Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books Gets 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
- Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, and More Announced as Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
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
Fable Legends will be Free-To-Play on Xbox One, PC
This is a bit of a surprise. Microsoft has announced that Fable Legends will be available as a free-to-play game on the PC and Xbox One.
According to the game’s online FAQ, Microsoft and the development team at Lionhead Studios have decided to make Fable Legends free-to-play to “open the exciting world of Fable to more players.” However, they’ve stressed that this will not make the game pay-to-win as players will be able to “play through it beginning-to-end without having to spend any money.”
So how will Microsoft make money off of Fable Legends? By selling a variety of customization options and permanent access to the game’s Heroes. Like Killer Instinct, a rotating set of characters will be available for free. But players may purchase any of the other offered Heroes at any time. And some Heroes will even be permanently unlockable through regular play. Purely cosmetic items to enhance the look of your Heroes will also be available through the Xbox Games Store or Windows Store.
If you prefer to play as the Villain, Creature characters, Traps, and Gates will also be available as separate purchases. As with Heroes, some Creature characters, Traps, and Gates can be unlocked by playing the game.
Fable Legends will be available for the PC and Xbox One sometime in 2015.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Fable Legends
CoD: Advanced Warfare Havoc Pack is now available for PC, PS3, PS4
Activision has announced that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s first downloadable expansion, the Havoc Pack, is now available for the PC, PS3, and PS4. The Havoc Pack will include the first episode in “Exo Zombies,” Advanced Warfare’s co-op mode featuring Atlas employees versus an undead horde, as well as four competitive multiplayer maps:
Core: Deploy to the Gobi desert where the ravaged ruins of a nuclear fusion plant set the stage for a high-octane warzone. Take down enemies through the wreckage in long-range combat or get up-close and personal in the tunnels surrounding the central turbine. Activate decontamination drones using the map-based scorestreak to help clean out the competition.
Urban: Prepare yourself for brutal, high-speed combat in Dallas Ward 3, a future mega structure, funneling players into a close-quarters free-for-all. This modular compound’s verticality unleashes the exoskeleton’s capabilities. Stay focused during the timed event as blast doors alter the map’s flow and sightlines.
Sideshow: In the shadow of Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, this abandoned inn’s open layout amplifies its creep factor. Blast your way through the clown inn with close-quarters battles or use long-range site-lines from the mining facilities and natural terrain. Use the map-based scorestreak to activate the lights, music, and magic of the clown marquee and rain down a barrage of rainbow smoke-trailed cannonballs.
Drift: An idyllic ski resort high in the Rocky Mountains is transformed into a festive high-altitude playground, perfect for an all-out firefight. Make your way to the highly contested over watch in the glass observation deck or take a ride on the carousel to deliver 360 degrees of carnage. Players can use the map-altering timed event to their advantage as an avalanche of snow and debris disorients players, intensifying the battle.
The Havoc Pack is available to download as part of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s Season Pass. It can also be purchased a la carte for $14.99.
UPDATE: In a post on their Facebook page, Sledgehammer Games has confirmed that the PC release of the Havoc Pack has been delayed until March 3 due to an “unexpected issue.”
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4
Tagged Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Nintendo will bring Splatoon, Xenoblade 3DS, Puzzle & Dragons: Mario, more to PAX East
Nintendo has announced their PAX East 2015 lineup and I hope you like handheld gaming, because it is very 3DS heavy. Attendees will get a chance to play the already available The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, and Super Smash Bros. For 3DS. But for players looking for something a little more unreleased, Nintendo will also decorate their booth with demo units containing Code Name: STEAM, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, and Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition. GungHo Online will also have a booth at PAX East with a playable demo of the other half of the Puzzle & Dragons package, Puzzle & Dragons Z.
A single Wii U game, Splatoon, will also be available to play at the expo. Nintendo’s colorful first person shooter will launch in May and its PAX East appearance will be the last chance gamers get to try it out before its release.
“We love giving our fans an opportunity to check out our latest products at PAX events,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “The newly released New Nintendo 3DS XL is sure to be popular with the many show-goers looking for StreetPass tags, and Splatoon will let attendees get their first hands-on experience with one of the year’s most creative games.”
The 2015 PAX East expo will take place next weekend, March 6th through the 8th, at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
Nintendo Download: Donkey Kong Country trilogy, DK Land trilogy, Ironfall Invasion, more
It’s Donkey Kong Country Day on the Nintendo eShop as Nintendo has added all three Donkey Kong Country games to the Wii U eShop and all three Donkey Kong Land games to the 3DS eShop.
Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble were all released in the waning days of the Super NES in an attempt to stave off the then-new PlayStation and Saturn systems. All three games launched to widespread critical acclaim, helped bring Donkey Kong back to the mainstream, and showed just how beautiful 2D side-scrollers could be.
Meanwhile, the Donkey Kong Land series attempted to adapt these landmark titles for the pea-green Game Boy. They weren’t exact translations, but Donkey Kong Land, Donkey Kong Land 2, and Donkey Kong Land III were all well-liked in their own right.
