Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, and More Announced as Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Has Another Big Night and Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2025-2026 DICE Awards
- 2025 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress
- The Game Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Racks Up Nine Wins, Including “Game of the Year”, at the 2025 Game Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Author: Andrew Rainnie
Michel Ancel says Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in development
Despite a whole decade since Ubisoft’s original appeared, it seems that Beyond Good & Evil 2 will prove naysayers wrong by climbing into the cold light of day. However, unlike the recent HD re-release on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network, the franchise will be seeking a home on the next generation of consoles, if we are to believe Michel Ancel, the original game’s creator. He has (once again) been quoted as saying the game is in “the active creation stage,” explaining further:
“I can say that it’s a very ambitious game and we need some tech to achieve that ambition. We focus on the game. We create it first, then we’ll see what can run it. We don’t say 2013 because we don’t know when it will come. We’re working to create a great game and it needs more tech.”
However, it has been four years since Ubisoft debuted a teaser trailer for the sequel at their short-lived Ubidays conference in 2008. A short time before that, Ancel himself stated at the Video Games Live show in Paris that BG&E2 had been in development for 18 months, suggesting that the project was perhaps put on hiatus, only to be revived by the original’s HD re-release in 2011, but retooled for the next generation. Could it be they are gearing it up for release on Nintendo’s Wii U (or perhaps the PS4 or Xbox 720)? The Wii U’s tablet controller would certainly be a good match with Jade’s camera.
[Source: Destructoid]
The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man To Mass Effect Review: Is There Art In Video Games?
The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man To Mass Effect is the literature companion piece to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s 2012 exhibition, which attempts to illustrate the evolution of video games, and by design, the art within. The book dazzles us with screenshots from forty years of gaming history, at one point placing Mass Effect 2 inside a blocky alien shape from Space Invaders, perhaps to suggest how far we have come. Yet I found I could not provide a genuine review without asking the question – are video games art? (more…)
Living in a Discless World?
A couple of weeks ago, a rumour spread like wildfire across the Internet, proclaiming that the next iteration of Microsoft’s Xbox console would have no optical disc drive (a similar rumour cropped up about the PS4/Orbis last week as well). Many wrote it off as idle speculation, although a minority seemed not only to believe the rumour as truth but welcome the news. Those who debunked the rumours cited the fact that the last console war between Sony and Microsoft was not actually about the consoles themselves, but the medium their respective consoles used. It seemed Sony had learned its lessons in its past defeats in format wars, from Betamax to Minidisc, with Blu-ray winning the battle against the slightly inferior HD-DVD for dominance in the home movie market. The suggestion now is that Microsoft would now have to kneel down and pucker up to Sony’s Blu-rimmed hole if it wished to brand their next console as a home entertainment system, and their strategy with the Xbox 360 would suggest as much. (more…)
GAME Over: Are British Gaming Stores on Their Last Continue?
Late last week week saw the shocking news that GAME Group, owners of over 1300 GAME and Gamestation stores scattered throughout Europe and Australia, would not be stocking EA’s sci-fi epic Mass Effect 3, set for release on March 9th. While official word from GAME Group’s PR firm Red Consultancy was vague, noting an ambiguous “supply issue,” an internal memo was leaked to Eurogamer. It stated that the problem was apparently more serious, stating that GAME “were committed to only stocking products on which we could get the right credit terms.” Does this mean that GAME Group did not have enough credit with EA to purchase copies of Mass Effect 3? Or has EA made changes to the credit terms that GAME simply finds unacceptable, and are now taking a bold stand? (more…)
7 Ways The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Made Me Crazy
Having played every console entry in the Legend of Zelda series, I was as giddy as a school girl meeting Justin Bieber when I unwrapped The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on Christmas Day. While at first it proved to be the standard Zelda fare, including swordplay, shields, dungeons, and the lovely Zelda herself (sporting some sexy new bangs), I had a growing sense of frustration at some of the new features, degrading my love of all things Zelda. These grew and grew until I was hurling my Wiimote at the TV, wondering why Nintendo would implement these annoying features in their flagship RPG. (more…)
Posted in Opinions, Top Story, Wii
Tagged The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Syndicate Hands-On Preview: From Bullfrog To BS
There is a certain level of irony in the amount of hype, press and videos EA has been spewing out about their new iteration of Bullfrog’s 1993 classic Syndicate, in that it is very similar to some of the ‘hype’ lauded by gaming guru and Bullfrog co-founder Peter Molyneux in his heyday. And by ‘hype’ I mean bullshit. Not to discredit the man who also brought us Theme Park, Theme Hospital, and Populus, but he does have a habit of overegging what was included in his games, like the confession that the now-cancelled Project Milo demo video at 2009’s E3 was tightly scripted.
But he doesn’t even work at EA anymore, who bought Bullfog in the late 1990s and integrated the company into its massive domain (again, the irony that this game is about massive rival companies running the world is not lost). Most of the other Bullfrog developers went on to found the now defunct Mucky Foot. And yet EA did not think to call them when reviving one of their old games.
They might wish they had. (more…)
New IPs to Play Before the End of Days
The Mayans and film director Roland Emmerich would have us believe that the end of the world is nigh. Really nigh. Knee nigh almost. But despite the warnings, it seems most game designers shirked off the warning that was Emmerich’s masterpiece 2012 and decided to roll out the same old stuff. We have Final Fantasy XIII-2, Guild Wars 2, Borderlands 2, Darksiders II, The Darkness II, Mass Effect 3, Max Payne 3, Soul Calibur V, and Street Fighter X Tekken (I know the X doesn’t equal 10, but it might at well). I am sure some of these games will be amazing (and I have my £40 saved for Borderlands 2 already), but if it really, truly is the end of life, the universe and my games consoles, then is it too much to ask to play something new before we’re all burned, drowned, stabbed or frozen to death (depending on which mood Emmerich is in) instead of say, another instalment of Call of Duty or, hypothetically, taking an isometric political espionage strategy game from 1993 and turning it into yet another First Person Shooter?
Thankfully no. (more…)
Posted in Features, PC, PS3, Top Story, Vita, Xbox 360
Tagged Binary Domain, Dishonored, Inversion, NeverDead, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Sound Shapes, The Last Guardian, The Last of Us
Saving Benny: The Bromance of Fallout: New Vegas
Howdy Folks! This article includes spoilers for Fallout: New Vegas. There is also some swearing, partly because the game is rated Mature, and partly because the writer is Scottish. You have been warned. Have a good ‘un.
“You sick, vindictive fuck!”
These were Benny’s last words to me when I finally gave up trying to save him, opting instead to crucify him and pushed forward through the rest of Fallout: New Vegas, a brilliant yet bug-ridden game that entertained as much as it frustrated. By the bitter end, after numerous screen freezes and load errors, stuttering frame rates and other exasperating glitches, I stumbled through to the final fight, killing Legate Lanius and handing General Lee Oliver the conditions for the New California Republic’s withdrawal from New Vegas as dictated by Mr. House. All this while wearing a spacesuit helmet. I watched the epilogue narrated by the various characters I had met, but through it all, someone was missing. (more…)