Company of Heroes 2 is the sequel to the much beloved RTS Company of Heroes. Since the first game was so highly regarded, no one disputes the fact that Company of Heroes 2 has some major commando boots to fill. Is it up to the task? According to our own Nick and Locke, things were looking extremely promising when they went hands-on with the game at PAX Prime 2012. The good news continued when a new mode was announced for the game called Theater of War which has 9 missions per faction that can be played cooperatively. Quite a quantitative improvement over the lonely cooperative mission of Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor.

Recently Paradox Interactive and Most Wanted Entertainment have released a new video showcasing their newest game, Defenders of Ardania, giving us a new reason to have our eyeballs glued to our computer screens.

Are you loving Shogun 2: Total War, but wistfully longing for the presence of more warrior monks? Don't worry, the Creative Assembly has you covered. The Ikko Ikki Clan Pack was announced and released today via Steam. It primarily adds a new clan to play in the Campaign, Custom, and Multiplayer modes of the game, bringing the total number of playable clans up to 11. The Ikko Ikki are the warrior monk clan, complete with eight new unit-variants, new skills trees, and a new special agent, the Ikko Ikki Monk.

Earlier this week an enormous patch was applied to the lately installment of the Total War series, Shogun 2. The bulk of the update seems to be fixes, but there's some unit tweaking, DirectX 11 support, and even four new multiplayer maps included as well. We found the game to be a great co-op strategy/RTS game, giving it an impressive 4.5 out of 5. For the full list of patch notes, read on:

The Total War series is a well-known and well-respected name out there in the strategy game world. A cooperative mode, however, is pretty new to the series. How does Shogun 2: Total War fare as a co-op strategy/RTS game?

We've got another trailer for you today, this one for Total War: Shogun 2.  This trailer doesn't feature any gameplay at all, but is really sweet and totally worth a watch anyway.  I learned a couple things watching the video.  1, apparently the weather changes very quickly in Japan.  2, the historical Japanese quivalent of "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" is "don't bring a katana to a longbow fight".  Shogun 2 releases on PC next month, and will feature two player online or LAN co-op.

Merely seeing the words Red Alert kicks off the Hell March theme in my head.  Red Alert 2 has always been one of my all time favorite RTS titles.  When I heard Electronic Arts was creating a sequel, I was a giddy as a little girl.  When I heard the sequel would be completely designed around cooperative play...my panties exploded.  

Ah, Halo Wars. The folks at Ensemble Studios have a lot to live up to in making this game. After all, they are making a Halo RTS. The jump from FPS to RTS is a big one, but there are several ways to make the transition easier. The main one is "have features from previous games." So far Ensemble appears to be doing great there, as the game has co-op, many of the familiar Halo characters and vehicles, and so forth. However, Ensemble isn't done placating the Halo masses. Through their monthly update, they have revealed another familiar Halo feature: Legendary difficulty. The game will feature the accurately-titled difficulty mode, which has claimed untold hours of peoples lives, as well as too many broken controllers to count. Apparently Halo Wars version of Legendary is no slouch.

Well, its seems that the next chapter in the monolithic Halo series, Halo Wars, will have co-op. Sites like Joystiq are reporting that Gamepro magazine has a world exclusive on the new Halo-flavored real-time strategy game. In thier latest issue (July), Gamepro says that the game will have two-player online co-op and six player multiplayer. The July issue also reveals more about the vehicles in the game, including some not featured in previous Halo games. So, co-op Halo fans rejoice and pray this is 100% true.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 (also in the same "longest game name" competition as Sacred 2) was revealed not too long ago. So, naturally we are left wanting for more information. As always, IGN has come to the rescue, with a preview of the PC real-time strategy game. The team seems to be enthusiastic about co-op, and the following quote does seem promising.

There's an integrated co-op experience where literally the two players have to work in tandem to pursue some goal. On a stealth mission, for example, you may have one guy who's moving a big, bulky shield generator unit and the other guy has to take his assault force and has to keep it underneath the cover of that shield generator unit. That's a very intimate co-op experience because they're talking into their voice-over-IP headsets and they have to coordinate their movements that way.

Read More

Red Alert 3 will mostly be a "What If?" kind of game which looks into the possibilities the first two games didn't cover. Classic technologies like Tesla coils, teleportation, and time traveling will be supplemented by new innovations like armored bears, floating island fortresses and... get this, intelligent dolphins!

Some of the interesting features that will be making its way into the game include a first ever heard of co-op campaign mode, a focus on the naval combat aspects, and all the Kalashnikov designer rifles a Command & Conquer game can hold.

Read More