Strategy

This is the playable demo for Gratuitous Space Battles. The full game can be purchased for $22.99 and the official trailer can be seen above.

Gratuitous Space Battles is a "strategy / management / simulation game that does away with all the base building and delays and gets straight to the meat and potatoes of science-fiction games: The big space battles fought by huge spaceships with tons of laser beams and things going 'zap!', 'ka-boom!' and 'ka-pow!'. In GSB you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets, give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways)."

Download Gratuitous Space Battles Demo (46 MB)
Download HD Gratuitous Space Battles Trailer (26 MB)

Smoking Gun Interactive, the Canadian-based developer, was formed in 2007 by former members of Relic Entertainment. Since then the developer has been keeping its first project well under wraps although back in May it announced it had recruited author Douglas Rushkoff to work on the storyline for the game.

Today Smoking Gun launched a new teaser web site that showcased a new online comic book called "X". Written by Rushkoff, the comic has art from Smoking Gun's own Cheoljoo Lee and Younger Yang. It will have new installments on the site every week for the next few weeks. You can check out the first three pages of the comic in the gallery below. As you can see the comic is a bit like a more adult Indiana Jones story with conspiracies and mysteries. There's still no word on when the actual game from Smoking Gun will be revealed.

Update: We don't want to give away exactly where this happens but there's something . . . interesting that you can activate by clicking on a certain section of the online comic.

It's a common thing to let the AI "cheat" in a real-time strategy game. Giving them faster resource gathering, knowledge of the whole map, or even extra units is something developers might do on higher AI difficulties. But why not just streamline out all the resources and construction and just leave the basics of the AI? That is to say, the basics are swarms of AI units that you must overcome to win. AI War: Fleet Command does this, and manages to set itself up as one of the best strategy games this or any year. It's a game that is perfect for playing with your friends, and easily surpasses the RTS 4X standards set by the excellent Sins of a Solar Empire. It shows that one man with a vision and make something just as good, if not better, than that of a large team.

Download the AI War: Fleet Command Demo

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

There's plenty of great games floating around in the 4x genre. Games like Civilization 4 or Galactic Civilizations 2 are incredibly engaging and time-consuming, leading to that "one more turn" affliction that most 4X fans are afflicted with. The Civilization series pioneered the ground-based 4X game, but another series defined the space 4X. Master of Orion is an incredibly influential and highly-regarded series for a reason, and the most enduring and popular of said series is Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares. While it's interface and graphics may seem a bit antiquated by today's standards, it set the bar for depth and humor in the 4X genre, and is easily a classic in any genre.

It's been a while since a Magic: The Gathering-based game has been released for the PC but today Sony Online made the announcement that they will be working with Wizards of the Coast on Magic: The Gathering – Tactics, a turn-based strategy game that will be released for the PC in early 2010.

The game is being developed by Sony Online's Devner-based studio who have created a number of online collectible card games in the past. This new title will also use online collectable trading cards mixed with full 3D figures. Look for both single player and multiplayer options (including tournaments, achievements and a ranking system) along with regular content updates to the game after it launches.

Download HD Magic: The Gathering - Tactics Teaser Trailer (51 MB)

We've followed the game Dyson all the way from its origins as an entry in the TIGsource procedural generation competition. It stole our hearts, and later went on to make itself into a freeware game with some added features. Finally, a year later, it has been released under the new title Eufloria. While the title has changed and the gameplay has been tweaked, this is still the Dyson we know and love from so long ago. It's just received a facelift and the trappings of commercial, retail release. While it may appear to be a strategy game on the surface, it's actually something much different, and sets itself apart through its liberal use of procedural generation and an incredibly unique atmosphere.

GameTap's latest addition to its premium subscription service is Evil Genius, the terrifically campy super-spy villain sim-strategy game that was released in 2004 from the now defunct Elixir Studios. As we reported earlier this year, the rights to the game have been bought by Rebellion and the UK developer is thinking about reviving the game and others it has bought from the former Vivendi Games.

GameTap has also freed up one of the chapters of the episodic action game American McGee's Grimm. The episode, Master Thief, was a Halloween-themed chapter in the series when it was first released and in honor of the holiday GameTap is making it available for everyone to play for free for the next two weeks.

It's been a long time since SimCity has seen a new numbered release. The latest in the franchise, SimCity Societies, almost completely forgoes the city aspect to forge into new territory for the series. Monte Cristo has taken up the mantle of the city simulation, and began work on the Cities series, which as seen two releases. The first is City Life, which was hammered for lack of content and general poor quality. The second is the recently released Cities XL, which attempts to revolutionize the city simulation genre by including an MMO-styled component. While ambitious and interesting, Cities XL still falls short of the depth and ease of Maxis' defining series, which is a shame, because it has a lot of potential that was simply overlooked or neglected.

