Prior to its release on XBLA, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light's online co-op was delayed, but now developer Crystal Dynamics has declared that it has been delayed again until the end of September. It could be that people are past caring and have already finished the game locally with a friend, but the developer is working hard on bringing the feature to the game and has its reasons for the hold up.

"We didn't want to deliver the subpar experience online," Karl Stewart, global brand director at Crystal Dynamics told Kotaku. Apparently, it was recognised late into the game's development that the online co-op aspect just wasn't going to cut the mustard in time for launch on the Xbox Live Arcade at the tail end of the Summer of Arcade in August, so it was held back.

"This is our first time doing online co-op using our engine in the studio," Stewart added. "We were open that it would have the challenges… Whether it be lag, the ability to drop in and out or the ability for the leaderboard to update as you played, these are things that needed to (work)."

Lara Croft's co-op is now undergoing extra polish and is scheduled to arrive with the first of five DLC packs at the end of the month. This first DLC pack will add three new challenge rooms and will be completely free for Xbox 360 users for the first 30 days. So, it's not all bad news then.