Train2Game’s World record Game Jam has a story on the Guinness World Record official website.
There are some great pictures from the weekend in the story.
You can read the story in the link below:
Category Archives: Games QA Tester
Train2Game News: World Record Certificate
We have been sent our Guiness world record certificate! The certificate was awarded for most participants at a 48 hour Game Jam. Well done everyone once again! It is a huge achievement.
Train2Game News: Mid-week round up
Five months since its release, Minecraft on the Xbox 360 is still selling 27,000 units daily. That’s an estimated 4 million copies sold, further solidifying the games legacy.
Valve’s Steam distribution service now sells software as well as games. The software is for games development. The products currently available on the store are ArtRage Studio Pro, CameraBag 2, GameMaker: Studio, 3D-Coat, 3DMark Vantage, 3DMark 11 and of course, Source Film-maker.
Halo 4 won’t be getting Kinect controls, says 343 Industries’ Frank O’Connor. His opinion is that while the motion sensor has its uses when it comes to the UI, controlling a core game is not what it’s for. Kinect will be used for Halo Waypoint however, which can be launched from in the game.
Reportedly, Arkane studios’ Dishonored will take over twenty hours to complete playing stealthily with killing no one. A brutal play through, killing anyone in your path, will take between 12 to 14 hours but that’s without exploring every nook and cranny, and knowing the solution to everything beforehand. It should take more thorough or inexperienced players longer than that.
PlayStation Europe is offering a month long internship to who ever can make the best game on LittleBigPlanet for the PS Vita. The best submission, as voted by a PlayStation judging panel, will be rewarded with a month-long internship at Swedish studio Tarsier. Games will be judged on gameplay, originality, and commercial appeal. The winner will eventually help work on official DLC for the game. To register an interest, go here.
A new mod has been developed for Crysis. The mod, StarCry, sees many different hit sci-fi shows making their way into the new user made campaign for the game. Franchises such as Stargate SG1 and Star Wars are featured in the mod.
Chasing Aurora developer, Martin Pichlmair, says that Nintendo is working hard to make the Wii U eShop friendly and open for independent developers. This opens up a whole new market with a new innovative console to work with.
World of Tanks official site, Wargaming.net, say that registration numbers have passed the 40 million mark. Players have been pouring into servers to check out the big 8.0 update, which overhauled WoT’s visuals and added proper physics. World of Tanks is one of the biggest free to play games in the world.
Cliff Bleszinski has announced he is leaving Epic. After two decades with the company he is moving on to expand his career. Whilst with the company he was responsible for games such as Jazzy Jackrabbit and the highly acclaimed Gears Of War series.
Bad Piggies, the Angry Birds spin-off from Rovio, shot to the top spot on the US iTunes App Store within three hours of launch. The firm said the game was the fastest chart-topper in the company’s history. The game is the third from the Finnish studio this year to hit the top spot within it’s first day of release. The other titles were Amazing Alex and of course, Angry Birds Space.
Train2Game News: SpecialEffect challenges Train2Game students
SpecialEffect, the games charity, have a challenge for Train2Game students. Their goal is to get 25,000 views of their brand new “SpecialEffect – The Gamers Charity video” by December 25th.
They would like all Train2Game students share it via Facebook and Twitter to get fellow gamers to watch it and share. A community is big as ours should have no trouble getting the video up to 25,000 views.
You can read more about the charity and watch the video in the links below.
Will you take up the challenge?
Train2Game News: Students in their local papers
Train2Game Students Aaron Reeve, Michael Wittington and Scott Williams have been featured in their local newspapers for being a part of the world record breaking game jam held at University of Bedfordshire in Luton.
You can see the articles in the links below.
Sevenoaks_Chronicle_September_2012
Southall Gazette September 2012
Woking Informer September 2012
Well done guys. Good luck with everything you do.
Train2Game witnesses start of Zombie apocalypse
Whilst Train2Game were at Eurogamer over the weekend, they witnessed the beginning of the Zombie apocalypse.
