This week, Gears of War developer Epic Games has given its collective blessing to release details and impressions of the welcome Horde Mode addition to their latest upcoming masterpiece.

Bungie's Community Manager, Brian Jarrad, sat down with Joystiq to answer some lingering questions about the recent announcement of Halo 3: Recon.  He explains that the game will have 4-player co-op in the campaign and that the game is built upon the Halo 3 engine, obviously refined to match up more with the passing of time from the last release.

You could probably put that title in the "duh" category pretty easily considering any game played via co-op is better than playing it alone.  Am I right?  Kotaku comes to us with some co-op experiences from playing the game at the recent Tokyo Game Expo.  They basically say co-op is far more fun in this game than playing alone, although it does rely on some gimmick gameplay where you get across chasms together and they make an analogy to ICO with that.

Dan Aykroyd told a Dallas radio station this morning that the upcoming co-op friendly Ghostbusters game has been picked up by Atari (just recently wholly bought by Infogrames) and will be released in 2009.  Although there is no official word from the developers or the supposed publisher, chances are good that Aykroyd isn't making this up.  

As it may be clear to you, Castle Crashers has claimed the "co-op game of the week" title for me in a previous week. Though, as I've said many times, I almost always play the game at some point in the week, every week. Often, the more I look into a game, the more there seems to be, and Castle Crashers certainly fits this description. I mean, the first time I wrote a "This Week in Co-Op" column about Castle Crashers, I was impressed with the fun co-op aspects and the games pure joy and humor. However, after a week dedicated to playing Castle Crashers (and basically nothing else), I can see what is even more impressive about the game: it is an incredible time sink, in the best possible ways.

International Talk Like A Pirate Day was last month, but it's not too late to celebrate.  This week, another pirate game (about pirates, not pirated, matey!) hits Xbox Live Arcade.  Age of Booty is today's co-op release.  Up to four scurvy dogs can play locally, and a full fleet of eight "Cap'n Colorbeard" types can play together online.  The co-op is said to be squad based, but still, that's better'n walkin' the plank, eh?  Each villainous captain will control but one vessel, making good strategy more valuable than a handful of Spanish dubloons.  The game's rated "E", so I guess the booty must be of the monetary varrrrriety, morrrrr'es the pity!  If you do download this title, keep an eye out for green clad flying boys, ya heaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr?!

Castle Crashers is a nice little game, probably at or near the top of most people's list of best XBLA titles.  However, as we've previously reported, it has been plagued with connectivity issues.  A patch to resolve these problems has been in the works ever since the game was released, and now that patch is one step closer to reality.  The Castle Crashers Development Blog reveals that a patch build has been sent to Microsoft for certification.  If all goes well, we may be just a few weeks from public release.  Then, everyone can join in on the amazing old-school co-op action.  If you've held out for the patch to purchase Castle Crashers, though, you might just want to hold off a little bit longer.  We do like to have contests and giveaways, after all...

So, as you may have heard, there's this fantasy game coming out next week.  To say that Fable 2 is highly anticipated is a bit of an understatement.  Just like an appetizer before the main course, here are a few little news bits to keep your hunger for Fable 2 in check for another 6 days.

With Saint's Row 2 hitting store shelves today, we thought we'd tidy up some related news to the 2 player co-op title.

I'll admit.  I'm a man who craves immediate gratification.  Upon seeing the latest Diablo 3 footage from Blizzcon of the recently announced Wizard class teaming up with the previously announced Barbarian; all I can say is....I WANT IT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!

A week has come and gone, and it's time to announce the winners in our Duke Nukem 3D Caption Contest.  If you haven't had the chance, you can check out all the entries here in the original news post.  I'd be nice and say that all the entries were great, blah blah, but I ask you, What Would Duke Do?  Would he be nice?  Nope, he'd laugh at a few of them, and use a rocket launcher on all the rest.  So, without any further delay, here are your winners, in no particular order...

Shhhh.  I have a secret to tell you.  Do you want to be the coolest kid on the co-op block when Fable 2 launches?  You know, when everyone joins your game on day 1 and looks at your character they will say - "Hey, where did you get that?"  I'll let you in on a super secret site to give you one of 5 exclusive pieces of content for the game.