Every once in a while, we like to look beyond consoles and controllers for cooperative gaming experiences. The board game under consideration today, Castle Panic, is ideal for casual gamers, particularly for groups of mixed ages.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to listen in on a conference call with some of the folks behind Iron Man 2: The Game. Dean Martinetti, Producer, and Mike McHale, Development Director, both from SEGA, answered questions from the gaming press.

Destroy All Monsters is my favorite giant monster movie, simply because it includes a legion of monsters all battling it out. Today for Co-Op Casual Friday, we'll look at the gaming equivalent to Destroy All Monsters: Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

Today, I'll share with you a harrowing tale of death-defying, madness-inducing consumerism at it's very worst: attempting to buy the AC/DC Rock Band Track Pack. On the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, 2008. At a Wal-mart Supercenter. At 4:30 in the morning!

Is Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer "The World's Greatest Game Based On A Movie Based On The Word's Greatest Comic Magazine? Or will it have you bashing your controller on the ground with the cry: "IT"S CLOBBERIN' TIME"?

Today, we begin a two part series about the future of band-centric video games. In this first part, we will examine the band games that have already been released (or announced), in order to determine what characteristics they share.

Today, we'll look at a great new board game that is simple enough to be accessible for non-gamers, yet deep enough to satisfy a diehard gamer's strategic brain: Pandemic. The best part about Pandemic? It's cooperative! Plus, we've got a guest report from Co-Optimus legend "justabaldguy"!

We've had quite a bit of fun at Band Hero's expense here at Co-Optimus. Is it a carbon copy clone of Guitar Hero, just another attempt by Activision to flood the game shelves? Or is it a kid-friendly, Top 40 music game that holds its own compared to other games in the genre?

Kid-friendly, based on pop culture mainstays, simple enough to play with your grandmother, and yet still fun for "hardcore" gamers, LEGO games are great, and LEGO Star Wars is the series that started it all.

What can be more fun than pretending to be a waiter or waitress? Ok, so maybe that's not your ideal video game. But how many times have you seen a kid pretending to be one when the family sits down for their evening meal? Happens quite often, right? Perhaps the kid knows something we don't.

LEGO Rock Band. It's a mix of two of the greatest casual game franchises. What could have been just a cookie cutter track pack is actually an innovative addtion to the Rock Band franchise. Adorable characters, hilarious cut scenes, and a fun song list will keep people of all ages interested.  For Co-Op Casual Friday this week, we bring you our full review!

If you have children, and are a gamer, you have probably run into some awkward situations.  There are some games that are perfectly acceptable for adults, and yet wildly inappropriate for children.  Some parents may disagree, and buy Grand Theft Auto for their first grader, but for most of us, there's a line between what's a "me" game, and what's a "kid" game.  This line varies from gamer family to gamer family, of course, and by child, as well.  For my youngest, who is eight, we have a higher tolerance of sci-fi violence (such as that in Halo's campaigns) than we do human on human violence (Call of Duty comes to mind).  Excessive realistic gore is a no-no (Left 4 Dead), but heavily stylized cartoon blood (Castle Crashers) is acceptable.  For our older son, fifteen, all the above games are probably OK, but I'd draw the line at games with strong sexual content or excessive language.  The point is, there are going to be some games on the shelf that your kids are not allowed to play.

LittleBIGPlanet is a natural choice for Co-Op Casual Friday.You'd be hard pressed to find a game more fun, enjoyable, and still appropriate for everyone, from the very young child who's never held a controller before to a seasoned gamer who has played it all.

You're probably thinking, hey, what's this?  A toy?  Isn't this a column about kid and family friendly video games?  Well, yes, it is.  But is there any thing more kid friendly than a toy?  Certainly there is not, especially when the toy is based on a fantastic video game.  As soon as we learned about the existence of Halo Wars Mega Bloks, it was a foregone conclusion that we'd own them.  Building our own Halo vehicles, with adorable little soldiers inside, is a lot of fun, and was certainly a cooperative effort!

This week, a major co-op release hit store shelves everywhere.  Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is the latest in an excellent series of action-RPGs, particularly enjoyable for comic book readers or general super hero fans.  We discussed the first game in the series, X-Men Legends, for a previous Co-Op Casual Friday.  Today, we turn our attention to X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse.