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
- With Grand Theft Auto 6 poised to take over the world, I reached out to Jack Thompson and it did not go well – PC Gamer (2026)
- Vib-Ribbon: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game – The New York Times (2026)
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- Diablo IV PC Cooled With Real Human Blood Is Still Going Strong Two Years Later, Says Guy Who Won It – Aftermath (2026)
Most Recent: PC
Xbox Store Today: Gears of War 4 Ultimate Edition, Mafia III, Rogue Stormers, more
Happy Friday everyone! Four new games were added to the Xbox Games Store today, and the quartet includes one particular title that Xbox fans have been waiting for for a long time.
Gears of War 4: Ultimate Edition is the first new game in the Gears of War franchise completely under Microsoft’s control and it is now available to download for the Xbox One. Taking place a generation after the war with the Locust, players will follow JD Fenix and his friends as the battle “a monstrous new enemy.” In addition to Gears of War 4, the Ultimate Edition will include the game’s Season Pass and other downloadable content. And everyone who downloads the game through the Xbox Games Store will also receive access to the game on Windows 10 PCs.
Monsters also exist in the world of Mafia III, and while they don’t have fangs or tentacles, they’re no less dangerous. Developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K Games, Mafia III is an Xbox One that stars Lincoln Clay, an orphan and Vietnam veteran who battles the organized crime families of New Bordeaux (a stand-in for New Orleans) in the late 60s.
Clay and his crew often employ a heavy arsenal of guns, just as the stars of Rogue Stormers do. Available to download now for the Xbox One, Rogue Stormers is a steampunk-styled side-scrolling shooter with roguelike elements from Black Forest Games, as players try to vanquish “the ultimate evil threatening Ravensdale.”
Finally this week, One Hundred Ways is puzzling game for the Xbox One where players have to guide a ball to its goal.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Gears of War 4, Mafia III, Rogue Stormers
Turn-based strategy Dungeon of Zaar is now on Kickstarter for the PC and Nintendo NX
The Nintendo NX is coming to Kickstarter! Don’t get too excited, the consolemaker isn’t funding the creation of their mystery console on the crowdfunding site. But a young development team has given prospective backers the option to select an NX copy of their upcoming project, Dungeon of Zaar.
Dungeon of Zaar is a turn-based strategy game in development at Kurb, a development studio located in France. Looking to Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars, and Pokemon for inspiration, Dungeon of Zaar will feature 5v5 battles that focus on lightning fast decision-making to win the day. Multiple multiplayer options are also set to make the game stand out from the traditional solo-only genre.
Kurb is seeking €25,000 ($27,828) to help fund Dungeon of Zaar’s creation through Kickstarter, and they hope to release the game on the PC in Summer 2017. The Nintendo NX launch for Dungeon of Zaar is planned for a few months after that. Their pitch video, which explains quite a bit more about their dreams for the game, is embedded above.
Oculus Touch motion controller will be available on December 6 for $199
Oculus has announced that the Oculus Touch motion controller will be available on December 6. Pre-orders for the Oculus Rift accessory will open on October 10, and you should probably start saving now, because the controller will be priced at $199.
While the Oculus Touch turned out to be pretty pricey, the box will include more than just the motion controller. Players will also receive an additional Sensor and two games… VR Sports Challenge and The Unspoken. VR Sports Challenge will be developed by Sanzaru, and it’ll include VR recreations of baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Meanwhile, Insomniac’s The Unspoken is a magic dueling game where players will wave their hands around to perform arcane spells and summon unfathomable monstrosities in one-on-one battles.
Players interested in pairing the Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch with a “Full Room” experience will have the chance to purchase a third Oculus Sensor, which will also be available on December 6 for $79.
The Oculus Touch will support 35 games at launch, and you can get a quick glimpse at a lot of them in a new trailer that was released by Oculus earlier today.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged The Unspoken
Salvation DLC Pack is now available for Call of Duty: Black Ops III on PC and Xbox One
Call of Duty: Black Ops III‘s fourth, and final, downloadable expansion is now available to download on the PC and Xbox One. The Salvation DLC Pack includes four additional multiplayer maps and “Revelations,” the final episode of Treyarch’s Zombies Saga:
Multiplayer Maps
- Citadel: Once home to a powerful medieval army, this ancient castle now sits broken and abandoned. Tight corners force close-quarters engagements, while the moat and drawbridge allows for unique player movement opportunities in this mid-sized map. The last trespassers didn’t make it out alive – maybe you’ll have a better shot.
- Micro: What’s better than a BBQ on a hot summer day? A miniaturized war zone that takes place on a well-stocked family picnic table, that’s what! Navigate this bite-size battlefield for a larger-than-life experience.