As we head into Halloween weekend, the PC game sales tradition will be in full effect. Retail web site GoGamer.com is doing its part with their (for once) correctly labled 48 Hour Madness event. The sale ends at 3 am Eastern time on Friday.

As they did with their last sale they are offering one game, the 2007 released sci-fi RTS game Maelstrom, for $0.00 (that translates in any language to FREE). Other games on sale this time include Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising for $29.90, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident for $7.90, Space Empires V for $6.90 and Spellforce Universe for a mere 90 cents. That's cheap. Not as cheap as $0.00 but still . . .

As promised, Paradox Interactive has released East India Company: Privateer, the downloadable expansion pack for the recent historical strategy game from developer Nitro Games. Now the Steam download service is giving folks a chance to download and play the original game at a much cheaper price than normal.

From now until November 2 you can get the game via Steam for just $11.99 which is a whopping 60 percent off its normal $29.99 price. The game comes with the new "Director's Cut" free update that includes things like two new multiplayer modes and more. The new Privateer expansion is also available via Steam. It adds two new campaigns and other new features for $9.99.

We've been down this road before and it looks like we are going that way once again. Rumors of a revival of the classic X-Com turn-based strategy PC game series have been popping up on the Internet tubes for years. This week the new rumors center on 2K Games' developer Firaxis working on a new version of the original game.

This new rumor comes from the Twitter page of the anonymously updated and trademark-obsessed web site Superannuation. The statement also revives the rumor that there's a first person shooter X-Com game that's also in the works. 2K Boston has been named as the developer for that title for quite some time and it's head man Ken Levine hasn't exactly denied that possibility. Indeed 2K Boston's sister developer 2K Australia has apparently worked at one time on such a project as Superannuation has found a (since removed) resume from a former developer at that studio that mentions such an X-Com game. We just wish 2K Games would spare us more time to speculate and come clean; the suspense is killing us.

Players with a knack for micromanagement and looking for a big power trip may be interested in Tropico 3. In this third installment, like its predecessors, players take the role of a national leader, El Presidente, of a tropical island. Under your direction, the tiny nation needs build up an economic infrastructure from practically nothing, tend to the needs of its citizens, and get out from under the shadow of influence of superpowers like the United States and the USSR. However, being a national leader takes more than tending the peoples' every whim. In order to get a high score, players will need to skim a little here and there to put away for a retirement fund. Balancing power between what's good for your nation and what's good for you will be a constant act as the game progresses.

Download the Tropico 3 Demo
Check out all Tropico 3 downloads

Will King Arthur form the Knights of the Round Table? Will he managed to establish Camelot? Will he have to fight the Knights who say "Ni"? (sorry, wrong film). That's for you to find out in the upcoming strategy-RPG King Arthur. Developed by Neocore, the company has now announced the game will be made available for digital download on November 12.

The game will apparently focus on the strategy element as your version of King Arthur commands armies to explore and expand his empire. Expect battles with lots of foes (both real and fantasy based) while your Knights of the Round Table gain experience, extra skills and abilities and more. We just hope there's room for the Knights to use the Holy Hand Grenade.

The 2005 turn based strategy game Shattered Union wasn't exactly a huge hit when it was released (indeed it turned out to be the last game for its developer Poptop Software; it's owner Take Two Interactive shut the studio down in 2006). The reviews were a bit on the average side as well. However its basic story premise of near-future where the US is split into several different countries is good enough to get Hollywood types to want to make a movie version.

According to Variety, Take Two has sold the movie rights to Shattered Union to blockbuster movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer. He plans to make the movie version at his long time studio partner Disney (where he is in post-production on the upcoming movie version of another game property Prince of Persia) Writer J. Michael Straczynski, best known to us geeks as the creator of the sci-fi TV series Babylon 5, will write the script adaptation. He's been mostly a movie writer for the past few years, scripting the recent Clint Eastwood directed drama Changling. He also co-wrote the action flick Ninja Assassin that's due in theaters November 25.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

While the real-time strategy genre may have started as an action game where you wade into the thick of things to deploy your units, it quickly became more about the dramatic overview and large-scale strategy, mostly in thanks to Dune 2. Instead of bumping shoulder to shoulder with your troops, you command things from the safety of an eagle's eye perspective. While there's nothing wrong with this, sometimes it is more fun to frag enemies alongside your soldiers instead of simply commanding them to attack. One of the better games in this expanding and mixed genre of first-person shooter and real-time strategy, and one of the first, is Uprising. It didn't shake any foundations when it released. This is a shame, because it really should have. Uprising is fantastic, and if you have never played it, you definitely need to give this nostalgic ride a go.