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
Tetropolis resurfaces as Refactor and it’s coming to PC, PS4 in 2016
Refactor originally popped up on our radar back in 2014 (more specifically, at PAX East 2014), when it was known as Tetropolis. Even back then, the action took place within a Metroidvania-style world that players explored through the eyes of a shape-shifting tetromino. The little guy was deemed inadequate to appear in “The Game,” but his powers gave him the perfect chance to escape.
Fast forward to today, and developer NextGen Pants has announced a partnership with Sony to bring Refactor to the PS4 and PC. Writing on the PlayStation Blog, lead developer Bob Webb expounded a bit more about the game’s mechanics:
For example, the square shape can be used to combat enemies or the line shape to leap great distances. These shapes can be further augmented by special abilities found throughout the world. While these powers are fairly standard for the metroidvania genre, we’ve turned it up a notch and have given you the ability to rearrange the map in a puzzle-like manner.
Set in a world that is a puzzle itself, you can literally turn the world upside down by rearranging the map. The rooms that make up the map can be reordered, moved around and even rotated, all in real time. It is up to you to construct new pathways to previously inaccessible areas, to solve mind-bending puzzles, and to uncover secrets in the world of Refactor.
Refactor will be released for the PC and PS4 sometime later this year.
EA CFO confirms that Mass Effect: Andromeda has officially been pushed to Early 2017
Earlier this week, Electronic Art CFO Blake Jorgensen spoke to investors at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference. During his presentation, the executive revealed that Mass Effect: Andromeda is officially slated for release in the fourth quarter of EA’s fiscal year, which runs from January 1, 2017 to March 31, 2017:
“So, we’ve got a great year ahead. For the first time I’m trying to tamp down Wall Street expectations than build it up. Good position to be in, I guess. We’ve got our Battlefield first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, it’s called Titanfall, it’s the second title that they brought into that brand. Both of those are first-person shooters and will be targeted around both the fast, action-driven shooter market, as well as the strategy-driven market in the quarter. We have all our sports games. We have our Mirror’s Edge runner game, that’s first quarter, and then we have Mass Effect, which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter. So, big year ahead and we’re pretty excited.”
Executives from Electronic Arts previously discussed Mass Effect: Andromeda’s release date during their quarterly financial report at the end of January. At that point, the game was expected to launch in late 2016/early 2017, so this isn’t really a delay, but more of a clarification.
Whatever happens, we know one thing for sure, Mass Effect: Andromeda won’t star Commander Shepard and is said to take the franchise in wild new directions.
[Source: Polygon]
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Mass Effect: Andromeda
Xbox Store Today: Mortal Kombat XL, Prison Architect (Game Preview), more
It has begun… umm… again! NetherRealm Studios added Mortal Kombat XL (Xbox One) to the Xbox Games Store today, which expands the original game with nine new characters, a packed closet of new costumes, and the return of “The Pit.” Players who already own 2015’s Mortal Kombat X can purchase the Kombat Pack and Kombat Pack 2 to get the full XL experience.
Also available today is Prison Architect: Xbox One Edition, the latest addition to the Xbox One Game Preview program. As you might expect from the title, players will design and operate their own prison, and whether its a quiet county lockup or a sprawling Super Max is entirely up to you.
More information on both of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Mortal Kombat X, Prison Architect
Broforce, Mortal Kombat XL, Heavy Rain on PS4, more added to PlayStation Store
It’s time to bro wild with this week’s PlayStation Store update as the uber-American side-scrolling shooter Broforce is now available to download for the PS4. Developed by Free Lives, a South African-based team, Broforce is also available this month as a free download for PlayStation Plus subscribers. That’s a good deal, bro!
Also new to the PlayStation Store this week, and just as violent as Broforce, is NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat XL. A super-sized re-release of a fighting game that everyone loved on the PS4 last year, the XL version adds nine new characters, a ton of costume changes, and the return of “The Pit.”