- Outlaw: Gear up for a showdown in Outlaw; a western-style re-imagining of the fan favorite map Standoff from Call of Duty: Black Ops II. This rough-and-tough medium-sized map brings classic engagements, flanking routes and strategic positions for long and medium ranged combat.
- Rupture: The Call of Duty: World at War classic Outskirts is re-imagined as a high-tech facility, designed by a futuristic society desperate to repair the Earth’s atmosphere.
In “Revelations,” we meet up with the Origins characters after they’ve taken an epic journey through space and time – all of their struggles lead to this very moment. In this, the final chapter of the Zombies experience, Richtofen, Dempsey, Takeo, and Nikolai finally come face to face with the mysterious Doctor Monty in The House. Confronted by an ancient evil, our heroes must fight the zombie horde once more in the final battle to save their immortal souls.
The Salvation DLC Pack is available as a free download for owners of the Black Ops III Season Pass, but it’s also be available as a standalone download for $15.
The next game in the franchise, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on November 4. Fans who pre-order the Legacy Edition or Digital Legacy Edition will also receive a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Gears of War movie adaptation announced on the eve of Gears of War 4’s launch
Epic Games tried to bring a Gears of War movie to the big screen nearly a decade ago, but as things often do in Hollywood, things fell apart and the adaptation was ultimately canceled. But it looks like Microsoft wants to take another chainsaw stab at the idea…
Announced yesterday during a massive Gears livestream, The Coalition’s Rod Fergusson said that Microsoft is teaming up with Universal to distribute the film. Production will be handled by Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark of Bluegrass Films, who have previously worked on dozens of films including Ted and the upcoming Patriots Day.
While it was too early to speculate about who would play Marcus Fenix, Fergusson did say that the film won’t necessarily be based on the storyline from the games:
When you do a movie like this, you have to… realize that it’s a different medium with a different audience. I think if you were to go in and say, like, “OK, it’s got to be completely 100% faithful to the game canon,” or the story of the game, like, what’s going to end up happening is… it’s not going to be the best movie. The big thing we’re really trying to focus on is making the best Gears movie possible, as opposed to the one that’s the most closest to the game.
The developer later expanded on his plan to create a great movie that’s not wedded to the game’s plot in an interview with Variety:
“I think you have to let the movies be the movies,” Fergusson said. “They’re two different mediums, and two different audiences in some cases, and I think some video game movies in the past have failed because they tried to make a movie for gamers. If you have this great IP with a deep backstory and lots of lore that you can make interesting stories out of it’s great, but if you just go after the gaming audience then it isn’t going to be a successful movie.”
We don’t know when Gears of War will hit theaters, but Gears of War 4 will be available for the PC and Xbox One on October 11 (or four days earlier if you sprung for the Ultimate Edition).
Outlast II Hands-On Preview: Red Barrels Returns With More Unsettling Found Footage Horror
Outlast garnered a lot of attention and praise back when it was released in 2013. Inspired by what Penumbra: Black Plague and Amnesia: Dark Descent did so well, Outlast was basically a first-person hide and seek simulator set within an insane asylum. With no means of fighting off the deranged patients and mutants that hunted you, there was a lot of hiding inside lockers and under beds while eluding capture. Does the sequel hold true to that formula? I played the recently released demo to find out. (more…)
Igarashi teams up with 505 Games to publish Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
In the latest Kickstarter update for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Koji “Iga” Igarashi has announced that he’s signed an agreement with 505 Games to publish the side-scrolling “IgaVania” game. To seal the partnership, “Iga” sat down to showcase some new footage from the game in the trailer embedded above.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will be released sometime in 2018 for the PC, PS4, Vita, Wii U, and Xbox One.
Pre-production on Beyond Good & Evil 2 officially begins at Ubisoft
It’s happening! It’s finally happening!
Last week, Michel Ancel unveiled a stray piece of Beyond Good & Evil 2 concept art through Instagram. But today, the famed developer went ahead and confirmed that the game (which was first announced by Ubisoft back in 2008) has officially entered the pre-production phase.
Once again, this barrage of good news began on Instagram, with Ancel uploading images of a shark monster and a bipedal rhino. The image of the rhino was accompanied by a caption confirming the game’s newly-minted status as an in-development project: “Endangered species – now saved – Game in pre-production – Stay tuned!”
It will likely be quite a while before Beyond Good & Evil 2 receives a splashy public debut, but in the meantime, Ubisoft wants to further stoke the hype train with a free giveaway of the original Beyond Good & Evil through their Ubisoft Club. Fans will be able to be able to pick up the PC edition of the game for $0 beginning on October 12.