For a game I haven’t even played yet, I’m a bit obsessed with Monaco. My backlog is preventing me from springing into a new game just yet, but soon I hope to be plunging the depths of Monaco’s heist-based, co-op driven goodness. With friends, of course.

One of the more fascinating things I’ve read about the game recently has to do with its community design. The creator of the game, Andy Schatz, faced an interesting challenge — how do you promote good behavior from your online community? While most online games do excel with a bit of proper teamwork, co-op based multiplayer always has a bit of a risk. Once players stop working together, the game breaks down. That’s why most games offer a bit of a chance for players to become a lone wolf, running and gunning as they see fit, with no care of what their team is doing. So how did Schatz address this issue in a way that few have accomplished before?

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I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting older, have less time, or because most multiplayer games are feeling pretty homogenous these days, but I’m barely able to dive into multiplayer matches any longer. What used to keep me up long into the morning hours before school or work just feels like a chore. Fighting guys that use the same cheap tactics, using the same abilities or progression trees that started in Modern Warfare — none of these things interest me any longer. Even Halo 4, a game whose multiplayer I loved, only had my attention for a few weeks. It seems like CS:GO is the only multiplayer game I can dive into a few times per month.

If other players must be involved, what I love these days is a good co-op/horde mode. It’s far better to kill with friends than it is to kill your friends (virtually speaking, lest I end up on an FBI watch list). I’ve had my eyes on Monaco for this very reason. Besides the fact that it’s a co-op heist game (which we talked about on a podcast a few months back), I just really want a game that allows me to yell at my friends.

But beyond that, my most beloved thing at the moment is still tried and true single player gaming.

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If you thought February was rough on your wallet, then I have some bad news for you: March is going to ruin your finances. Just to give you an idea, for the poll choices, I like to select the noteworthy games for the month and my original list was 12 and I had to trim a few off to make this thing look less like ALL the March releases.

It all begins today with Simcity and Tomb Raider, both of which are garnering stellar reviews. I plan on picking up Tomb Raider a little further down the road, but Simcity is already pre-ordered and ready to go. I literally can’t wait to start plopping buildings and building my own version of Florida in a digital form. The GamerSushi SimCity Region will never be the same once my chuckleheaded Sim-citizens start wreaking havoc.

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When Dead Space 3 was first announced at E3 last year, it was met with a chorus of skepticism. With the addition of co-op and a revamped combat system, this formerly slow-paced horror game looked more like a Gears of War knock-off. Although Visceral games has said repeatedly that Dead Space 3 will still adhere to the series’ roots, developers are known to embellish a little.

The final act of a trilogy carries a lot of expectations, especially when the people making them add a bunch of new features and try to rework tried and true conventions. How does Dead Space 3 fare under the microscope?

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A common concern with horror games is that adding another person into the mix will negate the scares, kind of like watching a scary movie with a friend and making fun of it to lessen the tension. While Dead Space 3 might seem like more of an action game with two players tearing up necromorphs together, there are a couple neat tricks that developers Visceral Games pulls to make the experience a little more frightening.

Throughout the game, the co-op partner playing as second banana John Carver will experience hallucinations that the person playing Isaac Clarke won’t see. It’s up to Clarke to protect Carver as he works through these visions. This is a pretty cool way to make co-op a bit more difficult as during these moments players can’t help each other defeat the enemies they are fighting, meaning that Isaac needs to hold off the hordes by himself while Carver does the same.

Communication is key during these parts, and this is one of the many ways that co-op feels integral to Dead Space 3. While there are the standard puzzles like holding a piece of equipment down while one player climbs up or re-routing computer programs simultaneously, going through Carver’s co-op exclusive missions make the co-op campaign of Dead Space 3 that much more enticing.

Has anyone played Dead Space 3? Are you doing it co-op, or are planning to do so?

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve made what amounts to a Herculean effort in terms of my gaming backlog. That means that I’ve utilized the strength of ten mortal men to play lots and lots of video games, and the pile of judgmental game titles, physical and hypothetical, have lessened their gaze of fury, demanding to be played.

