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
Grand Theft Auto V is getting a first-person mode on PC, PS4, Xbox One
Rockstar hasn’t been shy in letting the world know that the PC, PS4, and Xbox One upgrade to Grand Theft Auto V will be no mere port. From “across-the-board graphical and technical improvements” to the wide range of bonus content for players who already own the PS3 or Xbox 360 edition, the latest version of GTA5 will be jam-packed with never-before-seen stuff. But Rockstar wasn’t finished as they recently told IGN that the game will also include a first-person mode:
Police cars are stacking up in the cul-de-sac below and a helicopter is hovering somewhere overhead. I can’t really see where it is, but I feel its presence, and the cops open fire. So I make a run for it, vaulting over a fence into a parking lot, where I jack a car, climb in, and as I look down to hot-wire it, I see there’s a bullet hole in my in my forearm and blood is running out.
I’ve never had a GTA experience like this before, and that’s because it’s all playing out in the first-person.
We’ve said before that Rockstar rebuilt Grand Theft Auto V for the new-generation consoles, but they really mean it now. Each animation in the game had to be redone to work in first-person mode. That kind of attention to detail is Rockstar’s trademark and they weren’t going to ignore it now. Of course, if you’d rather play in third-person mode, players can switch between the two views at any time.
Grand Theft Auto V will be released on November 18 for the PS4 and Xbox One, with the PC version following on January 27, 2015.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Grand Theft Auto V
Insert Quarter: Is Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel’s Season Pass a Good Value or a Rip-Off?
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Gearbox supported 2012’s Borderlands 2 with a bevy of downloadable content including four campaign expansions (which were included as part of the game’s Season Pass), five Headhunter Packs, two level cap upgrades, and two additional playable characters. It was the most ambitious post-release DLC schedule for a game ever.
Perhaps it’s due to the developer switch or maybe it’s because the latest Borderlands game is still living on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in a new-generation world, but Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel‘s DLC schedule isn’t nearly as expansive. 2K Games is once again selling a Season Pass for The Pre-Sequel, but Destructoid’s Darren Nakamura is concerned that 2K is being intentionally vague in their promotion of the Pass to hide its less-than-stellar value:
So even though no promises are technically being broken, and 2K plans to deliver four digital additions to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel for the price of three through the season pass, I cannot blame any who bought it for feeling cheated. The content fits the requirements laid out, but the value is not there. Even if the plans were to change from here onward and the season pass ends up including one new Vault Hunter and three story DLCs, the value of the pass over purchasing content piecemeal hinges on the quality of all three packs, and the series does not have a perfect track record on that front.
You can read the rest of the article at Destructoid.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Last Year is another multiplayer slasher simulator where you can play as the killer
Is there something in the water? Besides the rotting corpse of Jason Voorhees, that is.
Just a few days after Gun Media announced Summer Camp, James Matthew Wearing has announced Last Year, his own asymmetric multiplayer game set within the confines of a slasher film. Wearing has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of Last Year’s PC release, which he wants to launch in Fall 2016. He is currently developing Last Year by himself and hopes to use a successful Kickstarter campaign as a means of attracting a team willing to help him complete the game.
Like Summer Camp, players in Last Year will take control of five teenagers being hunted by a masked Killer. The teens have been sorted into familiar multiplayer classes such as Nick the Nerd (Technician) or Chad the Jock (Assault). They will have to work together with the other teens (Amber the Scout, Sam the Medic, and Troy and Support) to survive the night against the Killer in 5v1 contests at Silver Lake Camp or East Side High.
However, in Last Year the Killer will have a special ability known as Predator Mode. Evoking the teleportation abilities seemingly held by Jason or Michael Myers, the Killer will be able to become invisible while in Predator Mode and pop up in just the right spot for the perfect jump scare. Boo!
A little more than 44 days remain on the Last Year Kickstarter campaign and Wearing is seeking $50,000 CAD (about $43,000 US) to make his game a reality.
Daily Scoop: November 3, 2014 – Crazy Monday
It’s Monday again, and this time, it means business. This day started out with my ceiling leaking in my bedroom and hasn’t gotten much better since. But it is a gorgeous day outside, so I can’t complain too much! I’m done with all that wind from the weekend.
There’s not a lot going on today deal-wise. Steam has 66 games on sale in their Weeklong Deals. You can get VVVVVV for $2.49, Lead and Gold for $3.39, and Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising for $0.99, among many others. And their Daily Deal is Hatoful Boyfriend, which is just $4.99 today! Scoop ’em up!
