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: PS4
Just Cause 3 officially announced for 2015 release on the PC, PS4, Xbox One
After a variety of leaks, fans of the first two games in the franchise have long assumed that Just Cause 3 has been in development at Avalanche Studios. Today, the developer has confirmed that their New York studio has been hard at work on the game for the last three years and that it’ll be released in 2015 for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The news comes not via publisher Square Enix, but instead from Game Informer, as Just Cause 3 will appear on the cover of the magazine’s December issue:
In 2015, the beloved series returns with Just Cause 3 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. We got the chance to be the first people outside of the studio to play not just 10 or 20 minutes, but several hours of the game, set in a fictional Mediterranean archipelago. The time flew by as we tried out the vastly improved parachute and grapple mechanics, terrorized the latest dictator’s well-defended bases, and soared through the sky with the all-new wingsuit. Just Cause has never played this smoothly, and as you’ll see in the cover story launching digitally today, it’s never looked this good.
More details about Just Cause 3 will trickle out of Game Informer’s editorial offices all month. And in case you’re wondering what the main Avalanche team is working on, they’ll release Mad Max in 2015 for WB Games.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Just Cause 3
Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Valve, others teaming up for The Game Awards 2014
Geoff Keighley is leaving the familiar confines of the Spike TV-sponsored VGX Awards to launch a brand new game industry event: The Game Awards. The VGX Awards polled a wide range of game journalists to select the best games of the year, but The Game Awards will take a different tack. Their advisory board will instead be made up of some of the industry’s biggest executives and developers:
- Reggie Fils-Aime (Nintendo of America)
- Yves Guillemot (Ubisoft)
- Hideo Kojima (Kojima Productions)
- Shawn Layden (Sony Computer Entertainment America)
- Peter Moore (Electronic Arts)
- Phil Spencer (Microsoft)
- Martin Tremblay (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
- An unnamed representative from Rockstar Games
- An unnamed representative from Valve
The nominations for this year’s Game Awards haven’t been announced yet, but we do know that the ceremony will take place on December 5 at the AXIS Theater in Las Vegas. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow and those of us that aren’t planning to attend the live show will be able to watch an online stream of the events through the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Nintendo Network, Steam, and “many other sites and platforms.”
And you’ll probably want to pay close attention as, just like the VGX Awards, the show will feature a series of trailers promoting a variety of upcoming games. Musical performances and appearances by “game developers, eSports players and online content creators” will round out the 2014 Game Awards agenda.
Spike TV has yet to announce whether the VGX Awards will be held this year.
New Releases: Halo Master Chief Collection, AC: Unity/AC: Rogue, Lego Batman 3, More
With Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s launch behind us, game publishers have moved forward with a massive amount of mid-November releases. Chief among them (that’s right, I went there) is Microsoft’s Halo: The Master Chief Collection, an Xbox One repackaging of Halo: Combated Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4. More Achievements than you could ever ask for and four of the best shooters to ever grace a gaming system. Not a bad deal. Also available this week is a double shot of Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (PS3, Xbox 360) closes the book on the franchise’s “Americas” saga while Assassin’s Creed: Unity (PC, PS4, Xbox One) shifts the series to the French Revolution.
The remaining new releases can also be slotted into several long-running franchises including WB’s Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One), Sega’s Sonic Boom two-fer (Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on the Wii U and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal on the 3DS), Bandai Namco’s Tales of Hearts R (Vita), and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 (PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One).
Finally this week, Blizzard is back with another World of Warcraft expansion… World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor.
A complete list of this week’s new releases can be found after the break. (more…)
Don’t Leave… Take This Interview With the Developers of Guns, Gore & Cannoli
At first glance, zombies, mobsters, and a wonderful cheese-filled dessert don’t seem like they’d have much in common. But while Clemenza instructed a young mafioso to leave his gun and take the cannoli in The Godfather, players will need both if they’re going to find any success against the rampaging zombie hordes of Guns, Gore & Cannoli. Belgium-based Crazy Monkey Studios is currently seeking funding for the game through Kickstarter, and we recently talked to Benjamin Claeys, one of the game’s artists, about the Prohibition era side-scrolling shooter and its unique art style.
