Rockstar Australia have given us the nod we'll be seeing the first in the promised Xbox 360 exclusive downloadable episodic content for Grand Theft Auto IV, next February 17.

"Making these episodes has enabled us to expand the narrative and the experience of interacting with a game world in really innovative ways,"said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "We hope fans of the game enjoy the new way of experiencing life in Liberty City contained in this first episode."

The first episode is titled The Lost And The Damned and will feature an all-new main character with a plot that actually intersects with that of GTA IV's. We'll also see new music, vehicles, weapons and missions as well as new multiplayer modes in addition to the main story.

We have a few more screens up for the episode on our freshly made GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned game page

Every now and then we come across a piece of free, open source software that is so cool or handy that it must be shared. Today I noticed that aria2c, a command line utility for downloading files (like wget) has hit version 1.0.0 after a long, careful development process.

For those that are familiar with wget and/or downloading from the command line, aria2c basically does the exact same thing, but offers a few other bells and whistles - including BitTorrent support and (most importantly for me), multi-threaded downloading - meaning you can download much, much faster.

If you're interested in checking it out, you can nab it from the it's official SourceForge site or get it locally from AusGamers in Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X flavours.

They just keep on coming, and we hope (but don't condone) you've robbed a bank and are therefore rich enough to keep up with the stock of games that are piling game store shelves across the country.

Today Dan took Ms Lara Croft out on a date, and came back with a smile on his face. To know why, you're going to have to read this excerpt from his diary (he keeps it under his bed, so we stole it and posted it here). Tomb Raider Underworld really does look pretty snazzy though, and if you're not at all sided on whether to pick it up from our review, make sure you have a look at our local game page which has all the media and info you could want.

PS How Purple Rain is our accompanying screenshot!

Still not sure where your holiday gaming money should be spent? We have yet another big year-end release in our review sights for you today with Call of Duty: World At War from Treyarch and Activision.

In the past Treyarch have been under fire for delivering lesser than their big studio brothers, Infinity Ward, but with their latest Call of Duty offering they've really upped the ante.

This is by no means as big a leap for the franchise as Modern Warfare was, but it's very solid gameplay experience. Check out our full review for the in-depth skinny, and be sure visit our CoD: WAW game page for all related info and media.

Back in July we posted about Google's Lively, an attempt to try to bring people into a 3d world for their online social interactions. It was sort of neat for a few minutes, but certainly didn't grab the attention of any gamer types, and Google have just announced it will be discontinued at the end of the year so they can "focus more on our core search, ads and apps business".

It'd be nice to think that they'd open source the platform so someone can at least pick it up where it has left off, but no word about that just yet.

Our Valve contact has reminded us that today sparks the 10th birthday of everyone's favourite sci-fi first-person shooter series, Half-Life. The mute every-day-man, Gordon Freeman, first dealt with the Black Mesa Incident back in 1998 as the protagonist in Valve's debut product as a development studio.

Launched 10 years ago today, Half-Life was greeted with overwhelming review scores (Metacritic of 96%), earned over 50 Game of the Year Awards, and birthed a franchise with over 20 million units sold to date.

Clearly Freeman's success throughout the last 10 years resonates now as Valve is one of the most respected games developers/publishers/distributors in the industry.

Can you remember when you first played Half-Life?

Competitive gaming was shaken today with the collapse of one of its major organisation, the Championship Gaming Series. The series was a joint venture between satellite TV operators BSkyB, STAR TV and DirecTV and was the first 'esports' enterprise with television coverage. With the CGS's demise and the end of the Cyberathletic Professional League (CPL) in 2007, the console-only Major League Gaming is left as the only important gaming league in the United States.

While the concept was ahead of its time and we are extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished, it became increasingly clear as this ambitious project evolved, that profitability was too far in the future for us to sustain operations in the interim.

Controversial in the tournament gaming scene, CGS began by raiding the US Counter-Strike 1.6 scene for many of its players. It then contracted its new talent to league owned franchises based on the American pro sports model. This created a two year competition freeze between the CGS dominated North America and the independent club/clans based in Europe and Asia as represented by the Group of 7.

The end of the CGS also affects a number of Australian based players under contract for Sydney Underground, a franchise that competed in the CGS' 2008 Pan Asia and World tournaments. The high point for the team came this year with their top two finish at the Pan Asia championships.

