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
We Are Doomed Review: A Dreamy Twin-Stick Shooter You Shouldn’t Miss
If you love twin-stick shooters, then this is a great time to be playing video games. After reaching perfection with the release of Smash TV in the early 90s, the genre faded away for more than a decade before Bizarre Creations brought it back with Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Since then, a ridiculous number of twin-stick shooters have been produced, and the control scheme has even been co-opted by a growing number of roguelikes. Basically, you can’t swing a dead hedgehog at a game convention without hitting a developer showing off their new twin-stick title.
Into this crowded fray comes We Are Doomed, the first PC/console game from Vertex Pop. (more…)
Mortal Kombat X DLC Update: Tanya will be available on June 2 for Kombat Pass owners
NetherRealm’s Creative Director, Ed Boon, has announced that Tanya will be available to download on June 2 if you possess the Kombat Pass. Everyone else will be able to obtain the klassic kharacter on June 9:
MK4's Tanya makes her return to Mortal Kombat X on Tuesday June 2nd for owners of the Kombat Pack. On sale June 9th! pic.twitter.com/22XZC97RGC
— Ed Boon (@noobde) May 27, 2015
Like Jason, Tanya will be released alongside a new costume pack for Kano, Sonya, and Liu Kang. Kombat Pass owners will receive Klassic Pack #1 for free, but other players will be able to purchase it separately for $3.99 or in a bundle with Tanya for $7.99. Tanya by herself will also be available for $4.99.
Xbox Store Today: Game of Thrones: Sons of Winter, Rogue Legacy
Are you ready to get medieval on today’s Xbox Games Store update? I hope so as this week’s new releases are heavy on the swordplay…
Telltale’s six-part Game of Thrones adaptation continues this week with the fourth episode, Sons of Winter. House Forrester is still in dire straits as Rodrik, Gared, Mira, and Asher plot their next move on the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
Also available this week is Rogue Legacy, a side-scrolling action platformer for the Xbox One where you play as a “bald ninja dwarf” that is succeeded by his children, each with a unique trait, every time he dies. Cellar Door Games refers to it as a “rogue-lite” and the mechanics should be very familiar to anyone who prefers to play “rogue-likes”
More information on both of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Game of Thrones: A Telltale Series
First trailer for Battlefield Hardline: Criminal Activity expansion released
A terrorist crime ring is set to invade Battlefield Hardline in its first expansion, Criminal Activity. Visceral briefed players on what to expect in Criminal Activity on Battlefield’s official website:
Small crews of well-trained, aggressive criminals have been using force of arms to terrorize the citizenry and are in direct conflict with the police in many cases. Public property damages and insurance claims have skyrocketed, not to mention the impact on the police force.
Detectives have uncovered evidence of a secret crime ring that could be behind all of this activity. They’re not sure why anyone would coordinate these goals – in a number of cases, the take seems to be smaller than the risk. But, orders have come down the chain to find out what’s going on and put a stop to it. Will you help the police?
Criminal Activity’s centerpiece is four new maps, which are detailed in the trailer embedded above. These new locales include “Code Blue,” a swanky nightclub; “The Beat,” the streets in and around a chop shop; “Black Friday,” a busy shopping mall; and “Backwoods,” which is pretty self-explanatory.
Other additions to the game bound for Criminal Activity include the new “Bounty Hunter” game mode, two new rides, two new ammunition types, three new weapons, a new gadget, a nailgun battlepickup, and six new masks (two animal and four police headgear options).
Criminal Activity will be available sometime in June for the owners of Battlefield Hardline’s Premium Edition. Everyone else will be given the option to purchase the expansion two weeks after that.
Super Mega Baseball goes into Extra Innings on PC, Xbox One this Summer
Where have you gone Baseball Stars? It’s not quite as famous as Joe DiMaggio, but the goofy spirit of SNK’s classic baseball game lives on in Super Mega Baseball, a well-received adaptation of the grand old game that was released for the PS3 and PS4 last year. Today, Metalhead Software announced plans to bring the game to the PC and the Xbox One this Summer as Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings.
