Etherium: War begins in video

• written by Krist Duro

Etherium, the new futuristic real-time strategy game published by Focus Home Interactive and developed for PC by Tindalos Interactive, begins hostilities in a new video!

Represented by the forces of the Consortium, the Humans face the Vectides and the Intary, the two other playable factions of the game, on some of the contested planets in the war for etherium.

While the first video only showed a single faction--the Consortium--and the sand planet Serenade, today's trailer reveals all three playable factions locking their troops in battle on two more of the six planets that will serve as battlegrounds. The ice world Arctis and the volcanic planet Pilo both provide environmental challenges and unique climatic events. The first battles promise to be quite intense, and one thing is for sure: the Consortium, the Vectides and the Intari are in for a large-scale conflict!

In Etherium, these three empires are locked in a ruthless struggle to control the etherium, a mysterious and precious resource found only on a handful of planets. Take the lead of one of the three factions, each with its individual characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, technologies and special skills such as climate control, espionage and precognition.

[embed]http://youtu.be/y-Nem9mXXH8[/embed]

The solo campaign in Etherium is non-linear: you are free to decide how your conquests progress. Manage your resources, expand your colonies and extend your control of the map to assemble an army capable of crushing your opponents. Epic battles will ensue between formidable armies comprising numerous units: infantry, tanks, aircraft, and even gigantic colossi of war several dozens of meters high; real machines of destruction! You will also use scientific research to develop a tech tree enabling you to unlock new units and upgrades, access new structures to develop your colony and to use new special skills.

Etherium has a unique and dynamic weather system that has a direct impact on your strategy. Use a sandstorm to approach the enemy base unseen, or mount a rearguard attack by crossing a freezing river. Each of the 7 planets has diverse environments, and varied terrain that will force you to adapt your strategy: arid desert, swamps that impede tanks, icy worlds, island archipelagos...

Finally, Etherium will also test your strategic skills in online modes, where up to four players can compete simultaneously.

Articles you might like

• written by Krist Duro

HESAW and Focus Home Interactive unveil Blue Estate

# HESAW and Focus Home Interactive are proud to present Blue Estate, the darkly funny rail shooter based on the Eisner Award-nominated Blue Estate comic books from Viktor Kalvachev. Designed from the ground up to exploit the unprecedented accuracy and precision of Kinect for Xbox One®, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft and the gyroscopic features of the new PlayStation®4 controller, Blue Estate offers slick wit and punishing violence through a genuinely fun and intuitive control system, all set in an eye-popping technicolor mob world. In Blue Estate, the players will play as Tony Luciano, the homicidal maniac son of LA's crime boss Don Luciano, and Clarence, a broke ex-navy seal who has been hired to clean up Tony's mess.

• written by Krist Duro

Insurgency: Major Update Incoming

# Insurgency, my personal go-to on the competitive online shooter front as of these last couple months, is finally getting its first major update in the form of 'Molotov Spring'. \[embed\]http://youtu.be/MMHcPMng1aU\[/embed\] All I can say is, “fantastic”.

• written by Krist Duro

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: The Original and The Sequel

# When The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing released last year, I felt it a breath of fresh air for the hack n' slash genre. It shy'd away from the dreary, overtly oppressive mood that has, for the most part, been representative of the genre since Diablo, for all intents and purposes, made it for what it is today. It instead comfortably set itself between the dreariness that you would normally see in a Diablo, and the cartoonish nature of, say, Torchlight and did so in the way that it presented the world and its characters.