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
Xbox Store Today: Rare Replay, Boggle, Sheltered (Game Preview), more
A quintet of new games are available to download through the Xbox Games Store today including a free-to-play puzzler and a new addition to the Game Preview program. But depending upon our you count Rare Replay, there is considerably more…
Rare Replay will celebrate Rare’s 30th anniversary by collecting 30 games from the company’s glorious history in a single package. Whether you discovered the developer in its early days on the NES or jumped in during their N64 heyday, there’s plenty to play in Rare Replay. Rare’s Xbox and Xbox 360 output (minus the Kinect Sports series) is also included.
Also available this week is Beyond Eyes, a fairy tale-like game that places players into the shows of a blind girl searching for her friend. With an entirely different understanding of the world, players will carefully guide young Rae on a “life changing journey.”
The Xbox One’s Game Preview program also grew by one this morning because Sheltered, a strategy game where players have to escape from a a deserted underground shelter, is now available.
More information on all of these games (as well as Boggle and the free-to-play Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight) is available after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Rare Replay
Mega Man Legacy Collection to be released on August 25; Physical Version coming early 2016
Have you been eagerly awaiting more news the Mega Man Legacy Collection since it was announced during this year’s E3 Expo? Well today’s the day, because Capcom has confirmed the compilation will be available for download on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on August 25. Sadly, the 3DS version of the game won’t be available to download until sometime in early 2016.
Capcom also announced that the Mega Man Legacy Collection will be available in a special physical version for the 3DS, PS4, and Xbox One in early 2016. Priced at $29.99 (twice the digital download’s $14.99 price tag), more details on the physical version will be announced at a later date.
Both versions of the Mega Man Legacy Collection will include all six Mega Man games originally released on the NES. A Challenge Mode (with “remixed gameplay sections”), a Music Player, and an extensive collection of vintage production documents will also be included.
It looks gamers interested in the Mega Man Legacy Collection will have to weigh their options very carefully. You can buy the compilation in about three weeks for a lower price, but you’ll never actually “own” it. Or you can wait and pay double the price, but you’ll receive a shiny disc in return that will better preserve the legacy of the first six Mega Man games.
Mafia III explores organized crime in 1968 New Orleans next year
As promised, 2K Games released the first trailer today for Mafia III at the Gamescom expo in Germany. The accompanying announcement also includes plenty of details about the storyline, which takes place in New Orleans in 1968. And you know its 1968 because most of the action in the trailer is scored to “House of the Rising Sun.”
Rather than follow a foot soldier’s rise in La Cosa Nostra, Mafia III flips the player’s perspective and follows Lincoln Clay, “a disenfranchised Vietnam veteran” who is at war with the Sicilian Mob.
Mafia III follows the story of Lincoln Clay, a disenfranchised Vietnam veteran, returning from combat and looking for a home and a place to belong. Orphaned as a child, Lincoln at last achieves a semblance of family with the city’s black mob, finding the surrogate father and brother he has longed for. But when Lincoln’s new family is betrayed and slaughtered by the Italian mob, he becomes fixated on revenge and wages a brutal war against the Italians, disrupting the balance of power in the seedy underworld of New Orleans. As the story progresses, Lincoln allies himself with other criminals and builds an empire and a new family of his own that transforms the city.
As Clay, players will be able to “choose their [own] path” when building their crime syndicate. And their revenge can be exacted through “cunning, stalking, and deception” or through “overwhelming force and firepower.” If the trailer is to be believed, players will even be able to feed rivals to crocodiles.
“The Mafia franchise is known for its immersive sense of time and place, and for presenting compelling stories about life within organized crime,” said Haden Blackman, the game’s Creative Director. “In Mafia III, we are introducing players to an unexpected new anti-hero and an iconic city to explore, all within a hard-boiled drama set during one of the most turbulent years in American history.”
Mafia III is in development at Hangar 13 and will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One sometime in 2016.
