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 Batman: Arkham Knight trailer lives in fear of Scarecrow
WB Games has released a new trailer for Batman: Arkham Knight, which lays out the game’s storyline in a way that I don’t think we’ve heard before. Scarecrow is using a new version of his fear toxin to blackmail the people of Gotham into leaving. As further incentive, he has recruited some of Batman’s greatest enemies (including The Penguin and Two-Face) to overrun the city with criminals. Batman, naturally, doesn’t take too kindly to this threat…
And that’s when Arkham Knight, a villain created specifically for this game by Rocksteady, shows up. Any bets on his “real” identity… A somehow still-alive Joker? Jason Todd? Azrael? Someone else entirely?
We’ll find out later this year when Batman: Arkham Knight is released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Batman: Arkham Knight
PS Store Today: Transistor, Wolfenstein: New Order, Drakengard 3, more
This is the week your PlayStation 4 has been waiting for. OK, maybe it’s just the week that my (hypothetical) PlayStation 4 has been waiting for. Either way, there are two very cool PS4 games available for purchase through the PlayStation Store as of today.
Supergiant’s Transistor is a sci-fi action RPG and the followup to their blockbuster breakthrough, Bastion. If you’d rather blast mecha-enhanced Nazis in the face with a bazooka, you may want to check out Wolfenstein: The New Order. The latest entry in the venerable FPS franchise is the debut project from MachineGames. And from the looks of it, they’re going to be around for a long time.
But if you’re a PS3 owner, don’t worry, there’s plenty more for you this week, including your own version of Wolfenstein: The New Order. However, fans of quirky Japanese RPGs will be most satisfied with this week’s PS3 slate as NIS America released Mugen Souls Z, Square Enix released Drakengard 3, and Atlus re-released Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga.
More information about all of these games and more (including a quintet of import PS1 Classics) can be found after the break. And a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons can be found at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Drakengard 3, Mugen Souls Z, Transistor, Wolfenstein: The New Order
Gauntlet reboot needs release date badly… it’s September 3
WB Games and Arrowhead Game Studios have announced that their reboot of Gauntlet will be available for the PC on September 3.
Priced at $19.99, players who pre-purchase the game now through Steam will receive some terrifying equipment for the Warrior (an axe known as Azkog the Demon Slayer and the Reaper’s Visage Helm) as well a digital comic book, Gauntlet: Darkness Calls, on the game’s release date. Produced by DC Comics, Darkness Calls will tell the story of the “origins of Gauntlet’s most vile master.”
The Gauntlet reboot will include local and online multiplayer play in addition to controller support and the ability to play the game via Steam’s Big Picture Mode.
Rare is changing “development methodology” after layoffs
One of the great video game developers may be moving away from motion gaming. Since 2008, Rare has worked exclusively on games in the Kinect Sports series, releasing Kinect Sports in 2010, Kinect Sports: Season Two a year later, and Kinect Sports Rivals last month. But according to CVG, about 20 employees will soon be leaving Rare, which will lay the groundwork for a new “development process” at the company.
In a statement, Microsoft confirmed that changes are afoot at Rare:
At Xbox, our goal is to constantly create new fun, social and interactive entertainment experiences. As part of Rare’s commitment to this goal, we have made a decision to change our development process and methodology at Rare to best support our future projects, this has led to us reviewing the skills and the makeup of our development teams in our business. Rare continues to invest in our people and future projects.
While this statement doesn’t come right out and say that Rare is abandoning the Kinect (even though Microsoft has decided to begin selling the Xbox One without it), it does jive with Phil Spencer telling Official Xbox Magazine UK that Rare is still undecided on their next project:
“[Rare has] just come off the successful launch of Kinect Sports Rivals,” said Spencer. “I think I’ve heard a few times from people asking about Rare – they’re in the process of evaluating what they want to do next, and we’re working closely with them to see what their new project will be.”
But if they’re taking suggestions, might I suggest a Battletoads revival? The entire Warp Zoned staff seemed pretty excited about the possibility of playing as Zitz, Pimple, and Rash once more in Continue Countdown #3.
Team Ninja is assisting with Hyrule Warriors development
We still don’t know much about Hyrule Warriors (Princess Zelda gets kidnapped again is about it), but it looks like Nintendo and Tecmo Koei have built an all-star team to develop it.
