul with their glassy, alien stares of desperate hunger. Makes me feel all warm a fuzzy. The makers of Guardians of Middle-Earth are tapping into our universal love of spiders with their new character, Unglob. 

Gears of War: Judgement follows Baird and Cole in the early days of the Locust War. The co-op options are as plentiful as ever. The gameplay is the same as Gears of War 3, but there's something missing here.

Gears of War: Judgment features all the co-op options from Gears of War 3. Same menus, same options, same player counts. If you could do it in Gears 3, you can do it in Gears: Judgment  -as long as you don't want to play Horde mode. 

There is a new guardian on the block in Guardians of Middle Earth. You may recognize him as the infamous Saruman the White. He hails from Isengard, and comes as the latest DLC for the game. He is classified under the Enchanter class.

How many times have you been rolling through a first person shooter with a shotgun or submachine gun and thought, "Man, I know there's a sniper over there. If I had a medium to long-range rifle, I could --" BANG!! Respawn. All the time? You know it.

Guardians of Middle Earth has been a very surprising title for the XBLA and the PSN. it has attempted, and in many ways suceeded, to bring the wildly entertaining world of MOBA to a home console. As a part of the season pass model, numerous guardians have been unleashed since the game made its debut. The latest addition to this cast of legendary heroes and villains is the Barrow-wight Lord. Here is the official description for the lord of terror:

Guardians of Middle-Earth may have already sported a cooperative mode for its more traditional MOBA style of play, but it looks like a new piece of DLC to the game will change things up even further.  Dubbed Survival, players will team up to take on waves of enemies with increasing difficulty.

Armored Core V might not have been a smash hit in the states, but that's not stopping Namco Bandai and From Software from bringing the mech fighting sequel stateside. Armored Core: Verdict Day was announced earlier this week in Japan and today is was revealed it will be coming to North America. This title  will be a true sequel to the events to ACV, not that anyone could follow them. The world is still in a constant state of war as opposing factions vie for territory, seeking to control of what remains of the planet's resources. I don't remember much resource gathering in ACV, but I do remember raining down metal hell on opposing Cores. Good times.

Indie PC game Orion: Dino Beatdown is a co-op shooter filled with fantastic ideas like pitting space dudes against dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the actual game had so many awkward design decisions and mistakes, it felt like the developers hadn't played a FPS game in the last five years. After debuting to scathing reviews like our own, Orion received one major update - but the PR damage had already been done. Rather than continue cooking a dead turkey, developer Spiral Game Studios has decided to start fresh (after a fashion) by releasing a sequel: Orion: Dino Beatdown - Jurassic Edition.

Warface, the upcoming free-to-play PC shooter using the CryEngine 3, recently entered closed beta in the West. Despite being out in some territories like Russia (and boasting over 5 million players already), the game is still undergoing to steps leading up to launch everywhere else.

Firefall has been in beta for what seems like forever, but up until this point, you had to have been accepted to try out the five player co-op game.  This weekend though, that's all about to change, as Red 5 Studios is opening up the servers for anyone who signs up.  The beta kicks off at 10AM PST on January 25th and will run until 11:59PM PST on January 27th.  It's a short beta, but you'll definitely want to check it out to get a feel for the free to play shooter.

Competitive PC gamers may know the MOBA genre well, but they are almost completely foreign to console gamers. One aspect of MOBAs that isn't talked about often is the cooperative modes many of these games offer. Players versus Bots are a big part of training for MOBAs while learning the ins and outs of a game. Monolith, a studio with roots in PC development, is bringing MOBAs to the console using the Lord of the Rings license with Guardians of Middle-Earth and we're diving into it.

Guardians of Middle-Earth is out later today on PlayStation Network and tomorrow on Xbox Live Arcade, along with a retail release of the game which includes a season pass.  The game is one we've been eyeing up since it came out of nowhere at E3 2012, it's a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game for the console featuring characters from the Lord of the Rings universe. 

While the initial release date announcement for Guardians of Middle-Earth illicited some confusion, with only a PlayStation Network and retail date being announced, we've now gotten confirmation of the Xbox Live Arcade release date.  The game will be out on December 5th, the day after the PlayStation Network release and will be priced at $14.99.  It'll launch with two maps and 20 guardians to choose from.