With the new Civilization game, Civilization: Beyond Earth due out this Friday the hype for the series is up. Pre-loading has already started on Steam so those who have already ordered the game can get into space play Civ-style from the moment it launches.

Until then, the previous game, Civilization V has been made free-to-play on Steam until Thursday, just in case you don’t already own it. Unfortunately it doesn’t include the expansions to the game, which add significant content to a good game and makes it great if you’ve a lot of time to kill playing it.

If that doesn’t put you off then it is worth a go while it’s free, trust me. I’m just looking forward to getting Beyond Earth and doing it all over again in space.

In the spate of recent Kickstarter cancellations we’ve a new one to join the name. Seems Uber Entertainment have decided to pull their RTS game Human Resource from the crowd-funding site due to there being the possibility of it not meeting its target in time.

Human Resources would have seen you playing huge gods and robots using humanity as resources in your battles to try and dominate the planet. Two silly factions, destructible cities made up of buildings that could be used as a weapon if you chose and hundreds of units involved in battles managed to net it $400k in pledges which sounds a lot but when you take into consideration that the goal was $1.4 million you can see why Uber considered the takedown at all.

In an update Uber’s John Comes wrote, “Every Kickstarter prediction model is showing that we will come up woefully short of our goal. Running a Kickstarter is a full time job for several people. As a small indie, we can’t continue spending time and money focusing on a project that won’t get funded. We simply don’t have the human resources.”

The game as pitched is over it seems, but Comes hopes to have the world it portrayed live on in some other way.

It’s a shame. Good RTS games are sorely lacking nowadays…

343 Industries boss Frank O’Connor has apologised for a 20GB day-one download for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but said it was the only way.

Speaking via Neogaf to those critical of the day one patch, O’Conner said, “The game is designed to run as a single, unified product, digital is seamless obviously, but we also wanted disc users to have the same experience, without swapping discs.

“Since the bulk of it is MP or MP related, the logic is sound. There will ALSO be a TU in there, but that in itself is a tiny fraction of the content.”

The 20GB is mainly related to multiplayer portion which is obviously important to most, so the developer hopes people will understand.

“For some folks it will be straight up annoying and I both apologize unreservedly for the irritance, and hope that the package and the way it works more than makes up for it

Do I understand the inconvenience and annoyance for some users? Of course. I’m not going to blow smoke or ignore it.

I’ve been playing the whole enchilada for a week now and the ability to sample, jump from aspect to aspect, customize with skulls and playlists has been absolutely addictive and mesmerizing.

I think I would have enjoyed a box set with the same fidelity, but the way it all connects has for me at least, made it more than the sum of its parts.”

Are you looking forward to the Halo: Master Chief Collection?

A new trailer for Total War: Attila has been made public that shows off the siege gameplay mode that was demonstrated on stage at EGX earlier this year.

As mentioned then, attackers are able to sap enemy morale by setting fire to the buildings inside the city and drain enemy forces by attacking in stages and using troops wisely by potentially attacking in a few different places at once. The defender does have the advantage of barricades that while breakable can be used to funnel attackers in ambushes and traps and provide boosts to those troops stationed on top.

Watch the trailer below!

If you love the game Killing Floor you’re in for a treat this Halloween. Tripwire Interactive are releasing two new maps as well as a modpack for use with one of them.

Club Cladestine is a map themed around a nightclub, but nothing there is alive or dancing. Instead you’ll find that torture devices are littered around the place and have been put to good use already by the club’s zombie residents.

Devil’s Dollhouse is the other map, and the one that the Toy Master modpack is intended for use with. The modpack replaces the usual enemy Zeds with twisted porcelain toys who have a similar bloodlust and need to murder you.

This is on top of several DLC packs that are being offered for sale containing new weapons and characters to play as. Killing Floor was also one of the games in the recent Free Weekend promotion and thus is currently reduced by 75% if you’ve not bought the game already. There’s another free weekend for it planned near Halloween as well probably in an attempt to stir up some attention around the new maps so keep your eyes peeled for that.