The CGS was the first gaming league to broadcast onto television and was one of the first leagues to feature matches played across multiple games - in its last season teams had players for CounterStrike Source, Dead or Alive 4, Forza Motorsport 2 and Fifa 08. Previous tournaments had also included included World of Warcraft battleground competitions.

While Microsoft Australia's PR Agency have sent us a Press Release suggesting the New Xbox Experience is already here, we're waiting for the download option to kick off when it turns November 19 Northern Hemisphere side, which is still really only hours away.

The free update will apparently start automatically, transforming some "25 million Xbox 360 consoles sold worldwide" (by the end of November, that is) into fully updated new machines.

"Xbox 360 is getting a whole new look," said Andrew Jenkins, Xbox 360 Product Marketing Manager for games and LIVE. "From today Xbox owners are able to download a new user interface for their consoles, effectively updating their Xbox through Xbox LIVE. Xbox 360 now boasts a more user-friendly look and allows users to create online parties, chat with friends, share pictures, create avatars of themselves and much more," added Jenkins.

I have my machine on right now, so as soon as the update is available, we'll let you know.

We've just been notified by a user about a potential problem with Yahoo email accounts - if you're trying to sign up with a Yahoo account or wondering why you're not getting any other email notifications, it appears emails sent to that provider are mysteriously vanishing after reaching the Yahoo mail servers.

We've hit their contact page to try and chase this up and will see what happens (past experience trying to contact mega-companies for support has not exactly been positive).

I've always thought National Geographic, Animal Planet or the like should enter the games market. How cool would it be to have a Great White Shark simulator where you rely on the animal's amazing senses and just work to survive. No points or power-ups, just an endless ocean of seals to breach waters for in a fantastic, dizzying display of power and prowess.

Ah well, I guess National Geographic Panda from Namco Bandai will have to do, though (not that Pandas aren't scary in their own right, the title just sounds like it will be a cutesy DS game). According to a statement, there's also National Geographic Africa in the works for Sony's PlayStation 3 platform.

National Geographic Games will be both creating games in-house (the first of which, Herod's Lost Tomb, has already been completed and will be made available as a free download for PC, Mac and the iPhone), as well as through partnerships with the likes of Namco Bandai, Sony and more. More titles are in the works for the PS3, Nintendo Wii and handheld devices such as the DS.

Nintendo of Australia have let us know the new Animal Crossing for Wii will be hitting Aussie store shelves early next month, December 4. Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City is the first time the series has landed on Nintendo's new console and will also feature interaction with the new Wii Microphone, Wii Speak.

Build relationships with animals in your town as you go fishing, take in a concert, get your hair done at Shampoodle salon and get a Mii makeover. Design your own clothes at the tailor's shop and the animals in your town can even wear them and take them into other towns!

Decorate your house, go on a shopping spree, watch fireworks with friends, ride the bus into the city - the choice is yours and your options are endless in Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City.

You can have four functioning towns on the one console or invite people online via your Wi-Fi Connection. We have more info on the game in our press release page.

An all-new costume pack for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is available for download from the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network. For the hardcore Star Wars fans out there, doing just that will net you the following:

• Hooded Combat Gear
• General Starkiller
• Sith Assassin
• Imperial Commando
• Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker
• Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi
• Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker
• Darth Sion
• Ki-Adi-Mundi
• Kit Fisto

You'll also be able to pick up new themes and gamerpics to deck out your online profile as well.

You can check out our Star Wars: The Force Unleashed game page and full review right here on AusGamers.

Stumped for what games to spend your money on at the moment (because there are so many)? AusGamers has your back. Well, at least we're ploughing through them as best we can as well (we're only a handful of brave men, remember).

At any rate, today we have the impressive and bold Mirror's Edge in review; a game that is big in its ideas, but smaller in its execution of them. That doesn't mean, however, you should overlook it - in fact, far from it. If you're looking for innovative, enjoyable fun with a new edge that isn't overly tied down to traditional gaming concepts this is for you. If you hate being frustrated, then you may want to prepare yourself.

The co-op zombie slaughtering simulator Left 4 Dead is now available to the gaming public via Steam. You'll need Steam installed of course, and you can head over to the Left 4 Dead page on the Steam website to buy it now for US$49.99, which equates to about AU$1,000,000.95 since the crash of our dollar. However, you can buy four copies for the price of three, so get your pals together, pool your shiny coins and get into the co-op action now.

