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Believe it or not, but Destiny didn’t dominate the gaming time of the Warp Zoned staff last month. Instead, there was much backlog playing along with preparation for some of October’s big new releases. Are we out of touch? Nah, most people would say that we play by our own rules…
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It’s a big week for the Xbox Games Store as several of this Fall’s biggest releases are now available for Microsoft consoles.
WB Games has released Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor on the Xbox One and players will once again get to explore that unwritten time between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. Microsoft themselves have released the latest game in their Forza racing franchise, Forza Horizon 2, for the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
In smaller releases, Atlus has teamed up with Arc System Works once again to bring Persona 4 Arena Ultimax to the Xbox 360. And Focus Interactive has published yet another Sherlock Holmes detective game, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, which is available for both the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
More information on all of these games (as well as a few more new releases) can be found after the break.
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Thomas Was Alone used simple rectangular shapes, and a mesmerizing voice-over performance from Danny Wallace, to captivate players on the PC in 2012 and the PS3/Vita in 2013. Next month, Mike Bithell’s award-winning game will make the jump to the PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One.
Curve Studios will once again handle the console port, which will carry a $9.99 price tag on all three platforms. However, the PlayStation version of the game will be part of Sony’s Cross-Buy initiative, so if you’ve purchased the game for the PS3 or the Vita, the PS4 version can be yours for free.
Curve Digital Managing Director, Jason Perkins said: “Thomas Was Alone came to PlayStation right at the start of their campaign to make console development more appealing to smaller developers. Since then, indie games have become a much larger part of the landscape for all major platform holders. It’s exciting to be working with Mike [Bithell] again and to be able to bring the title to even more gamers while offering a free copy for original PlayStation fans.”
And if you need a little mid-day entertainment, Curve and Bithell created a “behind-the-scenes” mockumentary detailing the porting process of Thomas Was Alone. The video is embedded after the break.
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Are you ready to fill your digital cart with new games for the PS4, PS3, and Vita? I hope so, as Sony dropped another massive update onto the PlayStation Store yesterday.
WB Games leads things off with the latest attempt at an original game in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. It is available for the PS4 in a standard edition and a Digital Deluxe Edition.
Also available this week is Pier Solar and the Great Architects (PS3/PS4 Cross-Buy), a retro-style RPG; Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (PS3, PS4), another crime-solving game starring the great detective; Natural Doctrine (PS3, PS4, Vita), a strategy game from NIS America; and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (PS3), another Persona fighter from Atlus and Arc System Works.
Finally this week, all five volumes of the Namco Museum compilation series is now available to download from the PSone Classics section of the store.
The full list of this week’s new releases can be found after the break and a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons can be found at the PlayStation Blog.
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Nintendo confuses me at times. On one hand, their studios are among the best. Nobody can deny that when an official Nintendo game is released, it will likely be a great title. On the other hand, some of their internal practices are questionable at best. Case in point: Nintendo of America’s handling of Club Nintendo. Many diehard fans (myself included) have been left scratching their heads at some of the Big N’s decisions. What started off as an amazing way to get Nintendo swag has devolved into a barren wasteland of repeating digital games and greeting cards.
That’s not to say it’s all bad. The digital offerings we get every month are appreciated (although I would like to have more third party Virtual Console titles), and they are reasonably priced. The limited-edition freebies, such as the Smash Bros. soundtrack and Hyrule Warriors DLC are a step in the right direction, but with Nintendo’s merchandising partners and deep pockets, one wonders why the physical rewards are near non-existent. Do they not feel physical rewards are economically viable? Are they just liquidating old inventory before bringing out a new wave of products? Did they run out of ideas, or do they just not care anymore? The truth is that we’ll never know why Nintendo is giving their North American fans the cold shoulder. We may never see an actual renaissance of Club Nintendo rewards, but here are a few ways Nintendo could fix Club Nintendo in the eyes of many gamers.
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Tomorrow is the first day of October, and you know what that means – time to really start putting together the Halloween costumes! Anthony Amato and I have known what we’ve wanted to be for a while, but we just have to actually get all of the components. Then it’s just time to party!
You’ve still got some time to pick up all those bundles at Humble Bundle, some of which are ending soon. You’ve still got plenty of time for the PC and Android 11 Bundle and the Humble Mobile Bundle 8, but time is running out for the Leading Ladies Weekly Bundle and the 11 Bit Studios Flash Bundle.
As always, Steam has lots of specials that you’ll want to keep your wallet far away from. Duke Nukem Forever is $4.99, Dragon Age: Origins – Ultimate Edition is $7.49, and my personal favorite, Borderlands 2 Game of the Year Edition, is on sale for a measly $9.99. Scoop ’em up!
Not many t-shirts again today…
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And that somebody is Larry Kasanoff, the same producer behind 1995’s Mortal Kombat and 1997’s less-impressive Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Kasanoff told The Wall Street Journal that his production studio, Threshold Entertainment, has signed a deal with The Tetris Company to produce the film as a theatrical release.
There’s no word yet on who will star in the film or when it’ll open in theaters, but Kasanoff believes that Tetris: The Movie should take the form of a massive sci-fi blockbuster:
“It’s a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” Threshold’s CEO Larry Kasanoff tells Speakeasy [a WSJ blog] exclusively. “This isn’t a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We’re not giving feet to the geometric shapes.”
Kasanoff’s sci-fi take on the game’s story isn’t the first time Tetris has looked to the stars for inspiration. The “plot” of 2002’s Tetris Worlds involved rescuing a race of intelligent machines from a dying planet through the power of “Tetrion Gates.” Each gate was unlocked once the player lined up a series of Minos (Tetris pieces) along the bottom of the well.
Personally, I hope it’s like the Captain N episode, “The Trouble With Tetris.”
Four months after the completion of their wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, Harmonix is ready to give gamers their first look at the upcoming Amplitude reboot.
The video was unveiled within the game’s latest Kickstarter update and it is definitely an early look. Things are so preliminary that the levels don’t even have backgrounds yet. But for Amplitude fans, it’s an exciting look into the future of the franchise on the PS3 and PS4.
If all goes well, the Amplitude reboot should be released in Spring 2015.
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