A few places are reporting the upcoming release of a PC only 2D shooter in the same vein as Masaya’s much loved Assault Suits games. Called Gunhound, it basically ticks many of the boxes in terms of a spiritual sequel to something like Leynos II on the Saturn. The game will be released on the 18th December either online (for 4800 yen) or on disc (for 6090 yen).

This is quite a cool little indie game by Teasoft, entitled Shining Blood you control a mecha across five stages via an over the shoulder camera viewpoint. In many ways, it handles a bit like Armored Core 4 and For Answer, especially when airborne. Bar that, it’s pretty standard third person shooter fare, though considering the indie roots it’s damn impressive nonetheless. Not only can you download a PC version but it’s also an Xbox Live Arcade community game too.

A while back, a bunch of fans of the Space Hulk board game, set in the Warhammer 40k universe, set out to make a freeware single player video game version. Unfortunately, despite what initially looked like some official support for the remake, the team ran afoul of the obvious legal hassles involved and had to take the download down. Well, the remake is back up, now with a new name, ‘Alien Assault’, and all Warhammer 40k terms changed to more generic science fiction space marine vocabulary.

There are two pieces of coverage over at 4gamer regarding a new PC online multiplayer third person mecha game called “Tekki“. Now, this is not to be confused with Steel Battalion, as both titles share a similar name (in Japanese at least), as this is by no means an attempt at simulation. Despite the somewhat dated game engine and functional approach, what is interesting is that the game uses designs by Mika Akitaka – a renowned mecha designer. The beta test will be happening in Japan at the end of this month, so after that it will be interesting to see if a Western release will follow suit.

An expansion for the RTS/RPG hybrid game Dawn of War II, titled Chaos Rising, has been announced. The official site, with a few more pretty pictures and such, can be found here.

What we know so far seems to imply the single player campaign is again Space Marine centered, so those hoping for a Dark Crusade style campaign, where every race was playable in single player, might again be out of luck. The only new faction announced (so far) has been Chaos, and I’m sure I’m not the only mecha fan who had their hopes on a Tau or Necron appearance, or at least a playable Ork campaign.

Still, it looks like Relic Entertainment might finally start answering some questions about the Blood Ravens’ hidden origins and the consequences of the events in the first Dawn of War. The last Dawn of War I expansion, Soulstorm, had a total of nine playable factions, so it’s somewhat understandable that they’ve been short on narrative time, but after five installments I feel we’re due some background characterization on everyone’s favourite generic Space Marines.

IGN has an enlightening interview up with some of the people behind the upcoming new entry in the MechWarrior series. After the announcement trailer was released, after a bit of “ooh” and “ahh”ing at the pretty robot graphics, I was left with a lot of questions about what direction they were attempting to take the new MechWarrior, and the interview is uncharacteristically insightful. Not only do these guys really seem to care about what they’re doing, but they sound like they’re capable of doing it, too.

Back in the 80’s when the early iterations of Battledroids (then later Battletech) surfaced, many of the designs had been not very surreptitiously lifted from various anime shows. Notably that of Dougram and Macross. FASA were suitably sued for their troubles. That said, over the years FASA did their best to throw several olive branches in the direction of the anime industry. Especially when they hired Shoji Kawamori to pen the designs for the Japanese edition of Battletech.

Fast forward to the recent trailer for the MechWarrior reboot featuring a Warhammer (or a destroid Tomahawk from Macross in case you’re wondering) and it seems that this has opened up the legal can of worms all over again. Considering the original case was with FASA it is interesting that the same designs can come under dispute when the rights are owned by another institution.

Personally, I don’t understand why they just didn’t get Hajime Katoki, Yutaka Izubuchi or Junji Okubo to pen new designs for the reboot and be done with it. At the very least they’d have had mecha that at least looked awesome.