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: PS4
Mini Metro, Her Story lead all nominees at the 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards
The Independent Games Festival has announced the nominees for their 18th annual awards, and two very different games lead the pack as Mini Metro, a tranquil public transportation sim, and Her Story, a detective story that uses 90s-era full motion video, will both be competing for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize.”
The minimalist Mini Metro collected three other nominations including “Excellence In Visual Art,” “Excellence In Design,” and “Excellence In Audio.” Meanwhile, Her Story also racked up three additional nominations including “Excellence In Narrative,” “Excellence In Design,” and the “Nuovo Award.” Both games will be competing for the “Grand Prize” against Darkest Dungeon, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Superhot, and Undertale.
The 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards will be held on Wednesday, March 16, during this year’s Game Developers Conference. If you aren’t going to be in San Francisco to attend the show in person, you can watch the festivities live through Twitch. However, if you are attending GDC 2016, all of this year’s finalists will be playable on the show floor at the IGF Pavilion.
A complete list of the nominees and honorable mentions for the 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged GDC 2016, Her Story, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Mini Metro, Superhot
Warp Zoned’s 2015 Golden Pixel Awards: Honoring Our Favorite Games From Last Year
The conventional wisdom will tell you that 2015 was a down year for games and that all the good stuff got pushed back to 2016. But how can you trust the conventional wisdom when last year featured a ridiculously entertaining string of good games starring kid squids, gothic hunters, glitchy sci-fi heroes, and the lone survivor of a nuclear war. And all that’s before you dip into the millions of user-created levels from Super Mario Maker.
Yup, we think 2015 was a pretty great year for games, especially the ones that took home some hardware during our annual Golden Pixel Awards… (more…)
Posted in Etcetera, Features, Mobile, PC, PS4, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Alphabear, Axiom Verge, Batman: Arkham Knight, Bloodborne, Broforce, Earthbound Beginnings, Fallout 4, Guitar Hero Live, Her Story, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Mortal Kombat X, N++, Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Until Dawn
Psychonauts 2 reaches its $3.3 million funding goal on Fig
After amassing more than 20,000 backers, Double Fine’s crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2 reached its $3.3 million goal yesterday on Fig. Unlike Kickstarter, Fig allows backers to invest in projects and eventually see a return on their investment once the game is released. At this moment, more than half of Psychonauts 2’s funding ($1.7 million) has been provided by investors.
“We’re so grateful to our backers for giving us this chance to continue the story of Raz and the Psychonauts. Knowing that they will be able to participate as investors in the game makes the whole thing feel more fair and more rewarding,” said Tim Schafer, the President and CEO of Double Fine Productions.
The Psychonauts 2 crowdfunding campaign will wrap up on Tuesday, and then begins the long process of actually developing the game. As of now, Double Fine is planning to release Psychonauts 2 sometime in Fall 2018 for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Psychonauts 2
PlayStation Store Today: Amplitude, Rebel Galaxy, Volume for Vita, more
Sony has delivered the first PlayStation Store update of the new year and fans of Harmonix’s brand of music-based button-mashing should be very pleased, as the developer released Amplitude for the PS4 today. And in case you were wondering, the trippy visuals support an even trippier story… “Take a trip through the expansive human mind as you seek to awaken your comatose patient and expand her perceptions.”
Also available this week for the PS4 is Rebel Galaxy, Double Damage’s “swashbuckling space adventure” that’s filled with space combat, extraterrestrial exploration, and a bounty of space pirates.
Finally this week, Vita owners can look forward to Mike Bithell’s Volume. If you’ve already purchased the stealth game on the PS4, the Vita version can be yours for free.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new release) can be found after the break. And, as always, a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons and discounts are available at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS4, Vita
Tagged Amplitude, Rebel Galaxy
EA Sports UFC 2 gets a March 15 release date and a new gameplay trailer
EA Sports announced today that EA Sports UFC 2 will be available for the PS4 and Xbox One on March 15. With a release date in place, the publisher is also ready to open pre-orders for EA Sports UFC 2. Players who purchase the game before March 15 will receive access to a trio of additional fighters including Bas Rutten, “The Gracie Hunter” Kazushi Sakuraba, and a “Mystery Fighter” to be named later. A Deluxe Edition, priced at $69.99, that includes up to $60 of UFC Ultimate Team Premium Packs will also be available.
