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
New Releases: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, NBA Live 16, Fallout Anthology, More
The father of skateboarding games returns to store shelves this week, and he’ll be joined by a new EA Sports simulation and a collected edition of one of gaming’s most famous franchises.
Tony Hawk has been a skateboarding superstar for more than 30 years, but he’s got a lot to celebrate this week as his eponymous video game series comes to the PS4 and Xbox One for the first time with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. The game will feature ten professional skaters including Hawk’s own son, Riley. I guess that “father of skateboarding games” thing is quite literal now.
Also available this week is NBA Live 16 (PS4, Xbox One), the latest basketball simulation from EA Sports. NBA Live 16 will feature Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder on the cover along with an all-new player movement system and an “easy-to-use HD face scanning app” known as GameFaceHD, according to EA Sports.
Finally this week, Bethesda is bringing all five games in the Fallout franchise together in a special collection known as the Fallout Anthology. Available exclusively for the PC, the Fallout Anthology will include Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas. Best of all, all five games will come packed in a box shaped like an atomic bomb. Something tells me that it’ll be explosively popular.
The complete list of this week’s new releases can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Vita, Xbox One
Tagged Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, NBA Live 16, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5
Mighty No. 9 will be released… for real this time… on February 9, 2016
Here we go again…
After their rather shady treatment of the gaming public and a string of delays, publisher Deep Silver and developer Comcept are finally ready to reveal the release date for Mighty No. 9. Barring any further setbacks, Keiji Inafune’s spiritual successor to the Mega Man franchise will officially launch on February 9, 2016.
Mighty No. 9 will be available on store shelves and as a digital download for the PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One. Players will also be able to pick it up exclusively as a digital download for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. A portable version of Mighty No. 9 for the 3DS and Vita is also in the works and will be released at a later date.
With the game’s final release date set in store, Deep Silver and Comcept are also ready to release the promised demo edition. Kickstarter backers are encouraged to visit Humble Bundle (and register with the same email address connected to their pledge) to receive access to the demo.
Launch date for PS4 re-release of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls will be revealed soon
During this year’s E3 Expo, Sony quietly confirmed that Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls would be re-released for the PS4 sometime in the near future.
Not much was mentioned about either re-release, though Sony did say that the games would be sold on store shelves (in a two-game bundle) and through the PlayStation Store (as individual downloads). A “Chronological Mode” will be added to Beyond, and both games will also receive a graphical overhaul.
And yesterday, we learned that a release date for the re-releases will be announced soon:
Hi everyone, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls PS4 release dates will be revealed soon now. Thank you for your patience!
— QUANTIC DREAM (@QUANTIC_DREAM) September 23, 2015
How soon is soon? Nobody’s quite sure. But Quantic Dream is also working on a brand new game for the PS4, which isn’t connected in any way to the brilliant tech demos (Kara and The Dark Sorcerer) they’ve showcased for the public in recent years. I’m sure we’ll hear more about that project “soon” too.
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain
Endure the latest video in Fallout 4’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L. series… E for Endurance
“Following total atomic annihilation, the rebuilding of this great nation of ours may fall to you. Study these materials carefully to ensure your survival and to discover what makes you S.P.E.C.I.A.L.”
Betehsda is back with another educational look at the traits necessary to survive in Fallout 4‘s harsh Wasteland. This time, the publisher has decided to focus on the benefits of Endurance… which apparently leads to a lot of cannibalism and a few run-ins with rampaging mutant crabs.
Fallout 4 will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on November 10. And tune in next week… Same Vault-Time, Same Vault-Channel… for Charisma, the next entry in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. video series.
Explore the extensive timeline of the Call of Duty: Black Ops franchise in this video
Beginning with the birth of Victor Reznov in 1913, the Black Ops saga spans more than 100 years of history… most of which has been redacted. Thankfully, developer Treyarch has compiled this primer to help players read through the lines before the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Black Ops III. If you’ve got ten minutes to spare, I highly recommend you spend it reacquainting yourself with the events behind Black Ops and Black Ops II.
And if you skip to the end, you’ll even find out which of Black Ops II’s multiple endings is considered the true ending by Treyarch.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III will be released for the PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, and Xbox 360 on November 6.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Call of Duty: Black Ops III
IO Interactive delays Hitman’s debut to March 2016
It looks like IO Interactive’s ambitious release plan for the next Hitman game, simply titled Hitman, has proven to be a bit too ambitious. The developer confirmed earlier this week (via the Hitman Development Blog) that the game will no longer be released this December as originally planned. Instead, Hitman will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One in March 2016.
IO Interactive is positioning Hitman as an episodic game… but with a twist. Instead of giving players the option purchase individual episodes at regular intervals, the developer wants to sell Hitman for full price upfront and release a number of free updates throughout the year. Part of the reason for the game’s delay is to ensure that more content is available at launch:
[W]e’re going for a new release model where we put out a good chunk of the game when it begins and then release the remaining locations over time. We want to make absolutely sure you all get the best possible experience when you join, so we’ve made the difficult decision to move the initial release date to March 2016. These few extra months will mean we can add more to the launch content of the game, more than we had originally planned, and then follow with a tighter frequency of updates, which ultimately will create a better game for everyone. And in the end, that’s what we’re all looking for.
To help fans visualize the scope of their latest project, IO Interactive also created an impressive infographic to better show off the size of Agent 47’s new playground. The gray layer in the infographic represents “Street of Hope,” the largest level in Hitman: Absolution. Meanwhile, the red layer directly underneath shows “Paris: The Showstopper”, a Hitman locale that’s roughly six times larger. This mission will also give players the option of 300 potential Targets (versus 50 in Absolution), and more than 25 unique areas to explore.
IO Interactive will announce more details about how the size of Hitman’s world will affect Agent 47 next week. The team also plans to reveal more details about the game’s episodic release schedule at the same time.
Skylanders SuperChargers, FIFA 16, Blood Bowl II, Soma, more added to PS Store
The Skylanders are back, and if you already own a Portal of Power, you can download Skylanders SuperChargers for the PS3 and PS4 from the PlayStation Store right now.
If Activision’s game/toy hybrid isn’t for you, there’s plenty of other new releases available this week including FIFA 16 (PS4, PS3), EA’s latest soccer simulation; Blood Bowl II (PS4), Cyanide’s second crack at “fantasy” football; and Soma (PS4), Frictional’s horrific follow-up to Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
The PlayStation Store is particularly stacked this week as further down the new release list is Extreme Exorcism (PS4 + PS3 Cross-Buy), a supernatural single-screen arena fighter from Golden Ruby Games; Laserlife, the latest game from Bit.Trip developer Choice Provisions; and Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma – Volume 1 (PS4), another ultra-violent martial arts saga based on the anime series.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. And you can check in with the PlayStation Blog to take a gander at this week’s new game add-ons and discounts. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Blood Bowl 2, Extreme Exorcism, FIFA 16, Skylanders SuperChargers, Soma
Extreme Exorcism Review: This House Was Cleaned… With a Twelve-Gauge Double-Barreled Remington
Golden Ruby’s Extreme Exorcism is what you get when you combine the single-screen baddie-bashing of something like Mario Bros. with the pattern memorization requirements of the most chaotic Treasure shoot ’em up. Toss in a throwback retro look and an Army of Darkness-style arsenal, and you’ve got yourself a game.
But there’s got to be more to Extreme Exorcism than that, right? Of course, and the power of Christ compels you to read on… (more…)