sword-of-the-stars-2 posts

Ah, Choplifter. Playing that game brings back a lot of memories. Mostly ones where we are drinking a lot of Coke and eating chips. Good times.

• Steam has new automatic updates for Civilization V and Total War Shogun 2.
• Peter Molyneux says he would like to participate in some way in a Syndicate remake. Are you listening, EA?
• PC Gamer has a new Sword of the Stars II developers diary entry.
• Fox News once again goes after a game with its "fair and balanced" reporting. This time it's Duke Nukem Forever.
• Finally EA's former founder Trip Hawkins is in trouble with the IRS.

Paradox Interactive is starting the new year right with the PC strategy publisher's annual press event, which it calls the Paradox Convention. The event will be held later in January in New York City and will give the invited media reps a chance to check out upcoming games such as Crusader Kings II, Sword of the Stars II and many more.

In addition, Paradox plans to announce a number of all new games at the Paradox Convention. At the moment the games are under code names like Project "Spring Break," Project "Ice Man," Project "Orange," Project "Penny," Project "Tatanka," Project "Mayflower" and Project "Doom". While the event is closed to the public Paradox is also running a contest where one person will be flown out to NYC to attend Paradox Convention and cover the event for the company's official message boards.

While first person shooters, action games and role playing games can cross over from the PC to consoles, strategy games are still mostly on the PC side of things. 2010 brought us some big strategy game releases such as Civilization V and most notably StarCraft II Wings of Liberty. 2011 also has some major turn and RTS based strategy games on tap for release including the latest in a long line of historical RTSs, the return of a major turn based fantasy strategy series and even the latest attempt at an MMO RTS game.

Big Download has picked 10 upcoming strategy PC games that we can't wait to play (in order of their expected release dates) in the next year as part of our multi-part feature on the games of 2011. You can also go back and check out our previous entries on the first person shooter, action and RPG-MMO genres.

Sword of the Stars 2 is the newest game for indie studio Kerberos Productions. As it is a sequel to the reasonably successful Sword of the Stars (imagine that), it's got some expectations. One of these is that the engine will be drastically improved from its predecessor, as one would expect, and this trailer shows that off in quite some detail. While the trailer itself is relatively boring (it's akin to a flythrough), the ship designs are incredibly stunning in both scope and color. Alas, there was nothing of the engine in action, just of the ships, so we can't really judge if it will look as great during gameplay.

In this trailer for Sword of the Stars 2, the follow-up to the Sword of the Stars sci-fi strategy game series, The Lords of Winter launch a surprise attack on the Argos Naval Yard and their prized leviathan class starship. However, the twist is, you might be playing as the Lords of Winter to spread doom across the galaxy. The game is currently expected to release in 2011.

"Boasting an all new graphics engine and incorporating new ship details that allow for new fleet strategies and tactics, Sword of the Stars 2 is poised to revive the 4X space genre."

Download HD Sword of the Stars 2 Teaser Trailer (42 MB)

Vancouver-based Kerberos Production made a splash with the original Sword of the Stars way back in 2006.Since then the development team has made a number of updates and expansions to their first space strategy game. Now the team is hard at work on the full sequel, Sword of the Stars II,for their new publisher Paradox Interactive.

Big Download got a chance to ask some questions to Kerberos Productions' CEO and creative director Martin E. Cirulis about their plans for the sequel, including new features, improved graphics and generally more of what players will get from the full version.

You may think you have all of the games and expansions for Sword of the Stars, but you really don't. The space strategy game from developer Kerberos and publisher Paradox Interactive is about to release a "Complete Collection" bundle featuring the original game and all of its expansion packs (Born of Blood, A Murder of Crows, and Argos Naval Yard).

And here's the kicker: The Sword of the Stars Complete Collection also has an all new scenario for the game. Hopefully that scenario will be made available for loyal fans and purchasers own the original game and its expansions.. The Compete Collection will be released on May 14.

Paradox Interactive bought the rights to publish the space strategy game franchise Sword of the Stars in 2009 after its original publisher Lighthouse Interactive shut down its operations. Today Paradox announced that that game is getting a full blown sequel, Sword of the Stars II, that will be released sometime in 2011.

The original game's developer Kerberos Productions is also making the sequel and IGN has some of the first details of the game including that all six races from the original and its various expansions will return. A new race, the Suul'ka will also be introduced in the sequel. Unfortunately the game is still in the very early stages of development with no screenshots or gameplay footage to show yet.