Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, and More Announced as Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Has Another Big Night and Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2025-2026 DICE Awards
- 2025 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress
- The Game Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Racks Up Nine Wins, Including “Game of the Year”, at the 2025 Game Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- 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)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
All Articles: PC
“F**king Run!” in FEAR 3 multiplayer modes
Back when it was first announced, developer Day 1 Studios revealed that they had enlisted John Carpenter to bring some horror to FEAR 3. It looks like the famed director wasn’t only involved in the single-player campaign as his unique stamp is all over the game’s four multiplayer modes.
Check out the trailer above for some absolutely hellish (and awesome!) imagery or hit the jump for the full scoop on escaping the Wall of Death in “F**king Run!,” the Horde-like “Contractions,” the divide-and-conquer of “Soul Survivor” and the collector-fest that is “Soul King.” (more…)
Activision: “True Crime would’ve been an 85”
Activision’s Head of Developer Relations, Dan Winters, recently sat down with GamesIndustry.biz to talk a little about the megapublisher’s developer culture and possibly refute some of that “evil empire” talk. He also touched on the recently canned True Crime: Hong Kong and revealed that Activision actually had great confidence in the quality of the title. Its cancellation appears to have been strictly business (specifically, it wouldn’t have done as much business as Red Dead Redemption):
We think that the game was tracking to be a very good game. The question was really the size of the prize based on how good it could be. We are confident that thing would of been eighty plus. Eighty five maybe. […] But…The challenges in the market place right now, when you’re talking about open-world games that are going to compete with titles like Red Dead Redemption, expectations for the consumer are really high.
Winters would go on to hint that Activision might be willing to offer the nearly complete game to another publisher: “[True Crime: Hong Kong] would have been, and still might end up being, a very successful mid-tier opportunity for someone.”
Who can say whether Activision is really the evil empire or not? But if they’re cancelling a nearly complete game that they think is worthy of some great review scores, I’d say that’s pretty frickin’ evil.
Posted in News
Tagged PC, PS3, Sleeping Dogs, Xbox 360
Street Fighter X Tekken gets trailer, adds PC version
Above you’ll find the first trailer from Street Fighter X Tekken, Capcom’s latest crossover event. Watch as Ryu, Ken, Guile, Abel and Chun-Li from the Street Fighter series take on Kazuya, Nina, King, Marduk, and Bob from the Tekken franchise. You’ll get a glimpse at the game’s Tag Battle fighting system as well as a view of the Capcomized versions of the Tekken cast.
Street Fighter X Tekken will be coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime in 2012. Capcom used their Captivate event to confirm that a version is in the works for the PC as well.
Head on over to the Capcom-Unity blog to see the first screenshots of SFxT and another trailer.
Posted in News
Tagged PC, PS3, Street Fighter X Tekken, Xbox 360
Welcome back Frank! Dead Rising 2: Off the Record announced
Frank West is back! The photojournalist who’s covered wars will return to experience his second zombie outbreak in Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. Available for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 this Fall, the game will reveal what Frank was up to during Dead Rising 2 in a brand new Fortune City attraction.
More than a mere spinoff, Capcom has promised that Off the Record will include “more twisted enemies” and “more outrageous combo weapons” as well as “enhancements to the save system and the co-op experience.” We also get to see Frank West deliver a suplex to a zombie while wearing wrestling tights. Oh yeah, welcome back Frank!
Frank’s return will also bring back the picture taking from the original Dead Rising and the Prestige Points (PP) exerpience system. And Frank’s camera will have plenty of new subjects as Capcom has said that Off the Record will include new enemies and new Psychos.
Posted in News
Tagged Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
CoD: Black Ops Escalation Map Pack coming May 3
Activision has announced that the second map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops, Escalation, will be available to download on May 3. As with all other CoD DLC, the Escalation pack will exclusively be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace before eventually being added to the PlayStation Store and PC download sites.
The pack will include four new multiplayer maps, along with something Activision is referring to as Call of the Dead, “a Zombies experience like none before it.”
“In crafting the Escalation multiplayer maps – Zoo, Convoy, Hotel and Stockpile – the team developed them to be distinct experiences in their own right, giving players the variety they crave in both setting and gameplay,” said Treyarch Studio Head, Mark Lamia. “And I don’t want to spoil any surprises for Zombies fans, but Call of the Dead takes it to a whole new level.”
To celebrate the upcoming release of Escalation , Treyarch will host a Double XP weekend beginning Friday, May 6th.
Posted in News
Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Brink release date moved up to May 10
Bethesda Softworks has announced that Spalsh Damage’s parkour-inspired shooter, Brink, will be available in stores sooner than expected. The game, which was previously penciled in for May 17, will now be released a week earlier on May 10.
“Production wrapped on Brink earlier than we planned and we didn’t see any reason to keep gamers from getting their hands on this highly anticipated game as soon as it was ready,” said Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing for Bethesda Softworks. “It’s apparent from the tremendous reaction so far that people are eager to jump online and play, and if we can make that happen earlier – we’re going to.”
Getting a week’s headstart on the May 17 release of the hugely hyped L.A. Noire was probably a part of the decision process as well.
PopCap goes experimental with 4th & Battery label
As if Plants vs Zombies wasn’t weird enough, PopCap Games has announced 4th & Battery, a new label for “smaller, simpler, and sometimes edgier games.”
“4th & Battery is a pressure valve intended to keep our heads from exploding,” explained Ed Allard, Executive Vice President of Studios at PopCap. “The PopCap brand has become closely associated with ultra-high quality, polish and attention to detail – which is a great thing. But our standard game development process is therefore long and involved, and doesn’t really accommodate all of the creativity pumping through our collective veins. 4th & Battery gives us a way to quickly try really strange or marginal ideas, and to give our designers a safe area to hone their chops.”
“Expect weirdness,” Jason Kapalka, Chief Creative Officer at PopCap, added.
To that end, 4th & Battery has announced their first game, Unpleasant Horse. The iPhone title will be added to the App Store later this month and it definitely brings the crazy:
Players take on the role of – wait for it! – a strikingly unpleasant horse that sports wings and advances through the game by destroying small birds and landing on more pleasant horses from above. Landing atop other horses enables the player to force them earthward into a perpetual meat grinder for extra points and special bonuses.
Guitar Hero III tops biggest moneymakers list
Guitar Hero may be dead (for now at least), but the franchise has certainly left its mark on the gaming world. In a report released by The NPD Group yesterday, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was crowned the king of all video games… in terms of total sales dollars that is. The music game has brought $830.9 million into Activision’s coffers, no doubt thanks to the expensive guitar bundle you see above.
Activision can also lay claim to the number two game on the list, Call of Duty: Black Ops (even though gamers have bought more copies of CODBLOPS than any other game ever). All told, the publisher snapped up half of the spots in the top ten.
But when it comes to printing money, the only other name that comes to mind is Nintendo. The consolemaker has four games in the top ten: both versions of Wii Fit, Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii. The only non-Activision/Nintendo title in the top ten was MTV Games’ Rock Band.
Interestingly, no game on the list was released before 2007, but CNBC pointed out that the list may not be entirely accurate as Super Mario Bros. 3 sold 18 million copies back in 1990 (before The NPD Group started tracking game sales). Originally retailing for $50, the game’s $900 million dollar tally would surpass every other game on the list.
Hit the jump for the full top ten. (more…)