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
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- 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)
Most Recent: Xbox One
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture leads with 10 nominations at the 2016 BAFTA Games Awards
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) bestowed some absolutely rapturous acclaim on Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture yesterday. The game, which was developed by The Chinese Room and released exclusively for the PS4, was nominated in ten categories for this year’s BAFTA Games Awards.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture will obviously be competing for “Best Game” at the 2016 BAFTAs, and also for “Best British Game,” “Artistic Achievement,” “Audio Achievement,” “Game Innovation,” “Music,” “Original Property,” and “Story.” Two nominations in the “Performer” category (one for Merle Dandridge and one for Oliver Dimsdale) round out its double digit list of accolades.
However, five other games (Fallout 4, Life Is Strange, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Rocket League, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt) are also up for “Best Game” and any one of them could easily steal the spotlight from Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.
We’ll find out who takes the top prize on Thursday, April 7, when comedian Dara O’Briain returns to host the festivities, which will be televised via Twitch and BAFTA.org. The complete list of nominees in all categories can be found after the break. (more…)
Deep Silver taps Sumo Digital to complete Dead Island 2 development
Deep Silver has momentarily shoved Dead Island 2 aside to promote the release of this May’s Dead Island: Definitive Collection. But the publisher plans to return to the troubled sequel in the near future and they’ve confirmed to MCV that development will be continued by Sumo Digital.
“Sumo showed so much understanding of the brand, had creative ideas and an excellent, vision that was aligned with our own,” Koch Media CEO Dr. Klemens Kundratitz told MCV.
“It just made perfect sense for us to move the project to them. We will reveal more details at a later stage, but for now I’d like to say that we are obviously super excited about the progress that we are making with them.”
Development on Dead Island 2 originally began at Yager, but Deep Silver yanked the game away from the Spec Ops: The Line team after their progress didn’t meet the publisher’s expectations.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Dead Island 2
Telltale will unmask their Batman game at SXSW 2016
Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner is understandably excited about the developer’s upcoming Batman project, but we’ve yet to get a really good look at the game. That’ll all change next week at the 2016 SXSW Gaming Expo.
Bruner, along with Executive Producer TQ Jefferson, writer Pierre Shorette, and PR guru Job Stauffer, are taking a trip down to Austin to present “Batman: Telltale Unmasked,” a panel with comedian Greg Miller. The Telltale team will delve into what make’s The Batman (and Bruce Wayne) tick, and the reasons behind his neverending battle with Gotham City’s underworld:
Hear the first details on Telltale’s upcoming new series as Greg Miller interviews the award-winning developers to dive deeper into the complex life and mind of Bruce Wayne, the duality of his own identity, and the struggle of responsibility in saving a city overcome with corruption and villainy.
“Batman: Telltale Unmasked” will be held on Friday, March 18, at 4:30 PM in Ballroom C at the Austin Convention Center.
Xbox Store Today: Tom Clancy’s The Division, Powell Lacrosse 16, Teslagrad, more
Four new Xbox One games have been added to the Xbox Games Store as part of today’s update…
Black Friday gets a deadly new meaning in Tom Clancy’s The Division, which is now available to download through the Xbox Games Store today. In the game, a terrorist organization has somehow managed to unleash a smallpox outbreak by contaminating a batch of dollar bills on the busiest shopping day of the year. Players will join the titular government agency to track them down and restore order to the city. Ubisoft is planning to release a series of new content for The Division this year, and Xbox One owners will be able to play it a month earlier than everyone else.
The sport of lacrosse gets the video game treatment, possibly for the first time, in Powell Lacrosse 16. Casey Powell, one of the greatest lacrosse players of all time, lent his name to the game, which promises the “player movement and passing of basketball with the stick skills, shooting, and hitting of hockey.”
Also available this week is Teslagrad, a steampunk-inspired puzzle platformer where players will have to discover the secrets of Tesla Tower using their Teslamancer; and Tetraminos, a puzzle that looks a lot like Tetris.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Tom Clancy's The Division
Doom’s Closed Beta begins on March 31… watch the new Multiplayer Trailer now
If you pre-ordered Wolfenstein: The New Order back in 2014, it’s finally going to pay off, as Bethesda has announced that’s Doom‘s multiplayer beta will begin on Thursday, March 31, at 10:00 PM (Eastern Time). Players will get to strap themselves in for a four-day fragfest of epic proportions as the beta is scheduled to conclude on Sunday, April 3, at midnight (Eastern Time).
