Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Meet the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025: Quake, GoldenEye 007, Defender, and Tamagotchi
- The BAFTA Games Awards Polled the Public and Shenmue is “The Most Influential Video Game of All Time”
- 2024 GOTY Scoreboard: Astro Bot, Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, More
- The Strong Museum of Play Acquires Prototypes and Development Documents from Volition’s 30-Year History
- Minecraft’s Volume Alpha Soundtrack Has Been Added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- It’s beginning to feel like gaming isn’t for everyone – Digital Trends (2025)
- 22 years later, modders are keeping SimCity 4 alive – The Verge (2025)
- The B-movies of Paul W.S. Anderson double as acts of devotion to his muse, Milla Jovovich – The AV Club (2025)
- Breakout, Ripoff, Genre: How Fiction Outgrows Originality – Uncanny Magazine (2025)
- ‘I Could Make “Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game” and Maybe It Would Eventually Get Taken Down’ – Devs Reveal Why the Consoles Are Drowning in ‘Eslop’ – IGN (2025)
Author: Andrew Rainnie - UK Correspondent
Cloudberry Kingdom Interview: Pwnee Studios’ TJ Lutz on Wii U and the Art of the Platformer
Today, Ubisoft announced that it’ll distribute Pwnee Studios’ ridiculously hard platformer, Cloudberry Kingdom. The game will be available on the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, Steam, and Wii U eShop this Summer.
Less than five months old, the Nintendo Wii U eShop is thriving and it is already home to a variety of interesting titles. In the first of a series of interviews looking at indie game development on the platform, TJ Lutz, Vice President of Pwnee Studios, answered some questions about their upcoming 2D platformer. (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, PC, PS3, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox 360
Tagged Cloudberry Kingdom
Kickstart This! The Post-Veronica Mars Edition
Kickstarter has been receiving a lot of attention in the press this week, mostly due to cult TV show Veronica Mars. Rob Thomas’ 24-hour success story (currently sitting at 175% funded) has been perceived by some as a wake-up call to the film industry, and by others as the end of Kickstarter’s indie innocence. The latter group highlighted the fact that Warner Bros. still owns the rights to the franchise, and that the multi-million dollar company will reap the benefits of the charitable donation of others. Those who have donated will have unprecedented access to information on the film during production, and fans donating over $35 will receive a digital copy of the film. While my own opinion on the positives and negatives of this project fluctuate, there was one detail that seemed very worrying. All of the reward levels come with a disclaimer saying “AVAILABLE TO US AND CANADA (NEW!) BACKERS ONLY.”
Thomas does acknowledge the fact, saying “there are hoops to jump through” in order to include other territories. It could be this is inherent in the dangers of crowdfunding a project where the rights are held by an entity whose aims are not wholly aligned with the spirit of Kickstarter. We have seen this in the past with rewards that required attendance to an event, but even then, people were still allowed to donate, and had the option to travel. For a show that aired globally, this seems like a worrying, xenophobic trend, one that I hope does not translate to other industries.
In light of this, I thought this month I would focus more on smaller indie projects, including classic side-scrolling action-adventure Shovel Knight, euphoric exploration game SoundSelf, first-person survival horror Pulse, retro pixel-art adventure Bik, surfing sim Kahuna Surfer, and last but not least, sci-fi RPG Reflux: The New World. (more…)
10 Actresses That Could Help Reboot the Tomb Raider Film Franchise
In March 2011, we reported that GK Films had acquired the film rights to the Tomb Raider franchise, and that a reboot of the film series was on its way. Now that the reboot of the game has launched, the good people at Crystal Dynamics, who have been developing the Tomb Raider games since 2006, are working closely with uber-producer Graham King’s outfit GK Films on a third cinematic outing for Lara Croft. The film will follow the game’s lead and reboot the series, possibly even using the plot of the new game. This is unlike the two previous films, which used plots that were entirely independent from any game in the franchise. It is perhaps for this reason that they are best described as “watchable.”
The Tomb Raider film reboot joins a slew of celluloid adaptations currently in development, including Assassin’s Creed, Deus Ex, Need For Speed, Hitman (again), Shadow of the Colossus, as well as Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon. But the big question on everyone’s lips is, “Who will play the new Lara Croft?” With the arrival of the game last week, we thought it might be a good time to have a look at ten potential actresses who could take the Tomb Raider baton from Angelina Jolie.
Wreck-It Ralph spoofs King of Kong with “Garlan Hulse: Where Potential Lives”
As well as being one of the best animated films of all time, Wreck-It Ralph had a very well planned marketing strategy that built an entire history behind the titular retro arcade game, including this old-school advert. Now, to promote the release of the film on Blu-ray and DVD, Disney has gone one better, creating a fictional version of smash documentary King of Kong for Wreck-It Ralph‘s world.
