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
Weekly Warp-Up: Post-PAX Prime 2013 Post
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…
With this year’s PAX Prime expo going an extra day, we learned a ton of new information on many upcoming game releases. But first, check out our picks for The PAXpocalypse List: The Best of PAX Prime 2013, especially if you’re a purveyor of indie games.
Now then, here’s what we learned at the 2013 edition of PAX Prime… Gearbox has teamed with Blackbird Interactive on a third Homeworld game… Microsoft is bringing a “Mass Effect Edition” expansion to Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition… Capybara will release Super Time Force in 2013 and Below in 2014… Gearbox is working on two original franchises for next-generation consoles… Gearbox wants to do more Borderlands 2 DLC in 2014 if Headhunter Packs are successful… Microsoft plans to allow trading of downloadable games on Xbox One…
Oh, that reminds me… It didn’t happen at PAX Prime, but Microsoft has confirmed that the Xbox One will be released on November 22, 2013. That’s kind of a big deal.
More news from this week can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News
New Releases: Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix, NHL 14, Killzone: Mercenary, More
For everyone that missed Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories the first time around, Square Enix has combined them both into a new high definition re-release known as Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix. As you may have guessed, it’s in stores this week. Also available this week is NHL 14. The only remaining official hockey game will be released for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Other new releases this week include Killzone: Mercenary, the first game in the series for the Vita; and Puppeteer, a game about puppets for the PS3.
Finally this week, The Elder Scrolls Anthology brings Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim together in massive multi-disc PC collection. And EA will release The Sims 3: Movie Stuff, probably the last Sims 3 “Stuff” expansion before next year’s release of The Sims 4.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Vita, Xbox 360
Tagged Killzone: Mercenary, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix, NHL 14, Puppeteer
Gearbox wants to do more Borderlands 2 DLC in 2014 if Headhunter Packs are successful
During last weekend’s PAX Prime expo, we had a chance to talk with Josh Jeffcoat, a Game Designer on Borderlands 2 at Gearbox Software. In the course of the interview, Jeffcoat had a lot to say about the game’s upcoming trio of mini-DLCs and revealed that the company’s current plan is to release all three Headhunter Packs by the end of the year. Though pricing details for the three packs have yet to be announced, Jeffcoat confirmed they’ll be cheaper than previous expansions like “Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep” (which was priced at $9.99). The first pack, “T.K. Baha’s Bloody Harvest,” will be available in October.
Jeffcoat also told us that the developers at Gearbox would love to create more Headhunter Packs in 2014, if the first three sell well:
Basically, we’re just going to see how people like it. If they like these new smaller-scale campaigns, then we might try and keep doing more of them, because they’re much, much faster for us to make than the full-scale Tiny Tina DLC was.
Obviously, this isn’t confirmation of anything. But the complete range of downloadable content for Borderlands 2 has been so successful that I’m certain fans will flock to the first three Headhunter Packs as well. Oh, and we’ll have a hands-on preview of “T.K. Baha’s Bloody Harvest” for you next week.
Posted in News
Tagged Borderlands 2, PAX Prime 2013, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Microsoft relaunches Xbox Live Rewards program
Microsoft Points are no longer the currency of choice in the Xbox Live Store. Now that everything is priced in dollars (or insert your own local currency here), Microsoft has revamped the Xbox Live Rewards program as well.
The system is now based on “Credits” and performing many of the same “missions” as before (filling out surveys, renewing your Gold membership, buying XBL Store content) will still desposit Credits into your Rewards. For example, if you fill out a survey, you’ll receive 250 Credits. After you’ve obtained 5,000 Credits, Microsoft will deposit $5.00 into your Xbox Live account.
The biggest addition to the new Xbox Live Rewards program is the “Play A New Game” mission. If you buy a disc-based Xbox 360 game within 30 days of release and put ten hours into it, Microsoft will give you 1,000 Credits. The offer doesn’t apply to downloadable games or older disc-based titles, so it’s not a great deal, but at least Microsoft is taking a few tiny steps towards making the Xbox Live Rewards program worthwhile.
