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
The Last of Us leads 2014 DICE Awards with 13 nominations
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has announced the nominees for this year’s DICE Awards. This year, The Last of Us leads all games with 13 nominations, including “Game of the Year.” It will compete against four other games for the honor: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, BioShock Infinite, Grand Theft Auto V, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
Each of this year’s “Game of the Year” nominees has a chance to collect multiple awards as Grand Theft Auto V (seven), BioShock Infinite (six), and Assassin’s Creed IV (five), and A Link Between Worlds (three) were all nominated in multiple categories. With five nominations, Tearaway is also up a huge number of awards. All told, 61 games received nominations in 24 categories this year.
The 2014 DICE Awards ceremony will take place on Thursday, February 6 during the close of this year’s DICE Summit. A complete list of nominees can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, BioShock Infinite, Grand Theft Auto V, The Last of Us, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Ubisoft will bring Tetris to PS4 and Xbox One
Ubisoft has signed an agreement with The Tetris Company to bring the puzzle franchise to the PS4 and Xbox One this year. The currently untitled Tetris Next-Gen will be available as a downloadable title through each console’s digital storefront.
Details about the proposed game are thinner than a long piece, but we do know that 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the original Tetris. Who knows, maybe we’ll see the return of the Soviet era graphical style.
Whatever form the final game will take, Henk B. Rogers, the Managing Director of The Tetris Company has high hopes: “We welcome Ubisoft to the Tetris family. I am 100% sure they will develop one of the best versions of the Tetris game ever.”
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Tetris Ultimate
IO Interactive shares a few details about Hitman 6
A week after Square Enix dropped the cancellation hammer on Square Enix Montreal’s Hitman spinoff, IO Interactive has posted an open letter to the official Hitman website detailing their work on the currently-in-development Hitman 6.
The IO Interactive team is going big with Hitman 6, promising “an extreme level of detail” and “the largest levels ever built for a Hitman game.” They’re also bringing the series back to its roots, stating that the Agent 47 of Hitman 6 will be in the prime of his career, “stalking his prey across the world,” with the help of his handler, Diana Burnwood:
The game concentrates on the core Hitman fantasy of using a wide range of tools to take out a diverse group of targets across expansive, exotic locations around the world. We are building this game on the backbone of the Glacier 2 engine, using the best parts and what we have learnt through Hitman: Absolution and drawing inspiration from past titles like Contracts and Blood Money to fulfil the core Hitman fantasy. That means we’re packing in an extreme level of detail on the largest levels we have ever built for a Hitman game. We’ve adopted an open, non-linear level design approach to the game, ensuring the game will play out across huge, checkpoint-free, sandbox levels. Our aim is to create living, breathing and believable levels which will allow gamers to play around with the AI to create those unique moments every fan of the Hitman franchise loves.
In addition to the single-player campaign, the HORSE-like Contracts Mode will return, allowing players to once again compose the perfect hit and challenge others to match it. IO also confirmed that 47’s “magic pockets” will not make a return appearance.
Hitman 6 is in development for next-generation consoles and the PC. IO Interactive has promised that we’ll learn more about the game throughout 2014, but a release has yet to be announced.
Nintendo Download: Unepic, Castlevania II, F1 Race Stars
Three new games are now available through Nintendo’s eShop: Unepic, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, and F1 Race Stars: Powered Up Edition. All three are available to download from the Wii U eShop:
Unepic – In the middle of a role-playing game with his friends, the hero Daniel is teleported to a castle and thinks that he is having a hallucination. Help guide Daniel through an (un)epic platforming adventure through a massive, mysterious castle.
F1 Race Stars: Powered Up Edition – F1 Race Stars: Powered Up Edition takes Formula One over the top with new content for Wii U, including four extra tracks and bonus accessory packs! Featuring official cars and stars, use awesome power-ups on famous circuits transformed to feature jumps, loop-the-loops and shortcuts, then share the fun in split-screen!
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest – In this sequel to the original classic, take on the role of Simon Belmont, grab your legendary whip and roam freely through Transylvania on a quest to find Dracula’s missing body parts. In addition to intense action and tight control, this sequel also introduces several unique game-play elements to the legendary series. Build experience the longer you play, buy weapons and items from merchants or talk with villagers to get clues. Take a deep breath, steady your nerves and help Simon end his curse and defeat the count once and for all.
