Hunted: The Demon's Forge is almost upon us.  Do you have your pre-order bonus picked out?  The dark fantasy action game has been built from the ground up as a co-op experience.  Two players can take on the roles of E'lara and Caddoc, each a master of their own particular style of combat.  (Here's a hint: the guy with big muscles is good at melee fighting, while the woman in the leather bikini prefers ranged attacks.  Go figure.)  Today we have one last video before the game's launch next week.  You like pop-metal covers of "Happy Together," don't you?  No?  Well, too bad.  Enjoy the launch video and all of its heart-ripping, face-chopping glory.

Sharp-eyed tipster, Kevin Clough, recently brought some co-op news to our attention.  It seems that the new Twisted Metal game will have a co-op campaign.  In a recent interview with Game Informer, Twisted Metal and God of War designer David Jaffe had some interesting information on the co-op properties of the game:

F.E.A.R. 3 has the potential to be a cooperative gaming power house.  We already know that the title supports a two player co-op campaign, both locally via split screen or online.  We've brought you a video of the Left4Dead-like four player online co-op mode, "F**king Run."  We've shown you a video of the competitive/co-op scoring system in action.  Today, we have a new video for yet another co-op mode called "Contractions."  In this mode gamers will be given a series of fill-in-the-blank questions.  You must then choose the correct answer from "your," "you're," "its," and "it's."  Each appropriate response is associated with a face button.  If you get less than 60% of the questions right, the game will track you down through your Xbox Live Gamertag, PSN ID, or Steam ID and somehow remove your ability to comment on internet message boards.  This may be the greatest thing ever invented.

Double Fine's Brad Muir is a man I can relate to.  The project lead for Trenched knows his way around a press release.  Allow me to quote him:

In this video for Starhawk, Light Box Interactive President Dylan Jobe, explains some of the story and features we can look forward to next year.  As many of you know, Starhawk is the spiritual successor to the multiplayer-only game, Warhawk.  Starhawk will still have a multiplayer mode, but it will now include a single player campaign, as well as a four player co-op mode.  

Earth needs you!  Colossal robots and giant bugs are attacking New Detroit!  Holy crap!  Can anything else happen to Detroit?  The latest trailer for Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon starts off slowly and ends with a bang. Many, many, bangs.  Booms, even.  And the best part?  It's all in Japanese!  Which makes it super cool, just like that kanji ankle tattoo you got on spring break. You think it says "Strong of Spirit," but it really says, "poop party." You're never going to go to Japan anyway, so what do you care? It looks cool!

In preparation for the launch of Resistance 3, Sony is bundling Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2 together.  A leaflet packaged in the Battle: Los Angeles Blu-ray spilled the beans.  You heard me right - someone admitted to having an early copy of Battle: Los Angeles.  I should note the disc contains a demo for Resistance 3, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.  

Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 will be out in 2011.  Weird, we know.  Actually, the game will be out next month.  But I guess Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers June 15, 2011 the Re-Shuffling, didn't test well with focus groups.  That's right, Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the - oh, come on!  We'll refer to the game as "DOTP 2012" or maybe even "it"  for the rest of this post.  "It" will be out in just a few short weeks.  What's got us pumped for the latest digital version of MTG?  Archenemy Mode, of course!  In case you missed the IGN article, Archenemy Mode lets three players team up online to battle a series of bosses.  That's right, three player online co-op is supported.  AI will even take over if one of your lame friends backs out of the match.  (We hope the AI knows what it's doing) This is a welcome addition to the local two player co-op mode, Two-Headed Giant which (hopefully) will be returning.

This week is harsh for full-size console co-op releases, but we do have a downloadable title and some portable gaming goodness heading our way.  The godfather of dungeon crawlers gets some love, and the DOA girls go 3D.

We - - - report - the g- f-s over at Bethesda and Splash Damage are - content - simply rest - their laurels while we try - - the incredibly - - lag-plagued shooter, Brink.  

We've seen the trailers, both of them.  But what about the gameplay?  Is Dead Island going to be a moody survival horror game, an action-packed race to safe houses, or something else entirely?  The following video has some answers for us.  Dead Island's gameplay is looking more like Fallout 3 than Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead.  You'll meet up with NPC's, repair your weapons, and numbers will spray from your enemies as you damage them.  You'll also see different enemy types as well as get a sense of scale for the island of Banoi (it's big enough to incorporate a fast-travel system). The video shows only single player footage, but we can get a good idea of where things are going from here.  It looks like consoles may finally get a giant open world action RPG that supports cooperative play.

The latest developer diary for the Hunted: The Demon's Forge delves into an oft overlooked aspect of games: sound design.  How do they get arrows to sound like arrows?  Sadly,  they don't shoot arrows inches away from a microphone.  How do they get sloppy sound of a gory kill shot?  Believe it or not, you just can't kill stuff on a sound stage, at least not in this country.  Find out little secrets like these and more in this enlightening 4 minute video.  There's plenty of in-game footage, as well.  

Do you like a little friendly competition in your co-op?  Are you all for the team until there's a scoreboard?  Do you steal kills to pad your stats, blasting baddies over teammates' shoulders?   If any of these apply to you, the scoring system of F.E.A.R. 3 may just scratch your competitive itch, while still letting you play cooperatively. It appears that after each mission players will be evaluated on things like Aggression, Tactics, and Aptitude. The player with the higher score will earn bragging rights and be declared the "Favorite Son."  Players can earn bonus points by completing skill challenges.  Hopefully, this scoring system will bring an element of replayability to the campaign.

Bulletstorm's Gun Sonata DLC has finally rained down upon the PC.  The new content has two new Echo levels, "Guns of Stygia" and "Crash Site." There are three new stages for the game's four player Anarchy Mode, "Villa," "Sewers of Stygia," and  "Hotel Elysium."  This DLC was available on consoles a little over a month ago, and we posted our impressions of the entire Gun Sonata pack here.  We liked the DLC, and thought fans of the game would appreciate it, but it wouldn't interest gamers who had moved on to other titles.  You can download the Gun Sonata DLC on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or PC for $9.99.

Game delays are never fun to read about.  Sega's online brawler, Anarchy Reigns, has in fact, been delayed until January of 2012.  To soften the blow we've added a huge amount of videos and screenshots to this post. The videos feature six character profiles, and a trailer called "Fight to the Death," which features some interesting environmental hazards.  We posted a ton of videos for this game a few weeks ago, and if you missed out you can still see them here.  One video featured Jack from the ultra-violent Wii title, Mad World. He's back in Anarchy Reigns, and it seems he has brought some psychotic friends with him.  Another video from that post featured a co-op survival mode with three players.  We don't know much about the co-op yet, but we'll let you in on all the details when they become available.