Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- 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
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC Awards
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
Fortnite Season 5 kicks off with a dimension-hopping trailer (and a new song from Joywave)
Epic Games launched the Season 5 update for Fortnite today, giving players the chance to find out what’s going on with all those crazy portals:
Worlds collide in Season 5! A viking ship, desert outpost, and ancient statues have appeared on the island, changing the world of Fortnite as we know it. Hop in an ATK (All Terrain Kart) with your squad and uncover all new mysteries and locations. New Season, New Battle Pass.
Epic also teamed up with Joywave to provide music for the battle royale game’s spacey new trailer, and you can hear a snippet of the band’s new single, “Blastoffff,” in the Launch Trailer embedded above. If you like what you hear, you can also find an “Audio-Only Video” for the full song after the break. (more…)
Bandai Namco delays Code Vein’s release to 2019
Bandai Namco announced today that the launch date for their anime-styled vampire game, Code Vein, has been pushed back to 2019.
Code Vein was previously expected to be released on September 28, but the publisher decided to devote more time to the game’s development to “ensure that the final product delivers on the expectations set amongst media and fans”:
“Code Vein has received an enormous amount of positive feedback from eager fans who have received hands-on time with in-development versions of the game over the past nine months,” said Eric Hartness, Vice President of Marketing for Bandai Namco Entertainment America. “Armed with knowledge of how well the game has already been received, we made the decision to postpone the release of Code Vein to further refine its gameplay in an effort to exceed the expectations fans already have of the title. It was a difficult decision to make, but we feel it is the correct one.”
Featuring gameplay inspired by the Dark Souls series, Code Vein is currently in development for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
20XX, Lumines Remastered, Shining Resonance: Refrain, more coming to PS Store this week
A platforming roguelike, another battle royale game, a new online shooter, and a pair of re-releases lead the way in this week’s PlayStation Store update.
Capcom is bringing back Mega Man in a big way in 2018, but first, Batterystaple Games is here to deliver a roguelike take on the platforming legend with 20XX. Available to download now for the PS4, 20XX includes two-player co-op (local and online) and a neverending stream of stages to scratch that Mega Man itch.
Also available to download for the PS4 this week are a pair of re-releases. Puzzle fans will get to experience the minimalist design (and fantastic music) of Lumines once again in Lumines Remastered. And Sega is bringing the Shining series back to North America with Shining Resonance: Refrain, a remaster of a PS3 game that was never released outside of Japan.
Finally this week, The Culling 2 is another entry in the growing battle royale genre. And Defiance 2050 is an online shooter based on the SyFy series. Both games are available for the PS4 and both are free-to-play.
You can learn more about the rest of this week’s additions to the PlayStation Store after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged 20XX, Shining Resonance: Refrain
Slam Land will be available for the PC, PS4, Switch on August 7
Bread Machine Games has announced that Slam Land, their wildly surreal hybridization of Smash Bros. and basketball, will be released for the PC, PS4, and Switch on August 7. Up to four players will be able to compete each other in the game’s three modes, as they all try to amaze the Giant Blue Man:
Dunk your friends to amaze a giant blue man in Slam Land, a magnificent new 4-player couch fighting/party game by Bread Machine Games.
Select your fighter and punch, grab and DOUNK! your way through five modes, ten levels, and a surreal world overseen by a benevolent (?) giant whose only amusement in life is to witness sporting and majestic slams.
You can prepare yourself for Slam Land’s launch next month by watching the new trailer embedded above.
Chasm will be released for PC, PS4, Vita on July 31
After more than five years in development, Bit Kid has announced that Chasm, their medieval-styled MetroidVania, will be released for the PC, PS4, and Vita on July 31.
In addition to the release date news, Chasm received a new trailer yesterday (embedded above), and Game Director James Petruzzi stopped by the PlayStation Blog to discuss the game’s lengthy development process:
One distinctive feature of Chasm is that the world map is procedurally generated when you start up a new campaign. That feature has led to a lot of questions and confusion, so I’d like to address exactly how it works and why we designed it that way. The latter part is easy to answer. Our entire team is composed of Metroidvania fans. Whether it’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Axiom Verge, we’ve played through our favorite games so often that we’ve long since memorized the maps. We love how those games play but wish we could wipe our memories so we could get that experience of exploration all over again. It’s our hope that people who love Chasm the way we love our favorite games can play it over and over and still have it feel fresh. But at the same time, people who only play the game once should have no idea that there’s anything procedural about it.
