Latest News And Features

It's time for another very excellent episode of the 5 Inch Floppy! This week Junglist checks out Zeno Clash 2, the sequel to one of the strangest games of 2008. Zeno Clash 2 takes the weird tribal anthropomorph setting of the bizarre first game and increases it, adding a partially open world and utilizing the Unreal Engine 3 for better, and weirder visuals. What's the verdict then? Watch the episode and find out!

You can watch the 5 Inch Floppy embedded below or in our videos library - going full screen for HD of course. And as always, you can get more of your Junglist fix by checking out the 5 Inch Floppy on Facebook and the 5 Inch Floppy Blog and following TheJunglist on Twitter!

Ah, here we are folks and it's time for another episode of The Weekly Update! This week our man Andy Wells checks out the Get into Games festival in Ballarat, which is happening next weekend, beginning on the 18th. He also checks out The Stinky Footboard, a new peripheral which allows you to control part of your game with your feet and he follows that up with a look at Joaby's outstanding First Look at Grand Theft Auto V and my review of Dead Island: Riptide.

Andy wraps up this week with a look back at EB Games' 25 Hour Starlight Game-A-Thon last week! You can watch The Weekly Update embedded below or in our videos library - going full screen to see Andy's handsome face in high definition of course!

It's still a long way off, but Sega and Creative Assembly today announced the release date for the highly anticipated sequel to 2004's Total War: Rome. Total War: Rome II will hit PCs worldwide on September 3 this year, giving strategy players another reason to dive into the world of ancient Rome and build the republic up into a massive empire.

Sega have also announced the perks which will be available to those who pre-order the game, namely the first DLC pack - the Greek States Culture Pack - which adds the playable factions of Epirus, Athens and Sparta to the game. Sega also announced the Collector's Edition, of which only 22,000 are being made, but it's only available in the US and it costs $180, so that's no good. Apparently it will be available through select retailers at some point in the future though, so keep an eye out if you want to show everyone how big a Total War fan you are.

You can read more about Rome II and pre-order the game digitally via the official site and you can watch The Battle of Teutoburg Forest trailer embedded below - or in our videos library. Are you looking forward to Total War: Rome II? Have you gone and pre-ordered it already? Let us know in the comments below!

We all knew that when Ubisoft bought THQ Montreal things were going to get awkward for Patrice Desilets. The Creative Director, best known for his work on the Assassin's Creed series, left Ubisoft back in 2010 and joined THQ in 2011, taking the helm at THQ Montreal on a new project under the moniker 1666. He also brought three former Ubisoft staff with him, which no doubt upset Ubisoft. When THQ auctioned off its assets, Ubisoft acquired THQ Montreal - and Desilets was back working for the company he'd left 3 years ago.

Things seem to have progressed further than just uncomfortable however. Yesterday morning Ubisoft announced in a press release that they had parted ways with Desilets, and that the Creative Director left after discussions failed to successfully resolve issues between the two parties:

"The acquisition of THQ Montreal in January allowed Ubisoft to welcome 170 experienced developers - including Patrice Desilets - to our existing and renowned workforce. Unfortunately since the acquisition the good faith discussions between Patrice and Ubisoft aimed at aligning Patrice's and the studio's visions have been inconclusive. As a result, Patrice has left the studio. Our priorities remain with the teams already hard at work on projects in development. They are at the root of Ubisoft Montreal's past and future successes."

A new Humble Bundle is up and running and this time it's all about Double Fine games. For the low, low price of whatever-you-want you can get three popular Double Fine games - the brilliant action platformer Psychonauts, the excellent mock JRPG Costume Quest and the... puzzle game Stacking. If you pay more than the average - currently just $7.89 you can also get the genre-mashing Brütal Legend, which I have yet to play.




Defying traditional Humble Bundle conventions, if you pay $35 or more you will also become a slacker backer for Double Fine's upcoming adventure game Broken Age - the same one which kicked off the Kickstarter revolution. This comes with private forum and beta access while the game is under development, 2 Player Productions documentary series about the development of Broken Age and, naturally, the full game on release - on PC, Mac and Linux. If you really want to throw money about, $70 will also get you a t-shirt, so you can show everyone just how much you love Tim Shafer and Double Fine.

After Deep Silver purchased Volition there were some worried voices, but those were primarily due to Deep Silver's relatively unknown status in the publishing game. If the latest trailer for Saints Row 4 is any indication however, it doesn't look like they've been interfering in the creative process.

