The disease simulation that everybody is having fun playing (if the comics are any indication), Pandemic 2 is a flash game developed by Dark Realm Studios. It was released on Kongregate just recently, and if you enjoy the sort of simple strategy mixed with more realistic simulation, this might be your thing. Your goal is to infect all of humanity with a disease that will completely exterminate them. You can control things such as infectivity, lethality, and visibility. It's very fun and incredibly humorous, especially considering how Madagascar closes down their one port at the slightest sign of trouble (leading to no end of hilarious comics).

Tom Clancy's HAWX is rad for a number of reasons. The game takes place above a battlefield that is comprised of other Tom Clancy game staples, like a Ghost squad. HAWX is also infinitely more awesome because it forgoes all spelling conventions and adds an X to the title -- for seemingly no purpose. According to Ubisoft the acronym stands for "High Altitude Warfare Experimental Squadron." HAWES seems like a lame choice and, let's face it, had the game been named HAWXS minds would undoubtedly explode. Developed by Ubisoft Romania, the team behind the Silent Hunter and Blazing Angels franchises, Tom Clancy's HAWX is set to fly onto store shelves early next year. Also, we're aware the use of "fly onto store shelves" is about as lame as it gets. Either way, check out the E3 2008 trailer today.

Download the Tom Clancy's HAWX E3 2008 trailer now!

Tarn Adams is just blitzing along with making sure his latest version of the exquisite Dwarf Fortress is (mostly) bug free. The next bugfix version has been released, bringing the version number to 39c. It fixes such things as pathfinding causing dwarves to stop performing a certain job, RNG (that's random number generator) issues, fish and turtle options not being available to take with you on embarking, buildings becoming invisible, and countless other problems, from small tweaks to big changes. You can download the new version on the Bay 12 Games site and, as always, your saves are compatible with previous versions.

We have already mentioned that Will Wright will be making his first appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con next week to promote their upcoming evolution sim Spore. Now it looks like he will be doing more than just showing off the long anticipated game. He will also be demoing a new Spore related application that actually does related to comic books.

According to a just updated listing on the official Comic-Con web site. Wright will not only demo Spore but also show off the MashON Spore Comic Book Creator. This newly revealed application will allow people to make a comic book story starring your custom Spore creature. There's no word yet on if this will be a separate application or one that will be included with the game.

It looks like Electronic Arts wants everyone to have access to some Spore. . . the game that is. Today the company announced a deal with AT&T that will give its AT&T High-Speed Internet customers access to not only the free demo version of Spore Creature Creature but will give new customers access to the full paid version of the editor.AT&T mobile customers can now get Spore Origins, the mobile phone game, exclusively on their phones until September 4.

This follows earlier reports that revealed EA is trying to make deals with PC makers to get the Spore Creature Creator installed in new PCs. The actual full game is, of course, still scheduled for release on September 7.

[Via press release]

So you have likely been playing with the Spore Creature Creator for a few weeks now, either in its free version or the full $9.99 version. But how, you may ask, is the actual Spore game actually looking. Quite well, thank you. In fact it's a lot deeper experience than we first imagined.

At Electronic Arts' E3 meeting room we got to play with just one aspect of the full game of Spore, namely the beginning of the game where you evolve as a microscopic organism. As it turns out the game is more than just a series of mini-games linked by editors. It really looks and feels like you are controlling the evolution of one small creature into a massive space-faring civilization.

That was fast. The powers that be (also known as Tarn Adams) have buckled down to fix most of the glaring issues with version 39a that we reported on yesterday. While playing with the new world generation features was fun (a single human with one leg fighting off an entire horde of elves? Awesome!), it didn't sate us like the standard gameplay could. It is with great pleasure, then, that we may now play 39b.

Dwarves no longer sleep forever, you can travel around in adventurer mode without getting the annoying "You can be seen" message all the time, caves are once again appearing, the health care and hauling labors now appear on the labors list for each dwarf, and generated animals no longer start out drunk. There's many more fixes, but those are the major ones. This is purely a bugfix version, but it makes the game once again playable. You can download the new version from Bay 12 Games. Remember that you can use any worlds or saves from 32a onwards in a new version.

