Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books Gets 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
- Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, and More Announced as Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
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
Fighter Pack 3 will add The Atom, Enchantress, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Injustice 2
Last month, we got a sneak peek at The Atom, the first character from Fighter Pack 3, NetherRealm’s next expansion for Injustice 2. Today, the developer revealed the flippin’ awesome fivesome that make up the rest of the expansion.
Enchantress, who was portrayed by Cara Delevingne in last year’s Suicide Squad film, will join The Atom as part of the DC Comics contingent in Fighter Pack 3. The remaining four characters will actually be available as a radical group… the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s unknown how players will access Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo from a single character slot, but hopefully it’ll work similar to Tri-Borg‘s variations in Mortal Kombat X.
A new trailer featuring the characters from Fighter Pack 3 has been embedded above, and Injustice 2 players who have purchased the Ultimate Edition or Fighter Pack 3 will be able to download The Atom on December 12.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Injustice 2
Need For Speed Payback, Skyforge, Street Hoop, more added to Xbox Store
Microsoft is closing the book on another week with today’s update to the Xbox Games Store.
Xbox One owners will now be able to download Need For Speed Payback, the latest game in EA’s racing franchise; Skyforge, an MMORPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment; Street Hoop, another NeoGeo re-release from Hamster Corporation; and Wuppo, a hand-drawn platformer.
You can learn more about all of today’s additions to the Xbox Games Store after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Need For Speed Payback
Doom, Rocket League, L.A. Noire, a lot more coming to Nintendo eShop this week
Nintendo has delivered yet another Nintendo eShop update overflowing with impressive games.
Starting things off, the Snipperclips Plus expansion will be available to download for the Switch beginning tomorrow, as will Bethesda’s excellent Doom reboot. 3DS owners will also get the chance to download Mario Party: The Top 100, a sprawling compilation that includes some of the best minigames from the series.
But things get even crazier for Switch owners on Tuesday, November 14. Psyonix will launch Rocket League, their massively popular automotive soccer game. Rockstar returns to the 1940s with L.A. Noire. Telltale will light up the Bat Signal for Batman: The Telltale Series. Tequila Works will venture forth on a deserted island with Rime. And WB Games will put all the pieces together in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2. Whew!
You can learn more about all of this week’s additions to the Nintendo eShop (including a few 3DS and Wii U games) after the break. (more…)
Niantic’s next augmented reality game is Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
Niantic’s Pokemon Go turned the mobile gaming world upside down last year, as millions of players tried to “catch ’em all,” and escape to the wilderness to chase Pokemon hiding out in the real world. Yesterday, the developer announced their next augment reality game for mobile devices, and I think it’ll likely make an even bigger splash with the gaming public.
In Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, players will get the chance to “go on adventures, learn and cast spells, discover mysterious artifacts, and encounter legendary beasts and iconic characters as they explore real-world neighborhoods and cities across the globe.”
“At Niantic, our goal is to leverage technology to create real world experiences that help people to discover the wonderful, and often magical parts of the world around them,” said Niantic’s CEO, John Hanke. “The beloved Harry Potter stories have captured imaginations worldwide for more than 20 years and soon we’ll turn the fantasy into augmented reality, allowing fans and their friends to become wizards and witches.”
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will be the first title published by Portkey Games, a new division within WB Games devoted to creating video games based on characters and locations from J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. So you can expect more Harry Potter games to be announced in the not-too-distant future.
More information on Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will be announced in 2018.
Posted in Mobile, News
Tagged Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
See touchscreen controls Rockstar added to L.A. Noire for Switch release in new trailer
L.A. Noire will make its Switch debut next week, but Rockstar released a brand new trailer today focusing on the touchscreen controls they’re adding to make the game more portable:
Today we’re thrilled to share the new official trailer for L.A. Noire for the Nintendo Switch, featuring contextual touch screen controls for portable detective work, a Joy-Con mode with gyroscopic controls, HD Rumble, and new wide and over-the-shoulder camera angles. Set amid the post-war boom of Hollywood’s Golden Age, L.A. Noire follows newly-minted officer Cole Phelps as he embarks on a desperate search for truth in a city where everyone has something to hide. L.A. Noire for the Nintendo Switch includes the complete original game plus all additional downloadable content, and will be available in-store and digitally via the Nintendo eShop on November 14th.
L.A. Noire is also being remade for the PS4 and Xbox One. All three versions of the game will be released on Tuesday, November 14.
Posted in News, Switch
Tagged L.A. Noire
EA Sports might discontinue yearly releases of Madden and FIFA
EA Sports has a particular way of doing things, and sticking to an annual release schedule for their games lineup is a big one. For decades, a new Madden appears on store shelves every August. It’s followed by updated NHL and FIFA games a month later, and the latest NBA Live (when it’s not on the bench) typically launches in October. But things might be changing for the venerable publisher.
Speaking to Bloomberg, CEO Andrew Wilson said that EA Sports might discontinue yearly releases and switch to offering downloadable expansions or subscriptions instead:
“There’s a few different things that have got to happen first. We do a lot in a FIFA game every year, and a lot in a Madden game. There’s a lot of code that we make available as part of the new iteration. But when we look at what we do in Korea or China, we don’t do it that way. There, every four years we release a new big code drop, and we offer incremental change over time.”
Wilson didn’t lay out a road map for how this change might be implemented, but I’m sure many sports fans would be interested in purchasing a full-priced game once and adding to it with roster updates and Story Mode expansions in future seasons.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged FIFA 18, Madden NFL 18, NBA Live 18, NHL 18
Sonic Forces, Super Lucky’s Tale, Guardians of the Galaxy Ep 5, more added to Xbox Store
It’s Wednesday, and Micorsoft has revved up another update to the Xbox Games Store.
Beginning today, Xbox One owners can now download Sega’s speedy platformer, Sonic Forces, as well as Microsoft’s throwback platformer, Super Lucky’s Tale. Telltale Games also threw their hat into the ring today with new chapters for Guardians of the Galaxy (Episode 5: Don’t Stop Believin’) and Minecraft: Story Mode Season 2 (Episode 4: Below the Bedrock).
You can learn more about all of today’s additions to the Xbox Games Store after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Guardians of the Galaxy, Minecraft: Story Mode Season 2, Sonic Forces
Take-Two ships 85 million copies of GTA5 and has a “highly-anticipated new title” from 2K on tap for 2018
Take-Two Interactive’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, had a few interesting things to say during the company’s quarterly financial report yesterday.
First, Zelnick announced that Rockstar Games has shipped more than 85 million copies of Grand Theft Auto V throughout the world on the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. That massive number, and its perennial popularity, has actually pushed Grand Theft Auto V past Nintendo’s Wii Sports to become the best-selling game in the United States. However, it still trails Minecraft (122 million) for the worldwide title.
Looking to the future, Zelnick also said that 2K Games will publish a “highly-anticipated new title” from its stable of franchises sometime in Take-Two’s 2019 fiscal year (April 1, 2018 through March 31, 2019):
And looking ahead, fiscal 2019 promises to be one of our best years ever led by the launches of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 and a highly-anticipated new title from one of 2K’s biggest franchises.
For all their success, 2K Games doesn’t actually have all that many major franchises in its catalog. So there’s a very real chance that the previously-announced Borderlands 3 or the assumed-to-be-in-development BioShock 4 will materialize next year.