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
Dishonored 2, Doom, Overwatch, Titanfall 2, Uncharted 4 will compete for “Game of the Year” at 2017 SXSW Gaming Awards
The organizers of the SXSW Gaming Conference and Festival have announced the nominees for the 2017 SXSW Gaming Awards. Not surprisingly, Dishonored 2, Doom, Overwatch, Titanfall 2, and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End will all be competing for the coveted “Video Game of the Year” award.
Appearing over and over again throughout SXSW 2017’s 23 categories, the nominating committee was very impressed with these five titles. However, Overwatch definitely lead the way with nine total nominations including “Esports Game of the Year,” “Trending Game of the Year,” “Excellence in Design,” “Most Promising New Intellectual Property,” “Most Memorable Character” (for Tracer), “Excellence in Multiplayer,” “Excellence in Art,” and “Excellence in Animation.”
The 2017 SXSW Gaming Awards will be held on Saturday, March 18, and fans are invited to vote for their favorites from now until February 10 at IGN.com. The winners in each category will ultimately be decided by a 50/50 vote between the public and the SXSW Gaming Advisory Board.
The full list of nominees in all categories can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Dishonored 2, Doom (2016), Overwatch, TitanFall 2, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Resident Evil 7, Yakuza 0, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8, more added to PS Store
It’s a big week for the PlayStation Store as developers and publishers plan to add more than a dozen new games to the digital storefront this week…
Let’s start things off with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the latest game in Capcom’s long-running zombie saga. Resident Evil 7 promises to switch things up on the PS4 and many of the franchise’s most familiar characters won’t make an appearance in the game. However, there is a deranged family of cannibals to deal with, and full PlayStation VR support for the first-person horror title.
PS4 owners interested in a different sort of wild ride might want to look into Yakuza 0, which will travel back to the beginnings of Sega’s gangland tale. Players will learn all about how Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima got their start in the Yakuza, and they’ll experience the “unbridled decadence” of Tokyo in the 1980s.
Also available this week is a trio of RPGs that will most likely offer more uplifting stories. Square Enix has remade Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (previously a 3DS exclusive) for the PS4 as Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue. Bandai Namco will expand the Tales series with the pirate-themed PS4 adventure Tales of Berseria. And Snowcastle Games will bring their retro-inspired RPG, Earthlock: Festival of Magic, to the PS4 later this week.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
WB Games reopens Disney Infinity developer to work on Cars 3 tie-in game
Last May, Disney announced the closure of Avalanche Software and the cancellation of all future installments in the Disney Infinity franchise. However, today, WB Games revealed that they’ve reopened Avalanche Software and signed a deal with Disney to create a console game based on Cars 3, the next animated film from Pixar.
John Blackburn, the architect behind the Disney Infinity franchise, will once again step up to lead Avalanche Software in its newest incarnation.
“It is a tremendous pleasure to welcome Avalanche Software into our development stable, and we look forward to working with our new team, Pixar Animation Studios, and Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media to create Cars 3 based on the upcoming film and hugely popular franchise,” said David Haddad, the President of WB Games. “The Avalanche talent and technology are a great addition to our group of outstanding developers, and we are excited for this Cars 3 game as well as all of the future games the team will create under John’s leadership.”
WB Games didn’t announce a release date for Cars 3: The Game, but presumably it’ll appear on store shelves shortly after the film’s June 16, 2017 release date.
Compete in Overwatch’s Year of the Rooster event now until February 13
Blizzard has launched the latest seasonal event for Overwatch, and players can now obtain “Lunar” Loot Boxes containing special “Year of the Rooster” items such as Character Skins, Player Icons, Sprays, Victory Poses, Emotes, Highlight Intros, and more. According to Blizzard, dedicated players will be able to discover more than 100 new cosmetic items during the “Year of the Rooster” event.
In addition to outfitting your favorite characters in new gear, from now until February 13, Overwatch players will also be able to compete in a brand new game mode… Capture the Rooster.
In Capture the Rooster, teams will face off on Lijiang Tower, attempting to secure the enemy flag while the opposing team does the same. In this fast-paced brawl, players will need to get creative with their team compositions as they attempt to construct a lineup that’s built for offensive speed and defensive stability.
