Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Top Story
Kickstart This! Aviary Attorney, Curse of the Darkness, Spectrum
Finding original games, especially from the bigger game developers, is becoming something of a chore. WWhile Ubisoft and Activision continue to produce annualized franchises that fans don’t seem to want as much anymore, truly original titles can always be found on Kickstarter. Designers and developers on the crowdfunding site are creating new experiences and approaching tired genres from a different angle, holding their begging bowl out to the masses to drum up enough cash to keep the lights on long enough to finish the game. So as we enter the season of giving, here are three projects that could use a helping hand. This time we looked at French-inspired animal courtroom drama Aviary Attorney, haunted house FPS Curse of the Darkness, and comic-book inspired side-scrolling adventure Spectrum. (more…)
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Review: Literally Borderlands 1.5 in Every Way
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the Borderlands franchise. I’ve played the first two games for hundreds of hours, and I briefly considered getting Borderlands 2 for the Vita. I was thrilled to find out that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel would fill the gaps between the two games, allowing you to play as Handsome Jack’s cronies and detailing how he came to power. 2K Australia took over on development, working with Gearbox to create the game, and it shows.The Pre-Sequel was rife with glitches, had a weak storyline, and was generally not as fun as the second game. Quality-wise, it felt more like the first, and, at best, could be considered a giant DLC pack. And it’s definitely not worth 2K’s $60 asking price. (more…)
An InnerView with InnerSpace Director Tyler Tomaseski of PolyKnight Games
The Kickstarter phenomenon has allowed those who would not have been able to follow the traditional routes of funding to realise their visions within many art forms, but this is especially true in video games. The way the project campaign is run and managed can often be the determining factor in achieving success or returning empty-handed to the drawing board. It is the final few days that are the most tense, and no one knows this better than the team behind the unique flying adventure title InnerSpace as it entered its last 48 hours with pledges covering 95% of its funding. Then, four hours later, the game managed to skip past its 100% target of $25,000 (including a pledge from myself). We caught up with Tyler Tomaseski, Director and Programmer at PolyKnight Games, to discuss the campaign, his hopes for the game now that it has been funded, and who shot JR. (more…)
Kickstart This! Unsettled, Blood Star, Waking the Glares
Despite Peter Molyneux claiming that “Kickstarter is a destructive force for video games,” as it may cause developers to oversell a project (oh, the irony), the crowdfunding site still plays host to a smorgasbord of quality, undiluted games. This week on Kickstart This! we have top-down survival game Unsettled, Action-RPG Shooter Blood Star, and finally the Myst-esque FPS Waking the Glares. (more…)
The Games of December 2014
The year rolls to a close this month with a handful of new games and the promise of an absolutely massive 2015. December’s release calendar may not typically be packed with the kinds of games that get gamers chattering, but there a few standouts will be available on store shelves (and digital store shelves) over the next 31 days. Games like Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, which more than a few members of the Warp Zoned staff have their eyes on. What else are we looking forward to? Read on to find out… (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in November 2014
November is always a big month for new game releases and the Warp Zoned staff dove in face first, trying our hands at games such as Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, LittleBigPlanet 3, Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions, and the Evolve “Big Alpha.” And, of course, there’s the October spillover and our gigantic backlogs to consider. Want to join our conversation? Then I suggest you take a gander at everything we played after the break. (more…)
Kickstart This! Hollow Knight, Skies, That Dragon Cancer
Welcome to the brand spanking new weekly edition of Kickstart This. The switch is so we at Warp Zoned can highlight great game projects more frequently and hopefully not miss any gems that would have fallen through our monthly window. So sit back, relax, and let us tell you the story of three games – 2D Action Platformer Hollow Knight, MMORPG Skies, and That Dragon, Cancer. (more…)
Posted in Features, Mobile, PC, Top Story
Tagged Hollow Knight
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…)