When gamers look at a game, one of the things they may overlook is the basics of design - the game's mechanics. Though we notice the potential of how a great game is great, we may not know exactly why a great game works so well. A full analysis of the gameplay mechanics for Left 4 Dead by Full Sail grad student Paul Goodman and course director Adam Greenwood-Eriksen brings to the surface the key design elements. A comprehensive look from Left 4 Dead creators give a solid nod to Co-Op being key to the games success a bit closer to the surface.

Today is January 3rd, a day in which famed author of the Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, would have turned 119 years old.  Every year it is a tradition amongst fans to celebrate by toasting to this man for his great literary works and creating a fictional universe loved by millions of people.  

Consider yourself blocked!

Indie developer Soldak Entertainment's Din's Curse is getting an expansion pack.  The randomly generated dungeon crawler impressed us, earning a 4 out of 5 in our review from last April.  Din's Curse is a Diablo-esque game that has no hard limit to the number of possible co-op players.  You can add folks until the game's frame rate crawls.  

Since this is the first MMO Co-Opportunities of the new year, we'll be looking at some of the anticipated MMOs of 2011 as well as their potential co-opportunities.

At the end of last year, a group of independant developers for the Xbox Live Indie Channel banned together to help promote some quality titles including a few co-op ones like Hypership Out of Control and Alpha Squad.  We had pointed the promo out in an effort to help with exposure.  There's been a lot of back and forth with the XBLIG channel devs and Microsoft, many wondering just how supportive the company really is of these titles.  For some, they simply felt ignored.

Though the gameplay is repetitive, and the challenge level is minimal, X-Men Arcade is still a lot of fun to play. It is certainly not the greatest co-op beat-em-up ever, but it's one of the few that allows more than four players, even when compared to other modern downloadable games.

2010 is coming to a close and it was another great year for co-op gamers.  2011 looks to continue the trend with tons of great big releases.  Whatever you do this New Years weekend, we hope it involves co-op gaming with friends and family - that's what the Co-Optimus staff will be doing. 

The excellently awesome Castle Crashers has reached a gaming milestone.  The Xbox LIVE arcade title hit 2 million players on the leaderboards over Christmas weekend.  That's not including PSN players.  For those of you who don't know, 'excellently' awesome is the sixth highest level of awesome.  It only gets awesomer from there!  Official* Top Five Awesome Rankings from least to greatest: incredibly, fantastically, moderately (weird, I know) , co-operatively, and finally, epically. Awesomely awesome is the worst level of awesome, for obvious reasons (If you're oblivious to the obvious, see inverse ninja thoery.)

AT&T is running a very co-op friendly deal on their Windows Phone 7 devices, something we looked at briefly when it was announced thanks to its Xbox Live integration.  We've been hearing good things about its marketplace, with an ever growing catelog of games, it won't be long now till we start seeing some cooperative titles to play.  

The player experience debate seems to be the topic that divides co-op fans the most. Is the story experience so important in some games that a complete absence of co-op is acceptable...or even a necessity? In the case of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Naughty Dog thinks so.

More DLC is coming out for the 6 player co-op title Castlevania Harmony of Despair.  We like this game, giving it a 4 out of 5 in our co-op review.  You and five friends can team up to blitz attack maps inspired by levels from previous titles.  Two new chapters are due out in January.  The first chapter will be based off of the Catacombs level of the classic Castlevania Symphony of the Night.  Details will be coming soon on the second level.