Naturally, the conversation drifted away from the cartoonish violence of the game towards an appreciation for really good cannoli… (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, PC, PS4, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Guns Gore & Cannoli
PS4 version of Secret Ponchos will be released in December
We’ve been big fans of Secret Ponchos, an isometric arena shooter that takes place in a stylized Old West setting, since its PAX East 2013 debut. Ever since, we’ve been waiting for its release on the PS4 and PC but, according to a post on the PlayStation Blog, we won’t have to be waiting much longer.
If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscribers, Secret Ponchos will be available in December as part of the Instant Game Collection on the PS4. All other PS4 owners will also be able to purchase it separately at that time. As one of the game’s banditos might say, yee haw!
Secret Ponchos is also currently available on the PC through Steam’s Early Access program. It’s possible the game’s “full version” will be released in December, but nothing has been officially announced by developer Switchblade Monkeys yet.
Posted in News, PC, PS4
Tagged Secret Ponchos
Development begins on Destiny 2 as Activision reveals Destiny has 9.5 million users
When Activision and Bungie signed their ten-year pact to produce Destiny, it was always assumed that the deal would extend to additional games in the series. Yesterday, during their quarterly conference call, Activision executives have confirmed that Destiny 2 is now in active development.
Eric Hirshberg, the CEO of Activision Publishing, told investors: “Work has also begun on future expansion packs [for Destiny] as well as on our next full-game release. We’re very pleased with the launch and continuing engagement, and we’ll update you on our progress on future calls.”
In other Destiny news, Activision has also announced that the game currently boasts more than 9.5 million users. These players appear to be putting a ton of time into Destiny as “active players” are averaging more than three hours of playtime per day. It’s unknown how that playerbase translates into copies sold, but the publisher said that Destiny has generated more than $500 million in revenue since its September 9 launch. Assuming $60 per copy, that roughly correlates to more than eight million copies sold.
And don’t forget, Destiny’s first expansion, The Dark Below, will be released on December 9.
CoD: Advanced Warfare, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, MotoGP 14, more added to PS Store
Just like this week’s retail release slate, most publishers avoided the PlayStation Store this week because the juggernaut that is Call of Duty has staked a permanent claim on the first Tuesday in November. This year’s edition, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS4, PS3), adds Kevin Spacey and a near-future storyline to the mix.
But a few games have taken up the challenge, including Edmund McMillen’s procedurally-generated action RPG, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (PS4, Vita). This expanded and updated edition of the game includes redone visuals and tons of other tweaks. Sony’s own downloadable version of SingStar (PS4, PS3) was also released yesterday after a slight delay. Also available this week is Milestone’s latest motorcycle racer, MotoGP 14 (PS4, PS4, Vita); a standalone download of Disney Infinity: 2.0 Edition (PS4, PS3); and a handful of other titles.
More information on all of these titles is available after the break and a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons can be found at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Grand Theft Auto V is getting a first-person mode on PC, PS4, Xbox One
Rockstar hasn’t been shy in letting the world know that the PC, PS4, and Xbox One upgrade to Grand Theft Auto V will be no mere port. From “across-the-board graphical and technical improvements” to the wide range of bonus content for players who already own the PS3 or Xbox 360 edition, the latest version of GTA5 will be jam-packed with never-before-seen stuff. But Rockstar wasn’t finished as they recently told IGN that the game will also include a first-person mode:
Police cars are stacking up in the cul-de-sac below and a helicopter is hovering somewhere overhead. I can’t really see where it is, but I feel its presence, and the cops open fire. So I make a run for it, vaulting over a fence into a parking lot, where I jack a car, climb in, and as I look down to hot-wire it, I see there’s a bullet hole in my in my forearm and blood is running out.
I’ve never had a GTA experience like this before, and that’s because it’s all playing out in the first-person.
We’ve said before that Rockstar rebuilt Grand Theft Auto V for the new-generation consoles, but they really mean it now. Each animation in the game had to be redone to work in first-person mode. That kind of attention to detail is Rockstar’s trademark and they weren’t going to ignore it now. Of course, if you’d rather play in third-person mode, players can switch between the two views at any time.
Grand Theft Auto V will be released on November 18 for the PS4 and Xbox One, with the PC version following on January 27, 2015.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Grand Theft Auto V