This week in co-op I play the Soul Sacrifice demo with random players. Here we go.

For this week's This Week in Co-Op, Tally and Eric decide to tackle Left 4 Dead 2's new DLC, entitled Cold Stream. It's been awhile since either of them played L4D, it's a new map, and while Eric's a vet at the game, he's never played it on PC before. How will this all turn out?

This Week in Co-Op, Marc and Paul take you on an epic journey into the dangerous punching dungeons of Dungeon Fighter LIVE.

“So what do you want to play for our TWICO article, Mike,” I asked. “Well… there’s always Diablo,” he replied. “I think folks have probably had enough of that for now,” I said. “Have you checked out The Secret World,” he then inquired. With that simple question, the characters of Dana “Frumpypants” Scully and John “Doc-Brown” Lovegood were born.

When Eric and I were deciding on a game to play for TWIC we ran through a plethora of titles that would work just fine but outside forces stopped us from finding that perfect title. One of us would not own a game the other chose, or when we did own the game it would be on the wrong platform. For whatever reason; call it luck, destiny, or predetermination, fate would conspire to finally find the game that we were to play together.

Jason     On the heels of his return from E3, I asked Andrew what game he wanted to play for our This Week in Co-Op piece. “I’m feeling something shooty,” he said. “Have you tried that Sniper Elite V2 game yet?” I had not. It was a game that had flown under my radar, but I was willing to give it a shot. The backup plan was Outland, a game that is decidedly not “shooty,” but still fun. So after I got home from work, I downloaded the demo and started playing. Within the first minute of play, I watched my slow motion bullet tear through a guy’s skull and explode out the other side...

Ask any co-op enthusiast about their favorite moments in a co-op game, and you’ll often get two answers. The first will usually be a tale of how teamwork and elite skill helped them defeat a challenge in perfect harmony - the absolute pinnacle of co-op play. This isn’t an article about that.

Chris says: I find it hard to believe that I’ve been with Co-Optimus for almost half a year now. Time sure does fly when you’re writing about things you like. I feel like I’ve grown more as a writer than I ever have before. But other than my participation in staff meetings and the various pizza lunches with boss man, Nick, I don’t really play with these guys as much as I’d like. That’s why I got excited when Paul and I were being paired up for a co-op session, especially since we were going to play a game I have been going gaga over lately: Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition.

This Week in Co-Op, Tally and Nick take you on an epic journey into the Torchlight 2 beta and their live streaming of the event from last week.  

It’s been a tough few weeks for me. After losing my job last week, I was having trouble focusing on what I should be doing next with my career. Obviously it’s all about finding my next job, but times are tight and I've been struggling to have things "work out". Luckily, Co-Optimus has been keeping me busy with work while I job hunt. Needless to say, I’ve been doing a bunch of gaming, which has also lead me to falling in love with a series that I had previously chosen to ignore.

I know I'm a little late to the Splinter Cell: Conviction party, but for some reason I never tried the game until this year. After reviewing the Windows Phone version for my other job, I decided to give the Xbox 360 game a chance. I enjoyed the stripped-down version, and its big brother even has both split-screen and online co-op for 2 players. How could I go wrong?

I was skeptikcal Bioware announced that Mass Effect 3 was going to have a co-op mode. As information trickled out to the masses, I drew conclusions that it was going to be a tacked-on horde mode rip-off that was added to the game in order to fill a checkbox requirement. I was being selfish, I didn’t want anything to sour my experience thus far in my wonderful space opera that I have been journeying through for the past five years. Having the Galactic Readiness level correlate to your multiplayer progress and allowing it to alter your single player ending was an ingenious way to force me to dip into the multiplayer even before I had finished the game. Well played Bioware, well played.

That's me, P. Walter Tugnut. Well, my version of Mr. Tugnut. I'm just cruising around my RV with my golden jet pack, sad and alone. My pink hair pick brings little joy to my supafly afro of gloom. My toned calves look magnificent in my fishnet stockings, but there's no one around to compliment them. I do have a giant mini-gun to keep me company, but alas, I've grown weary of her limited supply of ammo. You see, all my friends have gone to bed. I'm a West Coast gamer with an East Coast friends list. 

For the past several weeks, I’ve been dabbling in Dota 2. It’s one of those RTS/action games where you take control of a hero unit and defend your base from the opposing team. Though the focus of these games is usually competitive, Dota 2 supports a pretty good co-op mode (probably the best I’ve seen for the genre). Any number of players can form up on a team, fill up the remaining slots with bots, and go up against an all-bot team in good, old-fashioned comp-stomp. The bots are available in five different difficulty levels, so it’s easy to tweak the experience based on whether the players are new to the game or experienced. Of late, I’ve found the co-op mode a great way to blow off some steam.

For the past month or so, I've been in a bit of a gaming funk. My loyal ten-year old co-op partner and I have pretty much wrapped up all the games in our collection. The War in the North was ended successfully, and we managed to survive Raam's Shadow, leaving very little in the backlog. So, we scrolled through the long list of Xbox Live Arcade games to see what struck our fancy for our gaming time this week. There are literally dozens of games there that are perfect for short bursts of co-op gameplay before dinner.