Author: John Scalzo

John Scalzo is Warp Zoned's Editor-In-Chief and resident retro gaming expert. You can email him at john AT warpzoned DOT com.

Titanfall franchise comes to mobile devices with strategy card game Titanfall: Frontline

titanfallfrontline-header

Your Titan will soon be ready on your smartphone. Respawn Entertainment and Nexon have announced that Titanfall: Frontline will be available this Fall for iOS and Android devices. Developed by Particle City, Titanfall: Frontline is a free-to-play strategy card game where players will “face off in head-to-head combat with other players in real-time.”

Featuring hundreds of Pilots, Titans, and special ability Burn Cards, Commanders will collect and upgrade their units and build their own unique decks. Players can build their IMC or Militia squad according to their play style, whether they prefer to assemble a dropship of fast, light Pilots and Titans to deal quick damage or wear out their opponents with the addition of strong defensive units, installations, and support personnel.

“We’ve worked hand-in-hand with Respawn to weave in card battle strategy and collectibility with the iconic gameplay elements that make Titanfall so unique and that will help evolve the genre,” said Larry Pacey, Particle City’s Co-Founder. “From dropping a Titan onto the field of play to turn the tide of battle to using a combination of Parkour and Rodeo Burn Cards to take a Titan down, Titanfall: Frontline is unapologetically intense and utterly Titanfall.”

Nexon and Particle City will follow Titanfall: Frontline with a series of additional mobile games based on the franchise as part of a multi-year agreement. A small batch of screenshots and more details about Titanfall: Frontline can be found at its official website.

Posted in Mobile, News |

First gameplay trailer for WWE 2K17 is here

With less than a month to go before WWE 2K17‘s launch, 2K Games released the wrestling sim’s first gameplay trailer over the weekend.

Puff Daddy provides the soundtrack (“Bad Boys For Life”) as a string of WWE wrestlers fight it out inside (and out of) the squared circle. So be sure to check the trailer embedded above for a quick glimpse at Goldberg, Brock Lesnar, John Cena, The Undertaker, Bret Hart, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and many, many, many, many more.

WWE 2K17 will be released for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on October 11.

Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Tagged

Heart Machine cancels development of Hyper Light Drifter on the Wii U and Vita

In a heartfelt new update to the game’s Kickstarter page, Heart Machine’s Alex Preston has confirmed that Hyper Light Drifter is no longer in development for the Vita and Wii U.

Most of the problems with the ports can be attributed to GameMaker, the engine Hyper Light Drifter was built in. When trying to recreate the game for the Vita, Preston said they forced the engine to do things it wasn’t designed to do, making performance suffer:

With the Vita, we worked for months to get the project to run well enough on the platform. The problem is we pushed the engine incredibly far and made it do things it wasn’t meant to do. So the native port option has not been performing anywhere near our standards and would require a lot of majot reworking and downgrading to fit on a lower-powered platform.

Preston first discussed the problems his team was having with the GameMaker engine on the Wii U back in February, and it looks the engine’s lack of support for Nintendo’s console finally killed the port. The developer also cited his own health issues as a major contributing factor in dropping both versions of the game.

Preston confirmed that any Kickstarter backer who originally request the Wii U or Vita version of the game will receive a full refund. Though an option to receive a download code for the PC, PS4, or Xbox One is also available.

Finally, Preston said that “a big update” for Hyper Light Drifter will be released later this month, so we should all be on the lookout for that.

Posted in News, Vita, Wii U | Tagged

The Last Guardian hit with another delay… this time to December 6

thelastguardian-header

After years of delays, The Last Guardian finally settled on an official release date, October 25, during this year’s E3 Expo. But it looks like Sony has been forced to push back its launch one more time.

Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida, writing on the PlayStation Blog, confirmed that the PS4 game will now be released on December 6 so that Fumito Ueda and his team can deliver “the most polished experience possible”:

Fumito Ueda (gen Design) and Japan Studio have a wonderful vision for The Last Guardian’s touching, emotional journey of friendship and trust, and we want to deliver the most polished experience possible for our fans who have supported us for so long. A delay is a difficult decision, particularly with this game, but we have encountered more bugs than anticipated while in the final stages of development. To ensure that The Last Guardian delivers on the experience that the game’s creators have envisioned, we need to take the extra time to work on those issues.

In addition to announcing the delay, Yoshida also confirmed that Sony would reveal more information about The Last Guardian ahead of its launch.

