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)
Most Recent: Articles
WB Games reveals contents of Batman: Arkham Knight’s Season Pass including Batgirl mission
Earlier this week, WB Games announced a Season Pass for Batman: Arkham Knight, but failed to reveal what sorts of content the DLC subscription would contain. This weekend, the publisher decided to rectify that mistake by sharing more details of the Season Pass with the public (via their Official Forum).
The biggest piece of content in the Season Pass is definitely “Batgirl: A Matter of Family,” a story expansion that will allow players to play as Batgirl for the first time. The prequel story will serve as the first of three story expansions, along with the previously mentioned Batmobile Skins, Character Skins, and Challenge Maps. Here’s what else you’ll find in the Batman: Arkham Knight Season Pass:
Batgirl: A Matter of Family – An all new prequel story expansion in an entirely new location where you play as Batgirl for the very first time in the Arkham series – check out the first render of Batgirl.
The Season of Infamy – Play as Batman in all new story missions featuring legendary supervillains invading Gotham City, with new story arcs, missions and gameplay features.
Gotham City Stories – Play as Batman’s key allies in narrative missions extending their storylines, from both before and after the events in Batman: Arkham Knight.
Legendary Batmobiles With Themed Tracks – Drive the most iconic Batmobiles from Batman’s 75-year history, on custom-built race tracks, each themed to that Batmobile’s specific era. Every Batmobile will be drivable across every race track.
Crimefighter Challenge Maps – Engage in a series of new challenge maps utilizing the unique play styles of Batman and his allies.
Character Skins – A variety of skins from across the eras for Batman, Robin, Nightwing, and Catwoman.
Batman: Arkham Knight will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on June 23. The Season Pass, which has been priced at $39.99, is available to pre-order now.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Batman: Arkham Knight
Weekly Warp-Up: The Silent Hills/Yooka-Laylee Continuum
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…
Two highly-anticipated games were in the news this week, but for very diametrically opposed reasons.
Very early in the week, Guillermo Del Toro and Norman Reedus told the public they are no longer involved in the development of Silent Hills. A day later, Konami confirmed that the axe had been dropped on the in-development, but vowed to begin development on a new entry in the Silent Hill series. The horrific end to this story is almost scarier than anything Konami has cooked up for the franchise in years.
But on the other side of this continuum is the good fortune bestowed upon Playtonic’s Yooka-Laylee. The developer teased the title and some early footage of their Banjo-Kazooie successor on Thursday. On Friday, they launched a Kickstarter campaign to a tremendously receptive audience. A little more than 40 minutes after that, the campaign reached its goal. Eager backers helped the campaign reach every stretch goal a day after that. It’s an incredible success story and really makes you feel good about the gaming community.
Right in the middle of the Silent Hills/Yooka-Laylee Continuum is the “World Reveal” trailer for Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops III. A new Call of Duty game is such an expected part of the video game landscape that few people had a big reaction to the footage… even though the final game will feature a battle with Terminator-style cyborgs.
Elsewhere on Warp Zoned this Week, I took a spin around the office and found out What We Played in April. And in between an Avengers: Age of Ultron break, the staff also put together a look at The Games of May. A review of the noirish horror game review of White Night and a new edition of Kickstart This! (featuring The Silent Roads, Dimension Drive, and Wildfire) round out the week.
Hit the break for more news from the week that was. (more…)
Posted in News
New Releases: SMT Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, Project CARS for PC, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, More
This May is going to be rather underwhelming when it comes to the quantity of new video games. But there doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of quality sprinkled in from week-to-week.
For example, Atlus will bring Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker to the 3DS this week. Originally released for the DS in 2012, Record Breaker will add a brand new scenario, the “Triangulum Arc,” to the RPG, as well as new difficulty options and improved controls.
Also available this week is the PC edition of Project CARS, Slightly Mad’s ambitious auto racing simulation. In addition to Oculus Rift and 12K UltraHD monitor support, Project CARS will offer dozens of vehicles and over 100 courses. Project CARS will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One next week.
Getting about as far away from the world of simulators as we can is Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. The downloadable prequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One as a standalone game. You can grab this World War II shooter on Tuesday, just a few days ahead of V-E Day.
