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
XBLA Today: RE Code Veronica HD, Worms Ultimate Mayhem, MLB Bobbleheads, Mercury
Just like yesterday’s PlayStation Store update, Capcom has added a high definition update of Resident Evil: Code Veronica X to the Xbox Live Marketplace today. The zombie adventure will be joined by a trio of new Xbox Live Arcade releases: Worms: Ultimate Mayhem, MLB Bobblehead Battle and Mercury Hg.
More information on those three titles can be found right here.
Worms: Ultimate Mayhem
Worms: Ultimate Mayhem is the definitive 3D Worms game! Load your weapons and experience a whole new dimension in destructive turn-based cartoon action! Taking the game into 3D creates all-new strategic and gameplay possibilities. With over 80 single-player missions and challenges, Xbox Live multiplayer for up to 4 players, 5 multi-player modes, unprecedented customization of both worms and weapons, and fully destructible environments, it’s bursting with anarchic mayhem. Battle and puzzle your way through all of the missions from both Worms 3D and Worms 4: Mayhem – it’s essentially two games in one, and is the ultimate 3D Worms™ collection. (1200 Microsoft Points/$15)
MLB Bobblehead Battle
Knock a curveball out of the ballpark with MLB Bobblehead Battle! This MLB bobblehead challenge features all of your favorite teams and players with a unique twist – it’s entirely focused on batting! Create customized fields with various obstacles such as walls and slopes while outsmarting your opponent with a dynamic card system that allows customization of players and more. (800 Microsoft Points/$10)
Mercury Hg
Mercury is back, all new and in HD! Explore 60 levels of tilting tension, color it, split it and watch the levels pulse to the beat of your own music. Can you attain the top position on the leaderboards and have the world race against your ghost? With the help of the ghost replays shave split seconds off your time and achieve higher scores. Discover the 20 bonus elements and 10 challenges as you explore the world of Mercury Hg. (400 Microsoft Points/$5)
Posted in News, Xbox 360
Tagged Resident Evil: Code Veronica
RE Code Veronica HD, Rochard, more added to PlayStation Store
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X, the second Resident Evil high definition remake released in as many weeks, is now available on the PlayStation Store. The remake has been priced at $19.99, but PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to get it for $9.99 for the next two weeks.
However, if you’d prefer something with a little less viscera, this week also marks the release of Recoil Games’s puzzle platformer Rochard. Doing his best Batman, main character John Rochard swings across space with gravity-defying G-Lifter gun for the low price of $9.99 ($7.99 if you’re a Plus subscriber).
Other new additions to the Store this week include Konami’s multiplayer Castlevania title, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair; Mercury Hg, an HD entry in the world-rotating puzzle series; and a downloadable version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters.
More details on all of these titles as well as all of this week’s game add-ons (including a Dead Nation expansion!) can be found at the PlayStation.Blog.
Posted in News, PS3
Tagged Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Rochard
Skyrim’s voice cast includes multiple Oscar nominees
The Elder Scrolls series has always managed to attract respected actors to speak the thousands of lines of dialogue in a typical game in the series. But The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is going to take the star-studded cast thing further than ever before. Skyrim’s cast will feature not one, not two, but three Oscar-nominated actors. Admit it Bethesda, you’re just bragging now.
Oscar nominees Christopher Plummer, Max Von Sydow and Joan Allen will be joined by Lynda Carter (she was Wonder Woman people!), Claudia Christian (Ivanova from “Babylon 5”), Michael Hogan (“Battlestar Galactica”) and a whole host of others.
“It’s been incredible to have all these actors together,” said Todd Howard, Game Director. “When you start a project, you always make your wish-list of actors, and to actually hear them in the game, it’s amazing. We can’t wait for everyone to experience it.”
Hit the jump for more details on the characters these accomplished actors will be playing. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
New Darkness II trailer asks “What Is The Darkness?”
What is The Darkness? It’s a quartet of tentacles that mob enforcer Jackie Estacado uses to rend the flesh from criminals big and small.
Oh, I guess it’s also a malignant force of evil that has hopped from body to body for millenia. But Jackie has kept it in check since the conclusion of the first game in the series. But in The Darkness II, the four tentacles are coming out to play with a new “quad-wielding” weapon system.
So what’s in the “What is The Darkness” trailer? A little bit of backstory about the malignant force of evil and a lot of mobsters getting flayed. Enjoy!
The Darkness II will be available for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on February 7, 2012.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged The Darkness II
Dead Island debut trailer being turned into a movie by Lionsgate
Do you remember Dead Island‘s haunting debut trailer that was released back in February? You know, the one that made you tear up a little bit? I know, I know, there was something in your eye.
