Warp Zoned Presents
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Death Stranding connects with 7 nominations at the 2020 GDC Awards
It looks like Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding really connected with the judging panel for the 2020 Game Developers Choice Awards. The developer’s latest game, and his first as the head of an independent team, was nominated in seven categories: “Game of the Year,” “Best Design,” “Best Visual Art,” “Best Narrative,” “Best Audio,” “Best Technology,” and the “Innovation Award.”
The remaining “Game of the Year” contenders gobbled up most of the rest of the nominations, as Remedy’s Control and Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds were close behind with five nominations apiece. Also in the running are House House’s Untitled Goose Game (which collected four nominations) and From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (which snuck into the conversation with three nominations).
In addition to this year’s slate of competitive awards, Kate Edwards will receive Ambassador Award for her work in “helping video games advance to a better place through advocacy and action.” Edwards is the current Executive Director of Global Game Jam and the former head of the International Game Developers Association.
The 2020 Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony will take place on on Wednesday, March 18, and will be livestreamed on the GDC’s Twitch channel. The full list of nominees, as well as all the Honorable Mentions, can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Control, Death Stranding, GDC 2020, Outer Wilds, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Untitled Goose Game
Latest update for Doom and Doom II adds Add-Ons, Quick Saves, 60 FPS support, more
As promised back in December, Bethesda has updated the recent re-releases of Doom (1993) and Doom II with a bevy of new features.
The biggest new addition to both titles is support for Add-Ons, which will initially include a number of popular semi-official WADs. The Final Doom campaigns (TnT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment) are now available to download for free through either game. Another bonus campaign will be available to Doom players looking to grab John Romero’s Sigil, while Doom II fans will be able to download the previously XBLA-exclusive expansion No Rest For the Living.
More Add-Ons will be added to Doom and Doom II at a later date.
Other new features included in this update are native support for visuals at 60 FPS, a Quick Saves option, and multiple Quality-of-Life Adjustments (including a “Quick Weapon Select feature, improved Level Select function, added Aspect Ratio and Brightness options, a new split-screen HUD, and more”).
You can learn more about everything that was added to Doom and Doom II today by visiting the Patch Notes page on Bethesda.net.
Untitled Goose Game and Slay the Spire lead the nominees at 2020 IGF Awards
The Independent Games Festival, the scrappier sibling to the Game Developer Conference, has announced the nominees for this year’s Independent Games Festival Awards.
Not surprisingly, House House’s Untitled Goose Game stole the spotlight, earning two total nominations (for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize” and “Excellence In Audio”). However, it was Die Gute Fabrik’s Mutazione that lead the pack. In addition to a nomination for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize,” the mutant soap opera is also in competition for “Excellence In Visual Art,” “Excellence In Audio,” and “Excellence In Narrative.”
Other games in the running for the IGF’s top prize this year are Mega Crit’s Slay the Spire, Adam Robinson-Yu’s A Short Hike, Zachtronics’s Eliza, and Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s Anodyne 2: Return to Dust.
The winners of the Independent Games Festival Awards will be revealed on Wednesday, March 18, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. League of Geeks’s Trent Kusters will serve as the host of the ceremony, which will be livestreamed for viewers at home on the GDC’s Twitch channel.
The complete list of nominees (and Honorable Mentions) from the 2020 Independent Games Festival Awards can be found after the break. (more…)
Dodge Roll confirms that Exit the Gungeon will be released for PC and consoles in Early 2020
Dodge Roll Games started 2020 off with a big news drop (on Twitter) about all their current and upcoming projects.
First up, Exit the Gungeon will escape its exclusivity deal with Apple Arcade and make its way to “PC and consoles” in Early 2020. The developer didn’t specify which consoles the game would appear on, but Enter the Gungeon has found a lot of success on the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, so a wide release strategy seems likely for this pseudo-sequel.
Speaking of Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll also announced that their first game has now sold more than three million copies across all platforms. Congratulations to the team on reaching that milestone.
Finally, Dodge Roll revealed that Enter the Gungeon: House of the Gundead, a lightgun-powered arcade cabinet developed by Griffin Aerotech, will also be available in Early 2020. The spinoff will offer two-player simultaneous shooting against the “adorable” Gundead horde when it launches sometime in the next few months.
