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
XSEED @ E3 15: Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 1/2, EDF 4.1 PS4, EDF 2 Vita, more
XSEED Games has big plans for the remainder of the year. The publisher, which specializes in localizing obscure and niche titles from Japan, will release ten more games by the end of the year and they plan to bring all of them to this year’s E3 Expo.
Here’s a quick look at XSEED’s full lineup:
- Corpse Party (PC) – The first game in the survival horror series is in development for the PC. (Fall 2015)
- Corpse Party: Blood Drive (PS Vita) – The third, and final, game in the survival horror series will be released for the Vita. (Fall 2015)
- Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space (PS Vita) – The second game in the bug-bashing shooter series will shrink down onto the Vita in its first American release. (Fall 2015)
- Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair (PS4) – An enhanced version of Earth Defense Force 2025 will come to the PS4 with an expanded level count. (Fall 2015)
- Return to PoPoLoCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale (3DS) – Farm and fight in this turn-based RPG. (Fall 2015)
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter (PC, PSP) – Yes, the “Trails in the Sky” series will finally continue in America with this PC and PSP release. (Fall 2015)
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (PS Vita, PS3) – Another Legend of Heroes game, set in the same universe as “Trails in the Sky” but starring different characters, is also coming soon. (Fall 2015)
- Onechanbara Z2: Chaos (PS4) – The “bikini zombie slayers” will be back chopping heads on the PS4 soon. (Summer 2015)
- Senran Kagura: Estival Versus (PS Vita, PS4) – The wave-based fighter will offer ten-player play on the PS4 and four-player play on the Vita. (Fall 2015)
- Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson (3DS) – The anime-influenced fighting series will return for another go-round shortly. (Summer 2015)
Finally, XSEED will also release The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II for the PS3 and Vita, but it currently has no release date and likely won’t be at this year’s E3 Expo.
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS4, PSP, Vita
Tagged E3 2015, Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space, Earth Defense Force 2025
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood will get a retail release on July 21
Due to “popular demand,” Bethesda has announced (via the Bethesda Blog) that Wolfenstein: The Old Blood will be available on store shelves for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on July 21.
Originally released as a digital download on May 5, The Old Blood’s file size weighed in at a hefty 37 GB. I don’t think anymore needs to be said about why fans were clamoring for a physical release.
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a prequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order, sending B.J. Blazkowicz back to the frontlines of World War II. There, he’ll tangle with “Rudi Jager and the Den of Wolves,” a maniacal prison warden who runs Castle Wolfenstein; and “The Dark Secrets of Helga Von Schabbs,” a Nazi archaeologist who uses occult artifacts to raise the dead.
The physical version of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood will retail for $19.99, which is the same price as the digital download.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
Bloodstained officially coming to Vita; final stretch goals announced
Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is officially coming to the PlayStation Vita after crossing the $3.5 million mark in total pledges over the weekend.
Like the Wii U version, the portable port of Bloodstained will be developed by Armature. They plan to offer a music import option to transfer Bloodstained’s soundtrack to your Vita music library, PS4 Cross-Save support, touchscreen map support, and PlayStation TV compatibility. Like all other versions of the game, digital and physical copies are currently available to backers.
With the campaign scheduled to conclude in just four days on Friday, June 12 at 11:00 PM (Eastern Time), Igarashi and his team at Inti Creates have revealed the final stretch goals, which include another playable character and a separate prequel game created created in a retro style:
$3,750,000 – Orchestrated Tracks: Yamane and Yamada are thrilled to see this goal on the horizon, as it will enable them to have some of their compositions performed and recorded by a live, professional orchestra! These tracks will, of course, end up in the game, not to mention on the soundtrack.
$4,000,000 – Online Challenge Mode: Compete and cooperate with a friend to earn points in specially designed stages by clearing challenges, killing enemies, collecting items, and more. Rumor has it there there may even be incredibly powerful bosses which drop rare crafting materials…
$4,250,000 – 3rd Playable Character: Iga and Inti Creates will include a third playable character in Bloodstained! They don’t want to give away too much—it might even be a character you haven’t met yet.
$4,500,000 – Prequel Mini-Game For Consoles: Inti Creates is so excited about Bloodstained that they’re hoping to create a 2D, pixel-based, retro-styled mini-game that sheds some light on the world of Bloodstained before Miriam awoke from her coma. This is a complete game which will be sold separately, but every $28+ backer copy of Bloodstained will come with a FREE download of this game on PS4, XB1, Wii U, or PC! (Backers at Physical+Digital tiers will be eligible for 2 copies of the mini-game.)
$4,750,000 – Prequel Mini-Game For Portables: At $4.75 million Inti will port their side story game to the PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS. Backers $28 and up will be able to choose any platform for their free copy (or copies)!
$5,000,000 – ?????
More than 44,000 backers have pledged over $3.6 million to Bloodstained so far. Can Igarashi find more folks to push it to $5 million? Check back Friday to find out.
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Bloodstained Prequel, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
The next Tales game will be Tales of Berseria for the PS3, PS4
Bandai Namco hosted the annual Tales of Festival this past weekend, and used the convention to announce the next game in the long-running RPG franchise. The next Tales game will be titled Tales of Berseria and it will be released for the PS3 and PS4 sometime in the not so distant future. According to Destructoid, the main character will be a woman named Velvet, but that’s about all we know. Bandai Namco also opened up an official website for the game, but aside from a nifty logo, it’s currently pretty bare.
