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: PS3
The Darkness II dated for October 4
We finally know when we’ll be able to “quad-wield” in 2K Games’ The Darkness II. The publisher has released a new teaser that confirms the supernatural shooter will be released for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on October 4.
If you need a primer on The Darkness II (the first game is almost four years old at this point, after all), here’s what 2K says you can expect from the game:
It’s been two years since Jackie Estacado, now the Don of the Estacado crime family, used Darkness to kill the men responsible for his girlfriend’s murder. Jackie continues to have haunting visions of his beloved Jenny since her death. He’s tried to cope by bottling up his supernatural power, and now Darkness wants out. A sudden, unprovoked attack on Jackie’s life heralds the start of a full-scale mob war, which has clearly been orchestrated by some outside force. The botched attempt opens the door for Darkness to reemerge, and sets Jackie on a journey to hell and worse, as he unravels the mystery behind the attack and the motivations of Darkness itself.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged The Darkness II
L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories announced
Rockstar will be expanding upon the noirish tales told in L.A. Noire with L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories, a short fiction collection from some of the biggest names in the mystery game. Published in conjunction with Mulholland Books, The Collected Stories will feature characters and cases from the game, but all of the “emotionally torn protagonists, depraved schemers and ill-fated victims” will be cast in a new light by the awesome Duane Swierczynski (read Severance Package right now, I demand it!), Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer and Andrew Vachss.
The first story available will be “The Girl” by Megan Abbott. The titular girl is June Ballard, one of the many characters from L.A. Noire. An excerpt of the story is available at the Rockstar Games website with the full-length tale coming soon.
Many of the stories will be released on Rockstar’s website before the game’s May 17th release. The Collected Stories will be available at eBook retailers everywhere on June 6th. A print copy doesn’t appear to be in Rockstar’s plans at this time, but it’s seems wrong to read hardboiled fiction on a computer screen.
Yeah, like that’s going to stop me.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged L.A. Noire
Bethesda bringing three more DLC packs to Fallout: New Vegas
Bethesda has announced that they plan to bring three additional DLC packs to Fallout: New Vegas this Summer. The expansions will be released simultaneously on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 (for $9.99 each) and, according to Bethesda, they will “raise the stakes” of the series. While they didn’t announce one, I’d bet good money that a Fallout: New Vegas Game of the Year Edition is in the works for this Fall.
But Fall is so far away. Especially when we’ve got all the details on the downloadable packs, straight from Bethesda:
Available on May 17, “Honest Hearts” takes you on an expedition to the unspoiled wilderness of Utah’s Zion National Park. Things go horribly wrong when your caravan is ambushed by a tribal raiding band. As you try to find a way back to the Mojave, you become embroiled in a war between tribes and a conflict between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man. The decisions you make will determine the fate of Zion.
In “Old World Blues,” releasing in June, you will discover how some of the Mojave’s mutated monsters came to be when you unwittingly become a lab rat in a science experiment gone awry. You’ll need to scour the Pre-War research centers of the Big Empty in search of technology to turn the tables on your kidnappers or join forces with them against an even greater threat.
“Lonesome Road,” available in July, brings the courier’s story full circle when you are contacted by the original Courier Six, a man by the name of Ulysses who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip at the start of New Vegas. In his transmission, Ulysses promises the answer as to why, but only if you take one last job –a job that leads you into the depths of the hurricane-swept canyons of the Divide, a landscape torn apart by earthquakes and violent storms. The road to the Divide is a long and treacherous one, and of the few to ever walk the road, none have ever returned.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Fallout: New Vegas
Daily Scoop: May 3, 2011 – The world is not enough
This weekend, Mike Gutierrez and I were talking about James Bond films, and lo and behold, today’s Amazon Deal of the Day in video games is a James Bond game! It’s Activision’s James Bond 007: Blood Stone for the Xbox 360, and it’s $29.99. It’s “an explosive third-person action/adventure game from critically acclaimed developer Bizarre Creations” and it “features Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and Joss Stone in an original story from the writer of GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.” It’s also got Daniel Craig on the cover. Sexy!