Dodge Roll recently overhauled their website at EnterTheGungeon.com, and you’ll be able to find future updates about all of these games over there.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Enter the Gungeon, Exit the Gungeon
NIS America will release Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories on April 7
NIS America has announced that Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories will be released for the PC, PS4, and Switch on April 7. If you’re unfamiliar with the Disaster Report series, the publisher also passed along a few new details about the game, which was originally released in Japan in 2018:
About Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories
A calm summer day turns into catastrophe when a massive earthquake strikes your city, throwing buildings and lives into chaos. In order to survive, you must navigate familiar locations under unfamiliar circumstances. The fellow survivors you meet and crucial decisions you make will affect the course of your experience and ultimately determine how your journey through this crisis will end.Features
- Stop! Think! Then Act! – Evaluate each perilous situation and make decisions that will impact your own safety as well as that of others.
- Torn From the Headlines – Interact with realistic scenarios within a Japanese city devastated by an earthquake, including scenarios designed in collaboration with the Kobe City Fire Bureau.
- Danger Around Every Corner – Navigate a multitude of crises—from collapsing buildings to raging fires—in a city aplomb with peril.
The Disaster Report series has had something of a shaky history in the US (the third game was never released outside of Japan), but hardcore fans will be able to pick up a special Limited Edition of Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories for the PS4 and Switch. The Limited Edition will be available exclusively through the NIS America Store, and include a copy of the game, the Official Soundtrack, an Emergency Backpack, and an Identification Tag.
In addition to announcing a release date and the Limited Edition, NIS America also revealed a brand new Gameplay Trailer for the survival sim, and it’s been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Switch
Tagged Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories
Travis Knight is no longer directing Sony’s film adaptation of Uncharted
Another One Bites the Dust!
Another One Bites the Dust!
Owwwwww!
Another One Bites the Dust!
Hey Hey!
Another One Bites the Dust!
Heeeeeeeeyyy!
Deadline is reporting that yet another director has been dropped from Sony Pictures’s film adaptation of Uncharted. This time around, Bumblebee‘s Travis Knight has been ousted from the position due to scheduling conflicts caused by star Tom Holland’s participation in the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home sequel:
Uncharted extends Holland’s relationship with the studio. It remains a priority project for the studio, which has seen several directors come and go. The actor will next shoot the next Spider-Man installment in the summer.
Even with this setback, Holland is still set to star as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted film, which will serve as a prequel to the video game franchise. Mark Wahlberg is also still under contract to portray Drake’s mentor, Victor “Sully” Sullivan. However, the film’s previously-announced December 2020 release date has been pushed back yet again as Sony renews their search for a director willing to take it on.
Knight is the sixth director to leave the Uncharted adaptation, and it’s very possible I already made that Queen joke up top in a previous update to this story.
Posted in News, PS3, PS4
Tagged Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Untitled Goose Game stole our hearts in 2019… and sold more than one million copies
Thanks to fun gameplay, a beautiful art style, and an absolutely inspired title choice, House House’s Untitled Goose Game managed to charm the entire Internet in 2019.
But while all the memes are nice, the game’s publisher confirmed yesterday that Untitled Goose Game also a massive hit. According to Panic’s Cabel Sasser (via Twitter), the game has sold more than one million copies in the last three months:
It seems impossible, but last week, three months after launch, Untitled Goose Game passed one million copies sold.
From the bottom of our hearts: thank you for playing our videogame.
— Cabel (@cabel) December 30, 2019
Sassler would go on to thanks the Goose’s many fans in a subsequent tweet: “The reaction was beyond anything we could have imagined. The fan art, the writing, yes the memes, protest signs, Chrissy Teigen, Muppets?! It feels once-in-a-lifetime. We hope we brought some joy into your life, because you brought so much into ours. And we’ll never forget it.”
Untitled Goose Game was originally released for the PC and Switch back in September, but the final push to become a million-seller likely came from it’s recent launch on the PS4 and Xbox One on December 17 (it was also added to the Xbox Game Pass library on the same day).
Presumably, “Sell Two Million Copies” is next on the Goose’s To-Do List.
WB Games is here to remind you (with a new trailer) that Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will be released in 2020
Happy Star Wars Day! You can head down to your local theater anytime this weekend to catch a showing of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the final film in the “Skywalker Saga.” But WB Games and TT Games also want to remind you that Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will be available for the PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One in 2020.
The new trailer embedded above features a short glimpse at Lego-ized scenes from all nine Star Wars films, while also promising that fans who played the previous titles in the series will get to experience a “New Game” sometime next year.