Basically, I’m having fun.

The most recent target of my gaming swathe has been Borderlands 2, the ludicrous FPS action RPG that can barely support any more capital letter descriptors. Nick and myself have been tearing through this game like nobody’s business, and just this past weekend managed to smite the Warrior, the game’s final fiery boss (with some help, of course). Naturally, one of the biggest draws of any dungeon crawler like Borderlands happens to be the massive amount of loot that you have access to, and according to legend, the Warrior drops some mighty fine bonuses.

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Welcome to “Stop the Presses” Thursday here on GamerSushi where we collect the biggest news stories of this week so you can give us your thoughts on them. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Just when you think the game industry couldn’t dig themselves any further into a misogynistic hole, out comes Deep Silver with their Zombie Bait Edition of Dead Island Riptide, boasting a bust of a zombified woman in a bikini. When I say bust, I mean bust: this is just a woman’s torso with no head or arms, and a Union flag-emblazoned bikini barely covering her breasts.

Special editions of games are no strangers to large, tacky statues, but I can’t think of anyone with half of a social life who would want to proudly display a severed torso in their living room. The bust is 31cm high, which means that this is one prominent piece of tawdry memorabilia. According to Deep Silver’s press release, the statue is meant to call to mind a grotesque version of a classic Roman torso sculpture.

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Hello, gaming friends, and welcome back to GamerSushi Votes, our now annual tradition of asking you, the community, what you felt were the stand-out titles of the year.

For the first day of voting, I thought we’d tuck into the best multiplayer of the year, which I’ve expanded to include co-op because I’ve spent more time playing with people rather than against them this year. Mass Effect 3 lead this charge, having a surprisingly strong and deep multiplayer mode that has been repeatidly expanded on and I’m still playing to this day. Add that to plethora of other games that encourage working with your friends, and you have a very strong year for co-op.

So, choose a selection from the list below, or let us know what your favorite multiplayer/co-op of 2012 was in the comments!

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The news that Dead Space 3 would have optional co-op has been met with a giant “Meh” from both the Internet and the two resident Dead Space fans (myself and Mitch) here at GamerSushi HQ. We like Dead Space for the isolation, the fevered combat and creepy atmosphere. It’s difficult to understand how Dead Space 3 can replicate the best parts of the previous two games with a buddy next to you.

Well, we might have shrugged indifferently too soon because Visceral has been cooking up something pretty unique for us and it is quite intriguing, even for a skeptic like myself. As revealed in EGM’s preview of the game, Isaac Clarke and his new partner, John Carver, will both have terrifying hallucinations. Separately. In the demo described in the article, one player saw creepy toy soldiers, while the other saw nothing unusual. Then Carver has terrible visions of shadowy children trying to kill him, but it is all in his head. While this is going on, Isaac has to protect Carver from the necromorphs who are taking advantage of Carver’s vulnerability to attempt to slice him to pieces. If either player fails, it’s game over. Intense, no?

I have to be honest, I still don’t know if I like the idea of co-op, but good on Visceral for trying something unique. The visions remind me a bit of Eternal Darkness, an overlooked gem on the GameCube that had your character going slowly insane, resulting in scares such as your memory card being wiped or the volume on your TV being turned way up or way down. Dead Space 3′s terrors seem to be less meta than that, but it does give me hope that Dead Space 3 might still be scary to play, even with a friend. The preview doesn’t state if these are scripted events or will happen randomly, but the idea that your partner could also be your undoing is a novel one.

What say you? Does this assuage your doubts about Dead Space 3 or are you still on the fence? Comment below!

Source: EGM

Considering I’ve beaten Borderlands 2 twice and conquered the end-game raid boss known as Terramorphous, it probably comes as no surprise that I’m hungry for some Borderlands 2 DLC. Gearbox, who apparently know their target audience better than I thought, were happy to oblige with Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, a DLC adventure that takes you to the Wurmwater Flats in search of Captain Blade’s lost treasure.