Also available this week is Ironfall Invasion, a free-to-play 3DS eShop title that attempts to bring a Gears of War-like third-person shooting experience to Nintendo’s handheld.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
Insert Quarter: Did Batman: Arkham Knight Just Kill the Teen Rating?
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
The gaming world was a tad surprised when Batman: Arkham Knight was awarded an “M For Mature” rating by the ESRB earlier this week, but no one has taken up the “Won’t someone think of the children!” mantle just yet. And that’s probably because the way that gamers treat a Mature-rated game is much different from the way moviegoers react to an R-rated film (to say nothing of the dreaded NC-17).
You might even wonder if this has signaled a shift away from the ESRB’s Teen rating (which has always been considered equivalent of the much-more-popular PG-13 for films). Few games carry a Teen rating in 2015 and nearly every critically acclaimed title of the past decade (BioShock, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto V, and many others) has been slapped with a scarlet “M.” Paul Tassi of Forbes believes the “T For Teen” rating is dead and that it’s unlikely anyone will notice or even care:
Unlike the movie industry, however, a game being rated M is not all that big of a deal. Movies will bend over backward to cut themselves down to PG-13 from an R in order to have a chance at dramatically increasing their box office haul, and there’s only one R-rated movie in the top 25 highest grossing films of all time, The Passion of the Christ. There are 16 PG-13 movies, by contrast, including the first four of the top five.
Gaming is a much different story, with rating hardly seeming to matter at all. M-rated games are routinely best-sellers, and comparatively seven out of the top 25 highest selling video games of all time are rated M, all split between Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty titles, with the non-M games mostly coming from Nintendo ’s E-rated stable. In fact, there isn’t a single T-rated game in the list.
The full article is available for your perusal at Forbes.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Batman: Arkham Knight
HumaNature launches Kickstarter campaign for ToeJam and Earl: Back in the Groove
As promised a few weeks ago, Greg Johnson and HumaNature Studios have officially announced the fourth ToeJam & Earl game, ToeJam and Earl: Back in the Groove.
Johnson and his team have recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the retro-inspired sequel. The developer, who originally created ToeJam & Earl back in 1991 with Mark Voorsanger, wants to refocus on what made the first game great while discarding the less-loved elements from the sequels:
Will it be like game one or game two, you ask? Well… (holding breath)… mainly like game one. We plan to go old school with this one. Fixed isometric camera, 2D sprites, simple controls, and an emphasis on coop play. It will also pull in some of the more beloved elements from game two, AND we have a list of exciting new gameplay elements planned as well.
Oh right, I almost forgot… and we’ll have funky music, and more funky music, and… then we’ll add in more funky music.
HumaNature is seeking $400,000 to complete ToeJam and Earl: Back in the Groove, which they’ll use to create a PC (Windows/Mac/Linux) version that includes four-player co-op play, a funky new art style, and “more fun features.” The plan is too eventually bring the game to as many platforms as possible, and the odds of that happening are good, as the campaign has already collected $100,000 in pledges with 29 days remaining. There’s currently no timeline on when Back in the Gorrve will be availabl if HumaNature reaches their goal, but you can find plenty of funky concept art and additional details at the Kickstarter campaign page.
Funky! OK, I’ll stop now.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged ToeJam & Earl 4
Xbox Store Today: RE Revelations 2, Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires
If you’ve already perused this week’s PlayStation Store update, you’ll be pretty familiar with what Microsoft has added to the Xbox Games Store.
The first episode of Resident Evil Revelations 2 (Xbox One, Xbox 360), “Penal Colony,” puts Claire Redfield back in the spotlight as she attempts to escape from a mysterious island with the help of Moira Burton. It’s joined by Dragon Ball Xenoverse (Xbox One, Xbox 360), which is the latest Dragon Ball adaptation from Bandai Namco. Also available today is Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires (Xbox One), the latest game from Koei Tecmo in the strategic “Empires” sub-series.
More details on all of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, Resident Evil Revelations 2
Dragon Quest Heroes will be released for PS4 in US in 2015
Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force successfully turned The Legend of Zelda into a Warriors game last year with the release of Hyrule Warriors. They’re currently performing the same magic on Dragon Quest, with a Japanese launch planned for this week. Today, Square Enix confirmed that Dragon Quest Heroes will also makes its way onto store shelves in North America sometime this year.
Besides Koei Tecmo and Omega Force, many familiar faces from Square Enix have come together to bring Dragon Quest Heroes to the PS4:
In Dragon Quest Heroes, players must rise up against insurmountable odds, challenging swarms of enemies and conquering gigantic monsters. Dragon Quest Heroes comes to the PlayStation 4 system in beautiful high-definition graphics, filled with characters and monsters designed by world-renowned artist Akira Toriyama.
Both Yuji Horii, director and creator of Dragon Quest, and Koichi Sugiyama, the composer closely tied to the series since its first installment and creator of countless memorable musical masterpieces, are closely involved in bringing this title to life. Dragon Quest Heroes is a title not only for Dragon Quest series fans, but also for gamers of all interests to enjoy.
The Dragon Quest franchise has tallied more than 64 million copies sold since its debut in 1986. That number will surely grow with Dragon Quest Heroes and the frenzied response to the franchise in Japan.
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Dragon Quest Heroes