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
The Path Our Enemy Forges: Shadow of Mordor and Mimetic Desire
WARNING: This article will contain spoilers for Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Whatever we may think about the universe, it is clear that John Reginald Reuel Tolkien firmly believed in an objective good and evil. A Roman Catholic who took his faith seriously, he shaped his fictional world of Middle-Earth to broadly fit a Christian worldview. A good and all-powerful God created the world from nothing. The angelic powers, some of whom fall into evil, exist as part of the created order. The world’s future hangs on the moral choices of common people. Evil is characterized as a turning away from the objective good, not merely an action that is deemed destructive by the social norms of the dominating culture. In fact, evil must be identified and confronted even though the dominating culture approves it.
Tolkien’s understanding of objective moral good and evil is demonstrated in his meditations on temptation in The Lord of the Rings. Boromir, a valiant but weak man, contemplates the use of the One Ring against Sauron. Faramir and Tom Bombadil, bastions of moral goodness, are unaffected by its draw. The power of the One Ring to dominate and to change free beings into thralls is disdained by those who recognize its means as objectively evil.
However, in Monolith’s recent hit, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, the player finds himself or herself doing battle with Sauron, not by taking the moral high-road and trusting good to overcome evil, but by wielding powers similar to Sauron himself. By dominating orcs and turning them against each other and their masters, players wield creatures with will and self-knowledge as pawns in a larger game. More than once, the high elf Celebrimbor states that the only way to overcome Sauron is to match him in determination, and to use his own powers against him. When the ranger Talion asks the Elven Lord how he can control the orcs, Celebrimbor states that when Morgoth (Sauron’s predecessor) created the orcs as a mockery of the elves, he made them to be dominated. Celebrimbor is merely walking the same path that his enemy forged. (more…)
See some of Evolve’s design changes in latest behind-the-scenes video
Evolve has changed quite a bit over the years and Turtle Rock Studios wants to share part of this process with us in their latest behind-the-scenes video: “The Iterative Process of Turtle Rock Studios.” The video includes early looks at the Hunters as well as Goliath’s initial appearance as a crab monster. Adam Sessler is your host once again and he gets the Turtle Rock team (who are all sporting some hefty beards) to open about those topics and the rest of the design process.
Evolve will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on February 10.
Insert Quarter: Should Games Have All Content Unlocked From the Outset?
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Back in the NES era, many games included cheats or Game Genie codes to unlock some of the more difficult levels or fill our coffers with 1-Ups. How else were we supposed to beat Battletoads? But today’s games don’t do that, opting instead to lock much of their advanced content behind a scavenger hunt for baubles or a seemingly impossible boss fight. Most games, but not all. Halo: The Master Chief Collection is a rather notable exception. Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland writes that Microsoft’s decision to unlock every campaign level and multiplayer match type was a master stroke:
It doesn’t have to be this way, as Halo: The Master Chief Collection and its immediate unlocks show. Original campaigns aren’t going anywhere, and we’re not about to start skipping content by default. But there’s no reason to prevent players from deciding how and when they can access whatever content is in a game—from levels and items to weapons and costumes—at the moment they first launch it.
You can read the rest of the article at Ars Technica.
Posted in Insert Quarter, Xbox One
Tagged Halo: The Master Chief Collection
New Releases: Super Smash Bros Wii U, Far Cry 4, Grand Theft Auto V PS4/Xbox One, More
After years of revealing screenshots and teasing trailers (including one 35-minute “Extravganza“), Nintendo is finally ready to release Super Smash Bros. For Wii U this week. It’s a big week for Nintendo in general as the publisher will also release Pokemon: Alpha Sapphire and Pokemon: Omega Ruby for the 3DS along with their first wave of Amiibo figures.
What can the rest of the publishing world do to compete? A lot, actually. Rockstar will bring Grand Theft Auto V to the PS4 and Xbox One for the first time while Ubisoft will release the Himalayan-set Far Cry 4 (PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One) too. Those are both massive open-world games… though only one lets you ride an elephant. Also available this week is BioWare’s latest RPG, Dragon Age: Inquisition (PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One); Sony’s latest LittleBigPlanet game, LittleBigPlanet 3 (PS3, PS4); and Deep Silver’s Dead Island spinoff, Escape Dead Island (PC, PS3, Xbox 360).
