Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is a rebuild of the excellent classic Carrier Command, which allows you  to command from the deck of a futuristic aircraft carrier. Your job is to colonise islands as manufacturing, defence or mining and build up a logistics base for your carrier. You can launch ground vechiles (Walrusses) and UAVs (MANTA’s) to go about scouting your way, building colonies and attacking the enemy carrier which is trying to block your way. At the time, the original was an awesomely fluid 3D engine using filled vector graphics. The new version adds troops and looks awesome, as well as true to the original. You can download the original here, I’m very much looking forward to it.

The only game that has come anywhere near to this was the very very buggy Battlecruiser series by Derek Smart.

This is quite clever: OnLive has a huge cluster setup lonline which runs the latest games for you, so you can have a low power piece of hardware running the latest games at blistering speeds.

This works a bit like guitar hero, but with strings you can put on your own real guitar and plug into the PC / Mac. So you learn how to play a real guitar, one that will work even when you’re not plugged into the PC.

EA is going full blown for the Steam distribution. There is allegedly no third party DRM on any of the games distributed this way (no SecuROM). They will apparently even be sending out patches allowing people to free up installation slots.

This game developer posted an open question asking why people pirated his games. He got loads of responses and he’s summed them up. Not only is he posting his findings, he’s also going to do something about it. I really hope it works out for him, as what he’s doing looks like a shining example to other game developers out there.

Who needs to buy an extensive game client like WoW, Conan, or install huge things like Second Life, when the internet function you use most, namely http, port 80 or the www – whatever you like to call the internets – can BE the game, populated by thousands of denizens either playing a game or just hanging out.

weblin: chat with 3D avatars and instant messenger functions

PMOG is more of a game you play in your browser. You lay traps and earn badges, you as a character actively develop.

Rocketon is a free to play parallel word. It’s in alfa right now

Attention Foosball players: Here’s the largest table football game in the world. In fact, Table Football XXL is so huge, two entire soccer teams — 22 players — could face off with it, settling their challenges without ever setting foos on a real field.

This monster was built by Amsterdam brewer Amstel, a stunt that coincided with the European Champions League Finals. While this is not the fanciest Foosball table in history, you still might want one for yourself, but good luck with that. If this one were available, you’d need six flight cases just to ship it to you.

Nations Forever is now out – it’s an insanely cool, free racing game with loads of tracks and online play!

We had some hints that this would happen soon and now WoW Insider has confirmed through anonymous sources that the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is in closed alpha status, and that various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict NDA.

Alpha is part of the software release life cycle — a software product in development goes from alpha status to beta status (sometimes including a “closed beta,” where a limited few are invited to preview and test the software, and an “open beta,”, where anyone can download and try out the beta), to “release candidates” and then “gold” (the final version, used to print the media to be available for sale). This doesn’t tell us anything about the timing of the expansion’s release (especially since Blizzard historically takes their time going through this cycle), but it does tell us that Wrath’s content is in a playable and mostly completed form — quests, game mechanics, and items are in, even if specific flavor text, names, and even textures are not.

We’ll keep an eye, as usual, on any other news we see coming out of Blizzard, through official or unofficial channels. Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion of World of Warcraft, is in alpha testing. The journey to Northrend has begun.

Update: A word to the wise: this is not an open beta, and any email or site that tells you to sign up for one is still scamming you. When open beta comes down, we’ll hear about it on Blizzard’s official site. This is just news that the next expansion has moved up a notch in its development, and that we’re one step closer to an official open beta.

Official URL Link

OK So everyone knows that when playing the legacy of games such as Wing Commander, Privateer and Descent: Freespace, we don’t want too much in the way of realism. There are some great real simulators for space which are tedious and take too much time. If you really want to fly the space shuttle, great. If you want shield management, missles, explosions and lasers that take their time to hit the enemy, then you want one of these games. Where they used to be common, there haven’t been many of them lately. This is the list of cockpit sims – so no Eve online, no Homeworld, allthough they are very well known and respected in their genre.

Microsoft Allegiance is all about multiplayer combat. MS is giving away the source code and has it’s gameplay server available for download. There are still some free public servers available online. Players have different ranks and can do different things. You can fly fighters, capital ships and bases. Build up your forces.

X3: Reunion is a beautiful space game built more on the lines of Elite. There’s not much in the way of storyline and what there is you kind of stumble upon. The universe is huge and very pretty with a massive variety of complex space stations and you can do what you like. Slower paced and more for the explorer.

