Face of Mankind was an in-development MMOG I remember nostalgically from my halcyon days of 2004 – 2005, where I spent many a Google query searching for games to play online. It was an interesting concept; a FPS MMOG focused less around grinding for levels and more about roleplay (as in, creating characters and backstories yourself) and teamwork. I got into the closed or open beta at some point and puttered around the game world, soaking in the mechanics of the environment around me. It's a bit tricky to remember the extent of the game's features so far back, but I do remember being blown away at the potential.

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The Void is an atmospheric action/adventure game by Russian developer Ice-Pick Lodge. In the game you play the role of a lost soul that has arrived in the Void after death; the Void is a purgatory-like existence between living and absolute death, and as a soul you roam through surrealistic zones on a quest to eventually regain your living existence and return to the real world.

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Out.com, the official website for Out Magazine, has recently published their list of the "gayest" video games. Looking over their selections, I have to say their choices are a little… interesting. And by interesting I mean, in fact, that this list would at first glance appear to be compiled by a gaggle of frat boys giggling over their collection of eBay'd NES cartridges.

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I wanted to take a moment to post an update on the issue I wrote about earlier regarding Valve's swear-word filter on their forums. A short time after I posted the original article, the filter itself was edited and "gay" was removed; unfortunately this appears to be a Pyrrhic victory.

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I've had a on/off subscription to EVE for years, although it usually lapses in a short space of time. EVE is a game I want desperately to love and play and enjoy but every time I try, I feel like I've walked into the middle of a group of people laughing over an inside joke and I don't get where the entertainment lies. EVE can be unforgiving if you're a solo player, as the bulk of it lies in epic fleet warfare requiring the synchronization of a large group of players. While there are things to do on your own, my experiences with mining are about as interesting as I suspect spending hours inside an actual mine would be.

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"With Rockstar Games releasing The Ballad of Gay Tony, will Valve ever include a gay character in any of their games?" That was the gist of a thread created on the official Steam forums several weeks ago. Innocuous question or not, however, the thread itself was quickly locked and hidden from public view by one of Valve's volunteer moderators, a fate that almost every other discussion of LGBT topics on the official Steam forums ends with, as well.

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In the latest patch to drop last week, Blizzard has again improved upon ways to find additional players for instances. The new Dungeon Finder tool is their newest toy and after playing with it for a few days I have to say, I'm completely blown away by how helpful it is. In the end this is probably one of the most impressive interface changes I've seen happen to WoW and I can only hope that other games take a page from Blizzard on this and release their own versions in the future.

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