The link below shows the picture evidence of these nightmare creatures with Train2Game
http://www.facebook.com/Train2GameEuroGamer2012
See everything Train2Game got up to at Eurogamer 2012
Not for the faint hearted!
Train2Game News: A day at Eurogamer Expo: Part 2
This is the continuation of my day at the Eurogamer Expo held in London at Earl’s Court.
The first game I tried in the afternoon was the new Devil May Cry from Capcom. With the main character, Dante, being younger, he is cockier and cooler than ever. I have not played previous Devil May Cry games. It’s a grand display of action in a beautiful demonic world with a good mix of Angel and Demon powers it looks to be attractive with a good pace of action.
I finally got my first play on a PSVita at the show, playing Little Big Planet. The game was enjoyable, it made good use of the touch screen. However I did find the way that I was holding the device meant I was touching the track pad on the back. It didn’t affect the game I was playing but I fear it might when a game uses the mechanic.
I didn’t get to play a WiiU unfortunately. I did however have a look at it. The person I watched was playing ZombiU. The game definitely blows away any worries that it is going to be all family games again like with the Wii. ZombiU looks like a good horror with impressive graphics. It uses the tablet controller in interesting ways, having to hold up the tablet to the screen so that it can disable a jammer in one of the in game areas. My only worry is whether the tablet will be too big in your hands to use comfortably.
After a little shopping trip, buying a Joker shirt and an Assassins Creed wall scroll, I came back to the Capcom stand to play Resident Evil 6. Now you may know I am a big fan of the series, so much so that I have the Umbrella logo tattooed just above my elbow. I was disappointed with Resi 5, I felt that it had lost all of its horror elements. Resident Evil 6 however seems to have something for most people. Playing as Chris Redfield you get a good action paced story, like what it seemed they wanted Resident Evil 5 to be. Playing as Leon Kennedy however you get a good sense of the survival horror similar to the first games of the series. There is a third character called Jake who I didn’t get to try out, my guess would be he is a mixture of the two styles.
As I was playing Resident Evil 6, I turned around to see a zombie who was eyeing up my arm. The guy had amazing make up which was so good in fact he wouldn’t look out of place in The Walking Dead. He then proceeded to give a friend of mine his phone to get his picture taken with a character from Mortal Kombat, that isn’t something you see every day.
I attended the Train2Game stand once more and saw the results of the Royal Rush competition I mentioned in the first part of this blog. The winner got a limited edition silver Xbox360 Controller and it was handed to the winner by The Joker.
The final game I played at the event was the Tomb Raider reboot. The game was absolutely gorgeous and Lara Croft no longer feel likes an immortal woman. She now feels flawed and real as you run around which adds to the immersion of the game. I was doing a hunting mission and my objective was to kill a deer using the Bow and Arrow I had just obtained. My only complaint was the arrows seem far too weak. I shot the deer straight through the neck, thinking that would kill it no problem. It then took an extra six arrows to take it down. The game is still in pre-beta though so I am sure such problems will be fixed by release in March.
Before I set off to drive home I headed in to the Cybercandy store and I bought my self a Zombie survival energy drink to keep me going through the drive home. I had an incredible day and it is very exciting seeing all the games that are soon to be released.
Train2Game News: A day at Eurogamer Expo: Part 1
On Saturday I was sent to the Eurogamer Expo held at Earl’s Court in London. I am going to give a recap of my day for anyone who couldn’t be there.
My first clue that the day was going to be a good one was seeing The Mask queuing to enter. I was surrounded by hundreds of other early entry ticket holders all eager to burst through the door and get their hands on the up coming games.
As the doors opened and we all filed in. I knew exactly what I wanted to play. I walked straight to the over 18 area to finally get my first taste of Arkane Studio’s Dishonored.
The demo gave you a good taste. I got to use the possession skill, walking around in guards bodies to sneak around, before falling out and assassinating them. The blink skill is a good mechanic, similar to that of Nightcrawler from Xmen, you can teleport short distances without being detected and get to hard to reach areas. The world its self looks beautiful and the level design is so versatile. I can not wait to get my hands on this game.
