I'll admit, I found it very difficult to write this, the first review for Runzwithfire.co.uk.  I didn't suffer from writer's block, my regular job hadn't blindsided me with additional tasks like it normally does, I wasn't even disturbed by Mrs Runz or the kids.  No my friends, the difficulty came with the fact that I have become hopelessly addicted to Endless Space, Amplitude Studio's new 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) game, and having had it for little under a week I have devoted about 30 hours to it in my quest for galactic dominance.  That's pretty much all my spare time, leaving me with very little opportunity to actually sit down and tell you how great it is.  It's a situation that many fans of the 4X genre will be able to empathise with and I'm sure many of you have lost entire weeks or months to Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilisations II or Civ V and Endless Space will have you no less hooked.  It's easy to lose yourself to the allure of 'just one more turn' as you're intrigued to see how the AI will react to your newly constructed warfleet or itch to finish researching that much needed technology which will solve whatever current problem is afflicting your empire most.

At its heart, Endless Space is a 4X game in the best traditions of the genre; you're cast in the role of leader to one of eight fledgling empires each with their own unique traits and aesthetic feel (see 'Love Thy Neighbour'), or alternatively you can opt to create your own race using a range of 100 positive and negative traits.  It's your job to lead your people out to the stars of the galaxy in a bid to colonise new worlds, exploit their resources and eventually dominate the competition, either economically, scientifically, diplomatically or militarily. In fact there are seven ways in which you can claim superiority and win, although it much be said that not all them are immediately apparent and whilst it's obvious when you're winning due to territorial dominance or close to researching the science victory, other means of victory are less clearly explained and rarely is information clearly presented on how close the other empires are to achieving their goals.

There's a fairly broad selection of options in the galactic map types allowing, for example, spiral galaxies or colliding galaxies and options on the galactic age determine the liklihood of star systems being filled with rich verdant worlds or older, more barren rocks which are more difficult to colonise.  The options provide variance to ensure that galactic maps don't get repititive on multiple playthroughs, but I would say that by default the maps feel a little bit claustrophobic.  Even the huge maps containing roughly 80 star systems become very quickly crowded, especially with eight empires playing, and with a fairly standard setting of one Empire per constellation in most cases (although some settings do change this) there can be little dynamism during the early phases of the game compared games such as Galactic Civilisations II or Civilisation V.

It's that time of the year again, it's the Steam Summer SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

That's right, the Summer Sale launched last night and is currently offering massive deals on a daily basis.  New deals will be launched everyday until 22 July and most titles have between 50% and 75% off.  You also have the 'Flash Deals' that rotate roughly every eight hours and a Community Choice Deal, where Steam Users have voted for which game they would like to see go on offer.

Late last week I was rightly excited by news of Overhaul Games remake of the classic Baldur's Gate games and I was subsequently lost in a world of RPG nostalgia as I remembered my favourite parts of many RPG games of the years.  Aside from the truly outstanding moments of plot developments and good questline design, one of the parts that always defined a good play experience for me was the inclusive of a well written humourous character or two.  We're not talking about NPCs with a witty one liner here, or the smarmy adventure game character who forces you to endure banter until you can steal/trade the item you need from him; no we're talking about those long term companions that follow you throughout the entire length of your adventure and still provide enough witticisms to make them a joy to share company with.  This type of game character wasn't just found in RPGs, although that seems to be where most of these jovial giants lurked, but a recurring theme in many of the types of games I played and loved.  Humour provides a welcome distraction and aids to relaxation whilst gaming, or provides some much needed levity to games of a more serious persuasion and with that in mind I started to compile a list of my favourite PC game characters that brought the fun to my adventures.

9. Veronica - Fallout: New Vegas

"Sorry about that.  Just because I love them doesn't mean that some of them aren't assholes."

I'll be honest, Veronica isn't the strongest candidate for this list considering the pedigree of her voice actress, the fantastic Felicia Day, but she is prone to some quirky one liners.  Veronica's snide comments about Melissa's lazy eye, an earnest love of dresses and amusing descriptions (her comments about Caesar's Legion are quite amusing) all help to create a humourous and light hearted companion, but not truly hilarious unfortunately.

On Tuesday, SOE posted their first Planetside 2 community video, Planetside Command Centre, up on their Youtube channel.  The video has received a lot of positive response from fans for it's forthright conversation from the development team and it looks like it's going to become a very popular feature provided SOE maintains it regularly.  In it they cover Planetside 2 appearance at E3 and the feedback from that, a look at the Infiltrator class (including some very nice footage), some fan art submission and, most importantly, an interview with the Executive Producer Josh Hackney.  Why is an interview with Josh so important?  Because in it he talks about the release of the beta, which should be "within the next month", as well as all the things leading up to beta (skip to 03:05 on the video to hear him talking about it).