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.

WGA nominates Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Pillars of Eternity, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3 for 2016 Writers Guild Award

Posted on January 12, 2016 by John Scalzo

wgaThe nominees for the 2016 Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing were announced by the Writers Guild of America yesterday.

The WGA bestowed nominations on four titles this year, including Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Pillars of Eternity, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It’s hard to pick a frontrunner at this point, but Syndicate is the seventh game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise to be nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing since the WGA began honoring writing for video games in 2008. The complete list of nominees can be found here:

Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (Ubisoft)
Story: Marc-Alexis Cote, Hugo Giard, Corey May, Jeffrey Yohalem
Narrative Director: Corey May
Lead Writer: Jeffrey Yohalem
Assistant Narrative Director: Melissa MacCoubrey
Scriptwriters: Richard Farrese, Russell Lees, Mark Llabres Hill, James Nadiger, Jared Schincariol, Travis Stout, Ceri Young
Additional Senior Writer: Paul Monk
Additional Writing: Judith Flanders, C.J. Kershner, Gabrielle Shrager, Danny Wallace

Pillars of Eternity (Obsidian Entertainment)
Lead Writer: Eric Fenstermaker
Writers: Carrie Patel, Olivia Veras
Additional Writing: Chris Avellone, Jeff Husges, Matt MacLean, Jorge Salgado, Josh Sawyer, George Ziets

Rise of the Tomb Raider (Microsoft)
Lead Narrative Designer: John Stafford
Narrative Designer: Cameron Suey
Lead Writer: Rhianna Pratchett
Additional Writer: Philip Gelatt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt)
Lead Writer: Marcin Blacha
Lead English Writer: Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz
Writers: Arkadiusz Borowik, Aleksandra Motyka, Bartosz Ochman, Karolina Stachyra, Jakub Szamalek
Additional Writers: Marcin Batylda, Michal Galek, Tomasz Marchewka, Robert Oglodzinski, Rafal Praszalek, Artur Sliwinski, Stanislaw Swiecicki, Pawel Zych
Story: Marcin Blacha, Jakub Szamalek

The winner of the 2016 Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing will be announced on Saturday, February 13.

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

Be Disturbed (as in, the band Disturbed) by this week’s Rock Band 4 DLC Update

Posted on January 12, 2016 by John Scalzo

The men and women of Harmonix must really love Disturbed. The Chicago-based metal band will be the featured act in a downloadable content pack for Rock Band for the fourth time. The Disturbed Pack 04, the first for the band since the release of Rock Band 4, is available to download now.

Priced at $5.49, Disturbed Pack 04 will include a pair of tracks from the band’s most recent album (“The Vengeful One” and “Immortalized”), as well as the song “Warrior” from the 2010 album Asylum. All three songs can also be purchased individually for $1.99 apiece.

You can get a preview of all three songs from Disturbed Pack 04 in the trailer embedded above.

Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One | Tagged

Coldwood’s inspiration for Yarny and Unravel… “What if we could make a game about love?”

Posted on January 11, 2016 by John Scalzo

“What if we could make a game about love?”

This sentiment is expressed several times in the video above by Coldwood’s Creative Director, Martin Sahlin, as he talks about the inspiration behind Unravel, and its adorable main character, Yarny. The developer revealed that Yarny’s red string is meant to symbolize the “bond” between people and that its tethered to something very important at the start of the game. He also shared a nice story about creating the first concept art for Unravel on a family camping trip with a handmade Yarny doll (and with his kids serving as an impromptu focus group). Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye…

Unravel will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on February 9.

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New trailer for Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India released ahead of January 12 launch

Posted on January 11, 2016 by John Scalzo

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India will be released tomorrow, January 12, for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. To get fans ready for the franchise’s next 2.5D installment, Ubisoft recruited Lead Designer Matt Duff to narrate this brand new gameplay trailer.

Prospective players will be able to see many of Arbaaz Mir’s stealthy secrets, including smoke bombs, sound darts, a grappling hook, disguises, and his trusty Trident Blade. There’s also a brief look at the game’s futuristic Challenge Mode, along with the tougher Plus and Plus Hard difficulty levels.

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Insert Quarter: Does the Oculus Rift’s $600 Price Tag Make it a Platform?

Posted on January 10, 2016 by John Scalzo

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Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.

The general public was understandably blindsided when Oculus announced earlier this week that its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset would be priced at $600. That kind of financial outlay is usually reserved for a brand new game console or the latest and greatest iPhone.

