It was voted our most anticipated co-op title for the rest of the year, so it's totally awesome news that Amazon is running a Left 4 Dead pre-order promotion. 

While top down shooters seem to be a dime a dozen these days, fans of side scrolling shooters like the classic game Gradius or the more recent Omega 5 haven't been so lucky.  Enter Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer.  I can't even begin to understand how to pronounce that, but my guess is it sounds something like saying Soldier Him Less Storm with a mouth full of bratwurst and beer.

Maybe a few of you have heard of LittleBigPlanet. We've covered the game quite a few times, and the game looks like a unique take on the idea of co-op. The game's all about customization and building things as a team, so it's unsurprising that Media Molecule (the dev team behind LBP) is doing all it can to get the fans involved. This time, they're holding a contest to create a skin for SackBoy, the main character of LittleBigPlanet.

It was the third most wanted game for the rest of 2008 by the Co-Optimus staff, and the release for the 360 is just around the corner.  So what do you need to know about Rock Band 2?

If you read our Castle Crashers Review, and have been following the game's release, you know things haven't exactly been smooth.  The good news is, they are working on a fix, but you already knew that.   If you followed the game as closely as we did before launch, you may have noticed a few characters and weapons were missing.  Where is the Chainsaw?  What about the Necromancer?  What about the King?

Hopefully, I'll still be here after bumping a news item over the great Top 5 article by bapenguin and AgtFox, but I've been itching all day to announce Circuit City's deals on co-op games this week.

There are literally over a dozen AAA Co-Op titles coming out from now until the year's end.  While most of them have the monicker of "2" after the title, there are a handful of fresh new franchises on the rise.  We've listed our top 5 most anticipated co-op titles for the rest of the year.  Do you think your wallet can handle it?

Castle Crashers has finally arrived, and we couldn't be happier.  Is the game worthwhile?  Do the network issues break the deal?  Or does the appeal of hilarious hacking and slashing knights swinging swords and slinging spells overcome these obstacles?  Read our review to find out!

As promised in our last column, we'll take a look at Sega's Altered Beast this week.  First gaining fame as an arcade hit, Altered Beast eventually got released for the Sega's classic Genesis system.  Back before Sonic (it's hard to remember back that far, isn't it?), Altered Beast was the pack-in game for the Genesis.  You'd better hope you sprang for the extra controller, because Altered Beast was a co-op fan's dream.

Wow!  We are already upon week 4 of the HUD (I know I missed 3, I was at PAX - sue me), and the questions just keep getting better and better.  What's on tap this week?

This is a story from Joystiq where they sat down with Brian Intihar, Insomiac's Community Manager (and former 1Up/EGM Editor we might add), at PAX 08 last week.  They asked him a bunch of questions about the upcoming Resistance 2 game and at the very end there are a few questions about the co-op part of the game.

Over at the official Call of Duty forums, Treyarch developer "JD_2020" has posted an explanation regarding co-op gameplay on the Nintendo Wii version of the upcoming Pacific theater shooter.