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
Call of Cthulhu’s E3 2016 trailer is appropriately grim and foreboding
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft
This E3 2016 trailer for Cyanide’s Call of Cthulhu adaptation opens with a quote from Lovecraft himself, and it couldn’t be more appropriate for the creepy atmosphere that follows. Based partly on Chaosium’s RPG of the same name, Call of Cthulhu will follow Edward Pierce to Darkwater Island as he investigates the death of Sarah Hawkins:
Call of Cthulhu will offer an RPG-Investigation title, packed with psychological horror and stealth mechanics. Cyanide Studio brings to life a disturbing world that players will have to explore and investigate while Cthulhu, the Great Dreamer, prepares its awakening. Today’s E3 Trailer offers but a glimpse at all that awaits you.
Insanity and the Cthulhu Mythos have long been entwined – as your investigation brings you closer to Cthulhu’s sphere of influence, madness will progressively engulf your senses, leaving you to increasingly question what is real and what is illusory. They say that madness is the only way that can bring you to the truth and you will have to balance your sanity against your determination to discover it!
Focus Home Interactive will publish Call of Cthulhu for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2017… which is also the 100th anniversary of the completion of Lovecraft’s first short stories, The Tomb and Dagon.
Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass owners will get Bespin expansion on June 21
Strike up the “Star Wars Main Theme,” EA and DICE have announced that Star Wars: Battlefront‘s Bespin expansion will be available to download (for Season Pass owners) on June 21. All other Star Wars: Battlefront owners will be able to access the DLC two weeks later, on July 5.
Along with a release date, EA and DICE also revealed a bit more about the expansion’s new heroes, weapons, and vehicles on the game’s official website:
Join legendary smuggler Lando Calrissian and cold-blooded bounty hunter Dengar in the Cloud City of Bespin. Take to the skies in the new Cloud Car vehicle and journey through Cloud City and the Administrator’s Palace. The Bespin digital expansion will feature two new blasters to add to your arsenal. No matter your preference of short or long range combat, there will be something new to try out in Cloud City. Hunt enemies within the Bioniip Laboratories or carbon-freezing chambers with the new X-8 Night Sniper and EE-4 blasters.
Lando and Dengar both feature new traits that will give them unique gameplay abilities. Dengar is a villain that thrives on being in a fight. He wields the DLT-19, which makes him the first Hero with a heavy blaster so far. Lando is very skilled with a blaster too, but his greatest talent comes from knowing the odds and using tricks against his enemies.
EA and DICE will release more Star Wars: Battlefront content over the next year including two additional expansions. The Death Star expansion will arrive this Fall, and an untitled expansion will follow in Early 2017.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Star Wars: Battlefront
Uncharted 4 discovers the top spot on the NPD’s list of best-selling games for May 2016
The NPD Group has revealed their tally of the best-selling games from May 2016, and four new titles were battling it out for the top spot. But ultimately, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End bested them all for the #1 spot on the list.
The three shooters that made the month of May a very crowded time for fans of the genre slotted in just behind Uncharted 4, and id Software’s Doom claimed the silver medal as the runner-up. And in the duel for the “Hero Shooter” crown, Blizzard took the first round as strong sales for Overwatch ensured a finish in the #3 spot. That means Gearbox had to settle for a bit less of the market thanks to Battleborn‘s fourth place debut.
Overall, the retail side of the industry did very well in May, which NPD’s Liam Callahan explained to GamesIndustry.biz: “Overall trends across new physical software, hardware, and accessories in May 2016 rose by 4%, or $19.3 million, due to 18% growth of new physical software, which offset the 10% decline of hardware, and the 2% decline in accessories”.
A complete look at last month’s best-selling retail games (which also includes Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft, Dark Souls III, and others) can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Battleborn, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Dark Souls III, Doom (2016), Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft, MLB The Show 16, NBA 2K16, NPD, Overwatch, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
See one of Cuphead’s “run and gun” levels for the first time
Cuphead, Studio MDHR’s deranged side-scrolling shooter, was originally scheduled to be released for the PC and Xbox One last year. But instead, the developer decided to push its release back by nearly a year to make their homage to 1930s animation even grander.
When it was first announced, Cuphead was described as a “Boss Rush” shooter, a game where players would battle a series of increasingly tougher bosses before taking aim at the final boss. However, Studio MDHR’s extra work has added a large number of Contra-esque platforming levels to the game as well, and they’re finally ready to show one off in the E3 2016 trailer embedded above. As you might expect, the animation is beautiful, the soundtrack is jazzy, and the shooting action is intense.
Barring any other delays, Cuphead will be released for the PC and Xbox One sometime this year.
Nintendo Download… Kirby: Planet Robobot, Wario: Master of Disguise, more
This week’s Nintendo Download is all about battling aliens in a giant mech suit, battling TV monsters with a shape-shifting wand, and going on a grand old fantasy adventure.