More information about the “Year of the Rooster” event can be uncovered at Overwatch’s official website or by watching the trailer above. You can also hear Game Director Jeff Kaplan’s thoughts on Capture the Rooster in the latest Overwatch Developer Update, which is available after the break. (more…)
He’s not even supposed to be here today… Kevin Smith will battle Zombies in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s “Rave in the Redwoods” DLC
Activision and Infinity Ward are taking us back to the 1990s with “Rave in the Redwoods,” the next entry in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare‘s Zombies saga. Sally, Poindexter, AJ, and Andre return to slay zombies at an abandoned Summer Camp, and they’ve brought director Kevin Smith with them. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be here today, but nothing screams “1994” quite like a Kevin Smith cameo…
After escaping the terrifying “Zombies in Spaceland,” our heroes are transported to an abandoned campground… the perfect site for Willard Wyler’s next horror masterpiece. Set in the 90s, the four actors find themselves in brand new roles, along with some fresh new threads. Together, they’ll team up to take on endless hordes of raver zombies and the mysterious Slasher, who’s on the prowl to add more “trophies” to his collection. With the help of some brutal new weapons and even director Kevin Smith (!), our heroes just might be able to put an end to the madness in the Redwoods.
“Rave in the Redwoods” will be available as part of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s Sabotage DLC Pack, which will be available to download for the PS4 on January 31. PC and Xbox One owners will have to wait about a month to get the chance to purchase the add-on. In the meantime, everyone can watch the first trailer for “Rave in the Redwoods,” which has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Mario Sports Superstars will be released for the 3DS on March 24
Even though the Switch’s March 3rd launch is right around the corner, Nintendo has no plans to forget about the 3DS in 2017. The consolemaker announced today that Mario Sports Superstars, the next sports compilation featuring the plumber and his pals, will be released for the 3DS on March 24.
The action-packed game launches on March 24 and offers five full-featured sports like Soccer, Tennis, Golf, Baseball and, for the first time in a Mario sports game, Horse Racing. Each sport stars Mario and his friends (and enemies!) from the Mushroom Kingdom and can be played in local or online multiplayer modes.
Nintendo also revealed that a new series of Amiibo Cards will be released alongside Super Mario Superstars. The randomly-sorted five-card packs will retail for $4.99, and each copy of the game will include one Amiibo Card packed in.
Posted in 3DS, News
Tagged Mario Sports Superstars
Capcom’s Ono talks about updating Ultra Street Fighter II for modern audience; Release date will be “in close proximity” to Switch launch
Capcom surprised everyone with the announcement that Street Fighter II Turbo would be remastered and re-released for the Nintendo Switch as Ultra Street Fighter II: The The Final Challengers. Thankfully, Street Fighter Series Producer Yoshinori Ono sat down with IGN last week to discuss how the Switch remake of the fighting classic came to be, as well as the difficulties in updating it for a modern audience.
Produced to honor the franchise’s 30th anniversary, Ultra Street Fighter II will include the arcade game’s original sprites, as well as the high definition character art created by Udon for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Besides tweaking the graphics for younger players, Ono was most concerned about rebalancing the characters while still retaining that spark that made the original game so memorable in 1991:
“The balance for the original Street Fighter II Turbo in the ’90s was OK for that time, but whether it matches the times now is a bit questionable,” Ono explained. “We didn’t want to do a complete overhaul, because then the situation would be, ‘Well, why don’t you just play Street Fighter 5?’ We wanted to keep some sense of what it was like playing in the 90s, but also retune it to match the era now.”
“We’re still in the middle of making the final touches, in terms of the tuning, but we hope we can find something that lands in between. Something that’s nostalgic, but also new at the same time. There are hands-on events here and also in Tokyo, and we see a lot of parents and children coming to play together. We observe and see how they’re actually reacting to it.”
The developer also confirmed that Capcom wants to release Ultra Street Fighter II “in close proximity” to the Switch’s March 3rd launch date. However, an official date is still very much up in the air and, regardless of what Ono wants, we don’t know exactly when Ultra Street Fighter II will be released.
Finally, Ono said that Ultra Street Fighter II is only in development for the Switch, but that “if [it] sells extremely well” he’d consider bringing it to other platforms.
Posted in News, Switch
Tagged Street Fighter II
Dark Souls III’s final expansion, The Ringed City, will be released on March 28
Bandai Namco has announced that The Ringed City, the final downloadable expansion for Dark Souls III, will be released on March 28. The final chapter in Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Souls saga will take players to the end of the world in search of the “Dark Soul of Humanity”:
At the close of the Age of Fire, as the world ends and all lands converge upon themselves, a lone adventurer descends into the madness of the earth and uncovers the secrets of the past. As players make their way to the fabled Ringed City they will encounter ancient beasts, a new cast of characters teetering on the edge of insanity, new armor, weapons, magic, and at the bottom of it all, a long lost city filled with new horrors for players to overcome.
The Ringed City will be available to download as part of Dark Souls III’s Season Pass ($24.99) or as a standalone download ($14.99).
Presumably, a “Game of the Year” re-release featuring the original game and its expansions is also in the works (and it might even come to the Nintendo Switch).
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Dark Souls III