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
- 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)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Most Recent: PS4
Indie Megabooth will host 12 games in their GDC 2017 Showcase
The Indie Megabooth will once again offer a small chunk of real estate at the Game Developers Conference to up-and-coming developers this year. Their GDC 2017 Showcase will feature 12 games that are sometimes goofy (Keyboard Sports), sometimes terrifying (Perception), and sometimes without explanation.
The full lineup includes:
Indie Megabooth’s GDC 2017 Showcase
- _Transfer
- A Duel Hand Disaster: Trackher
- Cosmic Express
- I, Hope
- Keyboard Sports
- Lightfield
- Monster Prom
- Perception
- Post Human WAR
- Rogue Process
- Snake Pass
- Super Slime Arena
The Indie Megabooth will set up shop in San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center on the third floor of West Hall, and more information about every game featured in the Showcase can be found on their official website.
The 2017 Game Developers Conference will begin on February 27.
Call of Duty 2017 is going “back to its roots” and CoD: Infinite Warfare is officially a retail disappointment
It’s official… Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has been a disappointment for Activision. During a quarterly financial presentation yesterday, executives from the publisher confirmed that sales of the sequel “underperformed our expectations.”
COO Thomas Tippl speculated that the sci-fi trappings of Infinite Warfare’s plot might have been responsible for the sales downturn, saying, “It’s clear that for a portion of our audience, the space setting just didn’t resonate.”
However, Activision’s senior staff are very excited for Call of Duty 2017, which is currently in development at Sledgehammer Games. Tippl confirmed the game will launch this Fall, and said it’ll feature “traditional combat” that takes the franchise “back to its roots”:
In 2017, Activision will take Call of Duty back to its roots, and traditional combat will once again take center stage. This is what our dedicated community of Call of Duty players and Sledgehammer Games, who has been developing this year’s title, are the most excited about.
During the Q&A portion of the presentation, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg added that Call of Duty 2017, which is known as “Lethal Combat” internally, will offer a better balance of traditional elements and new innovations than Infinite Warfare did:
I’ve said many times before, with any longstanding franchise like Call of Duty, there’s a balancing act we need to strike between staying true to the things that people love about the franchise and also the need to never become complacent and to keep pushing for innovations to keep the franchise fresh and vital.
Last year I don’t think we got that balance right. Infinite Warfare had a ton of great gameplay innovations that many of our fans appreciated and loved, but it also had a setting that didn’t appeal to all of our fans. The good news is, is that I’m excited to say that in 2017 we think we have this balance in perfect harmony with a game that our teams are incredibly passionate about, with a lot of great innovations, but that also has the traditional combat that we know our fans are going to love.
Barring some catastrophic change in Activision’s operational style, Call of Duty 2017 will likely be released this November.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Call of Duty: WWII
Activision: Fans are going to love Destiny 2, which will be released in Fall 2017
Bungie still isn’t ready to officially announce Destiny 2 just yet, but Activision executives continued to talk up its imminent release during a quarterly financial report yesterday.
Activision COO Thomas Tippl confirmed the game is still on track for a 2017 launch, and also said it’ll be followed by a “content season” of downloadable expansions:
Activision, along with their partners at Bungie, plan to answer the call with the release of a full Destiny sequel later this year, designed to thrill our existing loyal fan base and bring many new players into the fold. We plan to support the release of the sequel, with a great content plan post launch, setting the stage for growth with this year’s sequel and the content season that will follow.
Later in the same report, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg promised that Destiny fans are “going to love this game,” and narrowed down the release window to Fall 2017.
No new Skylanders game in 2017, but multiple “Adventure Packs” coming
As part of their quarterly financial report yesterday, Activision executives confirmed that a new game in the Skylanders franchise won’t be released in 2017. However, fans should still expect plenty of new content to appear this year.
First and foremost, Skylanders Imaginators will make its Nintendo Switch debut on March 3. The “toys-to-life” franchise has been one of the few third party bright spots on the Wii U, so it’s good to see Activision continuing the tradition on the Switch. And with Imaginators in the spotlight for another year, COO Thomas Tippl confirmed that Activision plans to launch “multiple Adventure Packs, new characters, and new in-game content” for it throughout the year.