If you've been living in a cave, our Left 4 Dead game page has a bunch of screenshots, information and videos.

Fans of The Killers anxiously awaiting the release of their third album, Day & Age, will also be able to nab a downloadable track pack featuring two singles off the new release, "Human", and "Losing Touch" as well as a third track, "Mr Brightside", a massive song from their debut album, Hot Fuss.

The track pack will also be made available for download day and date of the release of Day & Age. The track pack will be available from the Xbox Live Marketplace for 440 Microsoft Points, from the PlayStation Store for AU$9.95 and as single downloadable tracks for the Wii at 200 Wii Points a piece (you can also grab the songs as singles for the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well).

The first dedicated exhibition celebrating the birth and growth of the videogames industry, Game On, has found its way to Queensland this summer, debuting at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane.

Game On tracks the development of videogames from the earliest computer games to arcade-era hits and the very latest from today’s billion-dollar industry. With more than 100 playable games, as well as rarely seen consoles, controllers and collectables, this is a showcase of games history like no other.

You'll be able to check out the exhibition from November 17 through till February 15, 2009. More information can be found from the official Game On website.

If you liked playing in the mud growing up, or dream of smashing through precious rainforest in a Monster Truck, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift is probably going to be up your alley.

If you played the first MotorStorm though, don't expect this to be a massive leap in gameplay; it's very much an awesome addition but just not much further ahead than perhaps it should have been.

Still, there's a lot of fun here and with addition of four-player split-screen, you can now yell at your friends as you crush their puny quad bikes in your Monster Truck! Check out our full review for the AusGamers skinny.

Phantagram have released the first trailer for Kingdom Under Fire 2, the forthcoming strategy sequel in the works for PC and Xbox 360.

Details on the game are a little confusing at present, but developer Blueside claims the game will be an action real-time strategy game with Massively Multiplayer Online elements.

Whereas Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom was an Action RPG deviated from the main Action RTS stream of Kingdom Under Fire Series, this sequel version will be a true inheritor of the world acclaimed Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders in the truest sense with promises to deliver a unique game play and story line where the plot is filled with drama between game characters, who will all contribute to raise suspense and intensity of combat. Unlike the previous RTS series where the Human Alliance and the Dark Legion faced each other in endless battles, there will be a new third faction vying for control of the world, which will definitely pique the curiosity of fans worldwide.

BLUESIDE's CEO Sejung Kim stated that "We are preparing for an immense game that will feature not only field battles, but also titanic siege engines and thousands of units that will swarm over monstrous fortresses in siege battles of epic proportions." clearly expressing her confidence in the next title.

Check out the trailer right here on AusGamers. More details and screenshots can be found on our Kingdom Under Fire 2 game page.

A new version of Firefox has landed, bringing this uber-browser to version 3.0.4. The change list is as follows:

* Fixed several security issues.
* Fixed several stability issues.
* Official releases for the Icelandic and Thai languages are now available.
* Beta releases for the Bulgarian, Esperanto, Estonian, Latvian, Occitan, and Welsh languages are available for testing.
* Updated the internal Public Suffix list.
* Fixed an issue where the IME input tool used to enter Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters was covered by the "Add Bookmark" panel. (bug 433340)
* Enabled additional EV root certificates. (bug 451305)
* Fixed an issue where some passwords saved using Firefox 3.0.2 did not work properly. (bug 457358)
* In some cases, Firefox would not properly save proxy settings for protocols other than HTTP. (bug 446536)

If you haven't auto-updated yet you can download the installer manually now locally from AusGamers.

Wired have a brief but cool article looking at the intrusion into Valve Software's network that resulted in the leaking of the Half-Life 2 source code before the game had even hit shelves and Valve's subsequent attempts to trap the German-based hacker by, well, lying and pretending to offer him a job in the US so the FBI could nab him:

Coordinating with the FBI in Seattle, Valve began a correspondence with DaGuy, who expressed interest in getting a job with the company. From clues in the e-mail, the FBI identified the aspiring employee as Axel Gembe, of Schonau, Germany.
...
Perhaps sensing that his relocation expenses would be shouldered by U.S. taxpayers, Gembe didn't take the bait. He was ultimately charged in Germany, where he was sentenced to probation.

Worth a read!