Once you hit level 15 in the main game, you can take a trip out to the town of Oasis where you’ll meet your new BFF, Shade. As you might be able to tell from the title, Pirate’s Booty is, well, pirate themed, and as such you’ll be running across all sorts of re-skinned bandits and a few unique enemy types like the Anchorman and the Cursed Pirate. While the desert setting is bereft of water, the new Sandskiff will carry you ably across the sands, provided you don’t slam it into too many sandworms.

While it is fun to get back to Pandora, Pirate’s Booty is kind of lacking in payoff, although is does shine through with the classic Borderlands humor in some parts. Shade is hilariously creepy and this DLC contains two of my favorite new quest-givers, one of whom gives you a great quest riffing on DRM, “Don’t Copy that Floppy”. Unfortunately, Captain Scarlett herself is a lackluster villain, joking the entire time about how she’ll betray you, so it comes as no big surprise when she finally does. You can see the end of the DLC coming a mile off, so the feeling of running back and forth for little to no reason is more prevalent during these quests. To be fair, Handsome Jack set a high standard for villainy, but Captain Scarlett doesn’t even come close to hitting that mark.

If you’ve been hankering for more Borderlands 2 like I have, then Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty will be right up your alley. It’s a good jumping off point for Borderlands 2′s season pass, and it adds even more Badass Ranks to obtain. There’s another high-end raid boss that seems to address the ways players were able to beat Terramorphous and a brand new currency called Seraph crystals (which, to be honest, I didn’t see once during my playthrough).

Has anyone else played Pirate’s Booty? What did you think of it? Was this a good first installment for Borderlands 2 DLC?

It’s been more than half a year and I’m still plugging away at the multiplayer mode for Mass Effect 3. While the mode was a little basic to start off with, the various classes and maps that have been added to the game since release has kept its longevity going, and the new pack for Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer, Retaliation, brings a whole new enemy faction into the mix.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the news on Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer mode, Retaliation reintroduces the Collector faction from Mass Effect 2, but this time around they pack an even bigger punch. Collector captains are the brand new foes and in addition to being tougher than the regular Collector trooper, they can also release Seeker Swarms which block your power usage, something that can be downright terrifying when you’re facing down a couple Scions or a Praetorian.

New player classes have also been bundled with Retaliation, including a turian Havoc (a jetpack-using close combat class) and a volus Adept and Engineer. Yes, those little balls of asthma are now playable, and they’re just as hialrious as you expect. Watching a volus roll around and blast Collectors is quite the sight, especially considering they can’t take cover and just sort of stand behind most obstacles (which works because of their short stature). Cerberus and geth also get new types added to their lineup in the form of the whip-using Dragoon and the grenade-launching Bomber, respectively.

BioWare could have let Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer languish, but they’ve shown a surprising amount of dedication to it. They even put up a whole new web portal for stat tracking, including the brand new N7 challenges. Even though this is the last pack for multiplayer, new classes will continue to be added. While there are still server problems and synchronized kills from the large enemies continue to be frustratingly random and Vanguard-inhibiting, this new feature for the Mass Effect series is still going strong, and is a large part of why it’s staying high in my personal top ten for this year.

Is anyone else still playing ME3 multiplayer? What do you think of Retaliation? Anyone going to hop back in now?

Somehow a throw-away game mode from Call of Duty: World at War has taken on a life of its own (with its own convoluted back-story), and with every new Treyarch-produced Call of Duty game I find myself anticipating what kind of new crazy twist they’ll throw at us. The new way to slay in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2′s zombie mode is apparently a roving murder-bus, where you and three friends will go on a road trip in an armored vehicle, stopping along the way to kill the undead. There’s a new trailer, which you can check out below.

Apparently this new game mode will be an expansive sandbox for players to explore, and the driving sections in between the hubs will not just be loading screens, but another arena to fend off the living dead. There will also be a CIA vs CDC mode where the two opposing teams can grief each other indirectly; they’re not able to harm each other one on one but will be able to find other ways to indirectly cause the death of their enemies. There’s not too much more info about that mode, but it looks like the old zombie formula is being expanded on yet again.

