This is a story from Joystiq where they sat down with Brian Intihar, Insomiac's Community Manager (and former 1Up/EGM Editor we might add), at PAX 08 last week.  They asked him a bunch of questions about the upcoming Resistance 2 game and at the very end there are a few questions about the co-op part of the game.

First off he says that 8-player co-op is still in the game, but he goes on to explain that the game will dynamically adapt to the number of people playing at one time.  This means you can have anywhere from 2-8 people playing and the next wave of enemies you fight will adapt to the size of your team.  Pretty cool if you ask me.

He also tells us that you will be able to level up your soldiers in co-op as you go along.  There is a variety of soldier types and you can level each of them up unlocking new weapons and other things.  Along with this information he also confirmed that the co-op will be drop-in/drop-out and that there will be an overarching storyline to the co-op gameplay that is different than the single-player storyline.

Sounds like things are quite exciting surrounding Resistance 2.  The game will be available for your Playstation 3 on November 4th, 2008.  See you online!

From IGN comes word that Resident Evil 5 is going to have a totally different control system that will be unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show in October.  This new control system is said, via game producer Jun Takeuchi at a recent Microsoft Media event, to be based around the Gears of War style of control.  Best guess would mean this will involve such things as a cover system and the ability to quickly move to another place with cover.

Many people were fearful after the E3 unveiling of the game that it would be based around the Resident Evil 4 control system, but we'll find out more about this new control system in October when it is unveiled.  Resident Evil 5 is currently planned for a March 13, 2009 release on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and will contain 2-player co-op gameplay.

Games Conference in Leipzig has been eventful for the world of co-op. We've shown you some cool Diablo III screens, as well as some info about Resident Evil 5. We've shown you guys some pretty killer videos that make Resident Evil 5 look like a safe bet for co-op fans. Well, I'm happy to bring more news about Resident Evil 5. However, be warned, this news post doesn't come with a bunch of great vids. Sorry folks. However, 1up has posted some info that might be just as important as some cool vids. The article is mainly about how co-op will affect the fear factor in Resident Evil 5. The article quotes RE5 producer Masachika Kawata is saying:

Kawata also assured us that the co-op mode won't be any less scary than the single-player game -- which we're a bit skeptical of considering voice chat will probably remove some of the fear from the experience -- saying, "I thought the game would be more of an action game until I played it." He then took things up a few notches, claiming that the game "might paralyze you with horror."

The fact that the RE5 team is taking into account for the solidarity and support that a second player provides is nice. I found Resident Evil 4 to be quite scary, so I'm hoping I can get that level or fear (or more, even) and still have cool co-op. How about you?

IGN has posted their impressions from some hands-on time with Call of Duty: World at War.  As we reported to you earlier this summer, the fifth Call of Duty title will feature co-op play, for the first time in the series.  The WWII-themed title will let players drive vehicles and work together as a squad, teaming up to achieve objectives.  However, there is an interesting twist to the co-op play that is referred to as "competitive co-op".  This feature adds individual scoring to the game; at the end of each round, the winner is the one who has accumulated the most points for kills, head shots, etc.  This little snippet from the article is particularly interesting:

The kicker is that in competitive co-op, if you die, you lose points, and if someone revives you, they earn points. That mechanic is designed to reign in players, because if you charge ahead or take a lot of risks or play wildly and get killed, you lose points. Meanwhile, your rivals gain points for reviving your sorry rear, so you're basically giving your competition points by dying.

While you are competing with your teammates to earn points, you are rewarded for helping each other out, as well.  Beyond the warm fuzzy feeling you get for assisting your buddy, you will also earn the more tangible incentive of a higher score.  Competitive co-op is certainly a good name for this, isn't it?  It should be interesting to see how this plays out once the game is released on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and Wii later this year.

Thanks to "txshurricane" for the tip.

If you haven't heard, there's a giant game festival going on in Leipzig, Germany right now.  Capcom has released what can best be described as a "kick ass" trailer for the upcoming co-op friendly Resident Evil 5.  How kick ass?  Well it's got: explosions, dirt bikes, mini guns, zombies, some big executionor with an axe and a weird dude in a bird mask.  Shall I go on?  Ok, there's exploding heads, slimy worm like creatures, decaptations, and a hot girl in a nurse outfit.  Yeah, I think that about covers it.

On top of the awesomeness that is that official trailer, GameTrailers has some video footage of the co-op play from the game.  After watching all this footage the game has gone from a "Yeah I'll buy that" to a "Must buy."