Bethesda also released a new Multiplayer Trailer today to prepare players for the brutal and bloody beta. Further intel is available at the Beta FAQ page.
Doom will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on May 13.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Doom (2016)
Insert Quarter: Should Microsoft Have Gotten Rid of Retail Discs on the Xbox One?
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
We’re three years into the latest console generation, and retail game discs seem to be becoming less and less important every day. While it was a nice surprise to learn that No Man’s Sky would receive a retail release, something like The Witness is still trapped within the walled garden of the PlayStation Store. But maybe that’s not so bad?
Paul Tassi of Forbes argues that Microsoft was wrong to give up their original plan for the Xbox One, which would rendered a game disc as little more than a shiny coaster that proved you owned the rights to an otherwise completely digital title. Microsoft eventually flip-flopped on this position, but should they have?
Yesterday, I got my hard copy of The Division. Two and a half hours after putting the disc in, I was playing the game.
With discs taking almost as long to install as digital downloads, taking up just as much hard drive space, and being much more inconvenient to acquire, I just don’t see the point anymore. In short, I’m Microsoft in 2013.
The full article is available for your perusal at Forbes.
Posted in Insert Quarter, Xbox One
Telltale’s CEO talks about the company’s Batman game and his dream projects
Telltale Games has been busy, busy, busy over the last few years. Since 2013, the developer has launched five different episodic titles (The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead Season 2, Tales From the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and Minecraft: Story Mode), and they don’t seem to have any plans for slowing down. This year, Telltale will release the final episode for Mincraft: Story Mode, along with The Walking Dead: Michonne and maybe even Game of Thrones Season 2. They’ll also release the first episode of a brand new Batman series this year, possibly their biggest game ever.
Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner recently sat down with Kotaku Australia to discuss the company’s future, and he had a lot to say about the Caped Crusader:
“Our Batman series is looking fantastic. I think it might become one of the best things we’ve ever done. I can’t go into much detail, but the Batman team is amazing and they are really on top of it. It’s not like any other Batman game out there. This game really explores all aspects of Batman, not just the the ‘fighting in the suit’ side of him. There’s a lot of subplots to explore and some really amazing choices that have a big impact on the story being told. I really think it might be the peak of the mountain for us so far.”
Working on a Batman game is clearly a dream for Bruner, but the executive dreams big, and he has a number of other projects that he’d love to be working on:
“Personally, I’m on record saying how much I’d love to make a Telltale Star Wars game. I’ve made Star Wars action games in the 90s when I worked at LucasArts, but a Telltale Star Wars game would be a dream come true. And Bond. James Bond would be freaking awesome. And Fletch. And Chinatown. Oh, and The Shining.”
Until just this moment, I never knew how much I wanted a game based on The Shining. Batman: A Telltale Game Series will make its debut sometime in 2016.
Sniper Elite 4 will be released for PC, PS4, Xbox One this year
Rebellion has announced that Sniper Elite 4 is in development for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Best of all, the sniper simulator will be released this year. This time out, “elite marksman” Karl Fairburne is behind enemy lines in Italy in 1943:
Italy, 1943. Covert agent and elite marksman Karl Fairburne must help free Italy from the yoke of Fascism and defeat a terrifying new threat that could halt the Allied fightback in Europe before it’s even begun.
From sun-drenched Mediterranean coastal towns, to colossal Nazi megastructures, daunting forests, and giddying mountain monasteries, Sniper Elite 4 will offer breathless emergent stealth action and unrivaled sniping freedom across maps many times the size of those seen in Sniper Elite 3.
In addition to the supposedly massive single-player campaign, players will be able to team up with friends for a co-operative or compete in an adversarial mode. Rebellion doesn’t want to waste any time and plans to reveal more information about Sniper Elite 4 during next week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.