Me oh my, it's a good season for beat 'em ups. Arc System Works' Double Dragon: Revive is just around the corner, and Dotemu's Absolum recently landed on all platforms but the beleaguered Xbox. Not only is Absolum garnering piles of critical praise, it has also sold over 200,000 copies in its first week of release. That's an impressive debut for Dotemu's first game that isn't a remake or a sequel to an existing franchise. It certainly helps that the game is a gorgeous 2D beat 'em up with 2-player local and online co-op.

Are we alive here at Co-Optimus? Yes, we're alive! We've just been super busy with work and saving the world and stuff. But no matter how busy we are, we still appreciate a good deal. That's what caught my eye with Humble Bundle's Momcore Games For a Busy Life Bundle. The bundle includes up to ten Steam games for $10, including the cooperative APICO and Onsen Master from Whitethorn Games. Not too shabby!

We counted 69 (nice!) releases last month in our calender across all platforms. We know: Its a theme across many of these updates that we focus on the huge amount of games hitting store shelves. But time and time again we are baffled at how much there is to play these days. So many really good games both with and without co-op functionality are vaiing for our attention. It is literally impossible to play them all which in turn makes us a bit sad. All those adventures we will never have. All that joy we will never experience with our friends. Just because we are limited by such mudane things like time and money...

As one of the last remaining big gaming conventions, Germany's gamescom was once again the place to be in August. Okay, that's a bit of a lie. There were already too many people there. So instead we chose to just watch from the sidelines the unveiling of long-awaited titles like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV and Darksiders 4. Witness the surprise announcements of Daimon Blades (read our preview!), LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and others. And read all of the new information for upcoming games (see for example our preview of Hela!) that came down the old press-release-chute.

French development house Streum On Studio just announced their newest title: Daimon Blades. It’s a first-person slasher set inside an ancient temple filled to the brim with unique environments and hordes of monster to slay, along with online co-op for up to four players. The developers, however, also want to make the game enjoyable for l...

We - a lonely mouse - find a clearing ahead in the lush, beautiful forest. Surrounded by the towering trees, a pond piques our interest with faded out runes floating high above it. Why are they there? What can we do with them? A conveniently placed fixture is hanging from a tree branch above right into the middle of all those triangles. T...

July saw the release of a couple of highly anticipated Remasters/Enhanced Editions/whateveryouwanttocallit featuring a co-op mode: System Shock 2, Stronghold: Crusader and Neverwinter Nights 2. However, it seems like such things are not created equal. While Nightdive Studios did a banger job with System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster and FireFlys Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition was also well received, Aspyr Media didn’t hit the mark with Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition. The reviews show that They basically just released the same old game with no fixes or improvements to decade old problems. And it’s even worse now, since they added more than a couple new bugs. Hopefully they can turn the ship around in the coming weeks/month.

If there's one thing that PC gamers and keyboard users in general can agree upon, it's that cleaning keyboards is a pain. Air dusters are expensive and won't remove some of the debris, plus, the longer you use the duster, the more it feels like the can is going to explode. Am I the only one who worries about that? The can gets so cold, dude! Well, the folks at FurZapper have an alternative that can clean keyboards and clothing alike: LintZapper.

June was, as we call it in the industry, quite a month. We did expect it to hit hard with over a dozen Summer Games Fest showcases and Steam Next Fest afterwards. That's always a busy time. But the amount of titles with co-op that were announced this year? Very high.

Windblown is the game that answers the question, "What would a Hades-style game from the makers of Dead Cells be like?" Since debuting on Steam Early Access last fall, Motion Twin's latest roguelike has already received several updates. Today's "Gift Update" overhauls the game's Gift (passive upgrades) system, adds new gifts and weapons, and more. From the sound of it, the update doesn't blow!

When it comes to video games, people tend to think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a beat ‘em up franchise, but the heroes in a half shell have appeared in many other genres as well. A few years ago, a mobile game developer called Super Evil Megacorp had the brilliant idea of making a TMNT roguelike. After first releasing it on Apple Arcad...

We always love when a game is listed as "co-op" on the digital store. Sometimes, however, games with the co-op tag end up not actually having cooperative multiplayer. This can happen when the game's developer or publisher mistakenly considers all multiplayer to be co-op, or when they consider team-based competitive multiplayer to be co-op. When that happens, we'll say the game is Not So Co-op.