Most Recent: Articles

The Walking Dead Season 2: A House Divided Review: Strength In Numbers

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Mike Ryan

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Telltale’s Walking Dead games can be tough to review. The series is so heavily focused on story that it becomes increasingly difficult to write a review without giving away some of the finer plot details. In the Walking Dead universe, characters you’ve grown attached to are taken away in the blink of an eye, and if you know what will happen beforehand, the emotional impact is greatly lessened. In that regard, I’ve opted to provide a separate, spoiler-free review of The Walking Dead Season 2: A House Divided. That way, those of you who haven’t played the game can read on, knowing that nothing will be ruined. I promise to avoid any specific information or plot points throughout the rest of the review, so you can still feel confident in reading the entire review without learning too much.

Spoiler-Free Review: The game is amazing – go buy it right now!

OK, now that we have that out of the way, on with the review. (more…)

Posted in Mobile, PC, PS3, Reviews, Top Story, Vita, Xbox 360 | Tagged

Double Fine treats us to a Costume Quest 2 announcement

Posted on March 10, 2014 by John Scalzo

Double Fine has begun development on their first sequel as the Tim Schafer-led studio announced today that Costume Quest 2 will be available for the PC and consoles this October. The developer has partnered with Midnight City, Majesco’s indie publishing label, to bring gamers back to the world of one of their first hits:

In Double Fine’s triumphant return to Auburn Pines, our candy-crazed crusaders Wren and Reynold must once again protect Halloween from untold horrors, and grown-ups! Your favorite trick-or-treaters will come armed with a new batch of costumes they wear to transform into giant super powered fantasy Hallowarriors. Yeah, we totally just made that up. Fans of the original can look forward to a sweet upgraded battle system and a story that is unmistakably Double Fine.

Tim Schafer is absolutely thrilled about the return of Costume Quest: “Whenever Halloween came around, I felt like something was missing. No matter how many pumpkins I carved, apples I bobbed, or candy I ate, it just couldn’t fill the big spooky hole inside of me. But then I realized what was missing: I needed more Costume Quest. And also, I really wanted a T-Shirt with glowing skulls on it.”

While it doesn’t include any glowing skulls, I recommend checking out Costume Quest 2’s wacky “Announcement Trailer” above.

Posted in News, PC | Tagged

Daily Scoop: March 10, 2014 – On the eve of many games

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Nicole Kline

I know I’ve already talked about this a lot, but tomorrow is going to be off the hook. Dark Souls II, TitanFall, and TowerFall: Ascension are all coming out. The gaming world is going to explode, and I am really excited.

Whew. Anyway. Not that you need to spend your money on anything else with all of that happening, but in case you aren’t getting any of those games, I’ve still got some deals for you! Amazon has a few new digital deals this week, including Forced for $7.49, the Hell Yeah! Collection for $9.74, and Renegade Ops for $3.74. Scoop ’em up!

There’s not much other than that… the Daily Deal at Steam is Grim Dawn for $20.09, and the Humble Store has Vertiginous Golf for $14.99 and Post Master is $11.21, among others.

And now, time for t-shirts!

(more…)

Posted in Daily Scoop, Etcetera, News |

Gone Home is coming to consoles this year

Posted on March 10, 2014 by John Scalzo

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The Fullbright Company has announced (via their blog) that they plan to bring Gone Home to consoles this year. The console edition of Gone Home will be published by Majesco’s indie imprint, Midnight City.

Gone Home is an adventure game told from the first-person perspective of Kaitlin Greenbriar, who has returned to her Oregon home and found it deserted. As Kaitlin explores the empty house, players attempt to piece together what happened to the rest of the Greenbriar family.

Gone Home was one of 2013’s most critically celebrated titles, garnering multiple nominations from the the DICE Awards, GDC Awards, and the BAFTAs. Fullbright was not ready to announce a release date or possible platforms for the console port, but they’ve confirmed that more information will be available soon.

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Marvel is creating a connected universe of games too

Posted on March 10, 2014 by John Scalzo

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Ladies and gentlemen, time to light your cigars, the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” is about to get a baby brother. Speaking at this weekend’s SXSW Festival, Marvel’s Vice President of Games, TQ Jefferson, revealed that the company is working on linking all of their video game projects through a similar shared universe:

“You might have noticed that certain similarities and threads touch from one game to the next. Much like you see in publishing and film, we’re trying to build a gaming universe connected by common elements and narrative into a larger gaming initiative.”

