I remember when it were all Sins of A Solar Empire [official site] ’round these parts. Couldn’t move for Rossignols and Gillens talking about spaceship real-time strategy/4X games. Over eight chuffing years later, oh God I am so old, Ironclad and Stardock’s space management’n’war-em’up is still going strong. It was reinvigorated with the shinier Rebellion expandalone in 2012, which has just now received new, criminal empire-focused DLC that also includes a slew of new maps.

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Each week Marsh Davies unleashes a patriotic aquiline shriek and swoops upon the home of the brave that is Early Access, bringing freedom by way of cash-purchased endorsements and glib media-ready soundbites to all he meets. This week, these skills will hopefully propel him all the way to the White House in The Political Machine 2016 [Steam page], a timely update of the presidential campaign strategy game in which candidates scoot between states, bellowing platitudes to the credulous and smarming their way through interviews while doing everything to sabotage their opponents.>

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Gas Powered Games wants $1.1 million of your dollars. I also want $1.1 million of your dollars, but – instead of spending them on a mansion made of trampolines and a pony that’s also a rocketship – the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander dev is hoping to bring an RTS-RPG called Wildman to life. It’s about prehistoric evolution, but with an amusingly silly twist. “What if men, when they evolved into the homo sapiens form, what if other creatures also evolved, and other creatures had sentient minds? You could fight, say, a giant fly creature, or a lizard creature, or wild animals. What if there were thinking cats and things like that? Insects that are just creepy, that grew and were vying to take over the planet,” explained Taylor in an interview with RPS. So it’s part exploration-based hack ‘n’ slash, part troop-commanding RTS, and part fly monster. Got it. Video after the break.

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David Valjalo swings by to talk to game industry veteran turned comic creator Nate Simpson (Demigod, Supreme Commander) about his MMO-themed graphic novel that was conceived on the toilet, how everyone thought Demigod would go toe-to-toe with League Of Legends, and why he believes game addiction is real, and coming for us all.>

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Yesterday saw part one of our brief history of the games which followed in the lanes of DOTA. Part two looks at what happened next.> (more…)

Rebellion are suing Stardock and Ironclad Games over the use of the term “Rebellion”. Ironclad’s standalone expansion pack for their strategy series was called Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, and the trademark suit claims that the use of the word has “deprived [Rebellion] of substantial sales of its products”. Blimey.

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It’s election fever! Well, election ennui. As the disappointingly over-cautious incumbent takes on a billionaire charisma-vacuum for rights to the throne of America, Stardock release an update of their presidential wannabe sim. I’ve been creeping around the corridors of power in The Political Machine 2012 for the last couple of days. Join me in the west wing for a post-mortem, won’t you?> (more…)

The boys at RPS needed somebody who knew about rebellions for this review, so they called me in because I am Northern Irish and I once shot a gun. I thought, “This will be easy because it is a game about rebellion. There is even ‘rebellion’ in the title.” And then I discovered it was a game about SPACE rebellion, which is completely outside of my knowledge because I have not been into space even once. I thought, “I am in trouble now because I am not good at being in space.” I am currently playing a pen and paper role-playing campaign set in space. The character I rolled is so traumatised by life in space that every time there is a “stressful situation” he has to roll to see how he reacts. If I roll a one, I have to go through a psychotic breakdown.

I am not good at being in space. And here’s wot i think of Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.> (more…)

And it launches a volley of nuclear laser bombs, if the trailer below is anything to go by. I haven’t had time to get my hands on Rebellion yet, but I certainly have the intention to play it right up. I was one of the many who chewed through hours of Sins of a Solar Empire, and this expandalone has just about enough gravity to bring me back into orbit around its real-time space-conflict happenings. Anyone else on course for a rendezvous with this one?

Fancy lookin’ launch trailer below. (more…)