Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Previews
Secret Ponchos Interview: Dueling With Yousuf Mapara and Jose Lopez
One of the games we were most excited to see at PAX East 2013 was Secret Ponchos, the intense twin-stick arena fighter set in the world of a Spaghetti Western. Contributor Anthony Amato, Senior Editor Nicole Kline, and Editor-In-Chief John Scalzo met up with President and Creative Director Yousuf Mapara and Art Director Jose Lopez and had a fantastic conversation with them while trying out the game. Nicole got her butt kicked by an eight-year-old, but that didn’t mar our first impression of the game, which was: we want more as soon as possible. Read on for the full interview we conducted with the incredibly talented guys at Switchblade Monkeys. (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, PC, Previews, PS3, Top Story, Xbox 360
Tagged PAX East 2013, Secret Ponchos
Secret Ponchos Hands-On Preview: These Outlaws Will Steal Your Heart (Literally)
Secret Ponchos is a top-down, twin stick arena shooter stylized as a Spaghetti Western – characters, locations, music, and all. Developer Switchblade Monkeys has taken their love of those old Italian movies and married it to twitch-reaction arena mechanics, creating a game that took PAX East 2013 by storm. After seeing the trailer, it was on the top of my list of must-play games that weekend, and I was not disappointed by my experience. (more…)
Posted in PC, Previews, PS3, Top Story, Xbox 360
Tagged PAX East 2013, Secret Ponchos
Transistor Hands-On Preview: Speechless
Supergiant’s first game, Bastion, was an action RPG in the Legend of Zelda mold that didn’t tread on any new gameplay ground. But its narrative voiceover (provided by actor Logan Cunningham), and the way it integrated music into the story, moved Bastion beyond being just an enjoyable XBLA title and pushed it into Game of the Year contender territory back in 2011.
The developer’s second game, the sci-fi action RPG Transistor, made its worldwide debut at last month’s PAX East show. Using a similar isometric view, it’s clear that Transistor shares a fair bit of Bastion’s DNA, but it is also so much more. It’s almost like Bastion turned up to 11. (more…)
Posted in Previews, Top Story
Tagged PAX East 2013, Transistor
Dead Island: Riptide Hands-On Preview: Wasting Away in Zombieville
Dead Island: Riptide is a sequel to Dead Island, which was released to middling reviews and disappointment after a strong advertising campaign in 2011. Deep Silver’s marketing for the sequel has already stirred up controversy with their plan to include a “bloody torso” statue in the UK special edition. The game itself will be out this month, and was playable on the show floor at PAX East. The developers were showing off a cooperative mode, allowing you to work together with other players to fortify an area and keep the zombies out. But between collision issues, terrible graphics, and hysterical ragdoll phyics, the game was a jumbled mess. (more…)
Posted in PC, Previews, PS3, Top Story, Xbox 360
Tagged Dead Island: Riptide, PAX East 2013
Watch Dogs PAX East Impressions: Hack the Planet, or Maybe Just Chicago
Ubisoft didn’t have Watch Dogs playable on the show floor at PAX East, but the game still had an enormous presence. The publisher showed a special behind-closed-doors presentation of the game, which included a special Watch Dogs lanyard as a giveaway (and if you were wearing it on the show floor, you may have gotten a surprise visit from a Frag Doll with a free t-shirt). I would have much preferred being able to play the game myself, but what I saw on the screen was a somewhat impressive, if disappointingly short, display of the capabilities of main character Aiden Pearce. (more…)
Posted in PC, Previews, PS3, PS4, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox 360
Tagged PAX East 2013, Watch Dogs
The Last of Us Hands-On Preview: Tension and Fear Win the Day
I wasn’t sure what to think when I first saw trailers for The Last of Us, Naughty Dog’s first non-Nathan Drake game in six years. It certainly looked like a Naughty Dog game, with the same style and graphics, but this was set in a post-apocalyptic world, one in which humans had been infected by a strange fungus, which left the victims zombified. The remaining survivors of humanity lived in terror in a wasteland. While the Uncharted games had dabbled in science fiction (remember those crazy mutants from the second game?), this was the studio’s first real deviation from reality. I was doubtful that they could pull it off, mainly because the market is so saturated with these types of games, and in the end, not many of them are that great. But from what I saw in the half hour demo at PAX East this past weekend, Naughty Dog just might succeed. (more…)
Posted in Previews, PS3, Top Story
Tagged PAX East 2013, The Last of Us
Shovel Knight Hands-On Preview: I’m Diggin’ It
Being in the vicinity of Shovel Knight, the first project from Yacht Club Games, seems to make horrible puns just emerge from the ether. During my PAX East playtime, a nearby developer assured me that while the current build was only ten percent complete, the team was beginning to “dig in” towards the game’s full potential. The developer actually hadn’t realized the double meaning of his words until someone else pointed them out to him. He apologized for the terrible wordplay and admitted that it had been happening all morning.
But a game like Shovel Knight requires this kind of pun-tastic sense of humor. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, PC, Previews, Top Story, Wii U
Tagged PAX East 2013, Shovel Knight
Shovel Knight Interview: Sailing the PAX East Seas With Sean Velasco
Sean Velasco knows retro games. As the former Director of WayForward Technologies, he was the driving force behind Contra 4, A Boy and His Blob, and Double Dragon: Neon. And as the “Captain” of Yacht Club Games, Velasco is sailing off into the uncharted waters of an original property, Shovel Knight.
You can read all about Shovel Knight in our PAX East playthrough, which will be posted later today (UPDATE: Here it is!). But for now, let Captain Velasco guide you through his love of classic games, his thoughts on Kickstarter, Shovel Knight’s future, and the possibility of a PSN/XBLA version of the game. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Features, Interviews, PC, Previews, Top Story, Wii U
Tagged PAX East 2013, Shovel Knight