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
PAX East 2015 Indie Megabooth lineup has been announced
The people behind the Indie Megabooth have announced this year’s PAX East 2015 lineup, which includes 79 games from 76 developers. The mazelike network of booths and carpet will feature a variety of eclectic games including previous PAXpocalypse selections such as Broforce (East 2014), Catlateral Damage (East 2014), Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Prime 2013), Tumblestone (East 2014), and We Are Doomed (Prime 2013).
Trailers for every game are viewable at the Indie Megabooth official site and after taking in the short teasers, I’m sure a few other games will catch your fancy. I know I’m already planning to line up for Black Ice, a neon-coated beat ’em up/first person shooter; One More Line, a mobile game that feels like a Spider-Man simulator; and Titan Souls, a “Zeldalike” from Acidnerve.
In the interests of journalistic integrity, I’d also like to mention that Warp Zoned’s own Nicole Kline and Anthony Amato have earned a spot in this year’s Indie Megabooth Tabletop Area with their game, Resistor. I know I’m biased, but you should check it out.
You should also check out the complete list of games you’ll find within the Indie Megabooth at PAX East 2015, which is available after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Broforce, Catlateral Damage, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, PAX East 2015, Tabletop Games, Tumblestone, We Are Doomed
Monsters have a slight edge in Evolve after the first week (and other stats)
Turtle Rock and 2K Games launched Evolve on February 10 and they’ve been busy collecting statistics on all the Monster versus Hunter action since then. Through February 18, nearly six million rounds pf Evolve have been played with the Monster emerging victorious 51.9% of the time. While the Monsters have a slight advantage in total victories, a 52-48 ratio proves that Evolve is an incredibly well-balanced game.
All told, those six million matches tallied 58,461,472 total minutes of playtime with the shortest round lasting a Tyson-esque 60 seconds. The longest round clocked in at 43 minutes with the average sitting at nine minutes and 43 seconds.
Turtle Rock has produced a beautiful infographic depicting these stats and more (including the most popular Hunters and Evolve’s Twitch popularity). You can find it after the break. (more…)
Axiom Verge will be released for PS4 on March 31
Tom Happ, the sole Programmer, Artist, Designer, and Composer at Thomas Happ Games, has announced that Axiom Verge will be released for the PS4 on March 31.
If you’re unfamiliar with Axiom Verge, Happ wants you to know that it takes after a variety of classic side-scrollers like “Super Metroid, Contra, Blaster Master, and others.” You can definitely see the influence that Metroid had on Axiom Verge’s development in the new screenshots available at the PlayStation Blog. Happ also uses the PlayStation Blog platform to delve into more detail on some of the powerups and weapons featured in the game.
Axiom Verge is also in development for the Vita, but the handheld version needs a bit more time to cook. Don’t worry though, everyone who purchases the PS4 version will receive a free copy of the Vita version when its ready thanks to Sony’s Cross-Buy program.
Posted in News, PS4, Vita
Tagged Axiom Verge
FutureGrind will bring Uniracers-like rail racing to PC, PS4 in 2016
Does anybody out there remember Uniracers? Back in the 16-bit days, it was a Super NES game that gave players control of an out-of-control unicycle as it tore down a coaster-like track. Milkbag’s FutureGrind adds a second wheel, but the concept looks to be about the same… and there’s no one rider!
In FutureGrind, players will take control of a motorcycle with one red wheel and one blue wheel. This is very important, as developer Owen Gross notes on the PlayStation Blog: “Your blue wheel can touch blue rails, your red wheel can touch red rails, but touch the wrong rail and you’ll cause a short circuit. Watch out, short circuiting leads to, well, a bit of a mess.” Beyond survival, players will be expected to perform a series of tricks, flips, and grinds to progress in FutureGrind.
FutureGrind will be released for the PC and PS4 in early 2016.