Once every few months, the slumbering bear stirs and gives us a new version of Dwarf Fortress. Sandbox game lovers rejoice, as the new version of Dwarf Fortress is here! Version v0.28.181.39a (or just 39a to most) includes the brand new wars and armies system that maps in conflicts into the world generation. It may seem like something small, but it adds a huge amount of believability to the game world.

This new world generation feature is also the start of a series of enhancements to armies and battles called the "Army Arc". New features planned as a part of this arc are things like wars between civilizations occurring during Fortress mode, the ability for a player in Adventurer mode to run across a large-scale battle, and the ability for a Fortress to create its own army.

Note that this release has a crippling bug that causes all dwarves to stay asleep. So it's only good for the new world generation bits and Adventurer mode. A bugfix is planned soon.

Remember how it was said that the shareware version of Doom was installed in more PCs than Windows 3.1? (this was before Windows 95 of course)? Well Electronic Arts wants to make a deal that will apparently make the recent Spore Creature Creature editor demo available on a lot of new PCs

This revelation came in the middle of a New York Times story on E3 2008 where EA Games president Frank Gibeau mentioned their talks with several PC companies in an interview. Specific PC makers were not make but the article said that Dell, Apple and HP are likely targets

As we await the release of Will Wright's (hoped for) magnum opus game Spore, the development team is doing something a tad unusual, especially for such a high profile title. They are giving the public a chance to see one of the development programs they have created to make the game.

The program is called Particleman and according to a post on the Spore community web site it "simulates gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud." You can use it to simulate such things like gravity's effect around black holes, pulsars and more. You will need to agree to EA's terms for downloading the program but it's very small; just 208 K.

If you have been wondering what Operation Flashpoint 2 is supposed to look like, we now have a new trailer that will give you some idea of what developer/publisher Codemasters has in mind. The sequel to the military action game is slated for 2009 and Big Download now has some new CGI footage from the game.

This trailer footage is not from the in-game engine but it does supposedly use in-game models for its depiction of a battle between the US and China in the near future. The game is supposedly to be more realistic than other game titles of its type. We hope to get more info from Codemasters on Operations Flashpoint 2 later next week during E3.

Download the Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising CGI trailer at Big Download now.

UK based Introversion Software is one of the most innovative and successful of the new indie based game developers (they also have the deadliest business cards in the game industry; they are sharp and totally metallic and could be used as throwing weapons). Their next game is Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest, a multiplayer version of their acclaimed strategy-sim game Darwinia.

Today the developer sent over some new screenshots showing the game in action and as expected the visuals have an old-fashioned 2D arcade look with some funky modern art design. Introversion is planning to release Multiwinia sometime in 2008 but so far there's no word on a specific release date.

We're about to talk about an application that isn't really a game. It's more of a toy that can be used as a game.. We just think that you'll absolutely love it. Universe Sandbox is an application that gives you celestial bodies and allows you to do absolutely anything with them. Want to see what it would be like if the Earth had no mass? Go for it. What about two galaxies colliding? Sure thing. There's no goals and just about infinite possibilities, so just let loose and have a ball puttering around with the laws of reality. The accurate simulation of every aspect, from mass to gravity to velocity, makes it that much more cool. Our personal favorite moment would have to be making 4 galaxies collide into a swirling mass of stars.

[Via IndieGames]

Codemasters has kept details on the upcoming military shooter sequel Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising on ice since it was first announced a while ago. However, the new UK print version of PC Gamer magazine will have the first detailed preview of the title and Computer and Video Games has some huge claims that come from that article.

When we hear that Operation Flashpoint 2 will have "the most mind-bogglingly vast and mercilessly realistic battlefield gaming has ever known" that gets our interest peaked. The game is aiming to make a true modern day solider sim title, according to the article, and CVG has some screenshots from the preview (one of which is reproduced here) that seems to support such hype. That UK PC Gamer issue is on stands now. We hope to get more info on Operation Flashpoint 2 in the near future (maybe at E3).