I’m not going to lie, Treyarch’s Call of Duty games have usually hooked me in with zombie mode and Black Ops 2 looks no different. What about you guys? Are you feeling the familiar tugging on your purse-strings, or is that just a horde of shambling grotesqueries reaching for you from beyond the grave?

It’s been a little quiet around these parts for the last couple of days, but I bet you all know why: Borderlands 2, Gearbox’s follow-up to 2009′s FPS loot-fest, dropped at 9pm on Monday for me and I’ve been spending my evenings playing it since.

So far I’m having a lot of fun with it, as I really like the new Commando class (although useful assault rifles are still hard to come by for me) and the game is freaking gorgeous on my new PC. There’s a ton of customization options available to PC players, which is nice after the abortive console port of the first Borderlands. I am have screen-tearing issues occasionally, but I think that might have something to do with my settings.

Shooting-wise Borderlands 2 feels much improved over the workman-like mechanics of the first game and so far the promise of even more crazy guns is being fulfilled. My favorite weapons at this juncture are the ones that you throw like a grenade when they’re empty (complete with explosion) only to have a new one materialize in your hands. The writing is also a lot better and it feels like there might be an actual story this time. The game never stops talking to you though, as there’s always one person on your radio, jawing to you about this and that.

Now that I’ve given my thoughts about it, who here is playing Borderlands 2? What do you think of it so far? Which system did you get it for?

Insomniac, makers of Ratchet & Clank, my favorite platformer since Mario, are currently working on Fuse, which you may remember being announced as Overstrike. Fuse is a 4-player co-op 3rd person shooter, set to be released on PS3 and Xbox 360 at some point before our sun burns out. That’s not the news part of this post.

Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac, said in an interview with GameSpot:

I can’t imagine that any game we’d do from here on out will be single-player-only. The [game industry] has changed. As gamers, we have always been social, but thanks to the way technology has evolved, it’s much easier for us to play together.

Price went on to say that this doesn’t mean games will be multiplayer only, just that there will be a multiplayer component to games that would normally just be single-player. While I can’t be upset at that part, this paradigm shift that seems to be permeating throughout the industry, notably with EA, is a little bit frustrating. Some of the most popular games have been single-player only experiences and the constant denial of this by the publishers is staggering.

Am I shouting into the wind here or do you guys feel the same? I love multiplayer games, but shoehorning them into every release seems counterproductive to me. What say you?

Source: GameSpot

Valve’s crazy new addition to Team Fortress 2, the co-op mode Mann vs. Machine, launched last night, and if you had a similar experience to me, you spent most of the evening waiting in a queue for a community server because you’re too cheap to buy a Tour of Duty ticket.

If this is the first you’re hearing of Mann vs. Machine, here’s a quick rundown: you team up with five friends and fight robots. Even if you haven’t played Team Fortress proper in years, the prospect of co-op in that game is probably enough to entice you to come back (I know it worked for me). The problem last night was that, given that the mode just launched, the demand for community run servers far outpaced the supply.

To play in the official Mann Up mode and get access to the Valve servers, you need to buy a Tour of Duty ticket. When Mann vs. Machine launched last night, there were a whole bunch of Valve servers waiting for paying customers. The co-op is still free-to-play, but it has to be on community run servers, of which there were a ridiculously low number; somewhere in the neighborhood of hundreds as compared to the thousands of official servers. If you’re still confused about how Mann Up works in conjunction with Mann vs. Machine, Icrontic has a great flowchart explaining how the whole thing works.

I would have loved to play MvM last night, but the fact that you can’t even host a private server to get a game going (at least not yet, without console commands) kind of killed my enthusiasm. Well, that and the waiting an hour in queue for a community server without success. Once more unofficial servers start popping online, this hiccup will go away, but unless you’re willing to spend money to play on the Valve servers, expect Mann vs. Machine to be a less than stable experience for the first few days.