For now, the “Extra Innings” content includes two additional stadiums and a variety of gameplay tweaks and simulation enhancements. And if you purchased the game on a PlayStation platform last year, don’t worry, all of these changes will be made available to PS3 and PS4 players in a free update.
“Right now there are few options for quality, accessible sports titles on the market, particularly when it comes to baseball games on the Xbox One and PC,” said Metalhead co-founder Scott Drader. “We’re really looking to put this genre back on the map for more casual fans, especially the younger generation of gamers who haven’t had access to the types of games that were common during their parents’ generation. Games that could introduce a sport to the uninitiated and turn them into fans for life.”
In addition to its foundation as a realistic simulation with a comical presentation, Super Mega Baseball will include local play for up to four players, “fine-grained control of the difficulty,” a leveling system, and complete player customization.
Igarashi’s Bloodstained will come to Wii U if it reaches $3 million stretch goal
Koji Igarashi’s Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has had a pretty successful run so far. After two weeks, the side-scroller has reached $2.77 million in backer pledges and plowed through more than a dozen stretch goals. Since we last checked in with the campaign, backers have unlocked a Boss Rush Mode, a retro-themed level, a linearly re-arranged version of the game known as Classic Mode, six 8-bit music tracks for Classic Mode, and a promise that Bloodstained will have the “biggest castle” Igarashi has ever produced.
But the next stretch goal should be very important to Wii U owners as Igarashi has confirmed that Bloodstained will be released for Nintendo’s console if the campaign reaches $3 million. The Wii U version of the game will be produced by Armature Studio, a development team that specializes in porting games to new platforms. You might be familiar with their work if you’ve played the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection or Injustice: Gods Among Us on the Vita. Armature also assisted with Borderlands: The Handsome Collection for the PS4 and Xbox One.
The Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will end on June 12 at 11:00 PM (Eastern Time), so the world has a little less than 16 days to make the Wii U version happen. If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s as close to a sure thing as you can get.
Darksiders II’s Definitive Edition is actually the “Deathinitive Edition”
Back in February, Amazon posted a listing for a Darksiders II: Definitive Edition on the PS4. Rather than deny, deny, deny, the publisher confirmed that a current-generation remaster of the cult favorite was indeed in the works.
Today, Amazon has reposted their Darksiders II: Definitive Edition listing with the game’s proper title… Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition. Yeah, that sounds about right.
The listing has a placeholder price ($39.99) and release date (December 31, 2015) for the game, but both of those will likely change between now and the real release date. However, the cover, and the “Deathinitive Edition” subtitle, are surely here to stay. As of right now, Amazon is only offering the game for sale on the PS4 (just like in February) and there’s no word yet if it’ll also be released for the Xbox One.
Nordic Games originally purchased the rights to the Darksiders franchise from THQ in 2013. They’ve since re-released Darksiders II and its predecessor on the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 as part of the Darksiders Collection and announced plans to develop new games in the series last year. However, aside from saying they’re “committed” to the franchise, all discussion of Darksiders III has gone silent for the time being.
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Darksiders II
PS Store Today: Ultra Street Fighter IV, Game of Thrones: Episode 4, Mega Man 8, more
It’s Tuesday and the PlayStation Store is once again overflowing with new releases including…
- Capcom brings their famed Street Fighter series to the PS4 for the first time with Ultra Street Fighter IV.
- Capcom will also add the nearly forgotten Mega Man 8 to the PSone Classics section of the store this week.
- Telltale will continue their Game of Thrones adaptation on the PS3 and PS4 with Game of Thrones: Sons of Winter.
- Beloved mobile side-scroller Badland is now available on the PS3, PS4, and Vita as a Cross-Buy title.
- Magicka 2, an overhead action RPG, will cast its spell on the PS4.
- And finally, NASCAR 15 will turn right onto the PS3.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break. And, as always, a complete rundown of this week’s discounts and new game add-ons can be found at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Game of Thrones: A Telltale Series, NASCAR 15, Street Fighter IV