All Articles: The Last of Us
The Last of Us, Tearaway, Gone Home lead this year’s GDC Awards
The nominees for the 2014 Game Developers Choice Awards have been announced and The Last of Us, Gone Home, and Tearaway lead the field with five nominations apiece.
The Last of Us and Gone Home will be competing for this year’s Game of the Year award alongside Grand Theft Auto V, Super Mario 3D World, and Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto V are also in the running for multiple awards as each has been nominated in two additional categories.
Other multi-category nominees this year include The Stanley Parable, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Device 6, and Papers, Please.
This year’s Game Developers Choice Awards will be handed out on Wednesday, March 19 at the San Francisco Moscone Center during the 2014 Game Developers Conference. The full list of nominees can be found after the break. (more…)
Golden Pixel Awards 2013: What We Loved, What We Hated, and What We’ll Never Forget
2013 was an amazing year in gaming. While we got loads of sequels, we also got some beautiful new IPs, and plenty of new hardware to enjoy it all.
Naughty Dog took a break from Uncharted and gave us The Last of Us, BattleBlock Theater reminded us why we love The Behemoth, and Ken Levine and his crew unleashed BioShock: Infinite on the gaming world. And let’s not forget all the amazing ports, including Diablo III (on consoles), Fez (on the PC), and Hotline Miami (on the PS3 and Vita). Yes, this year took our breath away, and cramped our thumbs like the good old days of the NES. We here at Warp Zoned have been gaming our little fingers off the last 12 months, and we’ve been even harder at work the last few weeks trying to decide what we loved and hated about gaming in 2013. After several days of deliberation, here’s what we came up with. And now it’s time for us to get back to gaming… 2014 is ready for us. (more…)
GTA5 is “Game of the Year” at the 2013 VGX Awards
The first ever VGX Awards (formerly known as the Spike TV Video Game Awards) were held last night and the best games of 2013 were once again crowned by GameTrailers.com’s Geoff Keighley (with an assist from Community‘s Joel McHale). The general consensus among the Internetatti is that the show still doesn’t know what it wants to be and that the “intimate studio setting” (and McHale) made the whole thing feel a bit bizarre. But what about the award winners?
In what is sure to be the first of many, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V was named “Game of the Year” by the VGX Advisory Council. Rockstar’s crime saga also took home “Best Soundtrack.” But, the developer missed out on “Studio of the Year” honors. That award went to Naughty Dog for their work on The Last of Us. Their apocalyptic story was also awarded “Best PlayStation Game.” “Best Voice Actor” (Troy Baker), and “Best Voice Actress” (Ashley Johnson). Other multiple award winners include indie sensation Gone Home (“Best PC Game” and “Best Independent Game”) and BioShock Infinite (“Best Shooter” and “Best Song in a Game”).
A complete list of this year’s winners, including the remaining genre awards, “Best Xbox Game” (the surprising Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons), and “Best Nintendo Game” (Super Mario 3D World), can be found after the break. (more…)
Spike TV announces the nominees for 2013 VGX Awards
The nominees for the 2013 VGX Awards (previously known as the Video Game Awards) have been announced by Spike TV and it looks like this year’s show will be dominated by Grand Theft Auto V, BioShock Infinite, The Last of Us, and Tomb Raider. Those four games, along with Super Mario 3D World, will duke it out for this year’s “Game of the Year” honor.
Grand Theft Auto V lead all games with four additional nominations (“Best PlayStation,” “Best Xbox,” “Action Adventure,” and “Soundtrack”) as well as a “Best Studio” nomination for Rockstar North, “Best Actor” nomination for Steven Ogg, and two “Best Song” nods. The Fulbright Company’s Gone Home leads this year’s indie charge with two nominations (“Best PC” and “Best Independent”) and a “Best Studio” nomination for the developer.
And in a fun twist, Troy Baker will be competing against himself in the “Best Actor” category as his Joel (from The Last of Us) will do battle with his Booker DeWitt (from BioShock Infinite).
The 2013 VGX Awards will air on Spike TV on Saturday, December 7. A complete list of this year’s nominees can be found after the break. (more…)
The Last of Us: Left Behind expansion will let you play as Ellie
Even though the PS4 has ushered in the next generation of gaming, Sony isn’t done with the PS3 just yet. During yesterday’s PS4 launch event, Naughty Dog gave us our first glimpse at “Left Behind,” the first single-player expansion for The Last of Us.
The Last of Us: Left Behind will give players something they’ve been asking for ever since The Last of Us was released to rave reviews this Summer: The chance to control Ellie. Ashley Johnson will return to reprise her role as Joel’s sidekick, but Joel is nowhere to be seen. Instead, “Left Behind” takes place before Ellie met Joel, when she was enrolled at a military boarding school in the Boston quarantine zone. It’s there that she meets Riley (first chronicled in the comic tie-in The Last of Us: American Dream), a “mentor” and friend who will accompany her in “Left Behind.”
The Last of Us: Left Behind is currently scheduled for an early 2014 and will be available for $14.99. Unless you purchased the Last of Us Season Pass, then it’s free.
NCAA Football 14 finds the endzone as July’s best-selling game
The July 2013 best-selling games chart has been released by The NPD Group and EA’s NCAA Football 14 has gone to the head of the class. It will be the last game to carry the “NCAA Football” moniker as the NCAA has ended their licensing agreement with the game publisher.
A mixture of recent and older titles populates the rest of the top ten, which you can view right here:
1. NCAA Football 14 (Xbox 360, PS3)
2. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition (Xbox 360)
3. The Last of Us (PS3)
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, PC)
5. Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS)
6. Far Cry 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
7. Battlefield 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
8. Injustice: Gods Among Us (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U)
9. NBA 2K13 (Xbox 360, PS3 ,Wii, Wii U, PSP, PC)
10. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (Xbox 360, Wii, DS, PS3, 3DS, Wii U, Vita, PC)
The Last of Us is first among June 2013’s best-selling games
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us cashed in on years of hype and some of the best reviews for a PS3 game ever (including a 7/7 from our own Andrew Rainnie) to emerge as the best-selling game of June 2013. Last month’s report from The NPD Group featured plenty of other new faces including Animal Crossing: New Leaf (#2), Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition (#3, the first time its been available for retail sale), and Deadpool (#8).
Call of Duty: Black Ops II, NBA 2K13, and Battlefield 3 continue their lengthy runs as they sold enough copies to land at, respectively, #4, #5, and #9. The complete list of June 2013’s top ten best-selling games can be found after the break.
According to the NPD’s monthly report (via Game Informer), total retail sales of games, consoles, and accessories amounted to $593.3 million, a 15% decline from June 2012’s $700.6 million total. (more…)
The Last of Us Review: Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave
When Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was first unleashed upon the PlayStation 3, Naughty Dog managed to take the best aspects of the Tomb Raider formula and made it better by building on it with likable characters and Indiana Jones-esque hijinks. With The Last of Us, they have once again reinvigorated a flagging genre, the third-person survival shooter, by making it serious, personal, and scary.