Let’s check out today’s t-shirts!
Posted in Daily Scoop, Etcetera, News
Warpback: What We Played in October 2014
We here at Warp Zoned were busy in the month of October! A couple of us (John Scalzo and Andrew Rainnie!) had birthdays, and celebrated by – how else? – playing video games. We played a little bit of everything this month, from old Pokemon games to new Alien games and all that falls in between. Hit the jump to check out what we were playing all month! (more…)
Retro City Rampage: DX will be available on nearly every platform imaginable next week
Vblank Entertainment has announced that Retro City Rampage: DX, the expanded version of 2012’s Retro City Rampage, will be available on nearly every video game platform beginning next week.
Retro City Rampage: DX will be available on November 11 for the PS4, PS3, and Vita as a Cross-Buy title. The game will be a separate download from the original PS3/Vita version and will priced at $9.99 ($7.99 for PlayStation Plus subscribers).
If you’ve already purchased Retro City Rampage on the other previously available platforms, the DX version will be available as a free update. The game will be available through the WiiWare Shop for Nintendo’s Wii console on Thursday, November 13. The PC/Mac version will launch sometime next week, though the date is still to be determined. Finally, Retro City Rampage: DX is expected to be available for Xbox 360 next week through the Xbox Live Arcade, barring any last minute certification problems.
The DX version of Retro City Rampage was originally released for the 3DS earlier this year. This new version of the game fine-tuned everything about the Retro City Rampage experience including rebalanced missions, more checkpoints, tweaked controls, a complete graphical overhaul, and many more updates. A full rundown of the changes made to the DX version of the game can be found at Vblank’s official website.
If this wasn’t enough Retro City Rampage news for one day, stay tuned, because Vblank has promised “pretty big” RCR news will be announced later this month.
Microsoft: Fall 2015 is “so crazy” that we might delay some games
Like every other publisher in the game world, Microsoft doesn’t only have to promote new releases. They also always have to be thinking about what comes next. And as Phil Spencer, the Head of the Xbox Division, recently told Major Nelson, that might involve delaying one or more Xbox One games from 2015 to 2016:
“Looking at production schedules and how things are lining up, next Fall is just crazy. I mean, this Fall from a first party/third party standpoint is great. Next Fall, I don’t… Honestly it’s not hype at all, I honestly don’t know that we can actually ship all the stuff that thinks it’s trying to ship next Fall. It just might be too crowded and we might purposely try to move some things out to spread it. You have to [give them some breathing room], you have to do that.”
We learned quite a bit about Microsoft’s 2015 release schedule during this year’s E3 Expo. Halo 5: Guardians and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both currently penciled in for a “Fall 2015” release while Remedy’s Quantum Break will launch sometime next year. And then there’s Crackdown 3, Platinum’s Scalebound, and Phantom Dust 2, all of which are in development and may launch in 2015. Black Tusk’s Gears of War 4 is also in development and it’s mysterious nature likely already points to a 2016 release.
So which ones will get the boot? Possibly none of them as Spencer also told Major Nelson that he is a strong believer in a year-round release calendar:
“I think as publishers and first parties have success at multiple points of the year it’s just a good thing for us, because having three/four great games ship all in the same week at the end of October, while maybe on some forecast somewhere it feels like that’s the right thing to do, just as an industry I think it’s much more healthy if we have more beats throughout the year where people can ship great games.”
As of right now, Screamride is the only 2015 game with a known release date. It’ll be available for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 in the Spring.
Atari: Game Over documentary will premiere on November 20
Director Zak Penn has confirmed (via Twitter) that the Atari: Game Over documentary will make its Xbox Live debut on November 20:
Atari: Game Over premiering Nov 20 on XBOX #ataridoc
— Zak Penn (@zakpenn) October 31, 2014
Atari: Game Over will tell the story of the game company’s downfall, with a particular focus on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, which was the subject of a massive dig in an Alamogordo landfill back in April. During the dig, Penn and his team discovered a treasure trove of Atari 2600 titles under the dirt, confirming a long-held belief that the company trashed thousands (perhaps millions) of copies of unsold games.
With the recent closure of Xbox Entertainment Studios, the film has the distinction of being one of the first (and one of the last) film productions created by Microsoft.