Microsoft is holding their second annual Xbox Live Arcade Awards, and just like last year, all voting is done by users of Xbox Live.  

The arcade games are broken down into categories, and you have all the usual suspect;  Best Overall Game, Best Graphics, Most Innovative, etc.  There's also a a separate category for Best Co-Op Game, which is a nice treat.

And the nominees for Best Cooperative Multiplayer in an arcade game are....
 

Castle Crashers

Schizoid

Bionic Commando Rearmed

N+

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2

So there you have it!  There's even a few of those nominated for best overall.

Make sure you head onto Xbox Live to cast your ballot.  Voting begins tomorrow and runs until March 10th.  More information can be found at the official website.

I know what I'd vote for....

Source: Link

A few weeks ago we posted our interview with the Schizoid developers.  Now that we've had time to play the most co-op game ever, we have our review.  Read on to find out if it lives up to its claim.

Schizoid hit the Xbox Live Arcade this week, and it had one bold claim - "The Most Co-Op Game Ever."   After playing this last night for a few hours (co-op review coming soon) I must say there's some clever design decisions and slick level design that definitely reinforces co-op play.  The game was released awarded to the PAX 10, so we decided to dig further into the mind of Schizoid and head back to the source.

We had a little chat with the game's Technical Director and Lead Programmer Jamie Fristrom from Torpex Games to find out just what makes Schizoid a co-op fans dream. 

Read on for our full interview.

When a game claims to be the "most co-op game ever" it has some big shoes to fill.  This week Schizoid can put its Microsoft Points where its mouth is when it comes out on the Xbox Live Arcade. 

The game has been in development for quite some time, touted as the first XBLA game created from the ground up with XNA.  The basic premise is each player is a certain color ship, and can only attack ships of the same color by ramming them.  The co-op aspect obviously has to do with working together to block the opposite color ships from taking down your partner. 

With over 120 levels and the promise of more via DLC Schizoid looks like a steal at 800 Microsoft Points.

Some videos of the game play are posted after the jump.

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Xbox 360 Fanboy has a short article up showing off some new screenshots for Schizoid on the Xbox Live Arcade.   The game is designed from the ground up around Co-Op.  The videos of the game show of a combination of Pac-Man, Geometry Wars and Every Extra Extend Extreme.  Don't get it?  Let the folks at Xbox 360 Fanboy explain.

From day one, Schizoid promised true teamwork where players have to rely on a friend to survive and advance through the game. The clip is short, but we get to see how the game actually works and why it's so "teamworky". In a nutshell, Schizoid is based on red and blue crabs that need killing, but there is no shooting in the game. Instead, you kill these evil crabs by running into them with the blue player ramming blue crabs while the red player rams the red crabs. But the catch is that the blue player can't touch the red crabs or they die and vice versa making the co-op element oh so apparent.

The game has been built from the ground up on Microsoft's XNA platform, so you can expect some news about Schizoid to come out of GDC starting February 18th.  In fact...I wouldn't be surprised if that was the release date.