Did anyone actually manage to play this last night? If you did, what are you thoughts?

Thatgamecompany has a history of making games that bend the rules of what we traditionally associate with games, and their last PlayStation exclusive, Journey is no exception.

For the uninitiated, Journey is a two-ish hour adventure that features a unique twist on co-op: you can see you partner, and he can see you, but you can’t talk to each other, or even send PSN messages. All you can do is do little chirps at one another. Sounds strange right? It might sound even stranger that this foundation makes for one of the most emotionally resonant experiences in modern gaming. Let’s get to it.

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You might have noticed today that Dead Space 3 is in the news for comments coming from EA that they thought the first two games were “too scary”. The Internet at large, being the hyperbolic creature that it is, jumped to all sorts of conclusions about the direction the game is taking and the changes EA is forcing on it.

But is that actually what was said in the interview? Apparently not, as the headline associated with the article in question is quite different from EA’s comments. The original story over at MCV had the headline EA research said Dead Space 1&2 were too scary, but right down in the article, this is what the EA rep being interviewed, Laura Miele, actually said:

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Guys, we are getting actual news™ out of San Deigo Comic Con, and I am so excited. I thought that we were going to be dead in the water until September, but I’m glad to have been proven wrong.

If any of you played the original Borderlands, then you may remember the challenges the game presented you with as little notifications that popped up and then quickly went away. It was a small distraction, but most of us probably never paid attention to them beacause they weren’t that well integrated. Borderlands 2 looks to change that with Badass Ranks, which will incentivize players to complete challenges by giving them new ways to beef up their stats.

For every Badass Rank you’ll get tokens, and those tokens can be used to improve your character in various ways. The best part is, improvements gained from the ranks carry over your account, meaning that if you give one character +10% to health regeneration or something, every subsequent character you create will have that ability. It’s a great way to promote replaying the game without feeling like you’re starting from square one every time. Of course, purists can turn off both Badass ranks and the buffs if they so desire. Badass Ranks sound like an awesome addition, but that’s not all.

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In what’s sure to be a howling good time, Assassin’s Creed 3 will let players team up in teams of two to four assassinos in an effort to take down multiple targets in a “sequence-based” co-op mode called Wolfpack.

Revealed today at San Diego Comic Con (via GameSpot), Wolfpack adds a Horde-ish mode to Assassin’s Creed 3. Players have a limited amount of time to take out assigned NPCs, and when a kill is successfully made, more time is added. Kill enough baddies and you advance to the next sequence.

Since Wolfpack is a co-op mode, you’re not going to be worried about being too stealthy, as only your contracts care about nearby people being stabbed. While you can run around willy nilly, Wolfpack will reward you for completing certain challenges, such as remaining unseen or using poison darts, so there will be some incentive to do a little planning.

I’ve been waiting for a co-op mode for a long time in Assassin’s Creed, and I think Wolfpack will provide players with a lot of fun when the game arrives this fall. What do you guys think? Does Wolfpack look like fun, or is it just a quick add-on? Will you be giving it a shot?

Source – GameSpot

Epic Games, the studio that brought you Gears of War, a title who’s mechanics and engine influenced an entire generation of console games, is doing something a little different for their next release, Fortnite.

Revealed today during a San Diego Comic Con panel (thanks Polygon), Fornite will be running the Unreal Engine 4 (something Epic has said will not work with the current generation) and will be exclusive to the PC (although Cliff Bleszinski has tweeted that the PC is the “lead platform” for Fortnite, opening the game up for a possible installment on the next generation of consoles and other devices).

For people who need a refresher, Fornite is a co-op sandbox survival game where players band together to build a fortress that can withstand the onslaught of the undead. Your buildings and weapons are all upgradable, and the developers promise that there will be a lot of loot scattered around the game worlds.

So, what do you guys think of this turn of events? Are you excited for Fornite? What do you think of Epic moving on to Unreal Engine 4 development before this console generation is over? Is this the first real sign that the next gen is coming really soon? Go!

Source – Polygon, Cliff Bleszinski