Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, FIFA Soccer, and Silent Hill are the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- 2025 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress
- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game – The New York Times (2026)
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- 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)
Author: John Scalzo
Cory Barlog returns to Sony Santa Monica to work on something “freaking huge”
Cory Barlog’s walkabout is over. The Director of God of War II has announced (via the PlayStation Blog) that he has returned to Sony Santa Monica and has begun work on something that’s “freaking huge.”
What am I working on, you ask? Good question. Sadly, I cannot tell you…yet. But I can say that it is freaking huge, and it will live up to the standards that I helped establish here at SMS. We’re putting together a team as I type this, an Ocean’s 11 kind of thing. We are searching the world high and low for the best of the BEST to come and be on the ground floor of this endeavor.
Barlog has kept busy since he left Sony Santa Monica in 2007. First, he hooked up with film director George Miller and began developing a game based on the Mad Max films. Then, after leaving Miller’s employ, Barlog joined Crystal Dynamics and directed the cinematic cutscenes for this year’s Tomb Raider reboot.
Sony Santa Monica is currently working with Ready At Dawn on The Order: 1886, a steampunk action game for the PS4. We’ll have to wait and see if Barlog’s return points towards a God of War IV announcement or something else entirely.
Posted in News
Tagged God of War 4
Saints Row IV’s “Million Dollar Pack” includes the game and an insane amount of goodies
For gamers of a certain age, some of Deep Silver’s antics are probably beginning to resemble the late 90s/early 2000s heyday of Acclaim. Before going under in 2004, the defunct publisher offered cash to any family willing to name their unborn baby “Turok.” They also offered to pay the funeral expenses of anyone willing to be buried underneath a Shadow Man 2 headstone. Deep Silver’s “Million Dollar Pack” (AKA the “Super Dangerous Wad Wad Edition”) for Saints Row IV doesn’t reach those depths, but some of goodies included with the game are absurdly insane.
The Saints Row IV “Million Dollar Pack” will be sold through GAME, a UK video game retailer, and is available to purchase for, yes, one million dollars. The bundle gets you a copy of the game and some additional bonuses:
- Full-Size Replica Dub Step Gun
- Hostage Rescue Experience
- Virgin Galactic Space Flight
- Plastic Surgery
- Spy Training Day
- Access to a Personal Shopper
- A “Capsule Wardrobe”
- A Week in the Top Royal Suite at the Burj-Al-Arab in Dubai
- A Week at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington, D.C.
- First Class Flights to Dubai and Washington, D.C.
- Lamborghini Gallardo
- Toyota Prius + One Year of Insurance
- A One Year Membership in a “Supercars” Club
Only one copy of the “Million Dollar Pack” is available in the entire world, so if you’re interested, you’d better hurry. And I’m sure, if you ask nicely, Deep Silver will switch out the UK version of the game for the US one.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Saints Row IV
Weekly Warp-Up: World of Tomorrow 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…
Welcome to the…
[Dramatic Pause]…
World of Tomorrow!
This week, executives, developers, and community managers just couldn’t stop talking about games that are a very long ways away. For example:
- Id Software was rather forthcoming about why Doom 4 is taking so long.
- Namco Bandai assured us that Tekken X Street Fighter is still in development.
- Ubisoft discussed the end of the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
- Capcom confirmed that Street Fighter V is at least five years away.
- Deep Silver is sure that they’ll release Dead Island 3 someday.
- And finally, Microsoft’s Major Nelson “unboxed” an Xbox One system that is still several months away.
A little closer to the present, we talked with Dakko Dakko’s Dan Croucher and Scram Kitty and His Buddy On Rails, his company’s Wii U eShop-exclusive game.
More news from the World of Today can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News
New Releases: Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Payday 2, DuckTales Remastered, More
The brothers Mario are venturing back into the RPG world with today’s release of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team for the 3DS.
Tuesday will see the release of a few titles on the complete opposite end of the gaming spectrum including the multiplayer heistfest Payday 2 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) and the latest strategy game in the Europa Universalis series, Europa Universalis IV (PC).
The rest of this week’s new releases all star anthropomorphized animals…
- There’s the PC version of WayForward’s DuckTales Remastered. Downloadable console versions will also be available this week and special retail editions will be available next week.
- There’s the Wii and Wii U port of Angry Birds Trilogy.
- And there’s Phineas and Ferb: Quest For Cool Stuff, which will be available for the 3DS, DS, Wii, Wii U, and Xbox 360.