Next up I had a shot at Hitman: Absolution. Everyone who played the Square-Enix game got a little Agent 47 model, who now sits proudly on my desk. The graphics are of a very high standard and the game play is typical Hitman from what I could see. Having only played Hitman:Blood Money previously, I was happy to see the ability to peak from hiding places, which was seriously lacking in earlier games. This will probably be another one I end up getting.
After seeing highly amusing stickers that were for the iOS game Carmaggedon I had to hunt down the stand. It is a remake of the game released fifteen years ago that had so much controversy surrounding it. When the game was first released the public didn’t like the fact that you had to run over people. They had to change it to zombies or face the game being banned. Now that times have changed the game is back in all its glory, the way it should have been.
I then visited the Train2Game stand to say hello. I was happy to see many students and potential students attending. Royal Rush, the winning game from the world record winning Game Jam, made by RetroMetro, was playable at the stand. Train2Game held competitions daily, who ever got the highest score on the game was awarded a prize later in the day.
At midday it was time for the Dishonored developer session. We all took our seats and were introduced to Christophe Carrier and Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Studios. They took us through the story and some of their development ideas before doing two demos for us. The first time through they demonstrated the stealth aspects of the game, using the blink mechanic and distractions to get to the end of the level. No one was killed and he was only spotted once before disappearing out of sight. The second time was much more brutal. Killing everyone he could find using different methods. The highlight of which being the moment he froze time with a bullet in mid air, possessed the guard who had fired it and walked in front of the shot before leaving his body and unfreezing time, making the guard shoot himself.
That covers my morning at Eurogamer. There was so much to do and see through out the day I am going to have to split this in to two blogs across the day. Check back later for the continuation.
Train2Game News: Mid-week round up
Blizzard Entertainment released Mists Of Pandaria yesterday. The latest expansion for World Of Warcraft. Blizzard have also said that they have no fear of Windows 8 and will release games for any platform their players are on.
Avenged Sevenfold have released a new track that will feature on Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2. The song, Carry On, is the second song the band have released for a Call Of Duty game. They previously released Not Ready To Die with one of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops DLC packs.
Telltale’s five Walking Dead episodic games will be put on disc in December for Xbox360 and PS3. The game is based on the graphic novel turned TV show and through playing them myself I can say, if you are a fan of the series, play this game. You won’t be disappointed.
Nvidia’s head of cloud gaming, Phil Eisler, believes that cloud gaming could take over from consoles. He believes that consoles have one final generation in them before they die out, leaving the world of gaming in the hands of the cloud.
Ubisoft have announced that Assassins Creed 3 will not play on Windows XP. The company has released the specifications needed to play the game. There is a version for Windows 8 in the pipeline though.
Bethesda have released an animated prequel to its upcoming Dishonored. The webseries is called Tales of Dunwall and the gorgeous animated shorts are being released in three parts. The videos can be found on YouTube and they show the downfall of the in game city.
Sony Xdev are giving a small studio the opportunity to win £25,000. This new initiative, called Playstation Pioneers, will reward developers for a PlayStation Mobile game concept and will also offer successful candidates the opportunity to work alongside XDev. Further details can be found here.
An extra four titles have been added to the Humble Bundle 6. The titles are: Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown, and Wizorb. If you have already purchased the bundle, you will get the new games added at no extra cost.
If you are attending Eurogamer this weekend you can get a special surprise when you play Company Of Heroes 2. Everyone that plays the game or attends the developer session at the event will get a code to access a future beta for the game.
Finally Train2Game will be at Eurogamer this weekend. If you are attending go and say hello, it is always nice to meet these people. I will be attending on the Saturday so if you see me feel free to talk to me. I hope everyone that attends has a brilliant time.
Train2Game News: Another student in his local paper
Train2Game Student, Joao Soares, has been featured in his local paper following the World record Game Jam.
The article can be read in the link below:
The Train2Game Blog 