We know very little about Ghost Recon: Commander, so little in fact that I only just found out that it’s going to exist. I’d rather be a Commander than a Future Soldier or an Online so I was pleased about the prospect, but then I saw that it’s a Facebook/mobile game and my interest spiraled away like chocolate syrup down a motel shower drain. However, Chris Early of Ubisoft has told Pocketgamer.biz that playing Commander will unlock advantages in the other two upcoming Ghost Recon games, and vice versa. I suppose the idea is that spending a spare half hour on Facebook could earn you a gun rather than a dubiously rekindled acquaintance with a former sort-of-friend. Quotes and thoughts await below.

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Alexander ‘The Mittani’ Gianturco, Eve Online’s most famous and infamous player, has learned the hard way that the internet is serious business after all. Gianturco’s latest controversy arose at last week’s Eve Fanfest, where in a public talk he first mocked and then urged others to hound a player who was apparently suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. “Incidentally, if you want to make the guy kill himself, his name is [REDACTED]“, Gianturco declared.

After initially appearing to shrug off concerns as he had been drunk at the time – which he acknowledges was his own fault – and didn’t have total recall of what he’d done, Gianturco offered a lengthy apology a few days later, and promised his resignation as Eve Online Council chairman, Eve devs CCP have decided his actions were a breach of the EULA and are enforcing a harsher penalty. (more…)

I’m not entirely convinced I’d like to deliberately steer my vehicle anywhere called Death Road. Perhaps I’m being old-fashioned and twee, but there’s just something about the name I find offputting. I can’t put my finger on it, it’s just a feeling. That is the rather direct name given to what I’m going to generously call a “WipEout-inspired racer”, coming to PC tomorrow. You can see a trailer of it below, and then say, “No, that’s not WipEout, that’s…”

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EA have issued a clarification to Gamespy that while you will have to have an internet connection to launch SimCity, it will not boot you off if your connection goes down. Which is to say, it’s not as egregious as others’ “always-on” DRM, but we maintain is still an unnecessary and game-crippling mistake, which we really hope they will reverse before release. That the game won’t stop working if your connection goes down sounds great, but it makes no useful difference to those who wish to play the ostensibly single-player game without an internet connection, whatever the cause. As we’ve said before, the online features sound like they’ll superbly enhance your single-player experience, but enforcing them is cruel and stupid, and renders the game broken for enormous numbers of players. We desperately hope to see EA backing down from this position before release. Just as we expect to see Blizzard come to their senses and not release a self-sabotaged version of Diablo 3. The reality is, unofficial versions of the games will appear very soon after release, offering useful features that the publishers’ versions of the games will not. That’s simply crazy. We’ve contacted EA to ask if we can talk to them about this all.

Gosh, things are getting fraught in A Game Of Thrones RPG trailer-land. Dudes are getting stabbed and bashed with big metal clubs. Men and women alike are making accusations and sounding cross. There’s even something about cockroaches, so it sounds like they need to get the fumigators in to that castle. Yeah, I have no idea what’s going on, frankly, but it sounds exciting. Join in with vociferations below! (more…)

Joe Martin decides to explore Fallout 2 from the perspective of a character with no stats in the brain department. And, goodness, has a game ever responded coherently to attributed stupidity?>

Fallout 2 is old, so there’s only a handful of flickery cutscenes and none of these ever show you your hand-built character actually doing anything. The intro, for example, where you’re told that you’re the Chosen One and must quest for the Macguffin of the Moment, focuses solely on the the half-blind village elder. Which is a shame, because I imagine how my character, Al, would react to this news would be… interesting>. (more…)

Hello, you. The unseasonably warm afternoons seem to be making the hivemind sleepy. Personally I’ve been in a trance for the best part of an hour, just staring off into the blue skies overhead. Mmm. Is that jazz playing from an open window?> But then everything suddenly came back into focus and I realised there were videos to be blogged. And we all like to see imaginary men getting shot – Hell, some of us depend on it for our sanity. Yes, not a day goes by where RPS doesn’t provide your manshoot fix. Here it is. Again, and it’s Max Payne 3 multiplayer. How could that possibly work? Apparently by only making players in your line of sight enter bullet time. Which is a neat way to solve it. You’ll have sort of bullet time “bubbles” going off across the level when people choose to use it, I suppose. Anyway, the video explains it, so go take a look. Slooooowllllyyyyy. (more…)

Paradox Interactive are getting a taste for the limelight. Mmm, citrussy. Tonight at 8PM CEST, which my brain refuses to accept is 7pm UK time, they’ll be showing off four of their upcoming games on their Twitch TV channel. There’s something for everyone, as long as you like 2D shooters, dwarf-based strategy, co-op action adventures , or competitive RTS. Do you like those? I’m interested in The Showdown Effect, personally. He’s dreamy. (more…)

Remember when Google made a big deal of running Bastion in Chrome? They made the opposite of that fuss with Mini Ninjas, Io Interactives’s cute little NinjSim. I mean, I only noticed when I was poking around the Chrome store for a browser add-on. I clicked it expecting a webbified version of the game, but as far as I can tell it’s not been fiddled with in the slightest. In less than a minute, I was playing the first level of the game, full screen, with no obvious technical issues. Oh, apart from the bizarre payment model. (more…)

Just in case my three-part, 15,000 word interview with Jake Solomon, lead designer on Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown, wasn’t enough for you, here’s a follow-up chat with the effusive main brain behind the X-COM remake. This time, we’re finding out about how much soldiers’ special abilities define the game, what’s been done to ammo and why the perception that this new version only has one base isn’t quite right. > (more…)