Well those three minutes will form the basis of a Dead Island movie now in development at Lionsgate. Sean Daniel (The Wolfman, The Mummy) has signed on as a Producer. He’ll be joined by post-production guru Stefan Sonnenfeld (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, POTC: On Stranger Tides, nearly every other action movie of the last decade).
While the trailer will serve as the primary inspiration for the movie, Lionsgate has promised that Dead Island: The Movie will be” an innovation of the zombie genre because of its focus on human emotion, family ties and non-linear storytelling.” Hopefully that doesn’t include an appearance from Jigsaw.
“This is exactly the type of property we’re looking to adapt at Lionsgate – it’s sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love,” said Lionsgate’s President, Joe Drake.
Crysis coming to PSN, XBLA on October 4
It looks like Crysis will be available to download from the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade very soon. EA has announced that the visually impressive PC game will be playable on consoles for the first time on October 4. And to celebrate, they’ve released a quartet of new screenshots showing off the lush jungle life, several doomed chickens and one scary alien mech.
You can check them out after the break. (more…)
Sony uses a mysterious video to tease a mysterious announcement on 10.5.11
Sony has uploaded a new video to their YouTube channel that hints at a big announcement on October 5, 2011.
The video depicts a squad of soldiers (who are wearing patches from the 82nd Airborne Division) travelling through a dense forest and finding a mysterious mansion in a clearing. The mansion’s lobby is staffed by an otherworldly-looking woman and after paying the price of admission, the soldiers enter the back room. Loud voices can be heard in the room, but before we can see inside, the trailer cuts away to a title card showing the date “10.5.11” written in gothic script and PlayStation/PS3/PSN logos.
Mysterious advertisements are nothing new for Sony. But the sheer number of Easter eggs hidden within the 53 seconds of video shown above point to something more. So far, the following secrets have been found:
- A ghostly shape at 0:02
- Chimera eyes at 0:18
- Sweet Tooth’s ice cream van at 0:23
- A Metal Gear MK II at 0:27
- A drawing of PaRappa the Rapper at 0:31
- A LittleBigPlanet orb at 0:36
- A weapons rack featuring guns from Resistance, Ratchet & Clank and Killzone at 0:40
- A subliminal image of Kratos at 0:51
It should also be noted that “Divat Ludus Longe” is written above the door of the mansion. The phrase is Latin and means “Play Is By Far the Most Divine.”
So what does it all mean? Beats me. Perhaps Kratos and the “Divine” tag line point to a God of War IV reveal. Or maybe the long line of PlayStation mascots points to confirmation of the North American release of Vita. Or maybe it’s something else entirely, like a new holiday bundle. Whatever it is, we’ll find out on October 5.
Earthquake sim I Am Alive rated by ESRB
Ubisoft’s I Am Alive struck a chord with E3-goers (OK, possibly just me) back in 2008 with an intense debut trailer that centered around a desperate hunt for a single bottle of water in a Chicago that’s been devestated by an earthquake. Flash forward three years later and besides an “It’s still in development, we swear!” teaser trailer released during E3 2010, I Am Alive has completely vanished from Ubisoft’s future game slate.
But last week the ESRB confirmed that the game may be closer to completion than we all assumed by assigning I Am Alive a Mature rating. The PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 game’s mature subject matter likely played a role in receiving the rating it did as well as the “Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes and Strong Language” the ESRB found. The Rating Summary goes a step further and describes a very bleak landscape for the game’s main character:
This is an action game in which players assume the role of a man who must find his family in a post-apocalyptic world. From a third-person perspective, players traverse through city ruins and use a machete to kill human enemies in melee-style combat. Battles are accompanied by realistic gunfire, slashing sounds, and cries of pain; characters emit brief splashes of blood when hit.
Players have the ability to kill or knock unconscious wounded/vulnerable enemies via finishing moves (e.g., throat slashing, impaling, pistol-whipping); these scenes are highlighted by close-up camera angles and increased player control (e.g., on-screen prompts with button-press sequences).
During the course of the game, players encounter women who can be saved from nearby enemies; sexual mistreatment is sometimes implied in the dialogue (e.g., “These guys kept me as their pet, or mascot, or something.”). One sequence depicts the background silhouette of a man fondling and threatening a captured female survivor; the exchange includes phrases such as “Do you hear me? Don’t touch me!” and “Don’t be like that. You know I can make your life a lot easier if you would just cooperate.” The words “p*ssy,” “f**k,” and “sh*t” can be heard in the dialogue.
Ubisoft has yet to comment publicly on I Am Alive’s new ESRB rating, but you can watch the game’s astonishing E3 2008 trailer after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged I Am Alive