Omega Force, Tecmo Koei’s internal team that’s assigned to the Dynasty Warriors series, is handling the bulk of the game’s development. But according to the latest issue of Famitsu (via Siliconera), Team Ninja’s Hisashi Koinuma and Yosuke Hayasahi will also be involved in the game’s creation as producers. Hayashi has been the driving force behind the Ninja Gaiden series since Tomonobu Itagaki left Team Ninja in 2008 as well as one of the producer of Metroid: Other M. And as expected, Eiji Aonuma, the Series Producer of the Zelda franchise at Nintendo, is supervising the development of Hyrule Warriors to ensure it lives up to the Zelda name.
Hyrule Warriors (which is known as Zelda Unrivaled in Japan) will be released in Japan on August 14. The game will also be released in North America and Europe by the end of the year.
Posted in News, Wii U
Tagged Hyrule Warriors
Microsoft confirms Halo Mash-Up Pack for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
Two weeks ago, Microsoft revealed that some kind of Halo/Minecraft crossover was in the works for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. Many people assumed it would be a Halo Mash-Up Pack similar to the previously released Mass Effect and Skyrim packs. Looks like those folks were correct as Microsoft announced that a Halo Mash-Up Pack will be available to download soon:
As with our previous Mash-ups, the Minecraft Halo Mash-Up Pack has some exciting features; exclusive Halo-themed texture set, Halo-themed menus & user interface, new-look items inspired by Halo, 40 character skins, and many music tracks from across the Halo series. This epic pack also includes an astonishing pre-made world, recreating some classic Halo locations like Blood Gulch, Sandtrap, and Valhalla, among many others…
More screenshots from the Mash-Up Pack can be found at the Play XBLA blog. And Microsoft has promised that more information related to the expansion will be released this week.
Today’s Google Doodle is a working Rubik’s Cube
Google has added another game to their growing collection of interactive Doodles… and it’s totally radical.
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 40th birthday of one of the most famous puzzles of all time. Initially known as the Magic Cube, the ingenious little contraption didn’t catch on with the rest of the world until it was rechristened as the Rubik’s Cube in 1980. From there, it grew from fad to phenomenon to an enduring symbol of the 1980s. With more than 350 million cubes sold (as of 2009), it’s considered the best-selling toy ever. And for many people, the ability to quickly solve a Rubik’s Cube is seen as a sign of a genius-level intellect. I’m not sure I’ve ever solved a Rubik’s Cube, but Wikipedia has an amazing list of speed records including:
- 5.55 Seconds: Fastest Solve (set by Mats Valk)
- 9.03 Seconds: Fastest Solve Using Only One Hand (set by Feliks Zemdegs)
- 23.8 Seconds: Fastest Solve While Blindfolded (set by Marcin Zalewski)
- 27.93 Seconds: Fastest Solve Using Only Feet (set by Fakhri Raihaan)
- 3.25 Seconds: Fastest Solve… by a Robot
If you don’t have a Rubik’s Cube lying around your house, be sure to give today’s Google Doodle a whirl. Even after it leaves the Google homepage, you’ll be able to find it in the Google Doodles Archive.
Weekly Warp-Up: Kinect-ion Lost 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…
After suggesting that Nintendo should get into the moviemaking business and watching Kevin Spacey take over the Call of Duty franchise, the Warp Zoned staff has got movies on the brain. So naturally, our UK Correspondent, Andrew Rainnie, checked in with Legendary’s Mass Effect adaptation and mused about 10 Actors (and Actresses) Who Could Play Commander Shepard.
After that, Nicole Kline took a look back at Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW and just threw her hands up at the whole thing. John Scalzo (hey, that’s me) had a similar reaction to R.B.I. Baseball 14 in his review of MLB AM’s attempt at a retro baseball sim.
But this week was really all about Microsoft and the moves they made to get people interested in the Xbox One again. Moves like announcing Halo 5: Guardians and (possibly deliberately) spreading the rumor that a Halo 1-4 Box Set is in the works. Then there’s the matter of Gears of War 4 and the fact that the Xbox One will no longer ship with the Kinect sensor (maybe I should have lead with that one).
More news from this week can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News