Latest News And Features

Oh man, I was hoping I would never have to talk about The War Z again, particularly after I played through it in March. The trainwreck has resurfaced however, as Hammerpoint Interactive today sent out an email to registered users explaining that, shocking as it no doubt is, trademark issues - likely relating to Paramount Pictures upcoming zombie movie World War Z - starring Brad Pitt and based on the book by Max Brooks.


Hahaha you said it billboard, countryside really is great!

So yes, now instead of The War Z, Hammerpoint's awful money-sink of is called Infestation: Survivor Stories. In a bold demonstration of that trademark Hammerpoint hubris, it seems like they actually thought their crappy game had a case:

While we were reluctant to rename the game so long after launch, especially with nearly 1 million registered players, it was ultimately decided to be in the best interest of our existing community as well as future players in order to eliminate confusion.

Yes, ever so long after its December launch, that upstart blockbuster movie based on a seven year old bestselling book obviously wouldn't take precedence. I do like that bit about 'it was ultimately decided to be in the best interest of our existing community' though - not being bankrupted in court by a billion dollar multimedia corporation does seem to be in the best interests of your community.


A big thanks to squidassist for basically doing my job for me in the forums, probably before I'd even woken up!

If you are quick to faint, I would suggest sitting down, with some smelling salts at hand - after gamers' non-stop barrage of anger and rage, Microsoft has now announced that they will be dropping their preposterous 24 hour check in policy and their attempt to take over the used games market! Yes, instead of the years of non-stop outrage it normally takes gamers to change the policies of a major corporation, it took us just under a month to make Microsoft see the error of their ways.

Skulls of the Shogun was a game I always wanted to check out, but one I never could check out due to my sticking with Windows 7 - until now it has only ever been available on Xbox Live Arcade, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. A turn-based strategy game, Skulls of the Shogun looks like a Western take on the Eastern SRPG concept popularised in titles like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem. 17-BIT is now preparing to launch the game on Steam next month however, so I will finally get my chance!




In fact, if I had any money now I could play it right away - as pre-purchasing the new Bone-A-Fide Edition on Steam gives you immediate access to the beta, which includes the first chapter of the single player game and all of the multiplayer content. The Bone-A-Fide Edition of Skulls of the Shogun also features an additional four chapters set after the standard campaign and six additional maps for multiplayer - raising the total to 36 maps to play across.

The new edition also adds in a new unit - the Tanuki Monk - and features an experience system a la Call of Duty. And every other multiplayer game these days I guess. Nevertheless, it looks excellent and the Steam version still features the asynchronous multiplayer which made the game so popular amongst Windows 8 fans - although it doesn't appear to support cross-platform play with XBLA and WP7 users anymore, for what are probably obvious reasons. Skulls of the Shogun can be purchased at the special price $11.99 from the official site or via Steam. Have you played SotS, or have you been missing out like me? Let us know in the comments below!

It has been a bit quiet on the video games sales front recently - there are regular sales, but none of the big 'Everything is discounted!' kind we all love. Fortunately however, those purveyors of good old games at GOG.com have come to change all that with their #noDRM Summer Sale, kicking off the two week event by giving away the incredibly popular click-fest Torchlight!

Torchlight is free for GOG.com members for the next 48 hours and can be grabbed by simply logging in and going to Torchlight's page and adding it to your download cart. The game comes with TorchED - allowing you to modify Torchlight to your heart's content - and is, of course, DRM-free.

New specials will be available every day until the fifth of July, while a mass of other titles are currently 50% off. Today you can get the Wide A.Wake Bundle, offering Alan Wake and American Nightmare for just $4.48 and the Definitive Dungeons and Dragons pack, which includes Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 and several other less impressive D&D games for $21.10.

If you decide to grab some of the older games, I would suggest checking the GOG forums while you download them - they're a good place to find links to community built fixpacks and patches. Are you going to grab any games, or are you only interested in new titles (assuming Alan Wake isn't new enough)? Let us know in the comments below!

When Matt Booty, the GM of Redmond Games Studios, told Adam Sessler the Xbox One "may be the last console you'll ever need to buy", the hubris of that statement stemmed from the company's reliance on the Cloud.

