Another massive battle has taken place between the CFC and N3 coalitions in low-sec space on EVE, thanks to a trap set by the Black Legion alliance to bait the RAZOR alliance which ended up causing over 500 billion ISK or $10,000 worth of damage.

The trap was set in the system of Daras a low-security system, when the Black Legion used one of their own Super Carriers; one of the game’s most expensive and big ships; to trick the RAZOR alliance into thinking they had cornered the Black Legion’s ship. When the trap was sprung and the rest of the Black Legion ships closed in with allies from the N3 coalition RAZOR called for help from their own CFC alliance and the battle quickly escalated into a massive multi-ship battlefield. The ‘time dilation’ effect in the game quickly kicked in, slowing everything to 10% of normal speed and allowing for the battle to be planned out.

Notable among the losses were ten Super Carrier vessels on the side of the CFC, with the rest of that fleet managing to escape. The biggest loss was a Super Carrier worth 60 billion ISK from the Goonswarm group, the kill being bagged by N3. There is also a rumour going around that the Pandemic Legion were involved in the battle, agreeing to help the CFC but then turning on them when they arrived on the scene. Although PL have a reputation of being untrustworthy they have denied the accusation. The ultimate victors of the battle seemed to be the Black Legion and N3.

For scale it doesn’t compare to the infamous battle of B-R5RB where over ten trillion ISK or $300,000 was lost, but battles like these are more common in the spaces in-game where there is no security. This battle was in low-security space but also was large enough in scale to be notable.

Recently 3D Realms and Interceptor have been in the gaming press owing to the dispute around the ownership of Duke Nukem rights, more specifically if they had the rights to make a new one without the approval of the people who owned the rights: Gearbox.

Now though they’ve announced a new game, which sounds very similar to their previously announced but so far unreleased Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction. It’s an action, role-playing game, top down and takes place across many planets to save the President from an alien threat. The only difference? The Duke is nowhere to be seen.

The new game, titled Bombshell, stars a new female protagonist called Shelly ‘Bombshell’ Harrison who appears to be a cyborg and is introduced to us through the trailer linked below. It would appear that due to the lawsuit brought against 3DR and Interceptor by Gearbox, they’ve decided to take Mass Destruction and re-work it into the new game, which is still planned to be released on the same platforms of PC and PS4, although not until some time in 2015.

Interceptor and 3DR have promised that the game will contain “out-of-this-world enemies, a never-before-seen arsenal of devastating weaponry and a variety genre-crossing mechanics” and it can be guessed that the extra time will give them some time to tweak the graphics and sound to make them better than the Duke’s postponed game could have. It can also be guessed that the drama that surrounded them owing to the question of who owned the Duke can only work for them as far as promoting the game goes.

Valve have long since wanted Steam to be a service that they are as hands-off as possible with regards to interference, preferring instead to add tools that allow users to control what content gets promoted and what doesn’t. User reviews are a key part of this and today they got a little more useful.

With the recent proliferation of Early Access games, an awful lot of reviews are now being made for games while they are in an unfinished state, and unless you know the dates of when a game went from Early Access to Published there was no way to tell… until now. If a review is made on a game that is in the Early Access program, the review will now have a little tag that says ‘Early Access Review’ prominently stamped between the ‘Recommended/Time Played’ header and the actual text of the review itself. It’s quite a useful way of knowing if a bug that a comment mentions might be due to poor coding or just that the game’s developers haven’t gotten around to patching it out yet.

However as of right now, the ‘Early Access Review’ label appears only on the reviews on games which are currently still in Early Access, and not on those games which have already left Early Access and been fully Published. Maybe Valve will go back and add the labels later, and certainly it would be a useful thing to do mainly for the reason mentioned above. For now though, it seems that Valve are on the right track with adding useful features that users can make use of to judge for themselves a game’s quality.

It may seem hard to believe, but as of tomorrow (15th May 2014), Diablo 3 will be two years old. Cake and singing songs just isn’t in the style of the popular dungeon-based Hack-and-Slasher, however. Nor is a single day of celebration enough. No, Blizzard has something better in mind.

To celebrate the game’s second anniversary and the community that made it all possible, Starting tomorrow and running until May 22, players who log in to defend Sanctuary will receive double Rift Fragments as well as a +100% boost to their chance to find Legendary items.

While the buffs will apply to all characters; and will stack with other buffs a Player may have to add further bonuses to their drop rate etc, those with a console version of the game are unfortunately excluded – this event is for PC & Mac only. However, as Console releases already have better drop rates than the PC equivalent, this is hardly a big loss. What MIGHT be a big loss is the timing, as many Diablo 3 players are complaining the week-long event falls into a period where many students are completing major exams – thus limiting the time they have to take advantage. However, the most hardcore of Diablo 3 players are already clearing their schedule to make room for a whole week of non-stop action.

Whether you’re a casual or hardcore Diablo 3 player, looks like Diablo’s demons better prepare for a lot more bloodshed than usual.

Sony have kicked off a big sale on the Playstation Store, dubbed ‘May Madness’ in which there are many discounts on titles across their console range from more recent Playstation 4 and Vita releases all the way through to retro PS2 and PSone titles. The Sony Store website notes that there is ‘up to 65% off’ some games, with some having been discounted to less than £5.

Roughly a hundred different games have been included in the sale which is taking part in Europe and Australia and include titles such as XCOM Enemy Within, a Resident Evil 4/Code Veronica bundle and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. There’s also some brilliant retro classics thrown in there like Theme Hospital and Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. The discounts will be in place until June 5^th with a few exceptions such as Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z.

Full list of discounted games can be found here.