The stories for this week:

The weekend is finally upon us, and after the week I had, it couldn't be more welcome.  Here's what the staff is up to this weekend.

GameTrailers has a funny new video that shows off some melee combat moves in Resident Evil 5. The entire video is set in an alley, where Chris and Sheva take turns kicking, punching, and shooting zombies until they stop moving.

Slowly but surely the Playstation Network is building up a collection of co-op games for you and your friends to enjoy. The latest addition to this collection is an update of a PC shoot ‘em up game that was released a year ago, Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer (roughly pronounced zoh-dner ex, him-mill styurhmer), or Mercenary-X: Heaven Stormer.

So far, we haven't seen any prominent complaints in our forums about the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV, released December 2nd. Arguably, most of our users are console gamers; so this isn't much of a surprise, considering that the console versions have been on the market for months already.

The Gears of War franchise is a little bit like the Wii: it just keeps printing money.  Not only is it one of the best co-op series on any platform, but it is selling like snowcones in a heatwave.  It just makes sense that Epic will be working on a new Gears game, if they aren't already, right?

The upcoming Resident Evil game looks to have a prominent character in the series kick the bucket.  Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu has run an ad for Resident Evil 5, call Biohazard in Japan, featuring the details.  We aren't going to spoil it for you, but the above picture features the character's name.  Of course, this could just be a cruel trick on Capcom's part, or perhaps it's somehow integrated into the story.  Maybe the goal of the game is to use the Umbrella virus to bring this charcter back to life?  

I spy with my little eye a BAPenguin avatar!  Can you see it?  The Good Major has brought word that Xbox 360 owners can download a neat and free app called the SnowGlobe which puts your friends list inside a..uh...snow globe.  Watch as the helplessly try to get out of your maniacal trap; tapping on the glass, screaming for help, and desperately gasping for air.  Ok, so I made that last part up, but you can shake it and watch it snow.  White X360-Mas indeed.

We've been covering a bunch of Call of Duty news in the past few days, and with good reason.  Tonight is our monthly Xbox Live Co-Op night and the game of choice is the aforementioned title.  We'll be kicking things off around 7:30 PM Eastern and playing until...well until we get yelled at by our wives. 

Here at Co-Optimus, we look back fondly on the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games.  TMNT IV: Turtles in Time is one of my favorite co-op experiences ever, as you'll recall from our coverage in Co-Op Classics.  If you look at the last few Turtles games, though, the experience was... not so great.  Most of the Turtles titles I've played recently were either single player (the horror) or just mind numbingly repetitive.

The other day, we posted a news story where we reported that Lord of the Rings: Conquest only had one Co-Op achievement.  Sad news, to be sure!  Luckily, our good friends at Pandemic sent along the official, complete list of both Achievements and Trophies, along with the clarification that any and all achievements related to the campaign are able to be earned in cooperative play by both players!

Earlier today, Nick posted Gears 2 versus Left 4 Dead, a comparison of two of this season's hottest co-op games.