Today's Xbox Games Showcase offered few surprises. Some Xbox fans had hoped for bombshell announcements that would help Microsoft's console to better compete with PlayStation, but no such announcements occured. That's not to say that Microsoft didn't show any cool games! They just showed games of about the same hype level as were shown at last year's event. Additionally and despite reports to the contrary, several games were shown only as cinematic footage rather than in-game footage. Still, we learned about some cool upcoming co-op games, and that's always reason to celebrate.

Alien invaders called the Deathrix attack Earth and cause a huge flood. The only way to fight back is to hop into battleships and hit the sea in Afterwave: Downfall, the upcoming post-apocalyptic shoot 'em up from 7 Raven Studios. The game features a unique angled viewpoint and playable ships moving across the swollen ocean, not to mention 2-pl...

While Bethesda’s Fallout 76 MMO experienced a famously troubled launch in 2018, it has slowly and steadily improved over the years. Case in point: the free 'Steel Reign' update has just launched on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. The update includes the Steel Reign questline that concludes the story of Steel Dawn, a new vendor, and a new legendary crafting system.

First announced during the Microsoft and Bethesda Games Showcase, Redfall is an open-world co-op shooter from Arkane Austin, the developer of the Dishonored franchise. The premise of the game involves four heroes battling against an army of powerful vampires and cultists in an isolated island town.

E3 2021 is the first E3 since Microsoft acquired Bethesda, and today’s Microsoft and Bethesda Games Showcase is the first joint E3 press conference from the two companies. The 90-minute event revealed a number of new and previously announced games that will be coming to Xbox and PC in 2021 and 2022. Naturally, we’re most psyched for the 10 co-op games featured in the showcase.

Last week, Geoff Keighley held the fifth annual Game Awards where games and developers were honored. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice won the "Game of the Year" award (and "Best Action/Adventure Game"), Luigi's Mansion 3 won "Best Family Game" (the co-op is good), and Destiny 2 won "Best Community Support." Amidst all that, there were also some big announcements, including the reveal of the next generation of Xbox.

At E3 2018, Bethesda unveiled the newest entry in the Fallout franchise, Fallout 76. There is simply not enough time to go into the many trials and tribulations of this game, but the short version is that it had a rocky launch and didn't get a whole lot better over time. The one sliver of hope that some folks had was that the "always online" aspect of Fallout 76 would be mitigated by private servers, something Todd Howard mentioned they were "looking into after launch." Well, the last finger on your monkey's paw has grimly clenched down and private servers are here... if you pay for them.

In case you have not been playing Fallout 76 in recent weeks, or if you are a console player, Fallout 76 has received its first vault-themed raid in the most recent patch for PC players. This raid allows a team of up to four players to work together to clear out Vault 94, which was home to a plant-based people who were supposed to bring seeds back into the post-apocalyptic world before something went awry (as things in Fallout seem to do). The raid is set for players level 50 and is currently only available for PC, with developer Bethesda using this time to try and iron out any possible bumps before pushing the update to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Human: Fall Flat is having a fit of the vapors in its latest update.  The new level, "Steam", is industrially themed and focuses its puzzles and mechanics around all the ways you can use and abuse water's gaseous state.  Most importantly, it's available at this very moment.

Last summer, we hopped into Holospark's FPS alien shooter Earthfall. The game was very much trying to capture that Left 4 Dead feel but with aliens instead of zombies. There were some interesting ideas, like the 3D printers for guns and setting up defenses, but it also felt like there just wasn't enough there. In the few months after its release, the devs did add some new content, so we figured we should finally hop back in to check it out.

Earthfall, the four player co-op alien shooter, is free this weekend on Steam. Players can jump in and check out all the major new features and improvements from the Invasion Update that includes a horde mode and player progression system.