At an E3 Xbox 101 session Microsoft showed off a demo featuring a collaboration with NASA where the team plotted the existence, position and trajectory of every asteroid in the asteroid belt.

The Xbox One on its own showed us the positions of 40,000 of these data points, represented as little dots on the screen - but with the power of the cloud this rose to 330,000 data points, with the cloud updating information on the machine over 500,000 times a second.

One of the more surprising announcements of E3 took place during the Microsoft conference, when it was announced that the incredibly popular Free to Play action MMO World of Tanks was headed to the Xbox 360. And now, as spotted by our good friends at Ausgamers, those looking to get their tanking on on consoles can apply now for a shot at the beta via the official site.

Naturally, as it's an online game you'll need an Xbox Live Gold account, although a limited time trial will be available to Silver members when World of Tanks officially launches. It should also be noted that the beta is currently only operating in the United States and Canada - but it will be available in other territories in a couple of weeks, so you should probably still sign up now if you want a chance to get in!

World of Tanks move to the Xbox 360 follows Wargaming's announcement earlier this month that they will be ditching Pay-to-Win in the future - good news whichever platform you play World of Tanks on. Embedded below is the E3 trailer for World of Tanks 360 Edition, which you can also watch via our videos library - and tell me, are you looking forward to checking WoT out on the 360? Joaby tells me he enjoyed playing the console version, although it was hampered by a restrictive 7v7 player limit on the E3 floor - the 360 version will ordinarily maintain the 15v15 count of the PC version. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Steam's content delivery recently changed, moving to a new HTTP-based system, designed to allow more people to easily access content while maintaining better speeds. The new system also saves users time and bandwidth - only replacing changed files while updating, instead of replacing files wholesale. And now Bigpond's Steam services have migrated to the new system, all Bigpond customers can download new Steam games and files quota free through the GameArena content servers!


CoH2 is currently very popular on Steam, despite its preposterous price.

The new system is not perfect however - while new and popular Steam games will still be blisteringly fast to download, other, more obscure stuff might not be as speedy. And while you generally should download quota free from the GameArena servers, you are not guaranteed to connect to them. Incidentally, the new system means popular Steam download management programs might not work - so be sure to keep an eye on these things.

Fortunately, the new delivery system means Valve can and currently are implementing new features in upcoming client releases that address that very issue, along with several others gamers have been nagging them about for the past seven years - like download scheduling, throttling, and downloading updates for games while you play them. Hooray and a big thanks to Trog!

When we leave the realm of games, of sports, of actual competition, classifying a win is tempered by the beliefs and the information on hand for whoever is making the classification. So given even those who were in and around Los Angeles during E3 have no way of seeing absolutely every single thing each company does, outright declaring a winner is a fool's errand. Winning' E3 is stupid - you know that, I know that. It seems these days like everyone knows it - does anyone still think you can win a sweeping mass of PR? I doubt it.

Nevertheless, it's much simpler to say 'Sony won E3' than it is to say 'I believe that, given what I have seen of every company's output at the latest E3, Sony put on the best show and no doubt made significant gains in positivity and goodwill from consumers - particularly the 'core' gamer.' If you read the word won or lost and it bothers you too much, just pretend I said that big pile of words up there instead, or its opposite if that's more appropriate.


Destiny will be available on both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

You don't have to watch Sony's entire E3 conference to see when they won - out of their two hour presentation, two minutes is all it took. Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch just those two minutes right now on Youtube - go and check them out, it's worth it. Those two minutes changed everything - I am right now struggling to remember what happened in the other hour and 58 minutes without reading my summary.

And here it is folks, the final episode of the 5 Inch Floppy. Fridays are really turning out to be a bit of a bummer. My favourite part of any Friday was getting to watch and write about the 5 Inch Floppy and The Weekly Update and now they are gone. Anyway, for this episode, Junglist takes a look back at just some of the highlights from the show over the years - the skits, the haircuts, the awards, the very special episodes and - of course - the games.

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 following TheJunglist on Twitter. And let's all give Junglist a gigantic thanks for all his hard and excellent work!