Lead designer Tom French calls this world "Disneyland Paris." That's not exactly what came to mind as I jumped from rooftop to rooftop dodging Nazis, machine gun fire, and rockets, but French wasn't characterizing this bleak, occupied (and dangerous) World War II-era recreation of the city. The Saboteur features a scaled down, open-world Paris with oversize landmarks splitting the skyline (like Disneyland!) that trails off into countryside connected to parts of Germany.

The entire world has been stripped of color, save for those blood-red symbols of Nazism and oppression. As Sean Devlin (inspired by the real Grand Prix star turned SOE special agent William Grover-Williams), I attempted to bring a little color -- what Pandemic calls "Will to Fight" -- back to Paris as I took on a demo mission to destroy a pesky BFG.

Sure, it's a little distracting that EA decided to blur the mild nudity in the new trailer for Pandemic's The Saboteur. But thanks to a great soundtrack, our distrust of the exposed female anatomy and a bizarre fetish for things that are mostly but not entirely black-and-white, we still find the clip to be highly, highly erotic.

... We mean cool. Did we say erotic? No, no. Cool. That's what we meant.

A race car driver. 1940s Paris. An Irish accent. Zeppelins. Black and white. If you tossed these items into an active blender -- and it would have to be a pretty big one, what with you chucking Paris in there -- the end result would probably resemble The Saboteur, which is more simply described as a World War II game that features no American presence. Can you believe it's been more than two years since it was announced?

We spent some time with the game recently (and a slew of other EA titles -- keep your eyes open for further coverage over the next few weeks), and talked to lead designer Tom French, from Pandemic, who guided us through the streets of Paris. Check out the gallery of brand new screens below, and head past the break to read all about this innovative WWII title -- now with vintage racing cars!

The other game is also noteworthy, but only because it doesn't make a freaking lick of sense. In Swine Flu: Hamdemic, players must slingshot infected pigs across the U.S. - Mexico border, using a six-shooter to keep said pork suspended in the air. Ah, yes. Of course. The origins of this potent malady have at long last been discovered.

A few months back, Ian Bogost and his studio, Persuasive Games, were tasked with creating a game for the UK Clinical Virology Network to teach folks about seasonal and pandemic flus. Named Killer Flu, the game operates on a hexagonal board and, while learning about how to infect a populace by playing as the flu itself, the player is tasked with infecting various community members and sending them into buildings to infect their comrades.

His timeliness is incredible, considering only a few months have passed and we've nearly got a pandemic on our hands with the Swine Flu. Okay, okay, we're exaggerating a bit. If anything, Bogost's game schools our panic-inclined brains to the relative difficulty a virus faces in becoming an actual threat. "The truth is, pandemic flus are rare and unusual strains that are far harder to spread than popular discourse might make it seem," Bogost says in a post about the game on Gamasutra. So hard, in fact, that we lost repeatedly in our attempts to infect a decent chunk of the virtual population. Do yourself a favor: check out Killer Flu and assuage your worries about the upcoming apocalypse. Besides, we all know it's going to be zombies that do us in. Come on now!

[Via GamePolitics]

It's hard to believe, but The Saboteur was announced around this time ... in 2007. Crazy, right? We can hardly believe it's been so long, and since it was announced, we really haven't had much to talk about. Thanks to Tom French of Pandemic, we now know it's because the game was revealed too soon. Sabotaging The Saboteur, amirite?

In speaking with VG247, Pandemic's Tom French said the game is pretty ambitious and that the title was just revealed too soon. At the point where it was announced, most of the title was still on paper, with only a "small section of the world even built." Then, EA acquired Pandemic, which French said really helped The Saboteur out, allowing the team working on it to grow through inheriting people from other projects (he cites folks coming on board from Mercenaries, for example). French said the additions to The Saboteur team have helped "refine all those little details that we've been talking about but nobody had time to touch."

