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
Bandai Namco will release Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 in 2015
After 700 volumes, the final entry in the Naruto manga series was released last month. While the comic adventures of the ninja and his friends may be over, Bandai Namco still plans to release new Naruto games. And they’ve just announced that Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2015.
You can get a small taste of Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 in the trailer above or you can hit the jump to view an interview Bandai Namco conducted with CyberConnect2’s Hiroshi Matsuyama, the Director of the game series. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
The Interview is now available to watch via Xbox Live and other streaming services
The movie that Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s Supreme Leader, doesn’t want you too see can now be viewed on your Xbox 360 or Xbox One. The Interview, which will open in theaters tomorrow thanks to a successful petition from a group of independent theater owners, is now available to watch through the Xbox Video service for $5.99 (to rent) or $14.99 (to buy). The film can also be viewed for the same price at other streaming services such as YouTube, Google Play, and SeeTheInterview.com (which is hosted by Sony Pictures).
Oddly, the film is not available through the PlayStation Store, which is owned and operated by Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony’s video game division. Apple has also come out and said the film will not be available through iTunes, though that may change in the future.
The Interview was at the center of the recent Sony hacking scandal, which the FBI believes was prompted by the North Korean government’s dislike of Kim Jong Un’s portrayal in the movie. Directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, the movie stars Rogen and James Franco as two journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate the dictator.
Rogen said on Twitter that “The people have spoken!” and “Freedom has prevailed!”
CoD: Advanced Warfare’s Exo Zombies will star John Malkovich, Bill Paxton, Rose McGowan
Sledgehammer Games is currently hard at work on the first episode of the “Exo Zombies” cooperative mode for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which will be included in the Havoc Map Pack. And now we know which Hollywood heavyweights have been tapped by Activision to star in the downloadable expansion.
John Malkovich (!), Bill Paxton (!!), Rose McGowan (!!!), and Jon Bernthal (apparently he’s on The Walking Dead) will play four “unprepared and untrained” Atlas employees who suddenly find themselves face-to-face with the living dead. You can hear Malkovich monologue about their desperate situation in the trailer above.
Can they work together? Can they survive? Will Bill Paxton get killed in particularly gory fashion, as he is wont to do (and will he yell “game over, man” as it happens)? We’ll all find out together in January. Well, Xbox owners will. If you’re playing Advanced Warfare on the PC or PlayStation, you’ll have to wait until February.
Halo: Master Chief Collection owners will receive Halo 3: ODST for Xbox One for free
Microsoft and 343 Industries are still working on a patch to fix the matchmaking problems found in Halo: The Master Chief Collection. As a way of apologizing for these issues, the publisher and developer will offer players who purchased the game before December 19 a free month of Xbox Live Gold service and a series of free content updates over the next week:
- All ten Halo 4: Spartan Ops episodes
- Exclusive In-Game Nameplate
- Exclusive In-Game Avatar
Finally, Microsoft will add “Relic,” a remastered Halo 2: Anniversary multiplayer map, and the popular Halo 3: ODST campaign to Halo: The Master Chief Collection sometime in the future. According to Xbox Wire, development has just begun on both, so it might be a while before they’re available. But as with the Spartan Ops episodes, both will be available for free for Master Chief Collection owners who purchased the game before December 19.
Presumably, both downloadable additions will be available for everyone, but no announcement has been made as of yet.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Halo 3: ODST, Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Evolve’s last behind-the-scenes trailer is all about “Creating A Monster”
Turtle Rock Studios has posted the fifth, and final, episode of “The Evolution of Evolve,” their behind-the-scenes look at Evolve. This episode is all about the Monsters and how Turtle Rock attempted to make the beasts less alien and more relatable to players. Because I know that when I’m hunting human prey in the forest, I think of myself as a giant Cthulhu-like demon. Everybody does that, right?
Evolve will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on Feburary 10, but Turtle Rock will host a beta test in January, which you can read all about here.
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Review: The Natural Evolution of Retro Evolved 2
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions had a lot to live up to. The last game in the series, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, dethroned Smash TV as the standard bearer of the twin-stick shooter genre. And the first game in the franchise, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, was considered by many to be the Xbox 360’s killer app for the first year. But Lucid Games proved to be more than up to the task with an excellent new entry in the series. After the closure of Bizarre Creations (the creator of Retro Evolved and Retro Evolved 2), Lucid became the new home for multiple members of the Geometry Wars development team. So we probably shouldn’t have been worried at all. (more…)
Insert Quarter: Broken Games Are Still Broken
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Yes, we’re still talking about games that were shipped to stores broken and still haven’t been fixed after nearly half-a-dozen patches apiece. In light of all the problems that Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Halo: The Master Chief Collection has caused for Ubisoft and Microsoft, respectively, Joystiq’s Richard Mitchell looked at what companies are trying to do to prevent this from happening in the future. And the answer seems to be… “not much.”
Sony will gladly take your $60 to pre-purchase Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End through the PlayStation Store, and that’s because they’ve added a disclaimer stating they don’t have to refund your money if it gets canceled. But on the other hand, CD Projekt delayed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt when it became obvious that they wouldn’t be able to ship the game in February as originally planned. Even though the average gamer now expects the games they purchase to be patched many times over:
What’s really alarming, however, is that this process is standard practice now. Not only do we expect games to have problems at launch, but we tolerate it. We shrug our shoulders, saying “that’s just the way it is,” while developers and publishers take advantage of one of the most passionate audiences in existence.
That’s unacceptable.
The full article is available for your perusal at Joystiq.
New trailer offers a sneak peek at Halo 5: Guardians beta
The Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta will begin on December 29 (and run until January 18). To get gamers ready for the three-week test, Microsoft has released a brand new trailer featuring some “hot Red on Blue action.” If you pay close attention to the trailer, here’s what you might see:
To prepare fans for the start of the highly-anticipated Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta on December 29, this new trailer provides a sneak peek at the new maps, modes, weapons and Spartan Abilities featured in the intense 4v4 multiplayer arena gameplay of the three-week beta. Each week we will feature new content including seven new maps, two new weapons, new modes, and a new Competitive Skill Rating (CSR) system. Or sit back and enjoy watching multiplayer matches in the all-new Spectator Mode.
The Halo 5: Guardians beta is open to everyone who owns a copy of Halo: The Master Chief Collection. So if you’re waiting on Santa to place yours under the tree, don’t worry, you’ll still have time to enter the beta.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Halo 5: Guardians