Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Jordan Minor’s “Boss Fight Books: Super Mario Galaxy” is Now Available for Pre-Order
- 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
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
Crysis 2 Map Editor Pack coming Wednesday, Ultra Upgrade available now
If you’ve been dying to one-up Crytek at their own game by creating some of the best maps for Crysis 2 (or just Counter-Strike recreations), now’s your chance. Tomorrow, PC players can download the Map Editor Pack at My Crysis for free. This builds off of the Ultra Upgrade, available now, which brings DirectX 11 support, sporting “higher quality visuals and features including tessellation, water rendering improvements, high quality HDR motion blur, and many other special effects and higher quality texture formats with the optional high res texture pack.”
If you’re a PC fan looking to dive into this new content, you probably don’t want to read our review of the console version of Crysis 2.
Team Bondi’s horror story in making L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire turned out to be a pretty great game. But in the seven years it took to bring it to market, not all of the team members had such a great time working on it. In addition to a website detailing the real credits of L.A. Noire, a feature has popped up from IGN revealing some of the horror stories many former developers shared about working on the project.
The piece is a strong indictment of Studio Founder, Writer, and Director Brendan McNamara, as sources claimed working 100+ hour work weeks with “the angriest person” they’ve ever met. IGN also gave McNamara a good amount of space to respond, with him explaining, “you’re competing against the best people in the world at what they do, and you just have to be prepared to do what you have to do to compete against those people.”
While you can’t argue with the results of McNamara’s style, one would certainly hope these harsh revelations would cease before the game industry becomes a less attractive job market.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged L.A. Noire
Duke Nukem Forever coming to Mac in August
Despite the general disappointment from bourgeois game journalists, Duke Nukem Forever‘s strong sales have pushed for the game to be coming to Mac. Aspyr Media is handling the port, which will be available on Steam in August, supporting Steamworks features such as Steam Play.
“We are thrilled to play a part in bringing this gaming experience to the Mac,” said Michael Rogers, President of Aspyr Media. “Duke Nukem Forever represents many of the best aspects of gaming: shooting aliens, saving ladies in distress, and great tag-lines. We think Mac gamers will love taking a bite of Duke’s special pain cake.”
For more information on the project, visit the official site of the Mac release.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Duke Nukem Forever
Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies go “In the Jungle” in Annihilation DLC
“Call of the Dead” from the Call of Duty: Black Ops Escalation DLC was a hard act to follow for Treyarch. Instead of trying to up the star-studded cast of its previous effort, they decided to just bring you more interesting Zombies settings with new gameplay mechanics. Ride on a rail or down an aqueduct while you cut down the endless horde of the undead with all new weapons. Annihilation will cost you $15 and arrives on Xbox Live tomorrow with a future date for PC and PS3.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops
New Releases: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, RE Mercenaries 3D, Street Fighter IV Arcade, More
The month of June comes to an end with a bunch of new sequels and a new fitness game that will turn your mom into an ultimate fighter. Take that Wii Fit! But I’m sure you want specifics, so here we go:
- Capcom is bringing an expanded version of popular Mercenaries minigame to the 3DS in Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D.
- The publisher is also expanding the latest Street Fighter game again with Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (PS3, Xbox 360).
- Namco Bandai and Tecmo Koei merged two of their favorite franchises a third time in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 (PS3, Xbox 360).
- Nintendo brings the popular Mystery Case Files series to the console world for the first time in Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident (Wii).
- And finally, THQ wants to turn your exercise regiment into an extreme sport with UFC Personal Trainer (PS3, Xbox 360).
Check out the full list of the rest of this week’s new releases after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
Tagged Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Street Fighter IV
Team Fortress 2 goes free to play
Valve has been at the forefront when it comes to experimental pricing in the digital age of game consumption. They’ve also taken bold steps towards the “games as services” model. Now that ideal becomes more of a reality.
Team Fortress 2, one of the iconic Valve franchises, has now gone free to play. Robin Walker, who worked on the game way back when it was just a Quake mod, sat down with Develop to discuss the reasons for the move. Getting more people on Steam is one, as is learning more about consumer habits. But Walker also cites the fact that in multiplayer games, the more people actually playing it creates more value for each consumer.
Anyone yet to try out Team Fortress 2 should do so promptly, and be sure to read the full interview with Robin Walker.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Team Fortress 2
Dirt 3 Review: Can You Class Up Dirty?
Codemasters has spent this entire hardware cycle delivering consistently excellent racing games – with their biggest success being the Dirt franchise. An “evolution” of the old Colin McRae Rally games, the original Dirt offered not just traditional rally racing, but numerous other disciplines of off-road racing. 2009’s Dirt 2 continued this movement away from what made the CMR games so popular… and added an unfortunate “extreme” element that was insanely out of place. The result is a series that’s commended for solid racing action, but frequently criticized for its abandonment of “serious” off-road racing. The result of these complaints is Dirt 3, which can best be explained as a “happy medium” between the seriousness of Dirt and the insanity of Dirt 2. In short, if Dirt 2’s craziness was a serious turn-off, Dirt 3 is a heartfelt apology. (more…)
“War is coming” in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 game trailer
If you thought the first Deathly Hallows game was just a cover-based shooter with Daniel Radcliffe stepping in for Marcus Fenix, check out the trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 above. Besides watching Harry and Ron mow down dozens of people, you can also see Harry blindfiring from behind cover at a Dementor. Delta Squad Voldemort doesn’t stand a chance.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was developed by EA Bright Light and it’ll be released for the DS, PC, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 on July 12.