Entitled Garlan Hulse: Where Potential Lives, the 28-minute mockumentary features the film’s director, Rich Moore, as he leaps back to 1982 to enlighten us about Garlan Hulse’s recordbreaking Fix-It Felix Jr. score. He held the fame-winning title for only six weeks, before it was lost to former best friend, Kent Zborski. Cut to present day, and Moore journeys through California in search of the former gaming wunderkind. It is as equally as funny as the film it is promoting, and deserves half an hour of your day.
Posted in Etcetera, News
Tagged Wreck-It Ralph
Ultima creator Richard Garriott turns to Kickstarter for Shroud of the Avatar
Famous games designer (and creator of the modern RPG) Richard Garriott, best known for the Ulima franchise, as well as the ill-fated Tabula Rasa, is returning to the game development fold, and is looking for a little help from fans. His new game, Shroud of the Avatar, was announced on Friday by Garriott’s new studio, Portalarium. Based in Austin, Texas, the developer’s announcement was timed to coincide with the first day of the city’s SXSW Gaming Festival. With Shroud of the Avatar, Garriott is aiming to provide gamers with “the keys to an ultimate role-playing experience.”
“These important tenets include things like a fully interactive virtual world, deep original fiction with ethical parables such that players’ choices are relevant, cultural histories and fully developed alternative languages and text. Also we want our players to have physical game components like cloth maps, fictional manuals and trinkets. These are all things that people came to expect in my earlier works and we plan on bringing them all back to create Shroud of the Avatar.”
In order to fund his new title, Garriott has launched a Kickstarter campaign under his alias, Lord British. In the video, Garriott explains that he feels modern RPGs coddle players too much, and hopes to set them free to do as they wish with Shroud of the Avatar.
As of this writing, the project is almost halfway to its $1 million target, with 29 days still to go. So it would be safe to assume we will be seeing Shroud of the Avatar on the PC very soon.
Zeno Clash II gameplay trailer punches you in the face
The first gameplay trailer for Zeno Clash II, a first-person brawler from Chilean developer ACE Team, is hard-hitting. Literally. Players must once again take control of Ghat and battle their way through the weird and wonderful creatures that populate Zenozoik, to try and rid the world of the Golem known as Kax-Teh. Ghat is now accompanied by his sister Rimat, who wishes to reunite her family after events of the first game tore it apart.
Once again powered by Valve’s Source Engine and published by Atlus, ACE Team is hoping to make the game available on Steam, PlayStation Network, and the Xbox Live Arcade in the first half of 2013.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Zeno Clash II
Gore Verbinski’s Matter “no longer being pursued” by Microsoft
Microsoft has seemingly cancelled the Kinect puzzle game Matter that was due for release on Xbox Live this year. It was being developed by Blind Wink Games, a studio formed by Universal Pictures and film director Gore Verbinski, famous for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and the upcoming Lone Ranger adaptation. The official soundbite from an unnamed representative of the company states, “Microsoft Studios is no longer pursuing this title. We have no further details to share at this time.”
This is a contrast to its debut at E3 2012, when Phil Spencer, Corporate VP of Microsoft Studios, sang its praises: “To a lot of people who haven’t played games for a long time, somebody standing completely stationary with a controller in their hands kind of seems emotionless, even though we know that we’ll be sweating or twitching. And [it was Gore Verbinki’s] feeling, that with motion and movement, that the connection of the emotion that’s happening on screen and how the player feels would be more natural.”
Neither Verbinski or Blind Wink Games has commented thus far on the reasons behind the cancellation. Is this a sign that Microsoft are moving away from Kinect? Given the multitude of rumours suggesting that the device will be mandatory with the next iteration of the Xbox, it seems highly unlikely.
[Source: Joystiq]
EA refuses to refund gamers unable to play SimCity
It seems EA is going out of its way to retain the “Worst Company in America” award gifted to it by The Consumerist last year. Since the launch of SimCity on Tuesday, unhappy gamers have taken to the Internet to voice their frustration at a number of issues with the new title. While consumers have had to swallow the bitter pill that is the permanent Internet connection required to play the game, others have simply been unable to play at all due to server errors with EA’s Origin service. While EA and developer Maxis have been working to correct these issues, some gamers have simply decided it is not worth their time or effort, and asked for their money back.
The answer? “No.”
One user, going by the handle CalebPeters, posted a rather frustrating text conversation with the publisher’s customer support team on EA’s forum. During the conversation, he is refused a refund, despite drawing attention to a quote from Origin’s own Community Manager, “if you regrettably feel that we let you down, you can of course request a refund for your order” (the post has since been edited). When pressed, the agent states, rather worryingly, that “if you choose to dispute it, your account will be banned.”
To summerise, if you ask EA for a refund for a game that you cannot play because of their always-online “feature” and related server issues, it is completely at the company’s discretion to give one. If you challenge that decision, your Origin account will be banned. Consumer rights seem to be a thing of the past.
This is just one example. Many have voiced similar tales of woe on EA’s forum, as well as on SimCity’s Twitter account and MetaCritic, where the game has a current user rating of 2 out of 10. We can only hope this debacle serves as a valuable lesson to game developers, and that the burden of always-online will die a quick death.
[Source: Game Chump]