After what's felt like a lifetime of playing Ezio's, well, entire life, Assassin's Creed is finally in for a much-requested/angrily demanded change of scenery. More specifically, the American Revolution is about to get a massive shipment of conveniently placed hay bales, which have somehow been imbued with the magical power to muffle the sound of a 170 lb or so man falling 100 feet. But we digress. So far, Ubisoft's only officially sent along a box shot of AC III's tomahawk-wielding main character making a British soldier's head revolt from the rest of his body, but All Games Beta has managed to dig up roughly a billion screens depicting everything from wildlife hunting to George Freaking Washington. Ubisoft's PC indiscretions notwithstanding, this has us pretty damn intrigued. Apparently, more info's coming on Monday, so we'll emerge from our impregnable hay bale bunker as soon as that happens.

After attempting to give you power over the forces of biology, evolution, and arms-in-places-where-arms-shouldn't-be with Spore, Maxis is purportedly returning to its urban roots. According to scans from German magazine GameStar (via NeoGAF), Sim City 5 is building a hilariously complicated series of roads to 2013. Apparently, a brand new graphics engine, resource/economy-sharing multiplayer, upgradeable buildings, and roads that curve (!) are among the new biggest new features coming along for the ride. Maxis, meanwhile, hasn't made a peep so far, but it does have a major event scheduled for GDC next week, and it doesn't take a rocket surgeon (or even, say, a vaguely competent city planner) to put two and Sim City 5 together. For now, though, click through the link for a bit more info and some nice concept art.

I think The Darkness II's Jackie Estacado deserves an award for being more utterly screwed in a single instance than any other videogame character in history. So here's the tale of the tape: I – playing as the main character of all first-person shooters: camera-glued-to-the-main-character's-forehead – was locked in a dark, dingy room while a horde of vaguely supernatural mob goons turned my mega-mansion (and my horde of vaguely competent regular mob goons) into a gory pile of mob goop. “Mansion under attack, lol #firstworldproblems,” I could almost imagine Jackie tweeting if he hadn't also been, you know, crucified at the time. 

Then one of my none-too-subtle foes wheeled a TV inches away from my eyes so as to – both literally and figuratively – rub my face in what was to come. “It's your own personal snuff film,” he proudly announced. On the screen were two of my particularly talkative underlings – beaten, bound, and on their knees, with backs mercifully turned away from the pistol pointed in their general direction. “One lives, one dies. Pick.” And I should have cared. I really should have. 

But I didn't. Not in the slightest. So, what changed between the original Darkness' masterclass in characterization and this sordid tale of heartlessness and heart-eating? Simple: time.

What are you doing this weekend? OK, let us rephrase that: what plans are you canceling this weekend because they don't involve blue death discs and jetpacks? Tribes: Ascend, you see, is finally making the 50-foot vertical leap into open beta, and it's bringing four modes, nine customizable classes, and nine maps along with it. Also, seeing as it's free-to-play, this version of the high-flying FPS revival will probably carry on until the End Times, meaning that – in all likelihood – not even version 1.0 will steamroll your stats and unlocks. Regardless, this has “socially crippling multiplayer obsession” written all over it, and that's our favorite kind of obsession. So then, can we expect to see you gracefully skiing to battle alongside us, practically begging physics to write an amendment to the Gravity Constitution because you so thoroughly broke its laws?