Finally this week, WB Games and Monolith Productions will release Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor – Game of the Year Edition for the PS4 and Xbox One. This ultimate edition of one of 2014’s best games will include all of the previously downloadable content including both major expansions.
As always, more new releases will be available this week exclusively through the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, Nintendo eShop, and Steam. We’ll keep you updated on those titles as the week goes on.
Yooka-Laylee jumps past $1.5 million in pledges (and every stretch goal) after one day
Playtonic’s Kickstarter campaign for Yooka-Laylee has smashed through all of its initial stretch goals after a single day. The platformer has received pledges totaling more than £1,000,000 (about $1.5 million) and there’s still 45 days to go.
Yooka-Laylee’s success means that the game will expand considerably beyond Playtonic’s original pitch. By hitting stretch goal after stretch goal, fans have ensured the game will include boss battles after each level, a Quiz Show level, a transformation powerup, a local co-op mode for two players, a local versus mode for four players, and a simultaneous October 2016 release on the PC, PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One.
The developer has added more stretch goals to the campaign including an “N64 Shader” mode and a Playtonic-hosted Let’s Play of the game. Additional stretch goals will surely be added over the next few weeks as fans continue to fill Playtonic’s coffers.
Yooka the Chameleon and Laylee the Bat seem to have struck a chord with gamers across the world. In an update posted this morning, Playtonic offered their “sincere thanks” to everyone who believed in the project enough to back it.
The Games of May 2015
May 2015 isn’t exactly teeming with new releases, but the Warp Zoned staff is all turning towards an unlikely source for this month’s most-anticipated new game… their Wii U consoles. That’s because Nintendo will launch Splatoon, their ridiculously flashy team-based shooter, before the calendar turns over to June. But don’t worry, if you’re not interested in Nintendo’s inky experiment, there are a few other games to tide us over until the Summer. (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in April 2015
The Warp Zoned crew played a ton of games this past month! We dove into games from our backlogs, but also had plenty of fun with lots of new releases. One thing is certain: we weren’t bored! Read on to find out what we played in April. (more…)
Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter campaign is fully-funded after 40 minutes
Well that was unexpected.
Proving that the public’s hunger for a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie is currently going unfulfilled, the Kickstarter campaign for Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee has already reached its funding goal… less than 40 minutes after it began. The development team, which is comprised of several former Rare employees, was seeking £175,000 ($270,041) to produce the game. Instead, they’ve blown past that mark and are well on their way to the first stretch goals. As of this writing, the game’s backers have already pledged £250,578 ($386,665).
With their goal reached, Playtonic Games has vowed to release Yooka-Laylee for the PC by October 2016. Console versions (including the PS4, Xbox One, and Wii U) will be released sometime later, but if the campaign reaches £1,000,000 ($1,511,565), Playtonic will release the game on all four platforms simultaneously.
More details about the game’s world, characters, music, and platforming mechanics can be found at the Kickstarter page. But odds are you’ve already looked at it and already emptied your wallet in Playtonic’s general direction.
Galaga: Tekken 20th Anniversary Edition is now available on mobile devices
Galaga: Tekken 20th Anniversary Edition is now available to download from the iOS App Store and Android’s Google Play store. As you might expect from the title, the free-to-play game takes Tekken characters and drops them into the space-based shooting of the Galaga franchise.
This Tekken twist on Galaga includes the ability to “Tag” in other Tekken characters to perform a double-powered attack and assist attacks that call on classic characters from Namco’s archives (including Pac-Man, Splatterhouse, Rally-X, Mappy, and others).
“Tekken is one of our longest running franchises and has enjoyed a strong fan following for two decades,” said Katsuhiro Harada, the Game Director and Chief Producer of the Tekken series. “With Galaga: Tekken 20TH Anniversary Edition, we wanted to give our fans something unexpected to celebrate such a huge milestone for Tekken. The crossover gameplay is sure to surprise and delight both Tekken and Galaga fans.”
Bandai Namco actually teased Galaga: Tekken 20th Anniversary Edition last month, but many brushed off the announcement trailer as an April Fool’s prank.