I guess, technically, Phineas and Ferb aren’t animals. But they sure are weird looking.
Posted in 3DS, DS, News, PC, PS3, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360
Tagged Angry Birds Trilogy, DuckTales Remastered, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Payday 2
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition sells 8 million copies as MS details Title Update 12
First things first, Microsoft has announced (via their PlayXBLA blog) that Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has sold over eight million copies. If you recall, the game crossed the seven million barrier just a month ago.
The publisher also released a list of changes, additions, and fixes coming to Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition in the next Title Update. Title Update 12 doesn’t currently have a release date, but it will add a trio of new mobs (Ocelot/Cat, Iron Golem, Baby Villager) and several new items to the game. A new “Tutorial World” will also be added to the game in the next Title Update.
The full list of changes, additions, and fixes can be found after the break. (more…)
Deep Silver Creative Director doesn’t expect Dead Island series to stop
Guido Eickmeyer, the Creative Director at Deep Silver, answered questions from fans during a Reddit AMA session earlier today and, naturally, the topic of Dead Island came up. The future of Deep Silver’s most popular franchise was touched on a few times during the Q&A and Eickmeyer wasn’t exactly coy about talking about Dead Island 3. While Eickmeyer would never admit that Dead Island 3 is currently in development, he did say (multiple times) that the series would continue…
jaedekdee: Will there be a Dead Island Part 3?
Eickmeyer: [I] would not expect the series to stop at this point :)
Eickmeyer: [H]awaii would be awesome, right? :D [F]or now, i can only ask you to wait a bit further, then some really nice things will be revealed about the future of [D]ead [I]sland :)
So there you have it. The Dead Island series will definitely continue, but Eickmeyer specifically avoided questions related to bringing the franchise to the PS4 or Xbox One. So we might be in for a long wait.
Another new game in the series, Dead Island: Epidemic, a free-to-play MOBA for the PC, was announced yesterday.
Posted in News
Nintendo Download: Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, DuckTales Remastered, more
Welcome to another Nintendo Download! This week, 3DS owners will be able to download the latest Mario RPG, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, on Sunday, August 11. Two days later, on August 13, Wii U owners will be able to relieve the hurricane of fun that is DuckTales Remastered.
But what if you want to download something new today?
3DS owners will have a choice of three games: the steampunk-styled platforming of SteamWorld Dig, the 3D bowling of Smash Bowling 3D, and the tangram puzzles of Tangram Style. Wii U owners only get two new games today: the Virtual Console-bound Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire and the Wii U GamePad party game Spin the Bottle: Bumpie’s Party.
You can find more information about all of this week’s new releases after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, News, Wii U
Tagged DuckTales Remastered, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, SteamWorld Dig
CoD: Black Ops II “Apocalypse” DLC coming to XBLM on August 27
A day after Treyarch released a new Call of Duty: Black Ops II teaser with a giant mecha, Activision has announced “Apocalypse,” the game’s final downloadable map pack. The Apocalypse Pack will be available for the Xbox 360 on August 27. A PC and PS3 release will presumably follow a month after that.
Like the game’s previous DLC, the Apocalypse Pack will include four new multiplayer maps:
- Pod: A failed utopian community from the 70’s has left stacks of dilapidated residential pods nestled into an abandoned cliff side in Taiwan. Its residents long gone, the modernist compound now hosts frenetic combat as players must run atop the pods, as well as navigate their multi-tiered interiors for a strategic edge.
- Frost: Fresh snow meets explosive gunpowder in this snow-capped European city, where the bridge over a frozen canal separates it into two sides, requiring players to employ multi-level traversal strategies to outsmart and ultimately outshoot their enemies.
- Takeoff: Fans of Stadium from the original Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike DLC will find themselves at home on Takeoff. Marooned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this remote launch site is all about close-quarters combat, combining tight corners with open spaces for intense encounters.
- Dig: An adaptation of the fan-favorite Courtyard from Call of Duty: World at War, where two archeological dig sites in Afghanistan become the perfect playground for combatants eager for hectic, unceasing confrontations. Treyarch, has retained the spirit of Courtyard with two major chokepoints, a wide open layout and raised platforms, but has provided fans with a fresh take on the multitude of paths.
Oh, and about yesterday’s teaser. The Apocalypse Pack will also include a new Zombies Mode scenario known as “Origins.” In “Origins,” players will be able to play as the four original Zombies characters during a “Dieselpunk-themed First World War.” The scenario will also come complete with a new Avenged Sevenfold song (“Shepherd of Fire”) and original art by Alex Ross.