No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…
Two highly-anticipated games were in the news this week, but for very diametrically opposed reasons.
Very early in the week, Guillermo Del Toro and Norman Reedus told the public they are no longer involved in the development of Silent Hills. A day later, Konami confirmed that the axe had been dropped on the in-development, but vowed to begin development on a new entry in the Silent Hill series. The horrific end to this story is almost scarier than anything Konami has cooked up for the franchise in years.
But on the other side of this continuum is the good fortune bestowed upon Playtonic’s Yooka-Laylee. The developer teased the title and some early footage of their Banjo-Kazooie successor on Thursday. On Friday, they launched a Kickstarter campaign to a tremendously receptive audience. A little more than 40 minutes after that, the campaign reached its goal. Eager backers helped the campaign reach every stretch goal a day after that. It’s an incredible success story and really makes you feel good about the gaming community.
Right in the middle of the Silent Hills/Yooka-Laylee Continuum is the “World Reveal” trailer for Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops III. A new Call of Duty game is such an expected part of the video game landscape that few people had a big reaction to the footage… even though the final game will feature a battle with Terminator-style cyborgs.
Elsewhere on Warp Zoned this Week, I took a spin around the office and found out What We Played in April. And in between an Avengers: Age of Ultron break, the staff also put together a look at The Games of May. A review of the noirish horror game review of White Night and a new edition of Kickstart This! (featuring The Silent Roads, Dimension Drive, and Wildfire) round out the week.
Hit the break for more news from the week that was.
New Game Announcements
- Galaga: Tekken 20th Anniversary Edition is now available on mobile devices.
- The Last of Us: Left Behind will be available as a standalone game on May 12.
- Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor will get a Game of the Year Edition this week.
- Codemasters added Dirt Rally to Steam Early Access last week.
More News
- Dead Island 2 has been pushed back to 2016.
- Overkill’s The Walking Dead is in development for the PC, PS4, Xbox One.
- Motiga is collecting names for a Gigantic playtest on Xbox One.
- Cinder is now available to download in Killer Instinct.
- Mighty No. 9 will be released on September 15.
- The Strong Museum has announced the finalists for this year’s World Video Game Hall of Fame class.
- WB Games has announced a Season Pass for Batman: Arkham Knight.
- The console versions of Minecraft get a female character as one of the default choices.
New Videos
- N++ – “Enemy Trailers”
- Just Cause 3 – “Gameplay Trailer”
- Mario Maker – “Shigeru Miyamoto on GameCenter CX”
- Batman: Arkham Knight – “All Who Follow You”
Rumor Has It
- Disney Infinity: Star Wars has been outed by a German retailer.
- A Gears of War remake for the Xbox One might be in the works. And you might want to replace that first “might” with “absolutely.”
Gaming Etc
- Part of ESPN’s preparation for last night’s Mayweather-Pacquiao fight involved this Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! parody.
New Release Round-Up
- Retail Releases: State of Decay Year-One Survival Edition, Omega Quintet, Broken Age, more
- Nintendo Download: Amiibo Tap, Paper Mario, Karous: The Beast of ReEden, more
- PlayStation Store: Broken Age, Project Root, Omega Quintet, more
- Xbox Games Store (Wednesday): Shovel Knight, State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition, Project Root, more
- Xbox Games Store (Friday): Happy Wars
- Next Week’s Retail Releases: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, Project CARS for PC, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, more
