Welcome back, soldier! This month we're shaking loose the ground-pounder mantra in favor of a pair of wings...and afterburners. Everyone thinks of carbines and claymores when the word "tactical" is used -- Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. shows us squad-based action with bigger and better toys of destruction.

Original caption by Nicholas "bapenguin" Puleo

Our friends at Loot Ninja have worked up an editorial not too dissimilar from our 2008 retrospective "Co-Op Successes and Failures" (by Jason Love) and more recent "Innovations in Co-Op Gaming" (by Katrina Pawlowski feat. the staff)...the Loot Ninja staff seek the definitive answer to a question that has been hounding our forum-goers for several months now: Do All Games Need Multiplayer or Co-Op?

Hot on the heels of Naughty Dog's confirmation of both multiplayer and three-player co-op in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves comes the news that Bioshock 2 will also feature multiplayer (although, sadly, no co-op). Today's gaming news in particular has been ripe with teases of Modern Warfare 2, a game that we steadfastly hope will also include four-player co-op. Tomorrow, Fable II DLC See the Future hits the Xbox Live Marketplace, leaving us still wondering why the co-op in that game was gimped. Not to be outdone, Killzone 2 falls in the same category as Fable II -- although without co-op in any form -- and also makes its way to Loot Ninja, where they use the Sony headliner as an example of a high-profile game that may well have benefited further from a co-op campaign.

What's very gratifying to see is the general attitude of the comments as of this writing:  apparently Loot Ninja's readers are as attached to co-op as we are. We've gone over this before, but please take a look at the editorial piece and put in your two cents...then come back over here and continue our ongoing discussion.

Source: Link

Not since the age of Arcades, standing shoulder to shoulder in a local mall or shop, has co-op been so popular. With the arcade generation gamers growing up and moving away from each other, co-op went into a bit of hiatus. Now new innovations in co-op technology are bringing these gamers back together, and bringing co-op back into the spotlight. In this article we will take a look at ten things we think that have helped propel co-op gaming back to the forefront. Above and beyond that, these are things every co-op gamer needs or wants in their experience.

In the coming months, the Battlefield Report will cover a lot of different games and scenarios. This month, however, we fall back to familiar ground.

"Yes, dear..."

 This week we're featuring another Co-Op Couples submission, this time from guest writer Ethan Kaye . Ethan helps us revisit Castle Crashers , Xbox Live's 2009 Live Arcade Game of the Year, as well as some other favorite co-op titles. Read on for a musing romp through the living room of a friendly new Co-Op Couple...

The Co-Optimus Battlefield Report is a new monthly column that will feature team-based and co-op military action games. This month we debut with a fond recap of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, a solid game that our community has fallen back on time and time again. Send your favorite tales of co-op and team warfare to our tips line for future columns!

When we announced that Bioshock 2 was set to feature Co-op, the Co-op gamer in me jumped for joy, but my inner horror gamer was very unsure. The recently released Resident Evil 5 sparked a similar doubt in me when trying to decide if I wanted to play alone, or hook up with a friend.

On the co-op side of things, sharing the experience of a horror game can be like watching a campy zombie movie with friends. Building fond memories of a time with scary monsters after our brains, or precious life force called “Adam”. Co-op has potential for amusing anecdotes to share down the road.

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It should come as no surprise to many readers of this site that co-op gaming makes any game much better.  And not only does it make a normal game something extraordinary, it adds longevity as well as meta games to them simply by the nature of itself.  The folks over at Platform Nation have recently had the same epiphany - yes folks - co-op gaming friggin rules.
 

As time went on and developers realized that co-op can make almost any game better and more fun, I have found myself playing games or doing things within them that I may not have been able to do otherwise because doing them with a friend is so enjoyable. Had it not been for online co-op sessions with friends, it would have been near impossible to sit down for hours on end looking for those last few agility orbs in Crackdown. Playing through the entire career mode of FIFA Street 3, a fun but admittedly flawed game, would have been much less enjoyable without having Nick on my team to run plays and have a great time with while running through the other teams.

That's a pretty good question, would you really have spent the time to get all 500 Agility Orbs if you didn't have a friend helping you look in Crackdown?  Or having that same friend help break up the monotony by allowing you to throw a car on his head?  I think not!

Of course as we've seen over the past year, co-op gaming isn't just an added feature any more, it's the staple and essence of a game. 

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Co-Op Couples can blossom anytime of the day, any week of the year, and any season of life. Sometimes the gamer in all of us is apparent from the start of a relationship; other times it comes crashing into a seasoned marriage without warning. This latest Co-Op Couples is for the amusement of the married among us...and the anticipation of those who aren't yet.

A few years ago, when the Xbox was new to the gaming world, Jet Set Radio Future and Halo were the only two games I had that were new enough to be interesting. I would alternate between these games, and my mind came up with some amazing dream scenarios where I was the Masterchief on rollerblades 'shooting' cartoon cops with spray paint from a shotgun. This awesome phenomenon had not been matched...until now.

Last month I was bestowed with a few gift games, one of which was the popular Xbox-360 Co-op zombie killing game Left4Dead, and the other was a Wii game my sister and I play together regularly over wi-fi called Animal Crossing, where you play a silly cartoon-ized life sim game full of talking animals. I alternated between these games for a while, and something bizarre happened. Odd crossover, or awesome brain damage? You decide.