Saints Row 4, as we learned during the THQ auction process, features the Saints taking their popularity to a whole new level, with the player character becoming President of the United States. At the same time however, Steelport has been visited by aliens, who trap the pseudo-heroes in a simulation of their native town as they attempt to enslave the human race. So naturally, the Saints get super powers and begin to fight back.

You can watch the trailer embedded below, and fans of obscure but occasionally astonishingly funny sketch comedy shows will note that it uses the same song used as the theme to Kroll Show - Polyhymnia by Scout McMillan. The trailer is currently only available on Youtube, so it is metered content, but we will be sure to update this post once it hits the GameArena servers. Are you looking forward to Saints Row 4? Let us know in the comments below.

Bethesda today announced the next game to be published by the company - Wolfenstein: The New Order. Developed by MachineGames - a studio built by former members of Starbreeze Studios - Wolfenstein: The New Order will reimagine the popular FPS series on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the fourth quarter of this year.

Not much is known about the new game currently, although GameSpot have explained that the new Wolfenstein is set in the 1960s in an alternate universe where the Nazis won the war. The Nazis make the same mistake they always make though - they forgot about B.J. Blazkowicz. Judging by the armada of mechs throughout the trailer, I'd say we can probably look forward to another appearance by Mecha-Hitler too.

I'm not sure what to think about Wolfenstein: The New Order. On the one hand, while some people have been requesting a return to World War II recently I hope we never have to go there again - even if the World War II of Wolfenstein was significantly different to that of Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. On the other hand though, an alternate future where the Nazis won? What is this an episode of Doctor Who? What do you think? You can watch the trailer embedded below(it's only available via Youtube currently, so it is metered) and let us know in the comments!

Yes, it's EA day today apparently, as following the news that Disney would team up with the monolithic games company for Star Wars EA also announced that the next full fledged addition to the immensely popular Sims franchise would be released on PC and Mac some time in 2014.




As a result of the backlash over SimCity, which saw some users unable to play at launch and suffered from a host of other troubles, EA and Maxis have been clear to explain that The Sims 4 will be a single player offline experience. This will no doubt serve as a relief for some Sims 4 fans, however disappointing it is for SimCity fans that they didn't learn this lesson on a different game.

Not a lot is known about The Sims 4 currently, aside from its 2014 release date, but we will be sure to keep you up to date when news comes in. In the meantime if you want to read a bunch of Simlish somehow and tell me what it says, you can do so via the official site. I'm definitely interested to see what Maxis do with The Sims 4 - I hope it has a bit more of the structured gameplay we saw in The Sims Medieval. What do you think, are you on board? Let us know in the comments below!

A lot of people have been wondering about the status of Star Wars video games since Disney bought the franchise and Lucasfilm. Would Disney further its reach into the world of gaming or would they get someone else to take care of it? The answer, as announced today, probably won't come as much of a surprise - Disney has entered a multi-year, multi-title licensing agreement with EA, who will be developing a host of new games across consoles, PC and mobile platforms.


Here's hoping it doesn't mean another one of these.

Thanks to the specifics of the agreement, we can even guess at what kinds of games we'll be looking at. As part of the deal Bioware will be making Star Wars games - meaning another addition to Knights of the Old Republic perhaps? Visceral are also signed on to make a game - I doubt it will be horror, like Dead Space, but I can't say I'd mind if it was. Most excitingly however, DICE have also been mentioned - meaning we might finally get a new addition to the Battlefront series.

Crowd-funding is still a thing, but I thought we'd do something different this week - by which I mean something completely unrelated to crowd-funding at all. Instead we are going to take a look at PAX Australia's Indie Showcase - in which independent developers from across our great country can show off their awesome looking titles!

We will kick things off today with Black Annex, a stealth strategy title by Man Fight Dragon. Lance McDonald - the man behind Man Fight Dragon, explains it as a love letter to the old Bullfrog games - Syndicate in particular. As you can see in its video below (currently only available on Youtube, so it is metered content) the gameplay looks complex and tactical. You control a group of corporate spies as they kill, steal, sabotage and kidnap their way through other corporation's offices.

The most astonishing thing about Black Annex isn't its looks or its gameplay however, it's the way it was designed. Black Annex has been written from the ground up in QBASIC. Yes, QBASIC of Nibbles.BAS and Banana.BAS fame.