Welcome, Commander. You have new priority missions to attend to, so here's your briefing for October 22, 2012 with Late Night Computing.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a brutal game. You just get feeling comfortable with a particular outfit of soldiers, have them all upgraded with the latest technology, when three Slim Men have their way with your entire squad. Perfectionists need not apply to Ironman mode. You'll never make it beyond the first few missions.

News bits:

• Have you participated in two of the Xbox Live presidential debates, but need a third to get your free Halo armor? Tune in tonight at 9:00 pm E.T. / 6:00 pm P.T. Or watch through these numerous streaming sites. [via Gigaom]

• What lessons, if any, can game developers draw from Activision's recent move to make Call of Duty Elite free? [via Games Industry]

• How "business as usual" layoffs stagnate the game industry. [via Wired]

• Nearly 8.5 million people watched the League of Legends season 2 finals in Los Angeles, as Taipei Assassins and Azubu Frost competed for $1,000,000 and bragging rights. [via Next Web]

• Amazon's EC2 cloud hosting service experiences some difficulties today, bringing down popular websites all over the Internet. [via Beta Beat]

Chatty posts of the moment.

Make sure you log-in and check your filters if you can't see the following:

• "In this thread we discuss which videogame you thought had the greatest 'honeymoon phase' ever, of all time. Where it was just so completely new to you, exploratory as a game design and enjoyable on a level you never experienced before you wish that feeling would never pass.

  For me, it has to be playing Day Z the first week or so it was out. When no one really knew what was going on and the 'meta' of the game wasn't established. Searching through the pitch black night in that massive world trying to find my friend. Shooting my gun in the dark to see if he could hear it, and if he did trying to navigate to each other." [by eonix]

• "Can we talk about how much dailys suck in WoW? Who thought it was such a great idea to make all these factions with dailys and even more factions to grind once you hit revered with those factions? Its a boring tedious process and I miss tabards that would allow me to grind heroics.

  Also, heroics are easier than normals were 2 expansions ago its not like they were ever super hard, but at least make it so you have to understand the fights to be successful." [by D45hiz]

Nightly file.

• Euro Truck Simulator 2 demo 1.0. "Travel across Europe as king of the road, a trucker who delivers important cargo across impressive distances! With dozens of cities to explore from the UK, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and many more, your endurance, skill and speed will all be pushed to their limits. If you’ve got what it takes to be part of an elite trucking force, get behind the wheel and prove it!" Download the demo for Windows here.

Media.

Guild Wars 2 Halloween trailer:

"Get ready for Halloween 2012 with the Shadow of the Mad King trailer for Guild Wars 2."

The Zero Dark Thirty map pack for Medal of Honor shows off its life-inspired maps, Painkiller Hell & Damnation rocks out with a features trailer, and Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two vignettes Oswald to round out today's media.