Latest News And Features

If there is one good thing about my being stupid and missing last week's 5 Inch Floppy until yesterday, it's that we get two days in a row of Junglist's beautiful hair and excellent video! Yes, today Junglist checks out Shootmania Storm - the e-sports focused FPS developed by Nadeo which is currently in open beta. And what a game - it looks like a blend of Quake 3 and Tribes and it comes with incredibly easy to use map and mod tools.

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!

Junglist, Joaby, Luke and Heath join forces to talk about BioShock Infinite (no spoilers!), Shootmania Storm, DLCQuest, World of Tanks and more! They discuss the news of the week – and it’s not all good – and answer listener questions. This episode goes for 1 hour and 50 minutes and it contains coarse language.

The GA Podcast Episode 172 – Blaming the jetlag

You can grab the latest episode of The GAP right here or from iTunes if that's your thing. You can also check The GAP out on Facebook if that's your thing!

At the beginning of this week Ubisoft launched a new website for what appeared to be Far Cry 3 DLC - an eighties themed expansion titled Blood Dragon. The page, designed like an old Geocities site, had a lot of cryptic information and secrets on it (try out the Konami code) and was believed to be an April Fools' Day joke.




Until now. Several screenshots have leaked for Blood Dragon to NeoGAF, along with box art implying the game is headed to Xbox Live Arcade. Whether it will be stand-alone as the Arcade tag implies or the aforementioned themed expansion is not yet known - in fact, apart from some basics we know next to nothing about it at all. It certainly doesn't look like an XBLA title though.

You can check out all of the new screens on our Far Cry 3 Game Page and as an added bonus Ubisoft have released a three track soundtrack for Blood Dragon, with music by Melbourne electronica group Power Glove. You can stream all three tracks for free on SoundCloud and get in the mood for the awful outfits and hair that will no doubt factor into Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.

It has been a miserable week for video game developers. We've learned of the firing of 40 employees at High Moon Studios, an unknown number of staff at Square Enix Los Angeles and approximately 200 employees of LucasArts, which Disney has shifted to licensed based products instead of internal development. And now Sega have confirmed with MCV Pacific that Sega Studios Australia will be shutting down this August.




Sega Studios Australia is the Brisbane based studio best known by their former name as the Australian branch of Creative Assembly - where they were responsible for Medieval II: Total War and the London 2012 Olympics game. Our condolences and best wishes go out to everyone affected.

Pocketwatch Games has been developing Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine for quite a while, with its prototype (now named Monte-Carlo) winning the IGF's Seumas McNally Grand Prize in 2010. Monaco is nearly finished now however and it was announced on Facebook today that the heist game would be available on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade on April 24th.




Monaco takes the form of a co-operative heist game, with one to four players teaming up to rob various locations of everything they have. The single player is fantastic, and playing with friends looks even better, so I'm looking forward to checking it out on the 24th.

You can pre-order the game for $15 from the official site, which will give you a Steam key for the full game on release along with a copy of the prototype, along with some tracks and sheet music by the game's composer - the now famous Austin Wintory. Have you checked out Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine yet? Are you confused as to how two thieving related games - Monaco and Thief - are using the same phrase when Mojang couldn't make a crappy card game without Bethesda jumping down their throats? Let us know in the comments below!

Hey! I missed this the other day, so if you haven't checked it out already, get excited for another episode of the 5 Inch Floppy! This week Junglist talks to Minh "Gooseman" Le - the co-creator of Counter-Strike about his upcoming team based FPS Tactical Intervention. It's an outstanding episode, as we've all come to expect from Junglist, so go watch it already!

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!

It's not a good week to be working for a big studio it seems. As explained to Game Informer today, Disney are closing down LucasArts' internal development and focusing on a licensing model to 'achieve a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games.' Disney purchased LucasArts along with Lucasfilm for just over $4 billion late last year and have been trying to figure out what to do with it ever since.




The two titles primarily affected by Disney's decision are Star Wars: 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault. While not much was known about First Assault, 1313 was announced last year and would follow a bounty hunter seeking truth in Coruscant's underworld. While it seems at the moment that Star Wars: 1313 will never see the light of day, it could possibly come out if it is licensed - and picked up and completed by an outside source.

While our sympathies go out to the staff who have lost their jobs as a result of this, it does seem like a sensible move for Disney. LucasArts made a name for itself with its adventure games in the 90s, but since they began focusing exclusively on Star Wars projects their work has been more hit and miss. It would have been really great to see another addition to the excellent Jedi Knight series though.

Rockstar have now officially released the cover art for Grand Theft Auto V - and you can probably guess how it looks without even seeing it. Surprisingly, some people have noted their unhappiness with the choice, saying it is 'unoriginal'. Really though, isn't that another way of saying iconic?




As this Reddit thread points out, Rockstar have had almost the same cover art layout for every Grand Theft Auto from III onwards. Some elements might change, but primarily it remains the same - a tiled mosaic with pictures of a helicopter, the main character(s) and a motorcycle surrounding the title.

Seeing the Grand Theft Auto V logo summons memories of the earlier titles - it reminds me of the day I picked up Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on the PC from JB HiFi in Brisbane City - the game came in a hardcover book featuring a tourists guide to San Andreas and I read and re-read the booklet and stared at the cover for the entire exceptionally long bus trip home. Do you think the cover is unoriginal or iconic - does it bring any memories up for you? Let us know in the comments below!

Having successfully finished the Deadpool video game for Activision, it was announced today that 40 employees of High Moon Studios were being laid off as part of an attempt by Activision to 'align its costs with its revenues'. Deadpool - which is due out this Winter on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC - sees Marvel's beloved fourth-wall-breaking nearly invincible assassin taking on a mission to eliminate a corrupt media mogul and will feature cameos from other Marvel characters like Wolverine and Cable.




And in other news, High Moon Studios weren't the only company to lose staff today, after Square-Enix announced that its Los Angeles based office would eliminate a number of positions as a part of corporate restructuring. It's currently not known how many staff were affected by this, but I think we can all agree it's never good for people to lose their jobs.

Sadly, this is a recurring theme in the video game development and publishing industry as higher ups search for ways to maximise their dollars. It's one of the major reasons Season Pass style DLC is so popular these days, as it allows members of the team who have work finished before the game is released to continue creating in some capacity. There could be a silver lining here - maybe we'll see some awesome indie teams sprout up from the High Moon departures? Only time will tell.

April Fools' Day. Love it or hate it, companies put a lot of effort into making up gags to unleash on their, well, now-suspecting public and 2013 was no different. So come with us for a look at just some of the hundreds of April Fools' Day pranks pulled on the video gaming community this year.

Kicking things off, yesterday Arenanet added a brand new area to the incredibly popular Guild Wars 2. Called The Super Adventure Box, its in-game description is a virtual space created by an Asuran inventor to help Asuran kids learn. Complete with retro style pixel art graphics and some very, very Nintendo-esque theming, the Super Adventure Box is available for you to play through with your friends (or solo) until the end of the month.

The trailer shows another description of the Super Adventure Box - an eighties-style console that freaks out kids and makes Rytlock turn evil and watch you in your bedroom or something. It's definitely worth watching so check it out embedded below or in our videos library and read on for more April Fools' Day pranks.