More information about the program (including a full list of “missions” and their requirements) can be found at rewards.xbox.com.
Call of Duty: Strike Team sneaks onto iOS App Store
Surprise! Activision has secretly added a new Call of Duty game to the iOS App Store today.
Call of Duty: Strike Team was developed by Actvision’s new mobile team, The Blast Furnace, and is an original game “built from the ground up” for mobile/tablet devices. In this case, those devices are the iPhone 5/iPod Touch 5th Generation, iPad Mini, iPad 2 and iPad 3. Priced at $6.99, Strike Team gives gamers the opportunity to switch between first-person and third-person views as they hunt down terrorists responsible for an attack on the US in the year 2020.
“Call of Duty: Strike Team is all about giving a single player experience that is unlike anything else in the Call of Duty world in a way that matches the interests of players on-the-go,” said Mark Washbrook, Studio Head of The Blast Furnace. “By giving fans the option to play in either first-person or third-person views and to switch between them on the fly, we’ve really opened the doors for gamers to have a fun and entertaining gameplay experience with Call of Duty: Strike Team, because they can play the game the way they want.”
In addition to the Campaign, Strike Team includes a wave-based Survival Mode where players can compete for “leaderboard domination.”
Just Dance 2014 adds Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”
Ubisoft has announced that the soundtrack to Just Dance 2014 will include two of this Summer’s biggest songs: Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” I’m sure that all the people who love these two songs will be thrilled. Oh, and insert your own “Miley’s foam finger” and/or “Robin Thicke is a sexist” joke here.
Just Dance 2014 will be available for the PS3, Wii, Wii U, and Xbox 360 on October 4. A PS4 version will follow on Noveber 15 and an Xbox One edition will be released on November 22.
Nintendo Download: D&D Chronicles of Mystara, Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams, more
Nine new games have been added to Nintendo’s three download services today, though your definition of the word “new” may be different from theirs.
The Wii U leads the way as the arcade brawler Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara and the side-scrolling Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams are both now available to download from the Wii U eShop. A favorite among Super NES RPG afficiandos, Breath of Fire II, and yet another “find the object” game, Spot The Differences! Party, were also released today.
Over on the 3DS, Sonic Generations speeds onto the 3DS eShop today. Sega’s red-shoed mascot is joined by Summer Carnival ’92 RECCA, a tough-as-nails overhead shooter; Boulder Dash-XL 3D, a side-scrolling mining game; and Darts Up 3D, a… wait for it… darts game.
Finally, the DSiWare Shop hosts a new game this week: Jewel Adventures. It’s your typical match-3 puzzler.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, DS, News, Wii U
Tagged Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, Sonic Generations
Microsoft plans to allow trading of downloadable games on Xbox One
When Microsoft first revealed the Xbox One, downloadable game sharing features were at the center of the discussion. The consoles’s much coveted “Family Sharing Plan” would have allowed Xbox One owners to share their game purchases with friends and family, regardless of where they lived. However, that feature was temporarily disabled when Microsoft had to remove the Xbox One’s online check-in system due to fan backlash. But that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about it.
Albert Penello, a Senior Director in Microsoft’s Xbox Division, recently spoke to GameSpot about the future of the feature. According to Penello, not only does Microsoft plan to bring back family sharing, but the consolemaker plans to allow trading of downloadable games as well:
“We were trying to implement the ability to trade [and] loan digital games with your friends which is something that no one else was doing. I believe, in retrospect that people have calmed down and gone back and actually looked at what we said, people are starting to understand, ‘Wow, they did want actually to allow me to loan and trade’ which other digital ecosystems don’t want to do. And so, yeah, I think we need to do that. That has to be part of the experience.”
[…]
“I get a lot of mails saying ‘god, please bring back the family sharing.’ We’d love to figure out how to bring that back. I still think it was a good idea. Maybe it was a little too soon for some people, but I still think there were a lot of good ideas in there. And we’ll bring it back when the time is right.”
I wonder which game will become the Stadium Events of the digital download world.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged PAX Prime 2013