Obviously, this new gaming initiative is still in the early going as the publishing rights to several recent games based on Marvel properties, including Deadpool, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Lego Marvel Super Heroes, were licensed to outside companies. However, Marvel has shown great interest in expanding and updating Marvel: Avengers Alliance, a free-to-play title for mobile devices that tied in with the Avengers film. Perhaps that will be the seed from which their connected gaming universe will grow.

The future of Marvel’s game development ambitions may lie with their parent company, the Walt Disney Company. But Disney, and their Disney Interactive division, hasn’t had much success in developing games in-house. Disney Infinity sold like gangbusters, but the company passed on developing new Star Wars games and doesn’t appear to have any new titles in the works aside from Disney Infinity 2.

[Source: Variety]

Posted in News |

Weekly Warp-Up: Time Is On My Side Edition

Posted on March 9, 2014 by John Scalzo

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…

The clock is ticking ever so slowly away from Winter, but things sped up last night as we’ve sprung forward thanks to Daylights Savings Time. Even though time has skipped a beat, or an hour, you can still skip backwards and check out What We Played in February. When we weren’t playing, we managed to put together our very first Monthly Recap video as well. Hopefully, this is the first of a lot more video content to come from the Warp Zoned stuff. Oh, and for all you forward-thinkers out there, we also put together a look at The Games of March.

Speaking of lost time, Dan Hobbs recently reviewed Eidos Montreal’s Thief reboot and he wants the developers to return all the time they took from him. Finally, I dug into a few beloved puzzle games (including Threes, Dr. Mario, and Tetris) and asked why they’re so beloved. The secret is A Playing Card With Fangs or “How Puzzle Games Use Characters to Get in Our Heads.”

More news from the week that was can be found after the break. (more…)

Posted in News |

New Releases: TitanFall, Dark Souls II, Yoshi’s New Island, More

Posted on March 9, 2014 by John Scalzo

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It’s finally here. After a boatload of E3 awards and a hugely successful beta, Respawn’s TitanFall is ready to bring man versus mech multiplayer to the PC and Xbox One this week. And if you haven’t picked up an Xbox One console yet, don’t forget that the Xbox One + TitanFall Bundle will also be available on Tuesday.

If you haven’t upgraded to a next-generation system yet, you’ll probably be pleased to know that From Software will bring Dark Souls II to the PS3 and Xbox 360 next week. If you’re waiting on the PC version, it’ll be available at the end of April.

Finally, Nintendo will make the 3DS a Yoshi-er place this week with the release of Yoshi’s New Island and Tecmo Koei will continue the popular Atelier with the release of Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky on the PS3.

A full list of this week’s new releases can be found after the break. (more…)

Posted in 3DS, News, PS3, PS4, Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Tagged , ,

Tales From the Borderlands will tell a two-sided Rashomon-style tale

Posted on March 8, 2014 by John Scalzo

TalesFromTheBorderlands_Panel_SXSWMarge: You liked Rashomon.
Homer: That’s not how I remember it.

Developers from Telltale Games and Gearbox Software took the stage at the SXSW Festival today to talk about their upcoming collaboration, Tales From the Borderlands. During the talk, the developers revealed that the game will feature a two-sided narrative that will be told in flashback by the two main characters. Fiona, the Carmen Sandiego-like woman in red, is a con artist and Rhys, the cybernetically-enhanced dude with her, will be broody and cybernetically enhanced. Together, they’ll weave a story about their time on Pandora that won’t quite match up with the other’s retelling or with reality. The storytelling conceit, which was borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, has been used many times over the years including the Simpsons quote above and my favorite episode of The X-Files ever (season four’s “Bad Blood”).

Tales From the Borderlands is said to be funnier than Telltale’s more recent output (it definitely won’t be like the typically dour The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us) and will feature the franchise’s signature brand of humor. There will also be some shooting sections to the game, but according to Telltale’s Harrison Pink, they’ll be controlled “in a Telltale kind of way.”

Even with all this new information, the developers did not reeval any gameplay video and we still don’t know when Tales From the Borderlands will be released or what platforms it’ll appear on.

[Source: Polygon]

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