After a few months in the doldrums of Winter, the Co-Op Monthly Round-Up is back bringing you all the co-op news and info you may have missed in a surprisingly busy February. What did the month of purification bring us? How about a brand new handheld system in the PlayStation Vita and major releases like Syndicate, The Darkness II, and Twisted Metal.
When I turned 7, my Dad threw me a Star Wars themed birthday party. This consisted of all the kids dressing up as Star Wars characters and chasing my Dad (playing Darth Vader) around the garden with rolled up newspapers. Nothing I have seen since has come close in terms of re-enacting the original Star Wars trilogy (certainly not the second trilogy), but Kinect Star Wars has the potential. Two new preview videos have surfaced that give an impression of what the game will provide.
Co-Opticast Episode 82 is here. Our new quad of hosts are finally hitting their stride as they manage to talk about all the co-op goodness they've been playing. From Syndicate to the Vita there's lots of impressions to be had. Then it's on to user blogs to discuss what we want from our games. After that it's onto the news and the biggest announcement, or rather hype, Borderlands 2. Yes we spend 30 minutes talking about a 3 minute trailer. Not really. Maybe.
As one of the worst kept secrets in a long time, the Syndicate franchise has gotten a reboot as a FPS. Developed by Starbreeze many nostalgic gamers were disappointed to learn of the more action oriented direction. But perhaps this was for the better? We go hands on with the single player campaign and deep co-op mode in our review.
We've got three trailers today for Mass Effect 3 each bringing something new to the table. The first trailer was revealed this week during The Walking Dead, it was a 60 second live action trailer that sets the mood for the game. Yes the reapers are coming, yes Commander Sheppard is the only one that can stop them, yes violins are sad.
I don't know why companies still insist on creating code names for their products before coming out with the official title; I was happy with the Nintendo Piddle, before they changed it to the Wii. The latest name change surrounds the spiritual successor to Panzer Dragoon. Project Draco shall now been known as Crimson Dragon. Along with a new name, some equally new details are beginning to appear about this elusive exclusive for the Xbox 360 Kinect.
It was only last summer we showed you the process of renting games from a RedBox kiosk. Hopefully a few of you have gone out and given it a try - it's a good way to check out a game for a relatively cheap fee on a whim. If you haven't actually done it, perhaps this week you will. Why? They're offering one night's free rental.
3D gaming and movies seem to be all the rage these days. Every big theatrical release touts it's 3D viewing and several big games tout their compatibility with 3D on the PlayStation 3 and PC. Most home 3D viewing is done using a system that requires a set of big glasses that use alternating eyes to give the impression of 3D. But there's another method that's a lot less expensive and a lot closer to the experience you'd find in a movie theater - and that's polarized. Over the past few weeks I've been using a new monitor from AOC that uses this method to display 3D images.
And people are complaining about zombies plaguing the video game industry…
It's a little slow this week. The only truly new co-op release is a third person shooter. I'll give you a couple hints, and you see if you can tell me where the game takes place. Hint #1: It's set in the future. Hint #2: Robots. Hint #3: Said future robots, or "frobots," as I like to call them, are becoming too human. Hint #4: It's not a Blade Runner game (you wish!).
I've been putting hours upon hours into Syndicate lately, gearing up for our review which will go live tomorrow. Along side the single player, I played a ton of the game's co-op campaign this weekend on the Xbox 360, but ran into a few issues I thought I'd give people a heads up on before the review.
Iron Clad Games, developers of Sins of a Solar Empire, have announced their next game. It's called Sins of a Dark Age and is a brand new game that's not exactly related to the aforementioned space series of a similar name. Set in a fantasy world the game looks to combine Defense of the Ancients (think League of Legends) style gameplay with more traditional RTS mechanics.