Insert Quarter: It’s OK That The Order: 1886 is Short… But It’s Also OK to be Annoyed
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
The length of The Order: 1886 has been a hot topic around the virtual watercooler ever since a Let’s Player posted a video “confirming” that the game is only five hours long. Of course, not everyone plays games the same way. A professional streamer might be able to polish off The Order in five hours, but the average gamer playing an hour or two after work every night might need ten hours or even twenty. But that fact remains that paying $60 for a game that could be completed in five hours is not a great value proposition.
Polygon’s Ben Kuchera understands the length vs value argument, but he also believes that some games work better as shorter narratives. So who comes out on top of this rather silly debate? Actually, it’s everybody as it’s OK for games to be short, but it’s also OK to be annoyed at how short some games are:
The Order: 1886 has many, many problems, and its relative lack of length is not the most troubling.
But the pre-release stories about its supposed length, and what it means for its success, were passed around and fretted over endlessly among the gaming press and social media. The question of game length, and what it means for players, is a contentious one.
[…]
The Mona Lisa is, after all, very small. Does that mean it’s a lesser work of art?
Here’s the secret: Everyone is right.
The full article is available for your perusal at Polygon.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PS4
Tagged The Order: 1886
Weekly Warp-Up: Hall of Fame Nomination 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…
Every January, baseball fans slap their foreheads in amazement at the absolutely terrible job that the Baseball Writers Association of America does in selecting the annual crop of Hall of Fame inductees. This June, video game fans will get to experience this same frustration firsthand when the first inductees to the World Video Game Hall of Fame are announced.
But June is a long time away, instead we should sit back and read Nicole Kline’s account of her IndieCade East 2015 trip in Nicole’s IndieCade East 2015 Diary. And if you’re a fan of indie games, Andrew Rainnie has published his Kickstart This! column.
You can find more news from this week after the break. (more…)
Posted in News
New Releases: Dragon Ball Xenoverse, DW8: Empires, Homeworld Remastered, More
The final week of new releases in February includes a few familiar faces and a few that are… let’s go with less familiar.
Dragon Ball Z is definitely in the very familiar category as the popular anime series has spawned at least two dozen games over the last 20 years. Dragon Ball Xenoverse, the latest game in the series, will be released this week for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. And speaking of long-running franchises, Koei Tecmo will release Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires for the PS4 and Xbox One this week as well.
But the most familiar face might be one that we haven’t seen in a very long time as Gearbox Software is gearing up to release Homeworld Remastered Collection on the PC this week. A compilation containing revamped versions of Homeworld and Homeworld 2, the Collection will also include the original versions of both games in all their turn-of-the-millennium glory.
Finally this week, Maximum Games and HB Studios will bring Rugby 15 to the PS3, PS4, and Xbox One this week. Rugby 15 is the first rugby title to be released in North America in four years and will feature a variety of officially licensed leagues including Aviva Premiership Rugby, Pro 12, Top 14, and Pro D2.
The full list of this week’s new retail releases (including games on the PC, PS3, and Vita) can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, Homeworld, Homeworld 2
Iron Galaxy reveals Killer Instinct’s “War Golem,” Aganos, in a new trailer
We knew that Killer Instinct‘s next downloadable character had been nicknamed “Golem” by the development team at Iron Galaxy. And now we know why… “Golem” is actually a massive rock warrior known as Aganos. Aganos is the largest character to ever be included in Killer Instinct and he delivers a ridiculous amount of punishment to what looks like the game’s entire roster in the trailer above. You can also get a more in-depth look at the rocky fighter by viewing Iron Galaxy’s recent developer stream.
But I’d recommend sticking with this trailer all the way until the very end. If you do, you’ll get a fleeting glimpse at Killer Instinct’s next character, a Japanese ghost girl that bears more than a passing resemblance to Samara from The Ring.
Aganos will be available to download by Ultra Edition owners on February 27 while Combo Breaker Edition owners will have to wait until March 5.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Killer Instinct