Finally, Quantic Dream’s interlocking serial killer story, Heavy Rain, will make the jump from the PS3 to the PS4 this week. The remake will include improved visuals and more realistic lighting. And NIS America will put out their own upgraded re-release with The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition, a PS4 remake of an action RPG originally released for the PS3.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break. And a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons and discounts can be found at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS4, Vita
Tagged Broforce, Heavy Rain, Mortal Kombat X
Disney Infinity 4.0 won’t be released in 2016, but we will get four new Play Sets this year
With Assassin’s Creed already set to sit out 2016, another major franchise has announced plans to skip 2016. The Disney Interactive Blog has revealed the publisher won’t release Disney Infinity 4.0, opting instead to expand last year’s Disney Infinity: Star Wars (AKA Version 3.0) with four new Play Sets throughout the year.
On that note, the publisher launched the “Disney Infinity Next” webseries today to discuss the new adventures for characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars found in this year’s Play Sets. But also be on the lookout for new figures based on the upcoming Zootopia (Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde) and the classic Jungle Book (Baloo), which will be released this Spring.
The first Play Set we can expect to see in stores will be Marvel Battlegrounds, a four-player brawler that’ll introduce Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Vision to the Disney Infinity universe. Black Suit Spider-Man, previously a Vita-exclusive figure, will also be released individually alongside Marvel Battlegrounds.
A trailer for Marvel Battlegrounds can be found after the break. (more…)
Killer Instinct Season 3 will launch on March 29 for Xbox One and PC with four characters
Iron Galaxy has announced (via the Official Killer Instinct Blog) that Killer Instinct Season 3 will make its debut on the Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs on March 29. The latest update to the free-to-play fighting game will include four new characters (Rash, The Arbiter, Kim Wu, and Tusk), along with a number of tweaks and fixes to the original game. Additional characters will be released as part of Season 3 in the coming months.
For Killer Instinct’s PC debut, Microsoft plans to make it cross-compatible with its Xbox One sibling as, “Everything you own and have earned in Killer Instinct is available to you on Windows 10.” Support for Xbox 360 fightsticks will be available on March 29, and Iron Galaxy is working on a patch to also provide support for Xbox One sticks.
We also got a look at the minimum and recommended system requirements for Killer Instinct, which are available after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Killer Instinct
Call of Duty 2016 will make its debut at E3, but Activision will skip the show floor this year
Activision has announced that Call of Duty 2016, which is in development at Infinity Ward, will make its public debut at this year’s E3 Expo. The highly anticipated new game will receive a prime showcase during Sony’s E3 Press Conference, where developers from Infinity Ward plan to provide a gameplay walkthrough and reveal some of the game’s new features.
However, Activision also said they won’t have a booth on the E3 show floor this year. That makes them the second major publisher to drop out of the show after EA’s similar departure in January.
Even without a presence at the year’s biggest gaming event, Activision’s Scott Lowe also found the time to talk about the Call of Duty World League’s Challenge Division and the Call of Duty Championship over at the Activision Games Blog.
Uncharted 4 gets delayed two more weeks to May 10
Uh oh, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End has been delayed again. According to the PlayStation Blog, Nathan Drake’s next adventure won’t be available for the PS4 until May 10, 2016.
This is the latest in a string of delays for the game, which was originally expected to launch in Fall 2015, before slipping to March 18, and then April 26. But this latest delay doesn’t appear to be a development snafu, but rather because Sony wants to have a worldwide release date for the highly anticipated title:
In an effort to meet the considerable worldwide demand, and to ensure that all gamers worldwide have the opportunity to play the game on day one, we have chosen to postpone the launch of the game by two weeks to allow for extra manufacturing time.
Therefore, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End has a new worldwide release date of May 10, 2016.
And in case you missed it, Naughty Dog unveiled a new Story Trailer for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End just a few days ago.
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Uncharted 4: A Thief's End