Viva el verano! Call of Juarez: The Cartel is being shipped out this summer, but so far a solid release date has not been set by Ubisoft - at least, not publicly. Luckily, our friendly retailers have tipped us off. Best Buy and Gamestop have it listed as June 28th for the United States. Amazon UK shows July 01st as the PAL release date, which seems to confirm the former.
Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
It looks like the survival horror puzzle platformer (try saying that ten-times-fast) simply titled Catherine is going to offer a co-op mode of sorts. Our early reports are pretty vague, but it looks like completing the game will unlock a colosseum mode where you and a friend work together against the forces of the Catherine Universe.
It's another late spring weekend, but the Co-Optimus staffers are too busy playing lots of games to enjoy the great outdoors. As usual, recent releases are quite popular on the weekend's gaming buffet. LA Noire, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, and Brink make multiple appearances, as does Sony's venerable handheld, the PSP.
Earlier this week, ArenaNet announced the seventh profession (out of eight total) for Guild Wars 2: the Engineer. The last profession announcement (the Thief) was at PAX East, over two months back, so we're certainly excited to finally get a new reveal. Engineers will use offensive turrets, bombs, mines, flamethrowers (yes, flamethrowers!) and the like to wound their foes, but will also have the ability to drop healing turrets and throw around beneficial elixirs to support their allies. Their unique profession mechanic (besides turrets) will be Kits (in Weapon and Backpack varieites) which allow them to greatly customize their playstyle and can be swapped in and out as the situation warrants.
The latest developer diary for the Hunted: The Demon's Forge delves into an oft overlooked aspect of games: sound design. How do they get arrows to sound like arrows? Sadly, they don't shoot arrows inches away from a microphone. How do they get sloppy sound of a gory kill shot? Believe it or not, you just can't kill stuff on a sound stage, at least not in this country. Find out little secrets like these and more in this enlightening 4 minute video. There's plenty of in-game footage, as well.
Do you like a little friendly competition in your co-op? Are you all for the team until there's a scoreboard? Do you steal kills to pad your stats, blasting baddies over teammates' shoulders? If any of these apply to you, the scoring system of F.E.A.R. 3 may just scratch your competitive itch, while still letting you play cooperatively. It appears that after each mission players will be evaluated on things like Aggression, Tactics, and Aptitude. The player with the higher score will earn bragging rights and be declared the "Favorite Son." Players can earn bonus points by completing skill challenges. Hopefully, this scoring system will bring an element of replayability to the campaign.
The newest system update for the Xbox 360 is being rolled out over the next couple of weeks (starting yesterday). It brings two new features to the table. First, PayPal functionality is being added, allowing users to link their PayPal accounts to their Xbox Live accounts, enabling PayPal as a billing option for Xbox 360 wares and such (note, however, that this functionality will not be available in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, or Taiwan).
The Creative Director of Brink recently responded to the MTV Multiplayer Blog's "Developer Pop Quiz", and while the results aren't entirely a surprise - we couldn't help but agree with at least one of his answers. When asked about the most important thing that has happened to gaming in the last 10 years, he replied, "co-op" (in not so few words).
Epic Games have just announces that a brand new trailer for Gears of War 3 focusing on the game's story and campaign will debut next week during Champions League Final Match at approximately 9:45 p.m. GMT around the world, and during Game 6 of the NBA Playoffs on TNT in the U.S.
Arrowhead Games have announced the next piece of Magicka DLC, this time its a small update to the game adding a new character model and two new weapons with a Japanese theme.
You wouldn't have to gaze into a crystal ball or read tea leaves to see this one coming. Another LEGO Harry Potter game is coming this holiday season. Imaginatively titled LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7, the game will chronicle the last three books (or four movies) in building block form. It's being released for pretty much every system known to Muggles: Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS, 3DS, PC, and even for the NGP.