Let’s see, what else… I wasn’t going to tell you again, but since you brought it up, I’ll just remind you that Mortal Kombat is still $39.99 (and the Kollector’s Edition is $85.99), Portal 2 is still $34.99 on PS3 and Xbox and $29.99 on the PC, and you can still get a black or white Wii for $169.99, and a 160 GB PlayStation 3 or one of several different Xbox 360 consoles with Amazon credit.
We’ve got t-shirts! Two awesome ones today, actually. Hit the jump for the details! (more…)
Posted in Daily Scoop, Etcetera, News, PS3, Xbox 360
The G-Spot: Why Other OS Isn’t Worth Bringing Back (Much Less Stealing Credit Cards Over)
As the PlayStation Network is set to recover from the worst outage in the history of the service, there’s been a lot of talk about the feature this whole debacle started over. In the early days, one of the distinctive features Sony touted of the PlayStation 3 was its Other OS option, the ability to install operating systems such as Linux on your system. With the advent of the PS3 Slim, Sony removed this functionality, setting off a terrible chain reaction. First, the homebrew community managed to bring it back, which almost immediately opened the floodgates for hackers to destroy public matches on the PlayStation Network. Thereafter, Sony pursued litigation against modders looking to jailbreak PS3s, which led hacking groups like Anonymous to launch even more attacks on the PSN. It’s a complicated debate with valid points on both sides, but there’s no end in sight for gamers who have been written off as “collateral damage” by Anonymous. Given how few people actually ran Linux on PS3, it seems most don’t know what the feature they’re arguing about actually did. This installment of the G-Spot chronicles this ultimate irony: that one of the most lamentedly lost features on the PlayStation 3 wasn’t even worth keeping around to begin with. (more…)
PSN credit card sale a hoax, says Sony
Rumors have been spreading about credit card information that was leaked by the PSN security breach – one of them being that the hackers tried to sell a list of stolen card numbers back to Sony. Patrick Seybold, Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media at Sony, said on the PlayStation Blog that “To my knowledge there is no truth to this report of a list, or that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list.” He also reiterated that Sony will never ask you for your credit card number or social security number or any other information like that, so if you’re approached for this information, it’s by a party posing as Sony and you should not share that information. Duh.
He also explained what they meant at this weekend’s press conference when they said users’ passwords were not encrypted. “While the passwords that were stored were not ‘encrypted,’ they were transformed using a cryptographic hash function,” wrote Seybold. “There is a difference between these two types of security measures which is why we said the passwords had not been encrypted. But I want to be very clear that the passwords were not stored in our database in cleartext form.” Seybold also offered a link explaining the difference.
We’re nearly two weeks into the PSN outage, with not one, but two class action lawsuits against Sony already. The PSN should be back up this week, but have people already lost too much faith in Sony?
Posted in News, PS3
Tagged ApocalyPS3 2011
Sony Online Entertainment accounts compromised
The ApocalyPS3 continues as yesterday Sony took down Sony Online Entertainment in response to their discovery of “an issue.” According to CNet, after SOE was taken down, this message was sent: “Dear Valued SOE Customers, We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately. We will provide an update later today Monday. We apologize for any inconvenience and greatly appreciate your patience.”
Sony released more information at the SOE website, detailing the breach: “Stolen information includes, to the extent you provided it to us, the following: name, address (city, state, zip, country), email address, gender, birthdate, phone number, login name and hashed password.” There’s also “evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained.”
Holy crap. This is really bad, Sony. The company is pointing SOE users to the government-offered free credit report service: “U.S. residents are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free (877) 322-8228.” In other news, I just got my free t-shirt for participating in the Rewards Beta. I think I’ll wear it when I sign up for my free credit report.
Posted in News, PC, PS3
Tagged ApocalyPS3 2011
Buy Battle: LA Blu-ray, get Resistance 3 demo
G4 has the news that a 30-minute Resistance 3 demo will be included with all Blu-ray copies of Battle: Los Angeles. The Sony Pictures blockbuster will make its way to Blu-ray on June 14, three months ahead of Resistance 3’s September 6th release on the PS3.
This isn’t the first time Sony has placed a PS3 demo on a Sony Pictures Blu-ray disc. A God of War III demo was included with District 9 back in 2009. The Battle: Los Angeles/Resistance 3 connection makes even more sense when you consider some of the background scenery in the film.
Posted in News, PS3
Tagged Resistance 3