Songs from Black Keys, Fall Out Boy, System of a Down, more added to Rock Band 4
Harmonix announced recently that more songs have been added to the Rock Band 4 setlist, bringing the total number of songs to 39. These new additions include:
- 4 Non Blondes – “What’s Up?”
- The Black Keys – “Fever”
- Disturbed – “Prayer”
- Duck & Cover – “Knock Em Down”
- Eddie Japan – “Albert”
- Fall Out Boy – “Centuries”
- Halestorm – “I Miss The Misery”
- Heart – “Kick It Out”
- Heaven’s Basement – “I Am Electric”
- Lightning Bolt – “Dream Genie”
- Rick Derringer – “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”
- Rush – “A Passage To Bangkok”
- Scorpions – “No One Like You”
- Slydigs – “Light The Fuse”
- Soul Remnants – “Dead Black (Heart of Ice)”
- System of a Down – “Spiders”
- White Denim – “At Night In Dreams”
Anyway, the full setlist is only a fraction of songs available for play as there are over 1,500 songs available to download from the Rock Band Store, and songs can be transferred over from the previous Rock Band games. So there’s sure to be something for everyone.
Rock Band 4 will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One on October 6th. A trailer featuring the new tracks has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Rock Band 4
Lego Avengers will assemble on store shelves on January 26
WB Games has announced that Lego Avengers will deliver of lightning bolt of superheroics to store shelves on January 26, 2016 (January 29 in Europe).
Lego Avengers is in development for a huge number of platforms (3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One) at TT Games. The Lego adaptation is expected to recreate the events seen in The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, TT Games also plans to go beyond the two films by including heroes and villains from throughout the Marvel universe.
If you’re already planning to purchase Lego Avengers, you might want to know that GameStop is offering a pre-order bonus of a “Silver Centurion” Iron Man minifig, based on the armor worn by Tony Stark in Iron Man 3.
Killer Instinct Season 3 will kick off in March with Rash (of Battletoads fame) as guest fighter
Microsoft has announced that Killer Instinct Season 3 will kick off in March 2016, which is good news for all the fighting game fanatics out there. The previously-announced PC edition, featuring characters from all three seasons, will also be available beginning in March.
Killer Instinct Season 3 will once again feature eight new characters, including Rash, one of the tubular toads from Battletoads. Best of all, you won’t have to wait until March to try him out. Everyone who has purchased the 30-game Rare Replay compilation will be able to download an early beta version of Rash starting today.
The Rash beta is expected to be available until sometime in September.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Gamescom 2015, Killer Instinct, Rare Replay
Deep Silver shows off Homefront: The Revolution at Gamescom 2015
At Microsoft’s 2015 Gamescom Briefing, publisher Deep Silver finally revealed a gameplay trailer for the upcoming Homefront: The Revolution. They also showed a short, but poignant, two-minute CGI trailer (which is available after the break).
The short gameplay snippet shows a rebel squad in Philadelphia, the new location for the game, driving vehicles through the streets (and roofs) to take down a warehouse full of North Korean soldiers. It doesn’t look like anything too revolutionary, if you’ll pardon the pun, but if Deep Silver Dambuster Studios can fix the flaws of the original game, it could be a decent title.
Homefront: The Revolution will be hitting store shelves in Spring 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The Xbox One will also be getting an exclusive multiplayer beta sometime this Winter. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Gamescom 2015, Homefront: The Revolution
Halo Wars 2 announced at Gamescom 2015
Microsoft announced Halo Wars 2, a followup to the original Halo-themed RTS from 2009, at their Gamescom Briefing just a short few hours ago.
Interestingly, Sega’s Creative Assembly, the same team behind the Total War series, as well as Alien: Isolation, will be leading development. Ensemble Studios was responsible for the original Halo Wars, but they were shut down by Microsoft shortly after the release of the game.
Halo Wars 2 will be coming to the Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs sometime in Fall 2016.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Gamescom 2015, Halo Wars 2