Author: Nicole Kline

Nicole Kline is Warp Zoned's Senior Editor. She first began preparing for the job by climbing a milk crate to play Centipede in an arcade. You can find her on PSN under the name toitle or you can email her at nicole AT warpzoned DOT com.

Daily Scoop: March 22, 2011 – Amazon Gold Box Event!

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Nicole Kline

Another day, another all-day Gold Box Event in video games! Hooray!! I love it when Amazon does that. The big one today is Dragon Age II for $39.99 on all platforms. The others are:

  • De Blob 2 ($13.99-$29.99) (6 AM PDT)
  • Need for Speed Hot Pursuit ($39.95) (8 AM PDT)
  • Bulletstorm ($39.99) (11 AM PDT)
  • Ear Force X31 Digital RF Wireless Game Audio + Xbox Live Chat ($69.99) (2 PM PDT)
  • Dead Space 2 ($39.99) (4 PM PDT)
  • You Don’t Know Jack ($15.98-$21.99) (7 PM PDT)

We’ll be updating this periodically throughout the day, so stay tuned!

Also worth a mention is today’s Ript shirt:

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOADSTOOL!

Posted in Daily Scoop |

PixelJunk Shooter 2 Review: Delve Deeper with this Sequel

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Nicole Kline

PixelJunk Shooter 2 is the latest downloadable PlayStation Network game from Q-Games. This multidirectional shooter is a sequel to the first game, which was one of my favorites of 2009. Shooter 2 was promising, touting new game mechanics and a continuation of the simple storyline they’d started in the first game. But could it live up to the long wait, and fill the shoes as the first official PixelJunk sequel? (more…)

Posted in PS3, Reviews, Top Story | Tagged

Quantic Dream is up to something

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Nicole Kline

According to the amazing information sleuth superannuation, Quantic Dream is up to something. The creators of Heavy Rain have registered seven new domain names, all with the words Play Series and Five (written as Fiv5): playseries.fr, playseries.net, playseries.de, fiv5.net, fiv5.co.uk, fiv5.de, and fiv5.fr.

Fiv5 has been trademarked in Europe by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe as well. To top it all off, Benoit Godde, recently hired by Quantic Dream, has both Five and Infraworld listed on his resume on LinkedIn (Infraworld was a title the company was working on back in 2006 that was canceled due to disinterest by publishers).

While I’m excited to hear Quantic Dream is working on another game – I love Heavy Rain – it saddens me to find out this way. I do respect (and fear) superannuation’s amazing sleuthing skills, but at the same time, I really prefer to hear about games when they’re more fleshed out – and when the company is ready to tell us about them. Nothing gets me more excited for a game than a sexy trailer or some steamy screenshots, and while I do love information, it’s almost anti-climactic to read about it on LinkedIn. Talk about a boring way to find out about a game. Either way, hopefully David Cage releases some more information now that this has surfaced.

Posted in News | Tagged

Prey 2 purported to be a mash-up of lots of popular games

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Nicole Kline

On the heels of the live action Prey 2 trailer, UK magazine Game Reactor has even more details for us. According to MTV’s Multiplayer Blog, the game will feature parkour like Mirror’s Edge, environmental scope akin to Assassin’s Creed 2, combat similar to Killzone, a loot system kindred to Borderlands, and thankfully that’s all they said in the article, because I’m out of synonyms for “like” at this point. Oh, and a Human Head Studios producer said, “If the first ‘Prey‘ was the Luke Skywalker version of the story, ‘Prey 2‘ is Boba Fett’s story.”

So we’ve got parkour in a giant environment with bad-ass combat and loot systems, and we’re also going to be switching gears from the equivalent of the whiny farmer to the bounty hunter? It sounds too good to be true, until you consider they’re canning any multiplayer in favor of focusing everything on a “more robust single-player campaign.” The idea there is they don’t want to compete with all the other great multiplayer games out there – but can they compete with the single-player campaigns? With this intense amount of video game culture all tossed together like the Prince rolling up a giant Katamari ball, it’s either going to be a beautiful star in the sky or a complete disaster.

Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360 | Tagged

Daily Scoop: March 21, 2011 – On the eve of Crysis 2

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Nicole Kline

It’s March 21, which means tomorrow is the long-awaited release of Crysis 2. I am going to rush home after work tomorrow, tear it open, and toss it right into my PlayStation 3. If anyone needs me, you can find me on the PSN.

For today’s Amazon Deal of the Day in video games, they’ve got Namco’s Body and Brain Connection for the Xbox 360. It’s on sale today for $39.99 from $49.99. I guess calling it a Kinection instead of a Connection would kind of defeat the purpose of trying to make you smarter, right? Still, they missed out on a great marketing ploy there. There’s also $10 off the Xbox 360 Wireless Controller with Transforming D-pad at Best Buy this week – $54.99 down from $64.99 – as well as $15 off the 12 month Xbox Live Gold Card Membership at both Best Buy and Amazon.

Nothing directly related to video games in t-shirts today, unless you count the Famous Androids from Ript Apparel:

I can’t be certain, but I think I spy a Mega Man in there.

Posted in Daily Scoop |

Daily Scoop: March 18, 2011 – Let the gaming countdown begin

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Nicole Kline

It’s Friday! And I’m already prepared to be spending the entire night gaming. Is it weird that, since PAX East – three straight days of doing nothing but gaming and writing – all I’ve wanted to do is play games and write? Weird or not, I’m looking forward to doing nothing but that all weekend. Oh yeah, and eating some birthday cake. Bring it on!

No Amazon deal of the day today Amazon listed their Video Game Deal of the Day late today, and it’s a big one: lots and lots of Disney games. This includes (but is not limited to!) the Disney Epic Mickey Collector’s Edition for $48.96 down from $69.99 as well as the TRON: Evolution Collector’s Edition for $79.99 down from $129.99 for both PS3 and Xbox 360. They are also running some other pretty sweet sales, like this Xbox 360 Gearfest, which has some discounts on controllers and chargers. Oh, and if you pre-order Portal 2 at Amazon, you get $5 off the retail price. What are you waiting for? There’s science to do.

Not much in the realm of t-shirts today, unless you count Qwertee’s “Boo Busters” shirt:

I know I’ve seen this design before, but I forget which site had it. Being a rip-off doesn’t make it unworthy of purchase, but in the delicate business of independent t-shirt design, it is…uncool.

Posted in Daily Scoop |

Daily Scoop: March 17, 2011 – It’s St. Patrick’s Day!

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Nicole Kline

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! To celebrate, I’m wearing one of my favorite green shirts, and I’ll be having Italian tonight for dinner. This will be followed by another marathon of PixelJunk Shooter 2. I know how to celebrate in style!

Today’s Amazon Deal of the Day in video games is Square Enix’s Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for the PSP. It’s $12.00 off, making it $27.99 from $39.99. Considering this game just came out and is reported to be amazing, I would hop all over this deal as quickly as you can. Mike Gutierrez will have his review up as soon as he surfaces from the game. Between that and PAX East, I’m not sure if he’s slept in days!

Nothing else interesting to report here. I will continue to count the minutes until I can get back into my ship and fight my way back to the planet’s surface…sigh.

Posted in Daily Scoop |

Daily Scoop: March 16, 2011 – BOGO, baby

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Nicole Kline

Ah, humpday. So far from each weekend, yet with so much promise and potential. If we can just get over you, we’ll be at Thursday, which is one day closer to the weekend, and then it’s Friday, and nothing can hold us back!

Speaking of nothing holding us back, Amazon’s having their Buy One, Get One 50% off sale again. There’s not much, but some of what’s there is actually pretty good, so it’s worth at least a glance. Also, you can take a trip to Hogwart’s with today’s Amazon Deal of the Day in video games is Warner Bros’ LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4. They’ve got it for sale on three platforms – it’s $24.99 down from $49.99 on the Wii, $29.99 down from $39.99 on the Xbox, and $19.99 down from $29.99 on the DS.

Not much in t-shirt land today, but seeing the Portal 2 demo this weekend has me chomping at the bit for this awesome hoody at ThinkGeek:

It says [TEST CANDIDATE] on the back. Do want.

Posted in Daily Scoop |