Another week's gone by already and it's time for a new episode of Good Game!

Here's what Junglist has to say about tonight's show, followed by the second half of our chat with Junglist, about the Australian gaming industry, competitive gaming industry and what games he's looking forward to.

We're well underway again, and Ep 2 is all about FLIPPING. So without further ado lets get right into why you should flip the channel over to ABC or ABC2 this week to flip out at all these great upcoming games.


SKATE, Super Paper Mario, What does your WoW avatar say about you?
SKATE - The first real challenger to the Tony Hawk franchise, Skate is less arcadey and concentrates on making you feel good for doing a simple trick. We spoke to Jay Balmer about how they used cinematic camera angles to enhance the game, similar to Gears of War. It also contains FLIPPING.

Super Paper Mario - The platforming area has become a little stale over the years, and Paper Mario means to change that with some innovation. The ability to FLIP the world from 2D to 3D allows brand new puzzle-platforming possibilities.

WCG Australian Qualifiers - We tagged along and interviewed some of the players in Team Australia, representing us as we speak.

Your Online Avatar - The newest member of the GG team, Lux, takes us into the psychology behind creating your online avatar.

And as usual, download or stream every Ep from www.abc.net.au/goodgame (free for Internode customers!) - Every Ep premiers Tuesdays @ 8:30pm on ABC2, repeated Thursdays @ 10:30pm on ABC2, and Friday nights after jtv and before Rage, on ABC.

Enjoy the show :)

Anyway. last week, we chatted about what was coming up in the world of Good Game. This week, we chatted a bit about various aspects of the Australian gaming industry - are we as hard done by as everyone seems to think we are?

In terms of the punter, I think we have good reason to not be too happy with Nintendo, I have a chip on my shoulder about them, I think it's ridiculous that we get these DS games so late, considering they're region free - and think of all the Wii games that aren't region free. Other companies - smaller companies - can handle a simultaneous global release, why can't you? Is it that you don't care about PAL? I was having a great time when Mario Strikers came out and it was made by the Canadian development team, and Europe got it first and then we got it second and we went to E3 and the Americans were talking about getting it in a month...

Why shouldn't we (get the games with the rest of the world) - we've only just gotten Paper Mario now, how long had we been waiting for that?

It's not all doom and gloom though, Junglist acknowledges that more and more people are doing simultaneous global releases, and digital distribution networks like Steam and Xbox Live are changing the way we look at purchasing games, so publisher-set shelf dates are holding less sway.

Of course though, there's two sides to every industry. While the gamers themselves might be struggling to get good titles, the gaming development side is doing great things. He explains:

In terms of developers, the government's starting to get a better idea as far as giving funding to these guys, just like they do the film sector - so they're benefiting from that...

He mentioned names like Auran, and Krome Studios in Brisbane, currently working on not only Star Wars: The Force Unleashed but also Viva Pinata: Party Animals and a swag of other overseas titles.

If anything is a good sign, it's that BioShock was half developed in Canberra.
That's a huge claim to fame in itself - that game, the last time I checked, was scoring the highest on MetaCritic ever. Half-Life 2 and Half-Life both had 96, which was their highest score ever, but the 360 version of BioShock was getting 97, with lots of people giving it 100% - so to say that was half developed in Canberra is absolutely huge.

On the whole, things are looking up and looking great for the Aussie developers, both in terms of government funding and the deals they're getting.

Krome's Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Auran's Fury, 2K Australia (previously Irrational Games)'s BioShock
Jung's pet project this season is move coverage of competitive gaming. Look forward to seeing them cover more LANs and WCG coverage and trying to get more people interested in the idea - Junglist believes not enough people in Australia understand how Counter-Strike (for instance) was meant to be played, and they're missing out. It's not really a big thing in Australia, partially due to a lack of interest, but also due to this wide brown land.

Our geography messes it up. There are a lot of people who are really keen on competitive gaming in Perth but they just feel so jaded because they can't enter these online comps with the east coast - i know a lot of them who've resorted to cheating because they're just so jaded. But then Internationally as well, we can't really be on the same par as these great UK CS teams and the Swedish teams and the Finnish teams and the US... I know that Legionnaire had to move to Korea just to up his StarCraft skill because he knew that he couldn't get it over here.

Some of these barriers will be very difficult to overcome because they are pure country layout - however, Junglist acknowledges that it's not so much of an issue with RTS games, because lag's not as big a problem when you don't have to aim at people. One of the Australian players (who was featured in Good Game doing a masterclass, as it happens) came second overall in this year's WCG playing AoE3.

"We consider ourselves a sporting nation, don't we? Every Australian is proud of the way our population is so small but we punch with the heavyweights in terms of cricket and rugby and the like... Cybergames should be no different."

Army of Two, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
...after all that, just what upcoming games are Junglist looking forward to?

Army of Two
"It's got gameplay we've never seen before, it looks great, it's got a strong underlying political message... it's got some dark humour in the form of banter between the two guys the whole way through..."

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
"Don't even get me started on 80s - I wish we were in season 2.5 when that game came out, just so I could give it a 3/10. You can quote me on that.

A lot of people that I talked to over here think 'Oh, maybe the songs were American hits... maybe they didn't get over here...' and I replied that no, they were just bad, forgettable songs."

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - I've been looking for a new competitive team-based FPS, and this looks like it might float my boat, although I've heard a few things from the beta suggesting that it's not that great...

The Orange Box: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal
I'm excited about all three of those.
TF2 - I hear it plays excellent but there aren't enough maps.
Portal looks like it'll be great...
I don't think there's any way that HL2 will be bad.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal

We then rushed through mentions of:

* Call of Duty 4
* Mario Galaxy
* Little Big Planet
* Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (I've heard it's even better - even more hilarious than the first!)
* Rock Band
* Resident Evil 5
* Conan
* Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
* Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
* The Witcher
* Folklore

...and to close, he admits that at least a small part of him is actually looking forward to High School Musical. You heard it here, first.

Don't hold that against him though - tune in to Good Game every Tuesday at 8:30pm on ABC2, repeated Thursdays at 10:30pm on the same channel, and Friday nights after jtv and before Rage, on free-to-air ABC. Or, of course, you could just download it all, at www.abc.net.au/goodgame!