This week the Xbox LIVE Summer of Arcade keeps the ball rolling.  We'll also get some free DLC for the Ark as well as a kid's game.

This month for MMO Co-Opportunities we look at Dragon Nest, a newly open-beta'ed F2P MMO with an action twist and the recently announced various editions of Star Wars: the Old Republic. We also visit the world of MOBAs.

This weekend's real-world headlines have been pounding the buzzword "compromise" into the skulls of hapless newswatchers. But what does it really mean to compromise? For Splash Damage, it means finding the right balance of story experience and gameplay experience in what many have deemed an overly ambitious blend - the quasi-campaign we call Brink.

This month's CCV topic revolves around the summer lull. We want to know what you do during these slow months for gaming. Do you catch up on your backlog of games? Replay your favorite titles with friends? Enjoy the outdoors or play more board games? Hit up the user blog section and let us know!

I'll be honest - I've been hounding THQ PR for months now trying to get any kind of details out of them on Warhammer 40K: Space Marine and its co-op mode.  The game is a ltitle more than a month away and we've still not heard a peep about its cooperative offerings, and honestly, that makes me nervous.  Now it seems a Gamestop Pre-Order promotion for the title may have leaked a few details regarding co-op.

That's one good looking board game

July was a fairly quiet month for co-op gamers.  We only saw a handful or releases - the only AAA titles being Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon and Call of Juarez: The Cartel.  Outside of that things were calm, news was mostly straight forward.  

Good news for all you folks that either don't have an Xbox 360 or prefer your twin-stick shooters on your Playstation 3: Warhammer 40k: Kill Team is due out on PSN next Tuesday (August 2nd). We reviewed the XBLA version and found it a satisfying co-op game, though not without its flaws. The PSN version sounds to be virtually unchanged from the XBLA one, with two-player local same-screen co-op . It features four classes as well as weapon upgrades and a perk system. The PSN version will also be $10.

Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.

Seems like another indoor type weekend for most of the Co-Opticrew this weekend.  Some of our inboxes were graced with a certain Alpha invite - so we'll be checking that out.  Sorry, no comments from us as we're under NDA!  There's still plenty of other gaming goodness with games like Catherine and League of Legends.

You want to know what we're going to be up against in RAGE?  We'll show you.  The latest video focuses on the different enemy types and the animations that bring them to life.  One can't help but think of Borderlands or Fallout when watching this video.  Similar to these other wasteland titles, the early enemy factions consist of varying bandit clans.  Each clan differs in combat style and physical appearance.  Then there are mutants to deal with.  You can see a rather large mutie in the above image.  Luckily, it appears that you will have some sort of magazine-fed rocket launcher at your disposal.  

You may have seen Crimson Alliance lurking on your Xbox LIVE dashboard.  It's the free bonus game you'll receive if you buy all of the Summer of Arcade titles.  This may lead you to believe that the game is a tacked-on after thought, but you couldn't be more wrong.  I got a chance to play Crimson Alliance at E3, and it plays as well as (or better than) any other downloadable dungeon crawler that's crossed the digital landscape of late.  You can read my hands-on preview here.