Deus Ex: Human Revolution was recently released but it’s already time for some DLC goodness with The Missing Link.  Set to come out in October, The Missing Link now has an official trailer  (see below).

The Deus Ex: Human Revolution conspiracy grows deeper in The Missing Link. During Adam’s quest for the truth in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, he mysteriously vanishes for three days. Where was he? What did he find out? The Missing Link reveals it all.

After being tortured by Belltower agents and having his augmentations disabled, Adam Jensen must rely solely on his basic capabilities to escape from a freighter, destined for an unknown location. While fighting for his survival on the ship, he uncovers another layer to the conspiracy that he never would have suspected. As Adam, befriend new, mysterious allies and fight ruthless enemies to discover what was happening in the shadows during the events of Deus Ex: Human Revolution!

Hard Reset  is an upcoming single player first person shooter for PC. The game is stated to be a sci-fi/cyberpunk game with hoards of oncoming enemies and destruction.  According to their website the story takes place in the only remaining human city with the main character, Major Fletcher, fighting enemies and discovering the mysteries going on around him.  Best of all you can get your grubby sci-fi loving hands on it September 13th.  However, If you’re impatient the Hard Reset demo is available on Steam for the unforeseeable future!

Take a look at all the features listed on the Steampowered.com Store Page:

• A haunting cyberpunk / dark sci-fi setting
• Fast-paced, old-school shooter gameplay
• Hordes of enemies to destroy
• Epic boss fights
• A deep, experience-based weapon upgrade system
• High-fidelity graphics with full dynamic lighting
• Extensive use of physics and dynamic environments

If you’ve logged into your self-hosted WordPress lately you might have noticed an invitation to connect your site to the new WordPress.com plugin called Jetpack.  Essentially the plugin combines previous add-on features provided by Automattic.

Among the features:

• Simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server. Previously provided by WordPress.com Stats.
• The WP.me URL shortener.
• Hovercard popups for your commenters via Gravatar.
• Easily embedded media from popular sites like YouTube, Digg, and Vimeo.
• For the Math geeks, a simple way to include beautiful mathematical expressions on your site.
• A widget for displaying recent tweets. Previously provided by Wickett Twitter Widget
• Your readers can easily share your posts via email or their favorite social networks. Previously provided by the Sharedaddy WordPress plugin.
• Your writing will improve thanks to After the Deadline, an artificial intelligence based spell, style, and grammar checker. Previously provided by the After the Deadline WordPress plugin.

As it stands, Jetpack, it just the first offering in a planned robust set of tools for your self-hosted WordPress website.

If streamlining your current WordPress.com plugins interests you take a look at the Jetpack download page.

When Star Trek Online came out I was among the first to give it a try.  I wanted to like it, I really did but the excessive greed displayed by Cryptic was quick to turn me off from the game (price for the game + monthly fee + item mall). Now that ST:O is going free to play I’ll be willing to give it another chance.  Luckily, if you’ve played and enjoyed the game you’ll still get to experience most of what you enjoyed completely free.

For $14.95 a month gold members will still have every feature available prior to free to play along with any new content.  However, with the silver (free) account you’ll be limited by the following:

• Guild Creation will be unavailable
• Energy Credit Storage Limit
• Additional bridge officer slots are only available through an add-on purchase
• Only 2 character slots
• Player/Bank inventory set at a maximum of 48
• Captain retraining token only available by purchase
• Foundry creator access and project slots are locked
• Veteran awards and priority login is disabled
• In game chat and mail is limited along with customer service
• Voice chat is ad-support
• Gold members receive a stipend of 400 promo points, silver members do not

Overall silver membership doesn’t seem to greatly restrict gameplay but it remains to be seen if items from the c-store will greatly tip the balance in the gold members / paying players favor.

Recently, I’ve found myself playing Eve Online again.  Unfortunately, I’ve returned to a game rife with strange user interface bugs.  Luckily, Eve is on top of the bug squashing with the Incarna 1.0.1 update #4 (and of course the other Incarna patches)

From Eveonline.com:

“EVE Online: Incarna 1.0.1 client update #4 will be released during our daily downtime on Thursday, July 21. This update fixes several UI issues with the Macintosh client. A complete list of the patch notes can be found here.”

