Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Top Story
It’s In Your Blood: A History of Horror Games (Part Three)
If you’re anything like me, you like to be scared. Horror movies accomplish this nicely from time to time, but for a truly memorable experience, horror games are unmatched. They drop you into terrifying situations, leaving you no choice but to wade through unforgiving environments and do battle with grotesque creatures… but when did this genre begin? How did it evolve? If you find yourself asking these questions, take a seat. Welcome to our domain!
We recently covered the birth of horror games, and then waxed poetic about the genre’s evolution. This time around, you’ll be reading about a far more stable period for this type of game. As certain horror titles began to stand out from the crowd, developers and publishers quickly took notice. This leads us directly into… (more…)
Posted in Features, PC, Retro, Top Story
Tagged Resident Evil 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan Review: A Kodak Moment
When talking about quality, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise is filled with anomalies. It’s a veritable roller coaster of highs and lows, of amazing stories and embarrassing character designs. It’s kind of a love-hate relationship. Kids of the 80s have fond memories of the original comic, cartoon, and movie. Opinion on the early 2000s cartoon was kind of split, as it is for the current iteration on Nickelodeon. The ongoing IDW comic, which recently released its 50th issue, has been incredible. The 2014 live-action movie resulted in a collective eye roll from the dedicated TMNT fan community, while this Summer’s sequel had many diehards enamored with its representations of favorites Bebop and Rocksteady. And let’s not even talk about The Next Mutation or the Out of Their Shells concert tour.
Yes, the Ninja Turtles actually went on tour back in the day.
Much like the other facets of the franchise, the TMNT video games range in quality from amazing to downright boring. The original arcade game and Turtles in Time are arguably two of the best beat ’em ups ever made. The game based on the 2007 computer-animated feature is also a decent title. On the flipside, the first game based on the 2013 cartoon series was pretty much universally panned, and the first NES game was downright awful. Electric seaweed? Really? Even with the Game Genie, I couldn’t beat that damn game.
Which brings us to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, the latest game in the ever-popular Turtles universe. Knowing the reputation of the franchise, I started this one up with a bit of understandable trepidation, as history shows that these games have potential to fall anywhere on the TMNT quality bell curve. After giving it my full attention, I can safely say that this one falls right there in the middle. Not quite a Cowabunga, but not a Shell Shock, either. (more…)
Kickstart This! Transmission
Sometimes a game comes along that just speaks to your soul before you have even played it. You fall in love with this game through its character design and music, and marvel at its art style in screenshots and trailers. You eagerly anticipate an exciting new adventure come release day. Of course, many of these games are backed by a studio and publisher that have a budget to spend on PR and marketing, with many coders cracking out footage needed to whet the appetites of potential players. To find a game on Kickstarter that manages to create a trailer so moving, so near to perfect as you could hope for, is remote, and yet, that is exactly what Paper Unicorn has achieved with Transmission.
Prepare for contact. (more…)
Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour Hands-On Preview: Disturbing For the Wrong Reasons
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Resident Evil 7 has officially been announced. The reveal itself wasn’t that surprising… it was pretty much assumed the game would be announced at this year’s E3 Expo… but I don’t think anyone could have guessed it would look like this. With a new first-person perspective, a total absence of familiar characters, and no immediate ties to the previous games in the series, the seventh game in the series seems like a fresh start altogether. (more…)
Superhot Review: A Puzzle-Shooter That Deserves All the Time in the World
“Time Moves Only When You Move.”
The developers behind Superhot know exactly what their minimalist first-person shooter is all about, and this succinct summation of the game’s hook is the perfect way to describe it to anyone unfamiliar with the game. It also tells prospective players that Superhot isn’t just a fast-paced arcade shooter (though it can be). Instead, it’s a deliberately-paced puzzle game where methodically figuring out the correct series of actions to complete each level is the only way to move forward. Even if you’ve never played a first person shooter before, it’s possible to pick up Superhot and understand what the game’s devilish AI has in store for you. (more…)
Kickstart This! Death Story
I’m going to begin by offering an apology. A few weeks ago, I highlighted a game on Kickstart This! called Lynn and the Spirits of Inao by Bloomylight Studios. The project was cancelled after it was revealed that Bloomylight founder David Tollari had been using unpaid interns to complete the game, which is a violation of French employment laws. Like many of the games journalists who covered the project, I was unaware of these infractions, and while it may not have been something we could have foreseen, I still feel sorry for those who wasted their time on the recommendation.
So let’s move on to another project… though Kickstarter seems to have gone all dark and gloomy this week, and there’s nothing but death, death, and more death! First, I found Death of Humanity, an online multiplayer survival game from Dingo’s Nest. There is also the visual novel Undead Darlings, where you explore the funpocalypse with a group of half-dead girls?
But my choice for today’s Kickstart This! is the rather cute Death Story from Team Neko. So let’s swing our scythe and find out why it rose above the other undead offerings. (more…)
The Games of June 2016
We’re all over the map here at Warp Zoned when it comes to what we’re excited to play this coming month! God Eater: Resurrection, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, and Mighty No. 9 are all games we’re looking forward to – though we are pretty disappointed about No Man’s Sky. That’s OK, though, because we’re all really excited about E3!
Anyway, hit the jump to see what we’re looking forward to playing in June. (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in May 2016
May was full of fun for us here at Warp Zoned, and it seems like we played a little of everything, from Doom, to Overwatch, to Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. But we also had time to visit some older games and work on our backlogs as well. It’s never a dull moment for us! Hit the jump to read all about the games we played in May. (more…)