With the holiday season drawing near, you’re probably wondering what to get for your gamer friend, sibling, loved one or self. This time around, Black Library, the fiction publishing department of Games Workshop, is giving you a lot of options for the tech-inclined science fiction fan and gamer in your life.

We’ve got a few Xbox 360 gaming deals for you today that doesn’t involve possibly getting pepper sprayed at Walmart. Microsoft has provided a few games with deep discounts for today only. If you don’t find what you’re looking for today, there will be another sale taking place on Cyber Monday.

Time to blow some stuff up with Ms. Splosion Man, the sequel to Twisted Pixel’s Splosion Man. Big Science has captured the first game’s hero and has cracked the bubbly. Champagne shorts out some equipment unleashing Ms, Splosion Man on an unsuspecting world. Coming along with her are 50 levels of single player, a separate 50 level co-op campaign and oh so many explosions. In Twisted Pixel tradition, the game contains avatar items and awards for the truly dedicated sploders to unlock. Ms. Splosion Man is 800 Microsoft Points. ($10)

With release of Oath of Moment, we saw the return of one of the best characters from the first five books of the Horus Heresy series. We also saw him recruiting people into what would become one of the Inquisition’s true military forces.

In Oath of Moment, he came. He saw heretics. He slaughtered them himself. Now we see him return. He had been recruiting for a couple of months and has built a nice little force.

For the first time since Tales of Heresy, we are delving into a book of short stories that are following the legions of the Adeptus Astartes (better known as the Space Marines).

Space Marines are inherently fun. After all, they’re living walls of muscle and armor. They excel at causing complete death, destruction and mayhem on a battlefield and that’s before any of the really big guns (like Dreadnoughts) come into play.

However, there are things that make them harder to write about.

This book not only holds the line holds the line set by the rest of Warhammer 40,000 fiction but actually advances it, as the Ghosts are so prone to do on a mission. Read on to find out how and why…

Not much information was given in terms of gameplay. What we do know are some of the ideas of classes that you could play and descriptions of each chapter that’s been revealed to be part of the game. Hopefully they reveal more about the gameplay. The possibility of being able to play as a space marine of any kind is well worth the wait. Either way, if the previous history of Warhammer 40,000 tabletop RPGs are any indicator, the game should have very similar gameplay mechanics to both Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.

Fans of the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 universes have heard about rumors of a Warhammer 40,000 movie for years. Soon, we may have something to look at if plans come to pass.

Now it seems there might be a straight-to-DVD motion-capture film titled Ultramarines.

The first sign of hope was when London-based production company Codex Pictures got the rights to the movie a few years ago. It was further solidified into an eventuality as it acquired Dan Abnett, veteran writer to the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 battlefields, as the screenwriter. The company also reported on the movie’s site that Martyn Pick would be the might-be movie’s director.

If, like me, you’re a student, you’re probably nearing finals and are on the verge of an educational burn out. Sometimes all you need is something fun to play to distract yourself for a short time and so you can relax. After all, a calm mind will help you in the long run.

Here are a few tabletop games you can play to help you relax along with a few additional suggestions that should help rest (or reset) your mind…

Title: The Horus Heresy: False GodsAuthor: Graham McNeillPublisher: The Black LibraryRelease Date: 2006Price: $7.99Rating: One thumb up and one down, 79/100, C+, ** 1/2 out of five.Pros: Incredible writing, great story, memorable characters are built up more, hard-hitting descriptionCons: Same problem most sequels have. Too much attention to smaller details and it occasionally blocks out the story. Also inconsistently deals with characters.Overall: It’s full of flaws but for a sequel it’s worth the money.

With False Gods, Graham McNeil has written a great second installment to the Horus Heresy series that tries too hard to outshine Dan Abnett’s Horus Rising.

Click through for the full review…