While the Mario Party series is mainly known as a collection of competitive minigames where the winner is determined by random chance, the new Super Mario Party that's headed to the Nintendo Switch next month will include something new: a co-op mode. The recently revealed "River Survival Mode" lets you and three friends work together to navigate a river before time runs out.

Today marks some sad news for Happy Dungeons.  Even though it's only been out for a little under two years, the folks over at Toylogic will be shutting down the game's servers next June.  

Announced only a few days ago, the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle drops today for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This collection of classic Capcom beat 'em up titles, a couple of which never made it to consoles back when they were released, allows for friends near and far to team up once more to beat up some baddies.

What ho, adventurers! Have you been plumbing the depths of forbidden tombs with your best buddies in Strange Brigade? If so, you may be interested to know that a new character is available to play (free for Season Pass holders and not free otherwise), as well as new maps for the Score Attack and Horde modes (all free).

Well, what do you know?  Destiny 2 appears to be back on the Co-Opticrew's weekend menu, and it's all thanks to "Forsaken", the game's latest expansion.  It feels like just yesterday that we collectively emerged from the dark recesses surrounding Destiny 2's original release, so I'm not quite ready to delve back in.  That said, depending on how long Jason, Mike, and Nick spend in there, we may have to form up a search party...

It's been awhile since we've looked at Sloclap's third-person action/fighting title, Absolver. The French developer has continued to support and update the game since its launch on the PC and PlayStation 4 with tweaks, balances, and a new 3v3 PvP mode, but the PvE content has still been lacking. However, there is some good news. A new PvE dungeon will arrive in just a couple weeks and it will be free for everyone.

Door Kickers: Action Squad originally forced its way onto PC back in November of 2017.  Since then, it's puttered around Steam's Early Access program, presumably waiting for someone to figure out the best CQC puns to use in its release announcement.  The good news here is that Action Squad got a full release just a couple days ago.  The bad news is that the release trailer has eschewed all those sweet, juicy puns in favor of actual information on the game's playable characters.

This past July, Trendy Entertainment dropped some new DLC ("Protean Shift") for their free-to-play tower-defense/third-person action title, Dungeon Defenders II. There have been a couple of updates since then - notably the one last month that increased the rewards received when playing with additional players - and last week, there was a hotfix that refined that system even further. Now, playing with additional players not only gets you more experience, but guaranteed better gear.

In a new video, developer Introversion shows off Alpha footage from the recently released multiplayer update for their prison building/management simulator, Prison Architect. The two developers highlight their online co-op construction while explaining how the drop-in/drop-out works and their constant tweaks and updates.

In the newest video for the upcoming BioWare game, Anthem, the developers have laid out the basics for how players will interact with the world and, in return, how the world will be able to influence the player; be it through the people you’ll meet, the places you’ll explore, or the monsters you’ll fight. While the world of Anthem is a creation of the developers, they intentend for what happens in that world and what story the players tell with their time in-game to remain up to them.

Bossa Studios' Surgeon Simulator makes its way onto the Nintendo Switch today, complete with local co-op play so you and a buddy can work together to definitely save people and not put a TV where their organs used to be. Nope. You'd never do that.

Turn based strategy game, Jagged Alliance: Rage! will be hitting PCs by the end of this month. Announced for September 27th, the mercenaries focused franchise will get its first new game in years with proper cooperative support. Console versions on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will launch on November 6th.

The Forsaken expansion to Destiny 2 dropped last week, and we've been taking it for a spin recently to see what all Bungie has tweaked, changed, and added. We have five (yes, five!) "Let's Play Co-Op" videos for you today as show off different parts from the game and provide some in-depth impressions of this new DLC.

Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord is an ambitious game. In development for the past few years, the game is the first full on sequel to the previous title which saw numerous expansions over the years. The series is famous for it's open world, sandbox style gameplay combined with an incredibly satisfying combat mechanic. 

OVERKILL's the Walking Dead is set to hit this November 6th on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 with four player online co-op in tow.  PC gamers that pre-order the title from the PayDay developer will get access to an exclusive closed beta. Today, the date and details of that beta have been revealed.

Admit it - we all get tired of being the good guy sometimes.  The kindly folks over at LEGO (or, more specifically, Traveller's Tales) recognize this, which is why LEGO DC Super-Villains is heading our way on October 16th.  Hopefully, the game will let you dip a toe into the realms of immorality, but instead of dealing with any real consequences, you'll be faced with more cute-sy, "oh no my plastic arms fell off" outcomes.

In many previous years of this column, fall has meant detailing launches of new MMOs; however, these days fall usually means new expansions and content updates to existing MMOs. This month for MMOCO, we’ll be looking at a couple of upcoming updates to TERA and FFXIV. We also sadly have the closure of Carbine Studios (and thus, WildStar) to di...

It's been sometime since I've reviewed a keyboard for Co-Optimus, with my last official review actually being the one I'm reviewing today's predecessor. But since that time I had fully switched to a Razer Black Widow Chroma that served me well for a number of years. But like my SteelSeries mouse impressions piece stated, the software and glitches became too numerous to stay invested in the Razer ecosystem so I dove in headfirst to an all SteelSeries lineup. The final piece of that puzzle is the SteelSeries Apex M750 RGB mechanical gaming keyboard.

Can you believe another week's done and dusted?  It feels like it was just yesterday that Jason was yelling at the Co-Opticrew to finish our morning serving of porridge and crowd back into the co-op mines.  "Ah well," I remember telling Marc on the way down, "at least we got that extra day to let the cartridge dust work its way out of our lungs."  We shared a somber smile then, knowing the darkness of the mines would soon shroud our faces beyond recognition.  My, how time does seem to slip away...

Shovel Knight, everyone's favorite game about being a knight with a shovel, has been making the digital rounds ever since its initial release in 2014.  While it was originally only available on the PC, 3DS, and Wii U, the game eventually made its way to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, all the while amassing a number of expansions and some downloadable content.

Xbox Live’s Games With Gold program for September 2018 features a solid lineup of co-op friendly games. Single-player loving Xbox One users who have GOLD membership will be able to build their own criminal housing facility in Prison Architect for the entire month of September. Following this, Livelock, a top-down co-op shooter, becomes free Sept. 15th to Oct. 16th.

Fall is a great time for gamers. There are so many games to play and not enough time to play them all, right? That's a real problem, so let me offer you a win-win solution. Pick one game that you were planning on buying, and don't buy it. Now, take that $60 you just saved, and make a donation on your Extra Life page, which you created after joining the Co-Optimus Extra Life Team. Your $60 just made an impact on some poor kid who was critically injured in a car accident, and you saved a lot of time that you would have sunk into that game you didn't buy.

With all the craziness surrounding this fall's game releases, it's easy to forget that Hitman 2, the sequel to one of the most unexpectedly good games of 2016, will also be available.  More importantly, it'll have its very own co-op mode!

It's no secret Smash TV is one of my all time favorite games. I've got a design doc in my back pocket I'll some day pull the trigger on for my take on a modern day remake. Until that time developer aQuadiun are releasing their take on the classic twin stick shooter with Galaxy Champions TV, coming to Steam on September 6th.