space posts

Black Prophecy may primarily be an MMO, but that doesn't mean it's going to be skimping on the voice-overs. This video (more like a developer diary) explores the sound studio that is working in conjunction with Gamigo and Reakktor. In the process it shows off music and sound we've never heard before, including potential story-spoiling lines (although nothing we can really put in context). Developer diaries and behind-the-scenes videos are always incredibly informative and enlightening, and this one is no exception. It's safe to say we are becoming more and more excited for Black Prophecy.

Download HD The Making of Black Prophecy - Voice Overs
Check out all Black Prophecy downloads

EVE Online is known for two things: its complicated free-market system and its grandiose science fiction plotline. This trailer for the upcoming Incursion expansion falls solidly into the latter. It depicts the attacks of Sasha's Nation, intent on revenge against the forces which hunted the creations of the mad scientist Sasha centuries before. It's purely CG, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful to behold. As for the expansion itself, it apparently includes a slew of fixes, some new ships and missions, and an entirely new pirate faction to contend with.

Download HD EVE Online Incursion Trailer
Check out all EVE Online downloads

We have a soft spot in our black hearts for the space trading genre. Games like EVE Online, X3, and Freelancer are all fantastic and engaging, offering amazing vistas full of technology, aliens, and explosions! Black Prophecy is following in that tradition, and despite being relatively under the radar, it's still releasing trailers to the general populace. Developed by the folks behind Neocron, it's going to be free-to-play, and will apparently incorporate many of the things players love about the genre (space combat, dynamic politics, player-controlled economies) with none of that tediousness. This trailer is certainly more slick than the last one we saw, so we're a little more excited, even though nothing was really shown.

Download HD Black Prophecy Gamescom 2010 Trailer (210 MB)
Check out all Black Prophecy downloads

Those fed up with EVE Online have a number of options for the in-depth space MMO. Black Prophecy aims to be one of those options when it releases soon, and judging by this new trailer from E3, it has two major things going for it. First, it's action-based, with a focus on combat and maneuvering instead of strategy. Second, incredibly beautiful ship designs!

Check out all Black Prophecy downloads

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!

Shortly after Descent 2 was finished, the developer, Parallax Software, split into two different developers. The first was Outrage Entertainment, who produced Descent 3. The other is Volition. While Outrage has since gone defunct, Volition is still going strong, thanks in part to the success of the Saint's Row and Red Faction franchises. These are not the games that put them on the map, however. Freespace is the game that cemented Volition as a rising star in the game development community, and thanks to GoG.com, newer players can enjoy this space simulation classic. It's easily on par with other esteemed franchises like Wing Commander and TIE Fighter, and it has aged considerably better than its colleagues.

Download the Freespace demo right here on Big Download!

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Most of the browser games that have been talked about on Freeware Friday have been by the esteemed Flashbang Studios. However, it's time to break that trend with a game that is just as good as anything Flashbang can or has come up with. Farbs' Captain Forever was released a while ago to those who have donated, with the promise of it being released for free at a later date. That later date has arrived, and Captain Forever is now available to the general public. It's an excellent game, and one that you can easily lose a lot of time to, which makes it both a great freeware game and an amazing browser game.

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.

Each week we find more and more free games that do not quite fit into the freeware mold. Games that do not require a subscription fee to play, but encourage player usage of money through microtransactions or special subscription services. This is Playing For Free, a column that showcases these games.

While chances are your average free-to-play MMO will be Asian in origin, there are still a few exceptions to this stereotype. Once of the best is the independent MMO DarkSpace. It may not be all that popular, high-profile, or mind-blowing (in graphics, anyway), but it incorporates a lot of elements that the rest of the MMO world could learn from. It also doesn't follow the normal microtransaction tomfoolery, opting for a subscription-based service instead. It's an outlier for most people, and that's definitely a shame, as it is incredible and rivals most mainstream MMOs in quality. You won't regret giving it a try.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Have I mentioned how much I love rogue-like games? The random aspect, the deep and engaging underlying gameplay systems, and the penchant for creating stories out of thin air really set the sub-genre apart from other games. I've already talked about Dwarf Fortress and Nethack before, and there's plenty more where that came from. However, this week is a little known space-combat rogue-like gem called Transcendence. Imagine if Nethack and Star Control 2 got together and had a top-down illegitimate child that went on to bigger and better things. That's Transcendence in a nutshell.