But that’s not to say that everything’s completely random; there is a fundamental structure to the game that never changes. If you’re familiar with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night you may recall that first you get the Jewel of Open, then the Leap Stone, then the Soul of Bat – in that order. As you get these upgrades, new areas of the map become accessible. Chasm, like most titles in this vein, follows this structure. When you start up a campaign, the game always has these key upgrades and plot points in the same place.
What’s different is how you get from one key point to the other. Chasm has a bunch of pre-designed rooms that are slotted in modularly in different combinations. So you won’t have any rooms that feel like they were designed by a computer. Instead, you’ll encounter rooms in a different order and even encounter new rooms you never saw the first time, and your path will be different each time you start up a new campaign.
Chasm will be priced at $19.99 when it launches later this month.
The end is nigh… Darksiders III will launch on November 27
The end is almost nigh. Six long years after the release of Darksiders II, THQ Nordic has announced that the franchise’s apocalyptic story will finally continue on November 27 with the launch of Darksiders III.
Darksiders III is currently in the final stages of development for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One at Gunfire Games, and this time around, players will be able to take control of Fury (known as Famine in biblical literature) as she does battle with the Seven Deadly Sins:
Return to an apocalyptic Earth in Darksiders III, a hack-n-slash action-adventure where players assume the role of Fury in her quest to hunt down and dispose of the Seven Deadly Sins. The most unpredictable and enigmatic of the Four Horsemen, Fury must succeed where many have failed… to bring balance to the forces that now ravage Earth.
Players interested in spending a few extra dollars on their Darksiders III experience will also get the chance to purchase one of two limited editions. The publisher will pack the Collector’s Edition ($149.99) with a copy of the game, a Figurine of Fury, an Artbook, a Soundtrack, an Exclusive Armor DLC pack, and a Steelbook case. According to THQ Nordic, all of these items will be housed in a Premium Box.
But those with deep pockets might want to consider the Apocalypse Edition ($399.99), which will include everything from the Collector’s Edition, as well as a Wall Scroll, an Amulet (with necklace), and three additional Figurines (Vulgrim, War, and Death).
A pair of trailers highlighting the contents of the Collector’s Edition and the Apocalypse Edition can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Darksiders III
NASCAR Heat 3’s launch gets the green light on September 7
704 Games has announced that NASCAR Heat 3 is coming back for another lap on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The stock car racing sequel will once again be developed by Monster Games, and it’ll be released on September 7.
In NASCAR Heat 3, players will be able to put the pedal to the metal on eight dirt road tracks in the brand new Xtreme Dirt Tour mode. Other new features set to be included in the game are “a deeper career mode, additional race tracks, and expanded online multiplayer including online tournaments.” Players will also be able to manage their own race teams as an owner in the game for the first time.
The drivers from Hendrick Motorsports (Chase Elliott, William Byron, Jimmie Johnson and Alex Bowman) have been picked as NASCAR Heat 3’s cover athletes, and a debut trailer for the game has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged NASCAR Heat 3
Deep Silver offers a small update on Dead Island 2’s development
Dead Island 2 has been killed and resurrected a few times since it was first announced back in 2014, with Deep Silver originally eyeing a Spring 2015 launch for the first-person sequel. But the game dropped off the radar completely that same year, and the publisher only eventually emerged to reveal that Dead Island 2 was no longer in the hands of original developer Yager.
Since then, Dead Island 2 was brought back to life by Sumo Digital, though concrete details have still been pretty hard to come by. But yesterday, we got a small update (via Twitter) about the sequel alongside the launch of mobile spinoff Dead Island: Survivors…
Dead Island 2 is still in development and we will share more on this at a later stage.
— Dead Island (@deadislandgame) July 4, 2018
That statement doesn’t stray too far from the ones that Deep Silver delivered in 2016 and 2017, but it’s nice to know that the Dead Island 2 is still in development somewhere.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Dead Island 2