Despite the rumor to the contrary, it appears that Star Wars: Battlefront III is not in development at Pandemic, the studio responsible for the first two games. Just last week an employee from Rebellion -- where Battlefront III development moved after its initial stint at Free Radical -- reportedly stated that development had shifted to Pandemic. According to Mathew Everett, community manager at Pandemic, the game "is not currently" with the studio. He added that only LucasArts would know the fate of the title at this point.

Depending on your point of view, this news is either a terrible blow or a tremendous relief (unless you're just middlin', of course). Given the popularity of the most recent Star Wars title, The Force Unleashed, we imagine Battlefront III will find a home somewhere. Here's hoping Jabba is finally playable.

[Via VideoGamer]

Star Wars Battlefront III has been jumping developers like a frog on a hotplate. First under development at Free Radical, the title was then supposedly moved to Rebellion. Now that Rebellion is hard at work on Aliens Vs. Predator, the latest rumor has the game right back at square one: Pandemic. The rumor comes from website DarkZero, which claims that it received the news directly from a Rebellion employee.

It would make sense, given that Pandemic was responsible for the first two games. Considering the studio also just pushed Lord of the Rings: Conquest out the door, its Batman title was canceled and the only other project we know about is Saboteur, Pandemic doesn't exactly have a full plate.

A 3D animator by the name of Travis Ramsdale has updated his personal blog with a couple of interesting (and sad) items. Describing himself as, "an animator who just finished up at Pandemic Studios in Brisbane," Ramsdale confirms the studio's closure, saying, simply, "So yeah ... Pandemic closed ... I'm moving to Germany."

Ramsdale also posted what he says is his most recent demo reel, which contains two sequences from an "unreleased Pandemic title" (separated here). One, a rooftop chase; the other, a cinematic test. If you hadn't been following earlier rumors that Pandemic was working on a new Batman title -- which was later rumored to be canceled -- you'd think the footage was of just another action game.

Put all the pieces together, though, and these videos (first spotted on Kotaku) would certainly seem to be of work done for the Caped Crusader's ill-fated video game outing, but they are in no way confirmed as such by Ramsdale or other official sources. We've posted the additional cinematic test footage after the break.

Congrats to the crew over at Pandemic on their demo download success, but we have to ask; how well did those demo downloads translate into retail sales? One could argue that those sales figures are a tad bit more important.

At this point, we don't even have confirmation that Pandemic Brisbane is gone, but according to a report from Kotaku Australia, the axe dropped after the studio couldn't finish the oft-rumored Dark Knight game in time for the film's DVD / Blu-ray release. Blame allegedly goes to the short timeframe allotted to development and a lack of technology / tools needed to make the open-world title the team had in mind.

Reportedly, a second team was working on an open-world Wii title and managed to retain rights to the project after the studio closed. We're still waiting to discover the studio's fate, but in the meantime, the report is definitely worth a read. After the break, check out footage from a different -- some would say fake -- Dark Knight game.

Electronic Arts has bid adieu to Pandemic Studios' Brisbane office, according to a "reliable source" speaking to Kotaku. The site reports that the studio has been "set free" and tasked with finding a new publisher, as opposed to being shut down completely.

EA acquired the Australian branch of Pandemic during its acquisition of BioWare last year. The studio is best known for the Destroy All Humans! series, but was rumored to have been working on other unannounced projects. We'll update if any new information arises.

Update: EA's Mariam Sughayer issued the following response: "In December, EA announced a cost reduction initiative that will impact facilities and headcount. We do not expect to make any more public announcements until our earnings call in early February. Outside of our scheduled earnings call, we aren't providing any new information on the status of individual facilities."

Guess what, kids? There's actually a game releasing for the Xbox 360 this week. You'll notice that "game" is singular, as there is only one game out this week. It's appropriate enough though, as the game itself happens to be about the One Ring. Yes, this week marks the release of Lord of the Rings: Conquest. If you've played the demo, you've got a pretty good idea of what to expect. It's essentially Star Wars: Battlefront only with fewer Stormtroopers and a lot more hobbits. Conquest has something that Battlefront definitely doesn't though: You can be a Balrog. A Balrog.

[Via Joystiq]