Do Androids Dream of Fake Plastic Turntables?
 

The sales numbers for DJ Hero are in, and they are disappointing at best.  122,300 copies of the game were sold across all platforms.  That's very low for a music game, especially one that was as heavily promoted as DJ Hero.  Ars Technica attempted to explain the low sales, and fans of co-op will likely appreciate this particular reason:

Rhythm games work best with crowds, and DJ Hero is a solitary experience. That's not a knock against it; playing the game is great fun. It's just hard to share with others, compared to the more popular Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises.

In other words, the lack of a compelling co-op mode may have been a factor in the game's lack of sales.  Music games seem to work best in a party setting, and DJ Hero just doesn't work due to the single-player focus.  Other reasons are listed in the article, but it just goes to show you that co-op is a major selling point for any game, especially one in a genre known for excellent co-op.

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What may be lost amongst a solid fall season of games is the family friendly title LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure continues.  Out now for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and PC - the game supports two player local cooperative play through the whole adventure with drop-in and drop-out play.

The truly unique thing about the title is a cooperative level builder mode much like Little Big Planet provides, except with LEGOs!  Just don't make anything with snakes in it, even LEGO Indy hates snakes!

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Spyborgs may look slick and modern, but beneath all the gloss, it is a very old school brawler. For gamers who enjoy beat em ups, Spyborgs is a decent experience, combining modern graphics and control schemes with older, familiar gameplay elements.

LEGO Rock Band. It's a mix of two of the greatest casual game franchises. What could have been just a cookie cutter track pack is actually an innovative addtion to the Rock Band franchise. Adorable characters, hilarious cut scenes, and a fun song list will keep people of all ages interested.  For Co-Op Casual Friday this week, we bring you our full review!

Remember when Borderlands was sent out to die?  Yeah...didn't happen.  The game sold an impressive 400k copies in October on the Xbox 360 alone placing it third on the sales chart behind Wii Fit Plus and Uncharted 2.  These sales numbers come from the monthly NPD stats, which report sales numbers for North America.

Halo 3: ODST took the number 6 spot, selling an additional 271k, bringing the two month total for North America close to 2 million.

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We've all been so busy actually PLAYING the myriad of releases this Fall, including some awesome co-op ones, that we didn't have time to write about all the other games out there. We've combined our Beyond Co-Op reviews for October and November into a mega issue.

How about Brutal Legend, Forza 3, Torchlight, Half-Minute Hero and more?  

James Cameron's Avatar is supposed to be one of the biggest movie releases this winter.  The concept of the film from the beginning was to create it side by side with the video game.  As December 1st rolls near, more information is beginning to be unveiled about the game.  

Jason brought you some hands on impressions with the next-gen version of the game,  and seemed to enjoy the fiery goodness it had to offer.  He was sad though to hear that in all that action on the screen, we wouldn't be able to share it with friends.  Sadly, it looks like the rep was mistaken on one account anyway as previews have started to pop up for the Wii version of the game, and it appears to have a 2 player drop-in co-op mode.

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Overshadowed this week by Modern Warfare 2, Wii owners got their taste of the original Modern Warfare in the form of Modern Warfare: Reflex.  Sporting a two player co-op mode where player two controls a cursor, the first person shooter is scaled down a bit for the Wii's hardware.

But how does it look? 

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In a fall crowded by rock music games, DJ Hero manages to stand out by focusing on music and mixes for various music tastes. Gone is the plastic guitar and in its place is the turntable. Are you ready to try your hand and spinning records? Ready to grab a guitar and help out?

This one time, at band camp, I shoved a flute...in front of my Rock Band mic and beat "Avenged" by Sevenfold on Expert.  And so this spunky young lady has done just that, by playing her flute into the standard Rock Band microphone with the correct pitch and notes she was able to score a 98% on expert.

It's quite impressive...and quite lovely.  I wonder if this works for Guitar Hero 5?  You could get a group of four completely unique instruments together to play four vocal tracks at the same time in the game's co-op mode.  My vote?  Xylophone, Ukulele, Jew's Harp, and Bongos.

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