GamesIndustry.biz’s Rob Fahey believes that this extravagant price tag repositions the Rift as a “platform” that must be supported instead of a “gadget” to be tried. Oculus will need to join the ranks of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to ensure the Rift has enough content to support a growing audience of gamers:

That brings us back to Oculus Rift and its $600 price point (which is $600 minimum – expect it to be significantly higher in other territories). Six hundreds bucks is a platform, in the eyes of the vast, vast majority of consumers. $300 may, for a fairly broad swathe of consumers with decent disposable income, be worth a punt just to “see what it’s like”, to own the latest thing, to show off to friends; $600 needs to justify its existence in far broader terms. Oculus Rift’s pricing pushes it squarely into the position of being a platform, and it must present and justify itself in those terms. In short, now that the price is on the table, Oculus has to prove itself on a harsh frontier that has often sunk even the toughest and most deep-pocketed of challengers; it has to deliver software, software and more software.

The full article is available for your perusal at GamesIndustry.biz.

Posted in Insert Quarter, PC |

Housemarque will release Alienation for PS4 in March

Posted on January 10, 2016 by John Scalzo

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Housemarque has made quite a name for themselves over the last few years with the release of Super Stardust, Dead Nation, and Resogun on the PlayStation Store. And now the Finnish developer will potentially wow PS4 players once again with the release of Alienation this March. Writing on Twitter, a Housemarque representative has confirmed the game will be available in the United Kingdom on March 23:

While Housemarque didn’t reveal a North American release date for Alienation, it’s likely the game will make its way to our side of the Atlantic in the same time period.

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Weekly Warp-Up: The Oculus Rift Finally Has a Release Date…

Posted on January 10, 2016 by John Scalzo

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…

After being teased as “The Next Big Thing” practically my whole life, the virtual reality revolution is finally at hand as Oculus announced that the Oculus Rift will be available on March 28 for $600. The company is definitely asking for quite a large chunk of change to enter their new playground (the $1,000 PC you’ll need to power the Rift is a separate purchase), but thus is the price of being on the ground floor for “The Next Big Thing.”

In other 2016 news, Microsoft gave us a “snapshot” of its slate of PC/Xbox One exclusives for the upcoming calendar year. Most of the titles should look familiar to anyone who saw the consolemaker’s E3 2015 Press Conference, but they did confirm that Keiji Inafune’s ReCore has slipped from a Spring release into the Fall. Microsoft also delivered the not-unexpected news that Platinum’s Scalebound will be released in 2017.

Finally this week, we here at Warp Zoned want you to take a step back into 2015 for a moment as we reveal the winners of our 2015 Golden Pixel Awards. SPOILER ALERT… We liked Axiom Verge, Splatoon and Super Mario Maker a lot.

More news from this past week can be found after the break. (more…)

Posted in News |

Sony reconfirms 2016 release date for The Last Guardian as PS4 sells 6 million consoles during holiday season

Posted on January 9, 2016 by John Scalzo

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We’ve waited… and waited… and waited some more… but it looks like Sony is finally ready to commit to a release date for The Last Guardian. The game appeared earlier this month in a Sony Europe sizzle reel that focused on “2016 PS4 Exclusives.” And this past week, Sony Computer Entertainment America also confirmed that the game will be released for the PS4 sometime this year, which should come as a relief to anyone who has been following the game’s epic saga since its 2009 unveiling.

In addition to delivering good news to the PlayStation faithful, this announcement was part of a larger look at the PS4’s continued retail success. According to Sony’s internal estimates, more than 5.7 million PS4 consoles were sold during the holiday season (which Sony defines as November 22 through January 3). On top of that, more than 35 million games were also sold in this time period. For those keeping score at home, the PS4’s latest sales surge has pushed the system’s worldwide install base to a little over 35.9 million, which is well ahead of where the PS3 was after two years on the market.

“We are absolutely delighted that so many customers have selected PS4 as the best place to play throughout this holiday season and that the PS4 community is growing more than ever,” said Andrew House, the President and Global CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to deliver innovative entertainment experiences, and look forward to bringing an unprecedented games portfolio from third party developers and publishers and SCE Worldwide Studios this coming year.”

Finally, Sony revealed that New Hot Shots Golf, which was announced during last month’s PlayStation Experience, will also definitely be released in 2016.

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