One of the oft-discussed topics among those following the upcoming Halo Wars RTS game by Ensemble for the Xbox 360 console is whether or not a workable interface for a strategy game can be created for a console. Many commenters have offered that RTS games just belong on PCs to be played with mice and keyboards, mirroring the comments of many PC gamers before the release of console FPS games like GoldenEye and Halo.

GamePolitics points out Neilsen Entertainment's third annual Active Gamer Benchmark Study, which says that there are 117 million "active gamers" in the United States.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

Russian news site Novosti says that the Russian government is planning on launching an unmanned mission to the Mars moon of Phobos in 2009. The vehicle is expected to arrive on the moon in 2010, and depart for Earth in 2011 carrying soil samples.

The story doesn't say whether or not the Russians expect to find any leather goddesses on the small moon, but you can bet this is a prelude to landing on Mars' other moon and beginning secret work to turn it into a colony ship.

Gamasutra reports that Alexis Nolent, Editorial Story Design Director for Ubisoft, delivered remarks at the Austin Games Conference on the integration of stories into games. Nolent seems to favor the Half-Life 2 brand of "scripted events" versus the more traditional, cinematic sort of Halo-style "cutscenes":

Those who wondered how Bungie was going to plausibly explain the presence of Nicole-458, the Spartan II soldier who guards the hangar bay of the Nassau Station in Tecmo's upcoming DOA4 title for the Xbox 360, will get a hearty "shut your noisehole" and a shout-out to the I Love Bees reality game in Frankie's run-down on Nicole, Spartan-458:

Nicole was born in the year 2531 in the city of New Legaspi on Mars. At six years of age she was abducted by agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence and conscripted into the Spartan II program. The Spartan II program was the UNSC's highly successful military project to augment and hone perfect soldiers.

SPARTAN-458's unit was preparing for a classified mission on Nassau Station when the ONI stealth ship Apocalypso tumbled into real-space – being carried along in the wake of a freak slipspace anomaly. The anomaly intersected Nassau Station; creating a semi-stable "bubble" in the space/time continuum on its way back to the 21st Century.

For the time being Nicole-458 is trapped in the 21st century; guarding Nassau Station's secrets with all but lethal force (she realizes killing someone in the past could have dire consequences), waiting for the "bubble" to collapse and hopefully returning her to the year 2552.

The Apocalypso, some of you might recall, was the UNSC craft that the AI Melissa was aboard, and that brought the mysterious artifact to Earth that Spartan-spawn Janissary James had to try and deactivate before it... did something bad.

Whether this mishap involving a cloaking device and a space station (sounds like a line from Hitchhiker's, doesn't it?) occurred before or after Truth's fleet arriving at Earth isn't specifically stated; but as the Nassau's hangar bay happens to include a conveniently-placed Covenant boarding craft, one can only assume the latter. Either that, or this is really just the Cairo's hangar from Halo 2. Wait, did I say that out loud? Nevermind.

Louis Wu at HBO passes on word from Dustin Kaufman that Hasmid Hamilton Camp, earlier known as Bob Camp and most recently known as the Prophet of Mercy in Halo 2, passed away of a heart attack in October of this year. Camp's wife, Rasjadah, passed away in 2002. They had six children and thirteen grandchildren.

Recovery from a three-day holiday here this week has sapped whatever resolve I had left for keeping up on news, so here's a collection of interesting items:

1Up has screenshots from Dead or Alive 4 showing Spartan-458 in action against Ryu Hayabusa on Cairo Station. These appear to be the same images as those scanned from print magazines recently. Xboxyde came up with the shots. (Anybody else still secretly hoping Cortana is hidden in there, too?-Ed.)

Tempus Fugit pointed out in the HBO forum a 1Up interview with Peter Jackson about the King Kong game coming out in connection with Jackson's latest film.

There are a few mentions of other games, among them Halo:

Multiplayer game aficionados who use Macintosh computers have been hampered by a lack of a VOIP program compatible with the popular TeamSpeak software. No more. The first beta release of TeamSpeex has just been released. Go try it out. Thanks IMG.