Tippl revealed that Netflix’s Skylanders Academy has also been well-received by fans. A second season will premiere on the streaming service sometime this year, and a third is already in the works.
Finally, Activision is working on a new mobile game set in the Skylanders universe, but that’s all we know at this point.
Episode 3 from The Walking Dead: A New Frontier will be released in March; Season Pass Disc coming February 28
Telltale Games has announced that The Walking Dead: A New Frontier‘s third episode, Above the Law, will be available to download for the PC, PS4, Xbox One, and mobile devices beginning next month. According to the developer, they’ll unveil more details about the upcoming expansion to the story “in the coming weeks.”
In other Walking Dead: A New Frontier news, Telltale also confirmed that the Season Pass Disc will be available in stores on February 28. The Season Pass Disc will contain the season’s first two episodes, Ties That Bind Part I and Ties That Bind Part II, and include access to all subsequent episodes as they’re released.
A new trailer advertising The Walking Dead: A New Frontier’s Season Pass Disc has been embedded above.
The icy Kolin will be second character available as part of Street Fighter V’s Season Pass 2
As promised, Capcom has announced the next character that’ll be available to download as part of Street Fighter V‘s Season Pass 2. Kolin, a “Phantasm of Snow and Ice,” first appeared in Street Fighter III as a background character, and fans will be able to select her as a playable character for the first time on February 28.
In addition to the trailer embedded above, the publisher also shared a few details about Kolin’s arctic abilities on the Capcom-Unity blog:
Character Overview
Kolin excels in the Russian martial art of Systema, utilizing the opponent’s momentum against them and executing various slash-like attacks and knife hand strikes. Gill has bestowed upon her the power of ice, allowing her to augment her fight style with frigid blasts and deadly icicles. She is often heard speaking condescendingly towards her opponents, knowing they don’t stand a chance before her, let alone Gill.V-Skill: Inside Slash
Kolin’s unique counter allows her to deflect and automatically punish incoming moves with ease.V-Trigger: Diamond Dust
With a full V-Meter, Kolin can slam the ground twice with her foot, each time shooting out a path of sharp icicles across the floor. In addition to damage and stun, this move freezes the opponent’s stun gauge. While in this special state, the stun gauge will not deplete and if Kolin is successful in stunning the opponent, they will be frozen in place.Critical Art: Frost Tower
Kolin dashes forward with a slice of her hand. If the attack connects, she’ll continue summoning large icicles from the ground, throwing the opponent into the air and shattering the ice to drop them to the ground.
In addition to Kolin’s debut, Capcom also confirmed today that Street Fighter V’s third new character of 2017 will be unveiled in April.
Posted in News, PC, PS4
Tagged Street Fighter V
South Park: The Fractured But Whole will be released sometime between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018
Ubisoft has quietly delayed South Park: The Fractured But Whole for a second time.
Originally scheduled to launch on December 6, 2016, the game was later pushed back to Early 2017 before being delayed again as part of their quarterly financial report. The publisher confirmed the comedic RPG will now launch on some to be determined date during their next fiscal year (April 1, 2017 – March 31, 2018).
According to a short post on the UbiBlog, the delay is designed to give the development team more time “to deliver the best experience possible”:
The teams at South Park and Ubisoft San Francisco are committed to pushing the envelope during development to deliver the best experience possible, and this additional time will allow them to do so.
Presumably, a final release date for South Park: The Fractured But Whole will be announced soon.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged South Park: The Fractured But Whole
Metrico+ Review: This Visually Unique Puzzle Platformer Charts Its Own Course
Graphic designers who spend their days translating statistical findings into a series of colorful bars and charts are working in the interesting new field of infographics. And if you’ve opened an Internet browser at all in the last five years, you’ve more than likely seen dozens of them.
Companies love infographics because they’re able to distill complex statistical studies down into an image that is easily shareable across Facebook and Twitter. Audiences love them because they provide easily digestible primers on subjects as frivolous as the many on-screen deaths of Sean Bean to serious societal problems like income inequality.
Dutch development studio Digital Dreams used this same philosophy to create Metrico, a puzzle platformer that was released for the Vita in 2014. The team expanded on their original concept, and launched Metrico+, a remake/sequel, for the Xbox One last month. (more…)