“Whether fans want to play upcoming cards, recreate the outcome of recent fights, or go back to fight with MMA legends, we’ll help them do that in the most authentic and exciting way ever in an MMA simulation,” said Brian Hayes, the Creative Director at EA Canada. “Our first two pre-order fighters, Bas Rutten and Kazushi Sakuraba are perfect additions to what is already the biggest roster ever for an official UFC game. Adding them is huge, and fans are going to go nuts when we reveal who the mystery fighter is. I can’t wait.”
EA Sports also released a new gameplay trailer to get gamers excited to step into the Octagon once more this Spring. It’s been embedded above.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged EA Sports UFC 2
Square Enix: Final Fantasy XV will finally be released in 2016
2016 is going to be a big year for the Final Fantasy franchise. Remakes and re-releases of both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX are in the works, and Director Hajime Tabata is hard at work on the next game in the series, Final Fantasy XV. The fifteenth Final Fantasy game began life in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, an action-oriented (and, at the time, PS3-exclusive) spinoff to Square Enix’s “Fabula Nova Crystallis” project. But after a number of delays, a title change, and a platform change, it looks like Tabata is finally ready to release the game for the PS4 and Xbox One in 2016.
He delivered the good news to Final Fantasy fans everywhere via the Square Enix Blog this morning:
We will finally release FFXV this year, in 2016! In development, previous phases required wisdom and strength. However, moving forward the final phase will focus on effort and willpower.
I vow to you all that every member in the team will do their best to the very last possible moment taking responsibility and pride in their craft.
We will do everything we can do to finish FFXV to create an experience we are incredibly proud of and one that you will enjoy and treasure.
While we still don’t know the exact date of Final Fantasy XV’s release, we do know that Square Enix is planning a simultaneous global launch, a first for the franchise.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Final Fantasy XV
20 PS4 exclusives for 2016 get the spotlight in new trailer released by Sony Europe
While the PS4 continues to sell like hot cakes, the system suffered a bit of a new game drought in 2015. Everyone expected Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End to anchor the Fall, but it was eventually pushed back to March, and then again into April. But Nathan Drake will surely get his moment to shine in 2016, especially after Sony Europe put the adventurer front and center in a new video promoting 20 PS4 exclusives that’ll be released this year.
A Thief’s End is joined in the trailer by a number of other early 2016 releases including Firewatch (February 9), Street Fighter V (February 16), Ratchet & Clank (April 12), and No Man’s Sky (June). A quick glimpse of David Jaffe’s Drawn To Death has confirmed it’ll be released in the next 12 months (it previously had no release date), and the trailer promises that Media Molecule will be back this year with a beta (and possibly a full release) for Dreams.
Keep your eyes peeled for these PS4 games in 2016 as well:
- Alienation
- Boundless
- Gran Turismo Sport
- Gravity Rush 2
- Hellblade
- Horizon: Zero Dawn
- The Last Guardian
- Nier: Automata
- Paragon
- Shadow of the Beast
- The Tomorrow Children
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- The Witness
Presumably, we’ll be hearing a lot more about all of these games in the coming days.
New Bases Loaded game will be released for PS4 this Spring (in Japan)
If you were a kid during the NES era, you likely have fond memories of Bases Loaded, a series of baseball games produced by the now-defunct Jaleco. But, per Gematsu, Clarice Games and Mebius plan to resurrect the series this Spring for the PS4. Best of all, Moero!! Pro Yakyuu (a Japanese title that translates to Burn!! Pro Baseball) will use the same 8-bit style as seen in Bases Loaded’s 1987 NES debut.
It’s unknown if this new version of Bases Loaded will make its way to North America, but it seems unlikely at this point. You can see more of Moero!! Pro Yakyuu at the game’s official website.