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
Remedy reveals more Alan Wake
Remedy’s Head of Franchise Development, Oskari Hakkinen, has reached out to Joystiq to confirm that a new Alan Wake mystery project is in the works.
Hakkinen was encouraged to send the confirmation due to a Joystiq report that “Alan Wake 2” had appeared on the resume of an artist who claimed to work on the title. The “2” part in the title appears to be a mistake, but Remedy also revealed that the new project is not DLC for the original Alan Wake:
Fans of the franchise will be excited to learn that yes, more Wake is coming! But to be absolutely certain to avoid confusion, this next Wake installment will not be Alan Wake 2. But neither will it be DLC. The rest we’re saving for our official announcement when we’ll actually SHOW YOU.
So it’s not a sequel and it’s not DLC. So it’s either a sidestory (in the same way that Capcom doesn’t consider Resident Evil: Code Veronica a sequel to Resident Evil 3: Nemesis) or it’s a new edition of Alan Wake that contains new content (and I would guess the previously released DLC as well).
There’s no details on when it’ll be officially announced, but Remedy did say the game has a tentative release date of Fall 2011. Hakkinen also said that “platforms” (that’s plural, with an “S”) for the game would be announced soon. So it sounds like Alan Wake may finally be lighting up the desktops of PC gamers this Fall as well.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox 360
Tagged Alan Wake's American Nightmare
Mortal Kombat: Legacy episode 5 now available
Kitana and Mileena continue their training in the latest episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy. The sister’s tale is once again told through a combination of animation and live action as they hunt down Shao Kahn’s enemies and prepare for the first Mortal Kombat tournament.
There’s no hint as to who will take center stage next week, but here’s hoping it’s Scorpion and Sub-Zero!
Posted in Etcetera, News, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Legacy
Activision: No Diablo III in 2011, Call of Duty 8 will be awesome
Activision held their quarter financial call yesterday and laid out a few more details about their 2011 slate of games. The company’s executives stressed that any real information about these titles would have to wait for E3, they did reveal a few juicy tidbits of information.
First off, it looks like it’s unlikely that a new Blizzard game will be released in 2011. That means no Diablo III and definitely no StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. Instead, the publisher’s COO, Thomas Tippl, said to expect both games in 2012: “[O]ur outlook at this time does not include a new game from Blizzard in 2011. Should Blizzard not release a major title this year, we would expect, for planning purposes, to launch a minimum of 2 Blizzard titles in 2012.”
Mike Morhaime, the CEO of Blizzard, was a tad more optimistic, saying the team wants to release Diablo III in 2011, but that they’re not ready to confirm an official release date yet: “The development team is working hard to try and launch Diablo III this year. But I want to be clear that we do not have an official release date or window yet. As always, we will not compromise the quality of the game in order to hit a window.”
While a 2011 release date is still a question mark, A Diablo III beta is being planned for the Summer.
One Activision title that does have a confirmed 2011 release date is the currently unannounced Call of Duty 8. The publisher still hasn’t shared any new information about the next entry in the mega-selling series, but Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, is pretty convinced it’ll be awesome: “By any measure, Call of Duty is one of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world and we expect this year’s game will set a new standard for this incredible franchise. The creative excellence and sheer scale of the game we are making and the unprecedented online universe that will accompany it will reset the bar for this genre, giving players a new level of immersion, connectivity, community and of course epic action. The game today has exceeded every internal milestone and we look forward to sharing this with you soon.”
Hirshberg also confirmed that a new James Bond game is in the works for 2011. But again, it looks like we’ll have to wait until E3 to learn more about it (and all of these titles).
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
Tagged Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo III, E3 2011, GoldenEye 007: Reloaded, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm
Brink launch trailer is full of wall jumping
The continuing PlayStation Network outage means that Brink‘s multiplayer portions will be closed off to PS3 players, but that hasn’t stopped Bethesda from releasing an amazing launch trailer that shows off the game’s wild wall running and gorgeous gunplay.
Brink will be available in stores tomorrow for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
MDK 2 blasts onto Wii Shop today
One of the greatest action games of all-time, MDK 2, will be blasting its way onto the Wii Shop Channel today. More than a simple Virtual Console re-release, the game has been rebuilt for the Wii and Interplay has released the game as a full WiiWare title.
The DSiWare Shop will receive a trio of new games today, but none as cool as MDK 2. They include Mighty Milky Way, a puzzler from WayForward; GO Series: Tower of Deus, a dark and atmospheric 2D platformer; and Whack-A-Friend, a whack-a-mole game that uses the faces of your friends.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Sony “uncertain” on PSN return date, targeting May 31
Brace yourselves PlayStation 3 owners, Sony has some bad news about the PSN outage. Shigenori Yoshida, a Sony Japan spokesman, has told Bloomberg that the company is “uncertain” on when the PlayStation Network will be back online.
Oh, it gets worse.
Yoshida went on to say that the target date for the restoration of all services is May 31, nearly six weeks after the service first went down on April 20th. While that’s the deadline, it’s still very possible Sony will have the PSN back up and running sooner than that. Though they previously expected online play to be ready by Friday, May 6.
And there original estimate of the outage on April 20th was “a day or two” so perhaps we shouldn’t hold our breath for May 31st either.
Posted in News
Tagged ApocalyPS3 2011, PS3, PSP
Keiji Inafune tricked Capcom into publishing Dead Rising, Lost Planet
It’s almost fitting that Keiji Inafune, best known as the creator of Mega Man, is the proud owner of a giant pair of brass balls.
Two of Inafune’s more recent projects, Dead Rising and Lost Planet, have become big moneymakers for Capcom. But the company didn’t have the utmost confidence in them when development began. In fact, the publisher canceled both games when they were still in the prototype stage. Expecting this outcome, Inafune and his team continued work on the games in secret and he went back to his bosses a second time. Not wanting to lose all the money Inafune spent on developing both games, Capcom executives gave the go-ahead to push them into full production.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Inafune was prepared to be fired for his act of treason. But he did it to fight back against a rule at Capcom that mandated that 80% of the company’s output had to be a sequel to a previously released game. So all those Street Fighter/Resident Evil/Mega Man sequels? They were the result of an actual company policy to sequelize everything. That explains so much.
Inafune believes his work on Dead Rising and Lost Planet (and their eventual blockbuster sales numbers) saved Capcom from bankruptcy. We’ll never know for sure, but if the father of Mega Man said it, I believe it.
[Soruce: Andriasang]
Posted in News, Xbox 360
Tagged Dead Rising
Weekly Warp-Up: Happy Mother Brain Day
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…
Get Warp Zoned!
As the PlayStation Network outage enters its second week we examined the the thing that started it all, Sony’s decision to remove Other OS from the PS3, in Why Other OS Isn’t Worth Bringing Back (Much Less Stealing Credit Cards Over).
While PSN users continue to curse Sony and Anonymous, Xbox Live users are having a blast with the Gears of War 3 beta. We gave our hands-on impressions of the beta last week, and now we’re back with the Gears of War 3 Beta Survival Guide so you can get the most out of the beta’s remaining time.
Finally, we took a look at the declining institution that is the licensed game in The Balcony is Closed: Whatever Happened to the Licensed Game? That’s right, I said institution. I miss the avalanche of licensed games that would arrive every year. For an example of current licensed games, check out the Games of May to hear about Thor.
Oh, and don’t forget to call your mother, even if she’s the Mother Brain, because it’s Mother’s Day!
Hit the jump for the rest of the Weekly Warp-Up. (more…)
Posted in News