Cavedog’s Total Annihilation is one of the best-loved real time strategy games of all time, and despite poorly thought-out unit balance, dodgy net code and a complete lack of official support for more than a decade, it’s still a popular multiplayer title fifteen years after its release.

Supreme Commander, the spiritual successor developed by Chris Taylor’s Gas Powered Games, captured some of the original game’s appeal, but its sequel, Supreme Commander 2, lacked the epic scale of TA and SupCom.  Planetary Annihilation looks set to be a spiritualer successor; an unashamed homage to the epic scale of the original, but taken to an ambitious new level.  Uber Entertainment (developers of Monday Night Combat) are set to develop, with TA and SupCom development vet Jon Mavor heading up the project.

Battles will take place across entire planetary systems, with moonbases, asteroids used as kinetic impactors capable of glassing entire planets, and also robots that blow each other up. The Kickstarter for the project looks to be doing well; already halfway to its $900,000 goal after only four days.  Check out the trailer after the break or on the Kickstarter page.  If you liked Total Annihilation, you will love what’s planned for Planetary Annihilation.

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I always wondered how the “Meet The” series promoting Team Fortress 2 would tackle the Pyro, a character that doesn’t talk and therefore would be breaking continuity to narrate his own video. It’s as cleverly done as all the others, even if it’s only in service of one real gag. Of course, why are Valve using resources to promote a game that’s how old at this point? Well, it’s also promoting an upcoming product called Source Filmmaker, which has its own serious video to explain it all. Pretty cool looking stuff.

I know we’re all tired of hearing about the revival attempts being funded through Kickstarter at this point, but I want to post about this because it has me somewhat conflicted. The game is Battle Chess; if you played PC games in the 90s, you may have come across it. The Kickstarter project is headed by Subdued Software and has a target goal of $100,000.

As someone who enjoyed the original 1988 release, and can play Chinese Chess (which was the game for the sequel), I’m interested. On the other hand, as someone who’s old enough to know that the gimmick of animations whenever a piece is taken grows old extremely fast, I feel doubtful that there will be enough meaningful substance for this game to register as a serious chess game for anyone but fans of the original. The “Challenge Mode” could be good, but then again, I could just check out the Puzzle Of The Day at Chess.com.

No images or further details and no apology for a direct copy of the press release, but this is interesting and I’m in a rush…