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
- 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”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- 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)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
Most Recent: PC
Assassin’s Creed: Unity Season Pass, AC Chronicles China side-scroller announced
Ubisoft has announced they’re preparing a Season Pass for Assassin’s Creed: Unity that will include story content that takes place after the main campaign as well as a standalone side-scrolling adventure set in China. You read that right… Unity’s Season Pass will include access to Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, a standalone game developed by Climax Studios that takes place after Assassin’s Creed: Revelations:
For the first time ever, players will be transported to the Middle Kingdom in the 16th century, where the last remaining Assassin of the Chinese Brotherhood has returned to her homeland. Players will be immersed in a vibrant setting, inspired by traditional brush paintings and Chinese architecture from a pivotal, historic time period in one of the greatest civilizations in history. Hell-bent on revenge, Shao Jun will use the skills she learned under legendary Assassin Ezio Auditore to exact vengeance. Players will be able to rely on stealth to accomplish their mission, as well as Shao Jun’s martial arts training and all-new Assassin gear.
Meanwhile, the Unity expansion is known as “Dead Kings” and includes a wonderful weapon known as the Guillotine Gun:
In this self-contained set of missions, players will explore the murky depths of the Basilica and fight merciless adversaries to uncover the darkest secrets of the city. Arno will equip the new Guillotine gun, a deadly explosive weapon for short and long range combat. In addition to the main missions, players will discover new open-world activities including treasure hunts, murder mysteries and contracts, as well as new co-op missions. Additional weapons, gear, skills and outfits can be unlocked and carried over to the main game.
The Assassin’s Creed: Unity Season Pass has been priced at $29.99 and those who pre-order it will receive an exclusive in-game weapon, the Double-Handed War Axe. All of the Season Pass content, including Chronicles: China, will be released separately and should be available by “early 2015.”
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China, Assassin's Creed: Unity
Blizzard ceases development on their Titan MMO and officially cancels StarCraft: Ghost
In an interview with Polygon, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime has confirmed that the company’s upcoming MMO, Titan, has been canceled. Development on Titan previously hit a snag when Blizzard delayed it into 2016 “at the earliest” last year. This massive delay was due to Blizzard blowing up their work on the game to start from scratch. According to Morhaime, that wasn’t enough to save Titan:
“We didn’t find the fun,” Morhaime continued. “We didn’t find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.”
Morhaime is unsure if the developer will ever try their hand at an MMO again, but he still has big plans for World of Warcraft. “My hope personally is that we’ll support it forever,” he told Polygon. And finally, after being “on hold” for years, Morhaime also confirmed that StarCraft: Ghost is officially canceled as well:
“It’s always really, really hard to make those kind of decisions. It was hard when we canceled Warcraft Adventures. It was hard when we canceled StarCraft Ghost. But it has always resulted in better-quality work.”
The decision to cancel Titan was definitely affected by Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, which just notched its 20 millionth player last week.
Posted in News, PC, Retro
Tagged StarCraft: Ghost, Titan
United Front announces Sleeping Dogs spinoff Triad Wars
“Triad Wars is an online open-world action adventure PC game where you rise to power as a criminal kingpin of the Triad underworld,” says developer United Front Games. Triad Wars is meant to be the other side of the Sleeping Dogs world – instead of playing as good guy Wei Shen, now you’re trying to build your own gang. You can fight your way to the top – or extort your way there.
Triad Wars is PC-only, and you can sign up for the closed beta right now. They’re also having a Reddit AMA today at 12:00 pm PST (3:00 pm EST), so bring your questions!
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Triad Wars
The Walking Dead Season 2: Amid the Ruins Review: The Dark Before the Dawn
In the television world, the finale is perhaps the most important episode of the season. It needs to be exciting and emotional. It needs to provide closure, while at the same time end on a cliffhanger and leave unanswered questions. How else could we remain interested in the show during that excruciating, seven-month wait until the next season? This rings true for the current season of The Walking Dead TV series. Rick and the gang are once again in a dire situation, and we don’t know what’s going to happen next. What happened to Beth? What do the residents of Terminus want? Will we riot if Daryl dies? See, now I’m getting anxious just talking about it. OK, back on track.
