There are few more "PC" genres than 4X. So named because they generally involve asking players to "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate", they're normally set in space, and have so many buttons and menus that you can only really play them on the PC.

So when I sat down to play Sidius Nova this morning, I was expecting the worst. Because it's a 4X game for the iPhone.

Yet an hour later, late for work and having skipped breakfast, I realised they might actually be onto something. Instead of trying to replicate the complexity of the kind of 4X game you find on a PC, Sidius Nova takes the barest bones of the premise, gives them a moody soundtrack and great Homeworld-esque art style, and... that's about it. You tap a screen to move a mothership around space exploring systems, you tap another button to build fighters, you get credits at the end of every turn with which to buy more fighters, then you do battle on a 2D screen where you send those fighters to their deaths in lanes, ala Plants vs Zombies. There's also some research to unlock more/better gear and craft.

That's it. If, say, Masters of Orion is a roast chicken dinner, this is a drumstick. But it's still chicken!

It's simple, then, but it had the same "one more turn oh god one more turn" hook that its grander siblings on the PC have. Plus, I really like the art, something I don't think I've ever said about a 4X game before. Best part is the game's free. Completely free. While there may be some pay-to-upgrade-faster stuff brought in down the line, every aspect at the moment is free, so even if you're only half on the fence about the idea of something so stripped down, it's worth a look.

Sidius Nova [App Store]

OK, so this should be the last batch of art from Halo 4 we showcase here on Fine Art. Hopefully. Maybe.

While we've done a lot over the past few weeks, it's hard to resist when the artists involved keep sharing their work, and that work keeps being some of the best you'll see in the business.

This batch is from John Liberto, a man who you may know for his work on Epic's Gears of War, but who also did some fantastic work on Halo 4, including some promo images you've probably seen floating around (like, say on the cover of the game's terrific art book).

You can check out more of John's work on his personal site and CGHub page.

You can also see more Halo 4 art posts here:

- Halo 4's Cortana Could Have Looked a Little Crazier
- It's Like a Reference Book. Only, For Halo's Spartans.
- It's Surprising How Much Art Goes Into Making Halo's Multiplayer Maps
- Yes, Master Chief, I Know You're Part Robot, But I Want You To Get In This Bigger Robot
- Halo 4 Was Shaped, At Least In Part, By One Of The World's Great Concept Artists
- Halo 4's Environments Can Be As Beautiful As They Are Brutal

If you've never seen a supercomputer in the flesh, the name is a little misleading. They don't look as clean as it sounds. More often they're banks and banks of individual units networked together to form a single hivemind, a gigantic mess of cables, stacks and fans.

To give you an appreciation of how much work goes into putting one together, here's a timelapse video of one being put together at my alma mater, the Australian National University. Its full name is pretty great: the official title is the "Fujitsu Primergy cluster high-performance supercomputer".

Construction of the NCI supercomputer - timelapse video [YouTube, via RiotACT]

In February, the Kickstarter for Code Hero raised over $170,000. Now they're out of money.

Code Hero's creators have been somewhat unresponsive recently, and some of the project's backers have taken to the Code Hero Kickstarter page to complain about the lack of updates. One or two have even hinted at a potential class-action lawsuit against the people behind Code Hero, as the backers have yet to receive their Kickstarter rewards, and updates are few and far between.

So I reached out to Alex Peake, the man behind Code Hero, to ask him what's going on. Is the game dead? What happened to all of the money?

"Code Hero is very much alive," Peake told me in an e-mail. "Although we are out of funds because we've paid a full time dev team for the last year to work on it, we continue to work on the project as volunteers until we can raise more funds and the team is currently myself and 5 programmers working on it actively."

They say they're working on a full Q&A for backers, which should be up on their Kickstarter page within the next day or so.

"We should have written more frequent Kickstarter updates and answered questions faster letting people know our progress," Peake said. "It sucks to have the Internet accusing you of crazy things when you're working hard on something that is already a big challenge."

Using official screenshots and stills from the game's trailers, a Polish fan site has done a cracking job comparing the San Andreas of 2004 to the one we'll be getting our hands on in 2013's Grand Theft Auto V.

As you can see there are... more trees. And shinier cars. But one thing I will miss is that old sky. As an avid supporter of the Blue Sky in Games campaign, Rockstar's old ones were a lot more fun to drive around under than their murkier, more contemporary efforts.