Kirby: Planet Robobot will be available to download for the 3DS tomorrow, and it takes Kirby to some strange new places. If you can believe it, Nintendo’s pink puffball is going up against an alien invasion. But don’t worry, he’s stolen a mech suit and is ready to punch those aliens in the face with a pneumatically-powered fist!
Jumping over to the Wii U eShop, we can catch up with one of Wario’s older adventures this week through the Virtual Console. Wario: Master of Disguise was originally released for the DS in 2007, and it’s a side-scrolling platformer where Mario’s on-again/off-again nemesis steals a shape-shifting wand and uses it to battle monsters in his TV. That Wario, he gets around.
Finally this week, the fantasy adventure The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is now available to download for the Wii U. Filled with the franchise’s “trademark humor that lovingly spoofs your favorite fantasy worlds,” The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 should certainly please adventure game fans.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, News, Wii U
Tagged Kirby: Planet Robobot
Superhot Review: A Puzzle-Shooter That Deserves All the Time in the World
“Time Moves Only When You Move.”
The developers behind Superhot know exactly what their minimalist first-person shooter is all about, and this succinct summation of the game’s hook is the perfect way to describe it to anyone unfamiliar with the game. It also tells prospective players that Superhot isn’t just a fast-paced arcade shooter (though it can be). Instead, it’s a deliberately-paced puzzle game where methodically figuring out the correct series of actions to complete each level is the only way to move forward. Even if you’ve never played a first person shooter before, it’s possible to pick up Superhot and understand what the game’s devilish AI has in store for you. (more…)
Activision officially announces Destiny: Rise of Iron expansion
As expected, Activision and Bungie will release the next major expansion to Destiny this Fall. Destiny: Rise of Iron will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One on September 20, and players will be required to own Destiny: The Taken King before they can tackle the new content.
In Rise of Iron, Destiny players will return to Earth to obtain new weapons (including an “Iron Black” Gjallarhorn for those who pre-order) and armor while completing a new six-player Raid (Felwinter Peak) and three-player Strike in “The Plaguelands”:
Guardians must rise to the challenge to take their place as the next generation of Iron Lords. Along the way they will join forces with a legend from humanity’s Golden Age to defeat a plague of unstoppable evil once and for all. The game features a collection of fresh content including an all-new setting on Earth called The Plaguelands, a brand-new six-player Raid, Felwinter Peak, a new social space that looks out onto The Plaguelands, new cooperative three-player Strike, more quests, weapons, gear, competitive multiplayer mode and maps, a Light level increase, a new mutated enemy faction of the Fallen, and more.
Destiny: Rise of Iron will be priced at $29.99, and players who purchase it for the PS4 will receive access to a another collection of timed exclusive content, which will be revealed at a later date. But for now, we can expect to learn more about Destiny: Rise of Iron during next week’s E3 Expo.
Capcom reveals more details about Street Fighter V’s Story Expansion
It’s fair to say that fans didn’t know what to expect when Street Fighter V launched as a relatively bare-bones package back in February. New entries in the fighting game franchise are typically quite larger, but Capcom decided to follow Nintendo’s lead with Splatoon and slowly build up Street Fighter V’s feature set over the next year. Today, we got our first look at one of the game’s biggest upcoming additions… the Cinematic Story Expansion.
In addition to a batch of new screenshots, here’s what the publisher had to say about the story, which actually takes place between Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter III, over on the Capcom-Unity blog:
The Street Fighter V Cinematic Story Expansion, “A Shadow Falls,” depicts the ultimate battle between the evil Shadaloo organization and the heroic World Warriors who rise up against them. Seven “Black Moons” are deployed by Shadaloo, granting M. Bison unimaginable power and enveloping the earth in total darkness. Seeing the moons mysteriously appear in the sky, Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li embark on an epic journey around the world to retrieve fragment pieces that are the key to stopping the “Black Moons” before it’s too late. Along the way, they encounter the rest of the World Warriors, each of whom have their own agendas and motivations in mind. The final battle between good and evil begins now… who will RISE UP?
Capcom also said the Cinematic Story Expansion will include a free preview of Balrog, Urien, and Juri. The publisher is currently in the process of polishing and balancing all three characters, and “tournament ready” versions will be added to Street Fighter V later this year.
Finally, Capcom announced that the Zenny “Real Money” Shop will no longer be added to Street Fighter V. Instead, players will be able to purchase characters, stages, and costumes with real money using the already-available PlayStation Store or the Steam Store. Unlocking in-game items through Fight Money credits earned through gameplay will remain unchanged.
Street Fighter V’s Cinematic Story Expansion will be available by the end of the month.
Posted in News, PC, PS4
Tagged Street Fighter V