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is also available to download from the 3DS eShop. Like all Virtual Console titles, Nintendo considers them separate purchases on the Wii U and 3DS.
XBL Store Today: Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD
Aveline de Grandpre, the first female Assassin to star in Ubisoft’s long-running Assassin’s Creed series, will make the leap from Sony’s Vita handheld to the PC and consoles this week in Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD.
The remake is now available to download from the Xbox Live Game Store for $19.99 and features improved high definition graphics and new missions for the main character.
So sail the high seas and read all about it here:
Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD, is the remastered striking chapter of the pre-American Revolution Assassin’s Creed saga . The year is 1765. As the events leading up to the American Revolution heat up in the north, Spanish forces plan to take control of Louisiana in the south – but they have yet to reckon with Aveline, an Assassin with a French and African mixed heritage, who finds herself on an unforgettable journey that will take her from the crowded streets of New Orleans to voodoo-haunted swamps and ancient Mayan ruins. Taking full advantage of its new hardware, Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD introduces graphical improvements and new missions that dive deeper into Aveline’s story.
Posted in News, Xbox 360
Tagged Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
Broken Age available to all on January 28
Double Fine’s Broken Age: Act 1 is now available to backers of the highly successful Kickstarter campaign. But for those who took a wait-and-see approach, good news, the game will be available to the general public in just two weeks, on January 28. To celebrate, the developer has released a new trailer that shines a spotlight on the game’s second protagonist, Vella Tartine.
Tim Schafer, Double Fine’s President and the Writer/Designer behind Broken Age, is thrilled to return to the adventure genre after all these years:
“It’s been sixteen years since I’ve made an adventure game, almost twenty years since I’ve made a point-and-click, and just shy of two years since I dared the internet to force me to make one,” he said. “Coming back to the genre has been like finding an old jacket in a box in your garage that you haven’t worn in twenty years, but once you shake the dust off and put it on you realize it’s an amazing jacket and it still fits, and once you patch the holes in the pockets it could easily take a spot in your main jacket rotation.”
But Schafer is aware that Broken Age required a bit more than nostalgic memories to create. “In one of the pockets was three and a half million dollars,” he added.
Broken Age: Act 2 will be available as a free download to all owners of Act 1 later this year and Double Fine is working hard to bring the complete game to the Ouya (and other Android devices) and the iOS App Store.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC
Tagged Broken Age
Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD, Double Dragon PSone fighter, more added to PS Store
Sony has performed their weekly update of the PlayStation Update and added a quintet of new games to the digital download service.
This week’s biggest release is Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD. Ubisoft is giving the Vita title a second lease on life as a downloadable title on the PS3. In addition to the HD makeover, the first female Assassin will be able to undertake new missions and new adventures.
Also available this week is Double Dragon, a one-on-one fighter originally released exclusively for the PSone in Japan. Best of all, it’s based on the 1994 film that starred Scott Wolf, Robert Patrick, and Alyssa Milano.
Hit the break for more details on both of these titles as well as The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief, a PS3 adventure game, and a pair of Vita games: Age of Zombies!, a comedy adventure, and Doodle Devil, a puzzle game with a sinister twist.
A complete list of this week’s new game add-ons and PlayStation Plus additions can be found at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, Vita
Tagged Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
MLB developing R.B.I. Baseball 14 for Spring release
The R.B.I. Baseball series is stepping back onto the field for the first time in almost 20 years!
Major League Baseball announced that its MLB Advanced Media team is hard at work on R.B.I. Baseball 14 and will release the game across “current and next generation consoles and smartphones and tablets” this Spring. If you’ve never heard of MLBAM, there’s a reason for that, R.B.I. Baseball 14 will be the team’s first game development effort. Their previous duty was managing and developing Major League Baseball’s web presence including MLB.com and the websites for all 30 MLB teams.
Little else is known about R.B.I. Baseball 14 as a mostly empty teaser website is all we really have to go on. But with Spring right around the corner (and only 22 days left until Pitchers and Catchers report to Spring Training), we should learn more soon.