You can see some comparison shots above, while the full gallery is below.

Los Santos 2004 vs. Los Santos 2013 [Rockstar24, via Rockstar]

I like LEGO Batman games, and while I didn't really love The Dark Knight Rises, I would totally see it in LEGO. Thanks to ParanickFilmz for making this dream a reality, at least in trailer form. (I think I liked the TDKR trailer more than the film, so actually, this works out nicely.)

How's everyone doing? Having a good week? Almost the entire Kotaku gang is all together in the New York office. As fun as working remotely can be, it's great to get everyone together at one big long table.

The open thread is now open for business. Talk about anything you like, here or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum. Have good conversations, see you on Friday.

I liked collecting and painting Warhammer 40K miniatures when I was a kid, sure, but one thing I liked more was heading to this local store that always had models painted by a professional.

Stuck behind glass and painted immaculately, they were so damn expensive I never got the chance to buy one before the store closed down in the early 90s. I've never gotten over that disappointment, so to treat myself, I routinely forget my own awful attempts at painting and stare, sometimes for hours, at the fantastic work done by people who have earned the right to call themselves professionals.

These shots, from the excellent Forge World, run the gamut of the 40K universe, from Space Marines to Tau and everyone in between.

Oh, and in case you missed it earlier in the year, here's a similar gallery, only with badass miniatures in action on a battlefield so lifelike it's got smoke.

For a store that's meant to be all about control, it sure didn't take long for someone to sneak a fairly blatant clone onto Microsoft's Windows 8 Marketplace.

Spotted by NeoGAF user PsychoRaven, the game pictured above is still there at time of posting. Perhaps out of bravery, or at least stupidity, the "creator", Joeri Kerkhof is charging $1.49 for the game, which he's called "Zelda Game".

Subtle.

He describes it as a "Classic zelda style role playing game game". So... if you do buy it, maybe you're getting twice the game a regular Zelda has?

Zelda Game [Windows Store]

It makes a weird sort of sense that Paolo Pedercini would hate on the modern era of sports games. The man behind the Molleeindustria catalog makes cutting anti-establishment games like Phone Story and Unmanned, experiences that put players in deeply exploitative and uncomfortable realities. But for his latest creative effort, Pedercini took on something else that he despises.

Yeah, he made a game about sports. Specifically, bike polo. Which, yes, qualifies as a sport.

A few weeks ago, the F**K This Game Jam tasked its attendees to make titles in genres that they hate. Pedercini turned out Arcade Bike Polo, a response to the increasingly photorealistic and simulation-centric corner that sports games painted themselves into. In a blog post about the game, Pedercini says:

The main inspiration for Arcade Bike Polo is Sensible Soccer, a frantic, streamlined and rather hardcore Amiga title from 1992. Sensible Soccer was a product of that awkward period of gaming history suspended between the symbolic/iconic age (i.e. pong) and the forced march toward photo-realism starting from the mid-nineties.

The choice of Hardcourt Bike Polo was obvious since it's pretty much the only sport I've ever liked (full disclosure: I'm a terrible player). Moreover, Bike Polo is still not contaminated by rampant commercialization, exploited by cool hunting marketers, nor dominated by jock culture. On the opposite, it's strongly connected with bicycle advocates, it's decentralized and permeated by a DIY/punk(ish) attitude.

For all the high-faluting design talk, the free downloadable game is a lot of fun. And it does recall the kinds of sports games from 15, 20 years ago.

There's a mission in Far Cry 3 that… well, it's kind of "That Mission." Every time someone new plays the game, I see them on Twitter or wherever, raving about the pot-burning mission.

It's great for a number of reasons—we've enjoyed lighting drug fields on fire since San Andreas. But the thing that really puts it over the top is that for a moment, the game's tone completely shifts and Skrillex starts playing.

The tune in question is "Make It Bun Dem" by Skrillex and Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley, and it plays on a loop throughout the entire mission. As Jason takes a flamethrower to Hoyt's drug crop (and the fumes make him get stoned if he gets too close), it's basically impossible not to gleefully grin and jack in another tank of fuel.

I have a feeling this might be the most widely YouTubed mission of the fall, and with good reason. Whatever complaints I may have about the game's story and tonal consistency, I'd actually love to see more stuff like this. You don't have to be Saints Row the Third, but a little goofiness (and a killer soundtrack) can go a long way when used properly. Sometimes you gotta say screw it; we need some Skrillex.