If you don’t want to navigate on over to the Eve Online patch notes, here is a what they have listed for this update:

Mac

• Resolved a rendering issue for turret icons, including turret blueprints, which would cause them to not render or render as black squares. Symptoms included info windows, market UI, and the container UI scrollbar not working for these items. Turret 3d assets were in no way affected.

Certainly not a huge update but like with all Eve expansions they have plenty of bugs to knock out.  If you want to fly around Eve with yours truly feel free to send a message to Devil Too, cheers.

Release Date: 9-2-2011

Decades-old found footage from an abandoned NASA mission to the moon reveals the existence of alien life.

Producer Timur Bekmambetov and the Weinstein Company went viral before cameras rolled on their quickie space mission, which has the kind of advance intrigue that films such as The Fourth Kind and even Skyline have lacked. With Bekmambetov running the set, we aren’t worried about the visuals one bit. – IMDB

Falling Skies is the latest sci-fi television series from TNT or any network I’m aware of to make its way onto the small screen since Stargate Universe. The show is set during the aftermath of an alien attack that took out (according to the show) all but 10% of the population six months after the initial invasion. The premier portrays a group of 600 survivors banding together to resist the aliens, nicknamed “skitters”, hellbent on obliterating the remaining human occupants. This new series fills the gap left by Stargate Universe on the Syfy network which ultimately failed to resonate with its audience.

Unlike Stargate Universe, Falling Skies has the opportunity to create something new for viewers instead of being saddled by the previous entries in a franchise. TNT has limited experience in sci-fi programming with the pickup of Babylon 5 in 1998 and the failed attempt at a spin-off called Crusade. However, after watching their newest venture into the science fiction realm I have reserved optimism about the success of Falling Skies. The reservations mostly derive from two sources, Twitter negativity and the lackluster special effects.

Twitter & more specifically the hash tag #fallingskies is buzzing with first impressions of the show.  From observing the last hour or so of tweets it would seem 40% of viewers had a poor reaction, 30% gave it a mixed review and the rest were in my camp with a solid to enthused view of the production. Most of the negatives from the show seem to stem from the special effects used to create the alien invaders. The multi-legged “skitters” trying to snuff out the human race look very unrealistic. The rational brain wants to let TNT slide on this issue, since it’s on a station not known for production quality, but after watching Battlestar Galactica it’s difficult to use a candle when you’ve experienced the handiness of a good flash light.

Beyond the thoughts of the Twitter army and dull visuals the plot of the show does a solid job of holding the attention of viewers (this viewer at least). I’m unfamiliar with the previous shows/movies of a Mr. Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) but I’m pleased by his performance in Falling Skies. His role in the story put me in mind of Rick Grimes from the AMC show “The Walking Dead”.  You have a guy thrust from his previous career into a world where he must fight for his life and his family against impossible odds, all the while exuding an air of calm and confidence. SPOILER: The greatest part of The Walking Dead series is that the zombies aren’t the sole protagonist of the story with other humans causing their fair share of mayhem. In Falling Skies you’re treated to similarly bleak surroundings and a human vs human side story that takes place later on against post apocalyptic outlaws.  This addition aided in deploying a new dynamic to the show beyond what you would expect from the “skitters”.

Falling Skies is scheduled to air every Sunday night at 10pm, so with satisfying first impressions aside, it may be months until we see what the rest of the viewership has to say.  Whether the show is renewed or canceled it’s off to a fantastic start. Let us know what you think of TNT’s newest foray into the sci-fi genre in the comments or on Twitter @retrohive.

The new (or old) Conan the Barbarian isn’t exactly a sci-fi movie but the newest iteration of the film stars Jason Mamoa from Stargate Atlantis fame.  If you’re a fan of his work then go check him out in the new Conan film and let us know what you think.

Release: August 19th, 2011

The tale of Conan the Cimmerian and his adventures across the continent of Hyboria on a quest to avenge the murder of his father and the slaughter of his village. – IMDB

Get ready for another Final Destination! Actually, I enjoyed the first Final Destination movie but the subsequent additions to the series fail in the same way as Saw… it’s the same old thing.

Final Destination Plot: Teen survivors of a suspension-bridge collapse soon begin to fear that there’s no way you can cheat Death. – IMDB

Another Earth Plot: On the night of the discovery of a duplicate planet in the solar system, an ambitious young student and an accomplished composer cross paths in a tragic accident. – IMDB