Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Mobile
Blizzard @ PAX East 2014: Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III PS4, Hearthstone, WoW: Draenor
Blizzard will have plenty to showcase at this year’s PAX East expo, including playable demos of the PS4 port of Diablo III, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor.
Players who get a chance to visit booth #848 will be able to play as The Crusader in Diablo III’s “Ultimate Evil Edition” with a DualShock 4 controller for the first time. If they slide over to the WoW: Warlords of Draenor demo, they will experience “updated character models” and the expansion’s “intro experience.” A brand-new demo of Heroes of the Storm will also be on hand, with never-before-seen heroes to try out. And finally, the iPad edition of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will be playable at Blizzard’s booth.
As always, PAX East will be held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. This year’s expo will begin on Friday, April 11 and run through Sunday, April 13.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4
Tagged Diablo III, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, PAX East 2014, World of Warcraft
Robotoki will use CryEngine to develop Human Element for PC, PS4, Xbox One
Robotoki and Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward’s former Community Manager, are hard at work on Human Element, their first game. Yesterday, Bowling confirmed that Human Element will be developed using Crytek’s CryEngine as well revealed the game’s launch plans.
Human Element is currently in development for the PC and will be released in November 2015 (so says Bowling via Twitter). In addition to the PC version, the game is in the works for next-generation consoles (specifically the PS4 and Xbox One), but it is unknown when the console edition will be available. A mobile spinoff of the open world game where players are tasked with rebuilding the world 35 years after a zombie uprising is also in development.
“The ambitious narrative and gameplay of Human Element required an innovative set of features in order to achieve our vision.” said Bowling. “CryEngine is the perfect fit for us because it delivers so many powerful features straight out of the box such as the physical based shading system and the infinite terrain from segmented worlds to create a massive open world experience but still allow the visual fidelity and detail our players expect from a first person experience from our team.”
Bowling also confirmed (again via Twitter) that a Human Element prequel originally in development for the Ouya has been canceled.
Continue Countdown #1 – Project Morpheus, The Last of Us Movie, South Park RPG, More
Welcome to the world premiere of Warp Zoned’s “Continue Countdown.” In each 30-minute episode, the Warp Zoned staff will discuss nine news stories from the week that was.
Get your quarters ready because in this episode Editor-In-Chief John Scalzo, Senior Editor Nicole Kline, and Staff Writer Mike Ryan talk about Sony’s “Project Morpheus” headset, the movie adaptation of The Last of Us, DriveClub’s delay, our expectations for Alien: Isolation, Gone Home’s console port, the epicness quotient of Angry Birds Epic, South Park: The Stick of Truth and the future of the licensed game, used games at Walmart, and our suggestions for the Official Scrabble Dictionary.
Posted in Mobile, PC, Podcast, PS3, PS4, Top Story, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Alien: Isolation, Angry Birds Epic, DriveClub, Gone Home, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Tabletop Games, The Last of Us
Papers Please wins big at the 2014 Independent Games Festival
Lucas Pope’s Papers Please was the big winner during last night’s Independent Games Festival. The 2014 edition of the annual awards show honoring independent games gave three awards to Pope’s game including “Excellence in Design,” “Excellence in Narrative,” and the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize.” Who knew taking control of a border control agent living under a harsh dictator could be so fun?
Five other games were also honored with awards last night. The “Excellence in Visual Art” award went to Jason Roberts for his puzzler Gorogoa. If you’re more of a sound guy, you’d probably like to know that Simogo was given the “Excellence in Audio” award for their beguiling mobile game, Device 6.
The “Nuovo Award,” which recognizes “abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development,” was given to Tale of Tales for Luxuria Superbia. According to the IGF, Luxuria Superbia is “a musically and visually resplendent title that uses the player’s touch to stimulate in-game sensations of pleasure and joy. Absent any characters or underlying narrative, the game is focused entirely on the experience of traveling through a series of tunnels to make them “feel good” and affect their colors and plumage through the player’s tactile inputs.” Certainly sounds unconventional to me.
The final two awards of the night went to Hopoo Games and Galactic Cage. Hopoo Games is made up of students from the University of Washington and, obviously enough, they took home the “Best Student Game” award for Risk of Rain. Finally, the “Audience Award” went to Galactic Cafe for their work on The Stanley Parable, their heavily-narrated first-person game.
Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC
Tagged GDC 2014, Papers Please
The first Angry Birds Epic gameplay trailer is suitably epic
Healing spells… fireballs… lightning bolts… Yup, the first gameplay trailer for Angry Birds Epic proves that the game is definitely a turn-based RPG.
The free-to-play Angry Birds Epic is available now as a “soft launch” game in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Other countries will follow with a full launch planned for later this year.
Posted in Mobile, News
Tagged Angry Birds Epic
A new trailer explores the combat and narrative of Hyper Light Drifter
A new trailer for Hyper Light Drifter has been posted to the PlayStation Blog along with more details about the game’s combat system and narrative style.
On the topic of combat, developer Alex Preston had this to say about how enemies will attack The Drifter:
Creating intelligent and tactical scenarios with enemies is key, rather than stacking cannon fodder that waits gleefully in line to get their heads chopped off. Some enemies dodge projectiles, others deflect attacks, some (the poison wolves) attack you and vulnerable enemies as a pack. We even have enemies that command weaker types in order to gain an advantage. Each encounter should feel different, and remain challenging.
And for the narrative, Preston will attempt to tell the story of Hyper Light Drifter using no dialogue:
We are wary of endless blocks of text, poorly designed UI, and explicit handholding, which can often dilute a great experience. These leave a player frustrated, or worse, disinterested. Instead, we want players to uncover the rich mythology along with the Drifter in a more organic way, with a narrative that’s not explicit. We chose to recognize that players are smart.
Dialogue and quests are presented in storyboardlike sequences, which convey a specific mood without the use of text or voiceovers. This also allows us to keep the game as visually lush as possible and break past language barriers.
If you’re interested in one of the most interesting Kickstarter success stories of 2013, the remainder of the PlayStation Blog post is a recommended read. Hyper Light Drifter will be available for PC platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) by the end of the year with PS4, Vita, Wii U, and Ouya versions coming later.
Crazy Taxi: City Rush will collect fares on mobile platforms this year
Sega’s unforgettable Crazy Taxi franchise will return later this year… but not in the way you’d expect. Hardlight Studios, Sega’s premier mobile development team, has joined forces with Kenji Kanno, the developer of the original Crazy Taxi arcade cabinet, to create Crazy Taxi: City Rush, a new entry in the series developed exclusively for iOS and Android devices.
“I’m very excited to finally be able to share with you the first news of Crazy Taxi: City Rush,” Kanno said. “We are delivering a truly fun game that captures everything our fans love about the original and infusing it with several new features to create an even more fantastic and memorable experience.”
In City Rush, players will swipe to change lanes in an all-new city setting. Our first introduction to the game, courtesy of a handful of screenshots, can be viewed at the Sega Blog:
Crazy Taxi: City Rush will launch with a wide variety of adrenaline-fueled missions, wild challenges – and unique areas to unlock, explore, and master as you progress through the campaign. Customize your cab to increase its power and visual appeal with a wide variety of over-the-top upgrades. Take your friends for a ride and blaze a trail through the city, sidewalks, and alleyways for special rewards.
Sega has “soft launched” Crazy Taxi: City Rush in several regions across the globe as a free-to-play title with a worldwide launch scheduled for later this year. In the meantime, Sega is giving players a free ride in the original Crazy Taxi. For a limited time, The game is available as a free download on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
Angry Birds Epic is a turn-based RPG… seriously
A few weeks ago, Rovio revealed Angry Birds Stella, a girl-powered spinoff to their popular mobile franchise. While we still don’t know what kind of game Stella will be, we now know that the developer is working on another Angry Birds game that is going to be “Epic.”
Angry Birds Epic will star the titular birds and their piggie antagonists in a turn-based RPG and “an extensive crafting system.” The game will “soft launch” this week on the iOS App Store in Australia and Canada. After that, it will expand to several other countries before officially launching on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8 devices later this year.
You have to hand it to Rovio, they know how to tick all the franchise boxes. In addition to the original Angry Birds trilogy, they’ve produced several crossover games (Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Star Wars I & II), a multiplayer-only version (Angry Birds Friends), a totally different type of game starring the swine (Bad Piggies), and a kart racer (Angry Birds Go!). Hey, it worked for Nintendo…
[Source: Kotaku]
Posted in Mobile, News
Tagged Angry Birds Epic