Posted in News, PS4 | Tagged

Sony has blocked release of modding tools for Fallout 4 and Skyrim: Special Edition on PS4

bethesdalogo

Fallout 4‘s modding tools have been available to Xbox One owners since the Spring, and Bethesda has continually promised to bring the feature to PS4 owners as well. However, a new statement on the publisher’s website revealed that Sony is currently blocking the addition of mod support to the PS4 version of the game:

After months of discussion with Sony, we regret to say that while we have long been ready to offer mod support on PlayStation 4, Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition.

Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. We consider this an important initiative and we hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available.

According to Bethesda, this ban also applies to the upcoming launch of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition. The publisher will continue to work with Sony to come to some kind of agreement, but until then, mods will not be available in either Fallout 4 or the Skyrim Special Edition on the PS4.

Posted in News, PS4 | Tagged ,

Two new Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 trailers ask… “Are you a Hunter or a Runner?” and “Can you beat the Giant Ghost?”

pacmanchampionshipedition2-header

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 will gobble up your freetime in a just a few days, but in the meantime, Bandai Namco released two new trailers for the game to get players ready for the return of video gaming’s first star.

First, the publisher asked players how they prefer to play in the “Hunter Vs Runner” trailer. If you’re someone who chases Ghosts for maximum points, that makes you a “Hunter.” But you’re a “Runner” if you like to smoothly munch on Dots while studiously avoiding the Ghosts.

All this hunting and running leads into the game’s brand new boss battles, and Bandai Namco also released a second trailer asking players how they’d defeat “The Giant Ghost.” If you said, “With an army of Pac-Men,” then you’re on the right track.

Both trailers can be found after the break, and don’t forget, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on September 13. (more…)

Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One | Tagged

Weekly Warp-Up: Mario Runs Towards the iPhone…

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…

Nintendo hit the ground running this week with the announcement that Super Mario Run will be available iOS devices this December. The endless runner will also make its way to Android devices in 2017. Not to be outdone, Sony officially announced the PS4 Slim, which will be released next week, and the PS4 Pro, which will be available in November.

Nintendo will no doubt take over the conversation once again when they reveal more about the NX, which is good news for our September 2016 Update to The Big List of Nintendo NX Games. To add to the list, Tank It!, an “anti-war” game from Bplus, was announced for the NX this week.

Elsewhere on Warp Zoned this week, the staff got together to discuss What We Played in August 2016 and The Games of September 2016. A review of Batman: The Telltale Series – Episode 1: Realm of Shadows is also available for your perusal.

More news from the rest of the week can be found after the break. (more…)

Posted in News |

New Retail Releases: NBA 2K17 Early Tip Off, ReCore, BioShock Collection, More

newreleases091116

Ladies and gentlemen, it has begun. The “Fall Gaming Season” begins now, and publisher are flooding store shelves with more than a dozen new titles this week.

With the NFL season kicking off today, let’s start with this week’s sports offerings. EA Sports released Madden NFL 17 three weeks, but the publisher is back this week with NHL 17 for the PS4 and Xbox One. If you’re more of a basketball fan, 2K Games will release the NBA 2K17: Early Tip Off Edition this week for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Soccer supporters will also get a new simulation this week with the release of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. And the checkered flag goes to NASCAR Heat: Evolution, which will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One this week.

Far away from Earth’s athletic fields is the planet of Far Eden, an interstellar colony that’s been overrun by villainous robots in Microsoft’s ReCore. Developed by Armature Studio, with additional idea work by Keiji Inafune, ReCore lets players fight back as Joule Adams, a resourceful woman who has her own team of robotic helpers. ReCore will be released for the Xbox One and it’ll also be available digitally for the PC as an Xbox Play Anywhere title.

You know who else has access to a lot of gadgets? Batman. And Telltale Games will put the World’s Greatest Detective through the ringer this week with their Batman: The Telltale Series – Season Pass Disc for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. The disc will include the first episode from Telltale’s Batman series and digital access to every subsequent episode released (the second is scheduled to launch on September 20).

Finally this week, a trio of re-releases will reintroduce gamers to a few beloved franchises. BioShock: The Collection will bring BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite together in a single package for the PS4 and Xbox One (and digitally on the PC) with improved graphics and exclusive commentary by Ken Levine and other developers from Irrational. Meanwhile, Capcom’s Dead Rising also makes the leap to the PS4 and Xbox One (and, again, digitally on the PC) with improved graphics. And Square Enix and Nintendo collaborated on a brand new localization for the 3DS release of Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past.

A complete list of this week’s new releases can be found after the break. (more…)

Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,