Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC 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: John Scalzo
Valve: No new announcements at E3 2012
Speaking to IGN, a representative from Valve has confirmed that the company has no new announcements planned for this year’s E3 Expo. Period. Full stop. No foolin’.
Valve has two previously announced projects in the works: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2. Sadly, it sounds like the much-rumored Half-Life 3 won’t be joining them this year.
Creative Assembly’s Alien game is coming to current AND future generation consoles
A job posting on Creative Assembly’s website confirms that their long-gestating Alien project will be available on “current and future generation consoles” when its finally released. While it’s too early to make any definitive statements, this kind of current generation/next generation development tactic was very common in the early days of the PS3 and Xbox 360. Which means Creative Assembly’s Alien game might be released alongside the launch of the PS4 and/or Xbox 720. Maybe. Possibly.
While we don’t know where it’ll land, we do know it’ll include “gameplay” and “multiplayer.” So that’s something, I guess.
Zombies Mode confirmed for CoD Black Ops II
Mark Lamia, the Studio Head at Treyarch, has confirmed that Zombies Mode will be reanimating on Call of Duty: Black Ops II this November in an interview with VentureBeat:
The multiplayer is pretty big and ambitious. And they really are creating another game with the Zombies there.
While that little tidbit of information would ordinarily be big news, CVG has ferreted out the first details of Zombies Mode and they are impressive.
Eight players will be able to take on the zombie menace in Black Ops II (up from four in the original Black Ops). With an increased player count, you can expect an increased zombie count as well: “Treyarch will be using the game’s improved multiplayer engine for zombies, which means double the amount of shuffling corpses to sink your bullets into.”
But I think the money quote is this one from CVG’s man on the inside: “Treyarch [has] given their zombie team free reign to do pretty much whatever they want with the mode regardless of the direction the campaign is headed in.”
In case you haven’t heard, Call of Duty: Black Ops II will be released for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on November 13.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops II
Atlus announces US release for Persona 4: Golden
Atlus has announced that the Vita remake of Persona 4, Persona 4: Golden, will make its way across the Pacific this year.
Scheduled for a Fall 2012 release, Persona 4: Golden will be an “enhanced and expanded portable version” of the PS2 original. Atlus has a ton of extras planned for the Vita re-release including…
- Remastered visuals
- 1.5x the voiced dialogue
- A new online rescue feature
- New Personas
- New story events (with a new character)
- Stunning new anime cut scenes
- A new opening animation with a new song by Shoji Meguro
- Tons of tweaks and fan suggestions
Whew!
Posted in News
Tagged Persona 4: The Golden, Vita
Rumor: $99 Xbox 360 (with 2-year contract) launching next week
The Xbox 360 might be getting a lot cheaper next week. The Verge claims that Microsoft will slash the price of the Xbox 360 4GB + Kinect bundle to $99 next week. Sweet deal, right? Wait, there’s a catch…
It’s true, purchasers would be able to walk out of the store with an Xbox 360 + Kinect for $99, but first they’d have to sign up for a two-year contract. The package, which requires a $15 a month fee, is also rumored to include two years of Xbox Live Gold and streaming video content access. Also, the subscription bundle would only be available at the Microsoft Store, of which there are only 20 in the entire US.
It’s not exactly a super-amazing deal, but it does measure up pretty well with purchasing the separate components outright. A 4GB Xbox 360 + Kinect bundle and two years of Xbox Live Gold is regularly priced at $420 and the cost of the entire subscription would be $460. So the cost of a subscription system would only amount to an extra $40, provided you don’t incur an early termination fee.
Charge a subscription fee and give the console away for practically nothing, I kind of love it.
XBLA Today: Fable Heroes, Awesomenauts
Microsoft’s Arcade Next promotion continues with the release of Fable Heroes.
Priced at 800 Microsoft Points ($10), the cartoony action RPG seems like a natural extension of the series and players who collect a massive amount of loot in the game will be able to use it to purchase upgrades in Fable: The Journey, this Fall’s next Fable spinoff:
Fable Heroes is a fresh spin on the beloved Fable franchise in which up to four players play both cooperatively and competitively in this hack-and-slash adventure. Work together as heroes of Albion to defeat familiar foes and new enemies while collecting as many gold coins as possible to unlock upgrades, characters, and items in both this game and Fable: The Journey for Xbox 360.
Also available today is Romino’s Awesomenauts, an online arena fighter that can be downloaded for 800 Microsoft Points ($10):
It’s the year 3587; conflict spans the stars. Huge robot armies are locked in an enduring stalemate. In their bid for galactic conquest they call upon the most powerful group of mercenaries in the universe: the Awesomenauts! Play as one of several Awesomenauts and storm the online arenas alone or with friends. Each Awesomenaut can be upgraded with their own unique items to suit different strategies.
Posted in News, Xbox 360
Tagged Awesomenauts, Fable Heroes
The Call of Duty: Black Ops II reveal trailer is here
Activision has officially released the Call of Duty: Black Ops II reveal trailer and it’s everything we hoped it would be. Los Angeles is burning and Sergeant Frank Woods is back in this “near future black operations” campaign against an enemy that “stole the keys” of some of the future’s greatest weapons including walking tanks, high tech helicopters and those quadrotor drones teased last week.
Those sound like fun and all, but Black Ops II will also feature horseback riding in a first person view. Hoo-yeah!
As expected, Call of Duty: Black Ops II is being developed by Treyarch and will be released on November 13, 2012. Start preparing now.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops II
Details on the first Skyrim expansion, Dawnguard, coming at E3
Bethesda has announced that the first downloadable expansion to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be titled “Dawnguard.” Per an agreement with Microsoft, the expansion will be exclusively available on the Xbox Live Marketplace at first, before coming to the PS3 and PC.
Want to know more? Well, not today. Bethesda says we’ll have to wait until the E3 Expo in June for more details on “Dawnguard.”