Many of us here at Co-Optimus were very excited to play Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine this past weekend, writing about our plans to begin co-op games straight away. However, we quickly discovered that Monaco’s initial release was retracted off of XBLA rather quickly by developer, Pocketwatch Games. Many gamers are eager to begin playing as well, so here’s an update on the whole situation from last week.
It was a little over a month ago I gave some impressions of KingsRoad - a free to play game from Rumble Entertainment that's playable through Facebook or Rumble's own online service. The browser based game is an action-rpg in the same vane as Diablo or Torchlight but is designed to be played in shorter sessions. Since last month, the team has added a new class, the Wizard, and made several enhancements to the game world. Today the game is available for anyone to try - though it's still technically in beta - and the team is treating it as a KingsRoad's coming out party.
Last year's Happy Action Theater wasn't exactly a traditional game, but that's one reason why it succeeded with the Kinec's non-traditional controls. Less than a year after the first installment, Double Fine returns with the more understandably titled Kinect Party. We can safely assume that just about every Kinect owner grabbed it for free oover the holidays, so the question becomes: does Kinect Party provide a better co-op experience and improve on its predecessor's handful of shortcomings?
It seems as though the gaming industry is truly digging the Call of Duty Elite and Diablo 3 Character Profile style of online stat tracking features, taking notice of how the modern world is truly and frequently on the move. Following in Activision’s footsteps, Capcom has recently announced that their upcoming title, Resident Evil 6, will offer its own version of a free, online, stat-tracking service for all players.
Online co-op game Gunshine.net is out of beta after months of testing from users. The four player game ties into Facebook and offers a slick RPG/Action experience that's a bit like a modern day remake of Syndicate - no... not that Syndicate.
I fear the day Civilization World launches on Facebook. As if the Civ games aren't already enough of a time sink, now Firaxis and Sid Meier plan to make it accessible just about anywhere and everywhere. In an interview with CNN, "The Sid" as I like to call him, discusses the upcoming Facebook title which plans to launch this summer on the social networking service. What's on tap for fans of the series? How about cooperative gameplay.
The Total War series has been in the business of combining turn-based strategy and real-time strategy action for over ten years. A recent addition to the series has been full campaign co-op (found in Napoleon Total War and the upcoming Shogun 2: Total War), a phrase we here at Co-optimus find truly delectable. Many of our readers, however, may be missing out on this series as it been almost entirely exclusive to the PC. For those of you who enjoy strategy games but aren't into PC gaming, hope may be on the horizon. Developer Creative Assembly says they are not opposed to the idea of bringing Total War to consoles, iPad, and/or Facebook.
Bungie's web prescence with their Halo titles have always been a step above the competition. When Halo 2 launched detailed matchmaking stats and history available online within minutes of your match completion it set a new precident for console games. Many years later Bungie is about to unleash it's 3rd major iteration of the website for Halo Reach and as usual - it's loaded with some slick new features.
We're pretty proud of the face we just reached a major milestone for the website - over 1000 co-op games in our database! To celebrate we're having a monster giveaway with almost a dozen prizes including a new Xbox 360 Slim console, Copies of Crackdown 2, T-Shirts and more!
Lionhead Studios really wants customer feedback on Fable III. They're testing the target audience on Facebook by revealing a screenshot at a time, and asking what you think about what you see. They've already made allusions to making real co-op, but the best way to insure its success is by having you, the player, post your opinion with them.
While Xbox 360 owners got their Facebook implementation yesterday, PlayStation 3 owners should get their update today. The Xbox 360 version of Facebook is used as a way to browse your friends, find gamertags, look at photos, and interact with the system. Sony took a slightly different route.
Xbox 360 owners will be getting a shiny new dashboard update on November 17th that includes features like Twitter, Facebook, Last.FM and the Zune video store. Also in the update will be a "News and More" section on Inside Xbox with feeds from MSNBC, The New Yorker and comics from Dilbert.