In order for the season finale to pack a punch, you need the prior episode to provide a good set up – which usually means a duller entry. This is not bad; it just slows down the momentum a bit. But it is necessary in order to make the finale that much stronger. A calm before the storm, if you will. Ergo, Season 2 of the The Walking Dead video game is no different from its television counterpart. As we draw ever closer to the conclusion of the season, we need to have the penultimate preparation episode – as we get ready for the end. Episode 4 follows this same mantra, giving us a notably slower episode, but still enjoyable in its own right. (more…)
New Releases: Hyrule Warriors, Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes, FIFA 15, More
Have you got Destiny out of system yet? If so, there are plenty of new releases to talk about this week includingHyrule Warriors, Nintendo and Koei Tecmo’s mashup of The Legend of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors for the Wii U. If nothing else, the game will let us play as Ganondorf and that just sounds amazing.
Also available this week is Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes for the PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Disney’s “2.0” attempt at a toy/game hybrid adds Marvel superheroes and an expanded Toy Box Mode. And speaking of games that appear on a lot of platforms… EA Sports will release FIFA 15 this week for the 3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Sorry, Wii U owners.
Finally this week, WB Games is rebooting the Gauntlet franchise on the PC and Microsoft is bundling up Killer Instinct‘s first season on the Xbox One in the Killer Instinct: Combo Breaker Pack.
Even more new releases can be found after the break. (more…)
Warp Zoned’s Fall 2014 Preview Presents the Video Game Fantasy League
It’s Over! Click Here to See the Winner!
With its spreadsheets, massive drafting guides, and heavy emphasis on statistics, your average Fantasy Football league is run more like a role-playing game than a sports contest. So as we were putting together our Fall gaming preview, we thought, why not combine the two? And thus was born… the Video Game Fantasy League.
Warp Zoned’s staff got together and “drafted” eight games from this Fall’s release schedule in hopes of creating the best-reviewed team of games. The rules are simple. Each staff member was required to draft a PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Wii U game. The final two positions were reserved for a handheld game (3DS or Vita) and a Wild Card slot that could be filled with a game from any platform. Points are scored based on how well-reviewed each game is and points are locked in based on a game’s Metacritic average a month after a game has been released. Any game delayed into 2015 will receive a big fat zero.
Our draft, and the games we’re most looking forward to this Fall, looks a little something like this… (more…)
Five Survivor Mode add-ons for Alien: Isolation planned; Season Pass announced
Sega and Creative Assembly have big plans for Alien: Isolation after its October 7 launch. As part of a planned Season Pass, the developer will create five Survivor Mode add-ons that place players in direct opposition with the Xenomorph in a confined space and with limited resources. A bonus Survivor Mode demo, “Basement,” will be included with the game at launch.
Each Survivor Mode add-on will include “three new maps, each with their own set objective and challenges, a new playable character and a variety of enemy types between you and your escape.” New Survivor Mode packs will drop at a rate of about one per month and the first will be released on October 28. All five will be available by next March.
“At this year’s E3 and a number of subsequent events, we put the Survivor Mode demo into the hands of the world’s press and consumers and the reception was incredible,” said Al Hope, Creative Lead on Alien: Isolation. “This is the game in its purest form; it’s you against the creature and it’s against the clock. It was just fantastic watching players leave the demo with a strange mix of joy, terror and relief at simply surviving, before jumping back in and try to tackle it in a different way to beat their time!”
Can you escape the Xenomoprh? Don’t forget the cat!
Microsoft officially purchases Minecraft maker Mojang for $2.5 billion
Two Point Five Billion Dollars. That’s how much Microsoft just spent to acquire Mojang, the developer behind the wildly popular Minecraft. To put that in perspective, Disney paid $4.64 billion for Marvel in 2009 and $4.05 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012. So the Minecraft community carries the same value as 19,000 characters from the Marvel multiverse or 60% of the entire Star Wars canon. That is unbelievable.
As expected, Markus “Notch” Persson will leave Mojang after the acquisition is complete to work on new projects. And, in a surprising move, Microsoft has confirmed that Minecraft will not become a PC/Xbox exclusive. The game will continue to be available on mobile devices, the PS3, the PS4, and the Vita.
“Minecraft is one of the most popular franchises of all time,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. “We are going to maintain Minecraft and its community in all the ways people love today, with a commitment to nurture and grow it long into the future.”
To date, more than 50 million copies of Minecraft have been sold across all platforms, making it one of the best-selling games of all time.