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
New Releases: Watch Dogs, Mario Kart 8, Mind Zero, The Sly Collection
After all the delays and all the hype, Ubisoft is finally ready to release Watch Dogs this week. Can the first adventure of Aiden Pearce live up to gamer’s expectations? We’ll all find out together on the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One this week. If you’re thinking about picking it up, don’t forget, the game will launch with exclusive content on the PlayStation platforms.
Watch Dogs won’t be available for the Wii U until the Fall, but Wii U owners will still get a major new game to play this week as Nintendo will release Mario Kart 8 for their newest console on May 30. With 32 tracks and 30 characters, it’s one of the largest Mario Kart games ever.
Finally this week, two new games will be released for Sony’s PlayStation Vita. Mind Zero is a dungeon crawler from Aksys Games and The Sly Collection will compile Sly Cooper and The Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves into one package.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Mario Kart 8, Mind Zero, The Sly Collection, Watch Dogs
Take-Two renews their trademark for Agent… again
Agent. That’s all I have to say…
OK, a little more. Agent has been in development in some form or another since 2007. It was first announced in 2009 as a PS3 exclusive and its been in limbo practically ever since. Sony doesn’t want to talk about it. Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two’s CEO, refuses to comment on its progress. But somehow, it still lives. This week, Take-Two Interactive renewed both of their trademarks related to Agent (the title and the logo).
If this story sounds familiar, it should. Take-Two filed a renewal application for Agent’s trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office in July 2013. What’s different this time? Who knows?
What we do know that Rockstar Games is hard at work on a game for next-generation consoles and they plan to release it before April 1, 2015. Could it be Agent? It’s certainly a possibility (and we said as much in the latest episode of Continue Countdown), though an enhanced edition of Grand Theft Auto V is more likely.
The 2014 E3 Expo is slightly more than two weeks away, perhaps we’ll find out there.
Listen to Transistor’s full soundtrack right now
Supergiant’s Bastion built its post-apocalyptic story on the back of an amazing soundtrack composed by Darren Korb and featuring vocals by Ashley Barrett. The duo got the band back together for the developer’s sophomore outing, Transistor, which was released for the PC and PS4 on Tuesday.
Transistor’s soundtrack is now available to purchase through the Supergiant Store, but if you’d prefer to give it a listen first, the developer has posted the entire album on YouTube. Once again, Korb’s music and Barrett’s vocals come together to create some of the best video game music that money can buy (or stream for free, in this case).
While Supergiant wants everyone to experience the game’s soundtrack, they did say that prospective listeners might be better off playing the game first: “We highly recommend playing through the game before listening to the soundtrack, since the soundtrack is deeply connected to the game’s story.” But if you’re ready to dive in, I recommend jumping straight to “We All Become,” the song used in Transistor’s debut trailer.
You can read more of Darren Korb’s thoughts on the process behind Transistor’s soundtrack at the PlayStation Blog.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PC, PS4
Tagged Transistor
Watch Dogs’ launch is imminent… so here’s a launch trailer
Watch Dogs will be available in just a few short days, so naturally, Ubisoft has released a launch trailer to promote the game. As I’m watching the trailer, it dawns on me, protagonist Aiden Pearce isn’t a “good guy” in any way, shape, or form. Sure, an early trailer showed him breaking up a sex slavery ring, but how many innocent people has he hurt and murdered due to the hacks he has to use to escape his pursuers? All told, I’m guessing hundreds (possibly thousands) of people were injured and several dozen more were killed as a result of Pearce’s rampage. The city of Chicago is a big place and that stunt with the power grid probably caused several massive car accidents alone.
He’s a loose cannon, is what I’m saying. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it…
Watch Dogs will be available for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on May 27. The game will also be released for the Wii U sometime this Fall.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor will star Nolan North and Troy Baker
It sounds like Nolan North and Troy Baker will star in yet another video game as WB Games has announced that the prolific pair will voice the protagonist and antagonist of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. Set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with an original story written by Christian Cantamessa (Red Dead Redemption), Baker will star in Shadow of Mordor as Talion, a Ranger attempting to raise an orc army. He will be challenged by North, who will play his nemesis, the Black Hand. The beginning of their story plays out in the new “Story Trailer” embedded above.
Other actors who will lend their voices to the game include Alastair Duncan as Wraith, Laura Bailey as Ioreth, and Liam O’Brien as Gollum.
Finally, WB Games announced that award-winning composer Garry Schyman will create the music for Shadow of Mordor. Schyman previously composed the score for BioShock Infinite, which won a BAFTA Award for “Best Original Music” earlier this year as well as a D.I.C.E. Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition.”
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is in development for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. It is scheduled to be released on October 7.
The Wolf Among Us Episode 4 will be released next week
It looks like things are getting downright hairy for Bigby in a new trailer for the next installment of The Wolf Among Us. Telltale Games has also confirmed they will release the fourth episode of their Fables adaptation, The Wolf Among Us: In Sheep’s Clothing, next week.
In Sheep’s Clothing will be downloadable for the PS3 through the PlayStation Store (North America only) and through PC download services on Tuesday, May 27. An Xbox 360 release is scheduled for Wednesday, May 28, and the iOS version will follow a day after that on Thursday, May 29. Telltale has promised that they will have release date information for PS3 owners in Europe very soon.
Has the Wolf met his match? Beaten and bloody, Bigby is confronted by the realization that a society built on secrets is ripe for exploitation. And that the disenfranchised of Fabletown may see his prey not as the cause of their problems, but as their solution. Constantly caught between ‘the rules’ and doing the right thing, Bigby must tread a path fraught with danger in this penultimate episode of The Wolf Among Us.
In Sheep’s Clothing will be priced at $4.99 on each platform. And as always, it can also be accessed as part of The Wolf Among Us Season Pass.
Amplitude reboot is now fully funded on Kickstarter
Things were looking awfully dire, but Harmonix’s Amplitude reboot has reached its funding goal after impassioned pleas (and pledges to match) from Insomniac, Markus “Notch” Persson, Jerry “Tycho” Holkins, and many more.
As of May 18, Amplitude’s Kickstarter campaign was sitting at about 50% funded with less than a week to go. That’s when Insomniac’s Ted Price got the ball rolling with a $7,500 pledge and a plea to get the game funded. Fans far and wide spread the word and the Internet responded with almost a full day to spare.
As long as everything goes according to plan, Harmonix expects to launch the Amplitude reboot on the PS3 and PS4 in March 2015. And with a fully-funded Kickstarter campaign, there’s nothing to stop them now.
WWE 2K15 bodyslams PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360 on October 28
Last week, WWE 2K15 was tagged with a “Fiscal 2015” release date by Take-Two Interactive in their quarterly financial report. Most of the other games were given a “Fall 2014” designation and many were worried that the different release window meant that WWE 2K15 would launch at the end of Take-Two’s fiscal year, which falls on March 31, 2015.
But never fear, the company’s “WWE Games” Twitter account set the record straight and WWE 2K15 will definitely be released thisyear:
Get Ready: #WWE2K15 launches on 10/28, internationally 10/31 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. pic.twitter.com/WOpSBP0h4T
— WWE 2K (@WWEgames) May 21, 2014
WWE 2K15 is believed to be in development at Yuke’s, but Take-Two hasn’t officially revealed anything about the game beyond the information in the tweet above.