Space Force Rogue Universe is a single player game where you choose a civilisation and command a squadron of AI aircraft and you follow the storyline. You can trade, craft, upgrade, and explore but the reviews suggest the universe becomes a bit samey and isn’t really that huge allthough the ’empty’ bits of space are gorgeous. This is more combat oriented. with some very imaginative models

Vendetta Online is an alternative to EVE online but with the space combat in the cockpit. It’s been developed by a bunch of four guys and they want to grow the world by changing the universe incrementally. Every Friday there’s an update and it costs $9,99 per month or $6,67 if you buy in blocks of 3 months. It looks good, especially considering the size of the company

Starwraith is an independant publisher with quite a history of space sims.

Evochron Renegades is the latest in the (long) line and has been reviewed very very well indeed. You can explore, trade, race, hide, spy, transport, etc etc, upgrade your ship and has a very nice multiplayer mode where you can go online with friends (up to 24) and take on missions together in your single player upgraded ship. It also features player controlled planet descents, stunning graphics and loads of objects in space you can visit and use as hiding places. It’s also trackIR compatible, with a fully 3D environment.

Sure there are others, but these are the ones I found most interesting. Have fun!

[Edit 20080523]
Jumpgate Evolution promises to be a beautiful space based MMO with some gorgeous screens so far. Very much in development, so no idea how long to wait untill we can play it, but you can sign in to the Beta allready.

Then there’s Starshatter which has been developed by one man(!) since 1997. So the graphics are directx 7, but they’re good enough for the job. The main claim to fame is that as you advance in rank, you get to fly and command more and more powerful ships – fighters, cruisers, destroyers, culminating in being in command of a carrier with wings of fighters and bombers and other capital ships to control. It also comes with a complete SDK allowing you to mod the game to your hearts’ content.

Shocking Tanks is a game where you remote control a tank and try to shoot the other tank(s) using a lasergun mounted on your tank. If you get shot, the controller electric shocks you.

Multiverse is a Second Life competitor, in that it allows the users to define the online experience. But not only that, you get to build your own MMOG / Virtual World very easily and allow players to play them, hosted on the Multiverse servers. The business model is simple: there are plenty of e-commerce tools Multiverse offers World creators, and when these are used, Multiverse gets a % take of the loot. Now, how do you get people to play your World if it’s not a common world?
Anyway, it can hardly fail to have worse graphics than Second Life…

It’s been a long while since I’ve last played X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Elite, Wing Commander, Privateer, Freespace et al. and I’ve missed the genre.
After a little hunting around I’ve found two space sims which look very worth exploring (Allthough, unfortunately, none is multiplayer as far as I can see…):

X3: Reunion is a huge, lovely looking, non-linear Elite replacement. Unfortunately it’s slow, trading is huge and complex and there isn’t much gameplay to keep you going if you want a storyline to follow. The pace is slow, but the detail and possibilities are breathtaking.

DarkStar One is more based on making your money through blowing things up whilst following missions. Trading is an option, but it’s fortunately simple. The graphics are slightly less beautiful but still at times awesome, but there’s apparantly a sameness to the galaxies and trading posts which marrs what would be a top space shoot-em-up.

Both look very worth playing though.

This Emotiv Systems controller claims to read facial expressions and brain patterns. With some training it can allow you to visualise the actions you want to take and externalise them on the computer. It’s a prototype, but release is planned for 2008, as well as an API for game designers.

This is a great take on what should be in the coming RTS games to make it more realistic. Very funny and actually, I’d love this kind of game!

This looks like it’ll handle it. Only $500,-. Ouch

A blow by blow account of jousting by people who joust today.
Oddly enough they haven’t changed the armour technology at all – I guess they want to be true to the spirit, but lighter and heavier duty armour (maybe Kevlar) sounds like a plan to me.

These guys have raised rocket jumping to a new art form – the blast of the rocket launcher in Quake 3 propels the avatar skywards. It’s a truly awesome display of the fundaments of snooker being used in a complex fashion in a computer game and seriosly worth a look for the effort these guys must have put in.

This list is very exhaustive and well researched and contains a whole load of shockers!

Galciv2 is an extremely moddable turn based galactic conquest game. It looks attractive, has a huge user base, has no copy protection, is affordable and frequently releases updates. It now has an expansion pack in the works, you can preorder. Not bad!

In 3D! First you convert the character to VRML and then feed it into the printer. These guys have 2 links to people who will do the printing for you.