The stories for this week:

EA Sports has made a big deal about Madden NFL 2010's new online co-op mode.  It appears though that EA's other big football game this year will also feature cooperative play, at least if the official achievement list is anything to go by.

My, how things have changed since the original Space Invaders debuted more than thirty years ago!  Looking back, the game seems so simple, it's hard to believe it was a national obsession.  Move your ship beneath aliens, push the fire button, repeat, that's all there is to it.  When Space Invaders Extreme was released on Xbox Live Arcade, I knew I had to get it for nothing more than nostalgic purposes.  I was curious, too, at how my kids would react to it.  In this era of open world gameplay, realistic 3D graphics, and cinematic storytelling, would young gamers get bored too quickly? The first test was to see if the kids would be interested when I was playing.  After school one evening, we all went our separate ways: one kid to feed the dog, the other to his room to play with his toys.  I fired up the Xbox 360 and started up Space Invaders Extreme.  The walls started pounding in time with the deep bass of the EXTREME techno beat.  I quickly turned it down before things started falling off the walls.  (Anyone else notice thatSIE is louder than most other games?)  Even just a few seconds of the loud music was enough to get my youngest son running to investigate.  He immediately perched on the couch, entranced by the hypnotic action.

It seems summer has kept the Co-Optimus staff on the road, as it's been weeks since the whole crew was here.

We've already covered a bit about Madballs: Babo Invasion.  We know the game will sport a four player online co-op mode putting players in the role of classic 80's franchise Madballs.  Today though we've learned of an interesting option the game will allow on the Xbox 360 version of the game.  

  This month in our Beyond Co-Op Reviews we take a look at quite a few solid titles. We compare the open worlds of Prototype against inFAMOUS; we look at what happens when Plants and Zombies mix. We also check out Knights in the Nightmare, Bionic Commando and the latest Indiana Jones title. ...

The demo version for Trine has just hit the interwebs weighing in at around 500MB.  Trine, as you might remember, is a three player local co-op puzzle platformer.  Players are put in the role of one of three characters, each with unique abilities to solve environmental puzzles and move on through the levels.

Earlier this week Microsoft held an event to showcase some upcoming holiday products including Windows 7, Zune HD, and numerous Xbox 360 titles.  We've already written up some extensive coverage of Halo 3: ODST, which if you haven't already, you should go check out.  Despite ODST being a highlight of sorts, there were other interesting things worth mentioning

About a month ago we told you that Croteam was hard at work on a new Serious Sam title based on a brand new graphical engine.  A new Serious Sam game was announced today, but not being developed by Croteam, instead new developer Devolver Digital.  The game is called Serious Sam HD, and it's a remake of the original on the new Serious Engine 3.  

You have to admire the folks over at Epic.  Already, just over half a year since release, Gears of War 2 its fourth title update.  Not too many games get this level of attention, and we're glad to see that there's a lot of co-op goodness to be had in this latest update.  From Epic's official Update 4 Release Notes:

One of the coolest features in the original Army of Two was the weapon shop.  Not only could you buy new guns to use in your co-op missions, you could upgrade and customize the guns, even add gold plating.  Purchasing and upgrading weapons are cool, but what if you could design one from scratch?  Now you can in the latest contest from EA.

Ruffian Studios doesn't want to get into a pissing match with Realtime Worlds, the original developer of Crackdown.  Of course part of that reason is so many members of the Ruffian team that are working on the game's sequel were actually AT Realtime Worlds when they made the game.  How many?   Well almost half.