The publisher probably isn’t ready to say much about Tales of Berseria because the most recent game in the series, Tales of Zestiria, still hasn’t been released in North America or Europe. It’s been available in Japan since January, but the rest of the world will have to wait until sometime this Fall.
A western release for Tales of Berseria wasn’t announced, but Bandai Namco has been very interested in widening the franchise’s popularity outside of Japan, so it’s probably only a matter of time.
Posted in News, PS3, PS4
Tagged Tales of Berseria
Weekly Warp-Up: Fallout 4 is Finally Real Edition
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…
We all knew it was coming and we all suspected it would be announced this year, but Bethesda has finally confirmed that Fallout 4 is in development for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Hopefully this also puts an end to the slightly unhinged folks who scream “Make Fallout 4!” after every Bethesda announcement that isn’t Fallout 4.
But Fallout 4 wasn’t the only big game to be announced this week as 2K Games and Firaxis revealed that XCOM 2 is in the works for the PC. If you’re wondering why it isn’t coming to consoles too, it’s because Firaxis said “it had to be PC-exclusive” to make all their ambitious plans work.
Thankfully, such as restriction hasn’t been imposed on Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, an enhanced compilation of the first three games in the series for the PS4. Some people may hate it, but I love this trend. Games need to be more like movies and even more re-releases need to happen so the great games stay accessible.
And speaking of great games, the World Video Game Hall of Fame announced their inaugural class, selecting Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Pong, Doom, World of Warcraft, and Pac-Man for enshrinement.
Finally this week, the Warp Zoned staff looked back at What We Played in May 2015 and looked forward to The Games of June 2015.
We’re also looking forward to this year’s E3 Expo and you can find even more pre-E3 news after the break. (more…)
Posted in News
New Releases: Elder Scrolls Online, Lego Jurassic World, Operation Abyss, More
While Bethesda is getting ready to deliver one of the biggest E3 Press Conferences of the year next week, they still found the time to bring The Elder Scrolls Online to the PS4 and Xbox One this Tuesday. The MMO has ditched its subscription model and only requires a one-time purchase to experience everything it has to offer. So if you’ve ever wanted to “battle, craft, fish, steal, siege, or explore” in an Elder Scrolls game with other people, now’s your chance.
Also available this week is Lego Jurassic World, an adaptation of the four Jurassic Park films with Lego characters filling in for Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt, and Bryce Dallas Howard. Players can escape the dinos this week on practically every current platform including the 3DS, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Must go faster… Must go faster… Must go faster…
The PS Vita will receive two more new games this week in the form of Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy and Terraria. Operation Abyss is a dungeon crawler from NIS America that includes high school students, demonic monsters, an eerie alternate reality underneath Tokyo, and killer robots. That doesn’t exactly make it unique among JRPGs, but hey, killer robots! And Terraria is the sandbox game that lets you dig, fight, and build in a charming side-scroller that everyone already seems to love.
Finally this week, Nvidia will release their Nvidia Shield Pro microconsole. If the idea of an Android-powered console that can also stream PC games to your TV is your idea of a good time, the Nvidia Shield Pro is apparently the best way to do that.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Lego Jurassic World, Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy, Terraria, The Elder Scrolls Online
Blizzard introduces us to Tracer, Reaper, Symmetra, Torbjorn in new Overwatch gameplay trailers
Blizzard is back with another batch of gameplay trailers highlighting four more characters from their upcoming hero-based shooter, Overwatch. Embedded above is a gameplay trailer for Tracer, a teleporting adventurer who zips across the arena with deadly speed. If you recall, Tracer was the star of the ridiculously entertaining cinematic trailer Blizzard used to reveal the game to the world. If Tracer is not to your liking, three more gameplay trailers can be found after the break featuring Reaper (a mysterious mercenary), Symmetra (an “architech” who can bend reality to her will), and Torbjorn (an eccentric weapons designer).
A closed beta test for Overwatch will be available sometime this year. You can sing-up for a chance at a spot in the beta at Battle.net. (more…)
XCOM 2 “had to be PC exclusive” but may come to PS4, Xbox One in the future
2K Games and Firaxis surprised a lot of people earlier this week when they announced that XCOM 2 would be released exclusively for the PC this November. Even though its predecessor, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, received a simultaneous PC/PS3/Xbox 360 release, developers at Firaxis told IGN the sequel had to be PC exclusive.
“When we looked at what we wanted to do with the sequel, we had all these very, very ambitious goals,” said Creative Director Jake Solomon.
Solomon, and Lead Producer Garth DeAngelis, also said that XCOM 2’s heavy focus on “high-fidelity characters and environments, better-looking destruction, physically based rendering and, […] procedurally generated maps” required staying close to home. And for Firaxis, the PC is home. This allowed the team to optimize the control scheme for keyboard-and-mouse as well as add more detailed tactical information to the on-screen action.
Finally, Solomon confirmed that XCOM 2 may come to the PS4 and Xbox One sometime in the future (“We’re certainly not opposed to that”), but he went on to say, “I can assure [you] that’s something we’re not even discussing yet.”