Watch both trailers after the read more link.

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Gamasutra recently interviewed the producer and director of Resident Evil 5.  The RE series is reknowned for its high quality, and the previous installment in the series, RE4, was many folks' choice for Game of the Year in 2005.  Resident Evil 5 will be the first RE for next gen (or is it current gen?) systems, which is notable in and of itself.  However, RE5 will feature co-op gameplay, which is a first for the series (not counting the two player co-op in the lightgun style offshoot RE: Umbrella Chronicles).  You might expect co-op to be a last minute afterthought, merely tacked on to the primary single player experience for such a title.  However, in this interview, the creators state that this is NOT the case:

For Resident Evil 5, a lot of the elements in it are a refinement of things that we had in Resident Evil 4; making them better, and choosing which elements to keep, which elements to discard.

The biggest change that we had to it, and the biggest change that we had from when we first settled on the design for it, was that we definitely wanted to have co-op in it, right from the start, and to have co-op be an integral part of the game, just right from the start.

So that's one of the first things that we decided, when we were making the game. That has led the development of the game. Right now we're about 70% of the way through the development process.

RE4 was certainly a great game, and the creators indicate that they will not try to reinvent the wheel for the new game.  Throw tightly integrated co-op in, and you have a game that we here at Co-Optimus are definitely going to keep an eye on.

Edit: The Resident Evil Outbreak series also featured co-op.  Thanks to TheReaperCooL for pointing this correction out.

Some of you might know the famous "odd and even rule" in the Star Trek movies, where the odd-numbered movies are inferior to the even-numbered ones. Well, Call of Duty has a similar type of rule, with the Infinity Ward games being rather good and the Treyarch ones being not so good. However, Treyarch is trying to bridge the gap with Call of Duty: World At War and are making some decent strides. One of the strides is co-op, which pleases the crew here at Co-Optimus. The game is still set in WWII, but a recent article by 1up sounds promising. The article discusses some of the featTures, like a destructive flamethrower (and flammable things, like grass huts and people) and an exotic locale (the Pacific).

More important to us is the details regarding co-op in the game. The game features a Halo 3-like competitive co-op mode, where players compete to get the highest score (by killing baddies for points) while still working together as a team. However, the interesting part is that you can use said points on the online multiplayer, which is much like Call of Duty 4. Not much else is discussed about multiplayer or co-op, though competitive co-op is an interesting mode.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then surely the above screenshot could replace the quite lengthy title of the game.  Flames?  Check.  A mercenary?  Yup.  So there it is, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.  IGN has posted a hands on preview of the game as played in co-op.  Perennial favorites like seamless drop in-drop out co-op make the feature list, and there are a few other nice little touches as well.

Money and weapons earned while playing in the host's game will transfer to your own game, though progress through the content will not.  The game's difficulty will not scale with the addition of a buddy; this is likely not too much of a problem due to the sheer number of enemies and toughness of many of the game's areas.  In co-op, players can resurrect each other, rather than failing the mission and having to restart, which is a tremendous benefit. 

The preview gives details about a couple of the missions from game, which sound quite entertaining.  This quote pretty much sums it up:

It's really quite something to watch a building vaporized and see a mushroom cloud bloom from its ashes.

Ah, LittleBigPlanet. In some ways, the game could have one of the best co-op modes around. What is more cooperative than building levels and working with physics? As of now we can only ask questions, as the game is not set to come out until this October. Well, to tide you over, Kotaku has nothing short of an avalanche of information about the game. Some of the more interesting feature include the ability to wear a Tron suit in-game, as well as a simple-yet-complex emotion feature, which enables you so show varying degrees of emotion. Nice!

Ah, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, I loved thee well. Mixing hack-and-slash with superheroes and 4 player co-op was a brilliant idea. Yes, there was a good deal of grinding for powerups and costumes, but where else can you have a team of Iron Man, Blade, Deadpool, and Wolverine? So, it comes as no surprise that the Co-Optimus crew was pleased to find out there will be a Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. We've covered the game in the past, and it sounds like more of the same, in a good way. However, recent details have come to light via 1up. The game is now called Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion. You might have heard that the "fusion" part of the game concerns combining superpowers for a cool combo attack. Hit the preview from 1up to discover more info about the game, including more on the "fusion" part of the game. And to make things better, 1up's sister site Gamevideos has a preview video. Oh, and don't worry about any platform feeling left out: the game will come out for most all platforms (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, PS2, PSP, DS).

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