And if you’re looking to pick up some previously released major releases on new platforms, now’s your chance. WWE 2K15 makes the jump to the PS4 and Xbox One, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor downgrades to the PS3 and Xbox 360, and Watch Dogs finally makes its way to the Wii U.
And you can find even more new releases after the break. (more…)
ScreamRide coasts into stores on March 3
Microsoft has announced that ScreamRide, their roller coaster creation sim, will be released for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 on March 3. Developed by Frontier Developments, ScreamRide is expected to serve as a spiritual successor to the RollerCoaster Tycoon series.
More than 50 levels will be included in ScreamRide and Xbox One owners will be able to share their original creations with other owners of the game. Players on both platforms will be able to add their name to a set of global Leaderboards. Best of all, ScreamRide will be budget priced… $39.99 on the Xbox One and $29.99 on the Xbox 360.
And remember to keep your hands and feet within the car at all times.
Posted in News, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged ScreamRide
Xbox Store Today: Terraria, Toybox Turbos, Pure Pool
Welcome to the weekend as three new games have been added to the Xbox Games Store. Terraria, the side-scrolling world-builder, is now available for the Xbox One and with a special launch trailer to boot. It’s joined by Pure Pool, VooFoo’s billiards sim that was originally released for the PC and PS4 over the Summer.
Over on the Xbox 360 Games Store, Codemasters’ return to their top-down racing roots, Toybox Turbos, is now available to download.
More details on all three games can be found after the break. (more…)
NBA 2K15 smashes to the top of Oct 2014 best-seller list (yes, even over Smash Bros 3DS)
Even though the month of October saw the release of a new Borderlands game and the first Smash Bros. title for a handheld, NBA 2K15 emerged victorious in The NPD Group’s recounting of the best-selling games of October 2014.
The basketball sim managed to hold off a pair of new releases as well as the continued sales success of Super Smash Bros. For 3DS (which landed at #2). A trio of new releases, The Evil Within (#3), Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (#4), Skylanders: Trap Team (#6), were close behind.
And believe it or not, but Minecraft continues to hold a spot in the top ten as the retail release of the PlayStation 4 Edition propelled it into #10 on the list. Sunset Overdrive, Microsoft’s big Xbox One exclusive for the Fall, did not make the top ten though Joystiq is reporting that it was the ninth best-selling game among individual titles.
This month’s top ten can be found in a handy list format after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Destiny, FIFA 15, Madden NFL 15, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Minecraft, NBA 2K15, NPD, Skylanders: Trap Team, Super Smash Bros. For 3DS, The Evil Within
New Tales From the Borderlands trailer promises that the series will debut “soon”
Just two days after giving gamers their first taste of Game of Thrones: Iron From Ice, Telltale Games has now gone and announced that Tales From the Borderlands will be available to download in the very near future. A final launch date is still up in the air, but we now know that the first episode of Telltale’s collaboration with Gearbox, “Zer0 Sum,” will be released “soon” for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. An Android and iOS release for Tales From the Borderlands is also planned before the end of the year.
Taking place after Borderlands 2, Tales From the Borderlands will be a new way to experience the planet of Pandora:
You’ll play as Rhys, a Hyperion “suit” with dreams of being the next Handsome Jack, and Fiona, a Pandoran con artist looking to score her biggest ever swindle. Thrown together as unwilling partners in an adventure to recover cash they both think is theirs, their journey will take you on a wild ride where gangsters, bandit lords, and Vault Hunters are just some of the obstacles you’ll encounter, in this new take on the award-winning universe created by Gearbox Software.
Tales From the Borderlands will feature an impressive voice cast that includes Troy Baker as Rhys, Laura Bailey as Fiona, Chris “The Nerdist” Hardwick as Vaughn, Erin Yvette as Sasha, Patrick Warburton as Vasquez, and Dameon Clarke as Handsome Jack. You can hear (and see) all of them give it their all in the gameplay trailer above.