The Xbox LIVE Marketplace is having a huge sale on EA games, many of which support some form of cooperative play. I know some of you think EA is an all-powerful, nightmarish entity that usually passes time by eating children and kicking puppies, but when the publishing juggernaut is not being evil it happens to put out some pretty cool games. 

The PlayStation Network is bringing it in 2013. Yesterday they kicked off their 13 for '13 sale, offering the PlayStation faithful 50% off on 13 downloadable titles. If you own a subscription to PlayStation Plus you'll get 75% off. That's like half price, then half price again!

EA has released an Indie Bundle on Steam which features six titles for the low price of $21.  The normal asking price for all six games would total almost $70.  Best of all, five of the six include cooperative features - score!  

I've recently joined PlayStation Plus, therefore I'm actually paying attention to the monthly deals. This April looks incredible. Members of Sony's premium service have all sorts of downloadable goodness heading their way. Fans of shooters will be granted early access to the Ghost Recon Future Soldier beta. Action game aficionados will get Shank 2 for FREE. Racing fans will be able to pick up Shift 2: Unleashed for the low, low price of zero dollars. There's a little something for everyone.

In case you haven't heard, Shank 2 is coming to the XBLA, PSN, and PC this week.  The violent, stylized 2D brawler offers gamers a cooperative survival mode.  While it's no co-op campaign, it looks like it will have more substance than your simple wave-based yawn-fest.  Shank 2's survival mode will offer unlockable outfits and upgrades at the waves progress, which is better than a swift kick in the junk. 

The latest Humble Indie Bundle, number four to be exact, includes co-op titles Jamestown and Shank along with single player indie games Super Meat Boy, NightSky HD, and Bit.Trip Runner.  Spending more than the current average price of about $5.33 will also net you Cave Story and Gratuitous Space Battles.  

It's that time of the week again, when the new deal of the week is available for those with an Xbox Live Gold membership.  Shank is the featured game, and the savings is 33% off the normal 1200 points down to 800 points, or ten bucks for the math-challenged.  We reviewed the game earlier this fall, and though it wasn't without its problems, the overall verdict was that Shank is a decent way to pass an afternoon with a buddy.  And until November 22, you can do just that, at a decent discount.

DeathSpank and Shank are coming to the PC.  "DeathSpank and Shank" also sounds like a fantastic rock opera, or maybe the name of the most kick-ass beauty pageant of all time.  These two downloadable games have already made an appearance on XBL and PSN.  They both offer fun but flawed co-op.

Shank is a game about a guy name Shank who shanks a lot of guys. It’s probably the most appropriate title for a game in recent memory. It is a story of revenge, mistaken identity and a whole lot of sticking sharp things into the soft parts of bad guys.

It’s been a long-running battle of fans based on a lot of nonsense and personal preference, but how do you choose which system to buy a game on? Content available? Support? Online connectivity? Or are you one that consults all of your friends before coming to a decision on which system to use?

To the community that was watching the development cycle of Shank from a distance, the single player campaign just felt too epic to mess with, but co-op sounded too sweet not to demand. To the developers, the single player campaign is too epic to mess with - so they had to make a few decisions when they decided to upgrade the game to include co-op.

At PAX East the glory, visuals, and smooth controls of Shank wow'd us back to the Klei entertainment both to play again, and again, and again - and it was just single player at the time. Now Shank has brought a buddy to play the incredibly impressive platforming adventure game. Shanking, shooting, jumping, and co-op attacking, the co-op campaign looks absolutely phenomenal in the trailer we've got for you.

We last saw Shank at Pax East in March of this year.  At the time we had no idea the game would contain a co-op mode, in fact, according to the developer Klei Entertainment - they wanted to keep it a secret.  So after coming up with the idea to have a separate co-op campaign (the single player was already designed) - Klei went to work to create a fun experience with levels and bosses designed for two players.  But this isn't just some survival mode, instead it's a full fledged backstory to Shank's single player campaign - complete with cutscenes and more. 

When I wasn't waiting in line for Co-op games with the CoG group or Co-opticrew on the PAX East floor, I was scoping out a few non-co-op games to fill my time. Two of those, which I enjoyed enough to go back for seconds, were Raskulls, and Shank. We got a brief preview of Shank at PAX Prime last year, but no hands-on time for this Shadokat. Raskulls was just a convenient thing to play while the others got busy with a nearby Crackdown 2 booth, which was a pleasant surprise to play