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Recently SyncError, the Community Manager for QUAKE Live, got a chance to interview Trajan, who was the first player on QUAKE Live to achieve 250,000 frags and earn the Dark Angel award. An impressive stat, and congratulations to Trajan from the team here at id! Hit the (rocket) jump for the interview.
Wanted to give a shout out to Splash Damage, who last week were named one of the Top 100 Tech and Media Companies by UK newspaper/website The Guardian. Sponsored by business consultancy PwC and Kemp Little, the list “aims to identify and showcase the top 100 innovative technology and media companies in the UK.”
For more details on the list, head here.
Cheers!
Here’s a few more Fallout 3 news items.
Tonight on X-Play, Morgan and Adam will be announcing their Best of 2008 winners. Fallout 3 is nominated in a few categories, including Best RPG, Best Art Direction, and Game of the Year. To find out who the winners are, tune in at 8 p.m. eastern time.
Speaking of winners, Hooked Gamers announced Fallout 3 as their #1 Game of the Year. Additionally, the game was their #1 PC Game and #4 Xbox 360 title. Here’s a sample of what they had to say:
“The ongoing background story is absorbing, the action is frequently frenetic without being overwhelming, and the graphics are spot on for making you feel like you are actually wandering a Post-Apocalypse world. Fallout 3 has got us completely hooked and we are certain most of you as well. There was only one spot suitable for Fallout 3 and that is #1.”
In other news, the editors at Game Daily have put together a list of the Top 25 Addictive Games of All Time. Both Oblivion (#17)and Fallout 3 (#12) made their list
To wrap things up, there are new Fallout 3 reviews up at Game Positive, Collider, That Aussie Game Site, The Times (in South Africa), and Xazz.
On Friday, we received exciting news from IGN that Fallout 3 won their Overall Game of Show award for the second year in a row. In addition, the game also received Best Console Game (with console-specific awards for PS3 and 360) and Best RPG honors.
Since it’s a been a few months since we last talked about Team Fortress 2 on the blog, you might have thought these guys had moved on to playing something else. Wrong! They’ve actually been going through rigorous training for a new developer league that begins tonight: The TF 2 Studio Rumble.
If you take a look here, you can see there are six divisions in the league, each featuring six different developer teams. In Team Bethesda’s first match up in the East Division, they’ll be squaring off against Beenox Studios. If you’re interested in following the action, Purkey let me know that you can watch the match on SourceTV at 6PM tonight. It looks like the IP for the SourceTV server is: 8.9.8.42:27020.
For more details on the Studio Rumble (teams, rules, schedule, etc.), head here.
As we head out for the really, really rainy weekend, I thought I’d share some news coverage from the week.
This afternoon we received some exciting news that Shivering Isles won RPG of the Year over at Gameindustry.com. Pretty cool for a couple reasons. First, in the site’s ten years of doing annual awards, Shivering Isles is the first expansion to win this category. Even better is the fact that the voting came from Gameindustry.com readers. We’re truly honored that our fans came out in large numbers to vote, particularly since it was up against some really great games. Many thanks!
Not too long ago, I found out that Guinness – those guys that determine the world’s tallest person, longest fingernails, and the most t-shirts ever worn at one time, were coming out with a new book that shares videogame records. While it’s not the first time Guinness has recorded videogame records, it’s their first book devoted completely to games. To help create the book, Guinness worked with Twin Galaxies, who have been recording pinball and videogame records for years.
The book, Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition, just recently went on sale (I got my copy in the mail two days ago), and it even features two pages on the Elder Scrolls series. I won’t spoil the whole book (soon to be a staple in my bathroom library), but here’s a few tidbits I thought I’d share:
- Daggerfall has the largest land-based game area at 63,125 square miles.
- Daggerfall is also listed as having the most NPCs (non-player characters) in any RPG with 750,000.
- The fastest play-through of Morrowind was done by Vladimir “Knu” Semenov at 7 minutes, 30 seconds. Kudos to Freddo for pointing this out a month ago.
Who knows, maybe there’s a record out there waiting for you to break it. My new goal is to beat Brian Sulpher’s record for highest margin of victory over an AI opponent in a basketball videogame. In Tecmo Super NBA Basketball for SNES, he beat the computer by 331 points. If the Pistons could score 186 points in a real-life NBA game, maybe I can pull off my own magic with their virtual counterpart.
Last week, we reported that our Team Fortress 2 specialists, Team Bethesda (aka the Vault 101 Dwellers aka [V101]), were putting their undefeated record on the line against EA Mythic. I asked Matthew Ouzounian (aka Matt Headroom) to recap the match and Daryl put together a recap video you can watch here.
Salve discipuli et discipulae! M-M-Matt Headroom, faithful m-m-m-mmmmedic and cheerleader for team Bethesda a.k.a. [V101], here to tell you a little story. You may have marked our match of mettle with Mythic in a Team Fortress 2. It is possible to present the pettifog using a plethora of playful phrases or prose, perchance, I was persuaded to portray it…but that’ll do it for the a-a-alliteration. Did we win? Well, you’ll just have to keep reading to f-f-f-find out.
As many have noticed, we definitely have plenty of folks that take Team Fortress 2 very seriously. In matches against developers from other companies, the Vault 101 Dwellers have amassed a record of 3-0 — beating the likes of Breakaway, Retro and Bioware. Tonight, the boys from Bethesda are aiming their sites on another win, this time against EA Mythic (makers of Dark Age of Camelot). Rumor has it a match against Blizzard…err…Activision Blizzard is being negotiated by Don King…keep an eye out for that.
So will the office team move to 4-0, or will this blog post serve as a jinx? Stay tuned!
Here’s what the Vault 101 Dwellers and everyone else are playing this weekend…
Cory Dornbusch, An Unwashed Villager… err QA Tester: The Witcher, and TF2 – Bethsoft vs. Mythic Friday night…place your bets!
Nate Purkeypile, Uber Pyro: TF2 match against Mythic to hopefully maintain our undefeated streak, Mario Galaxy and sending back my busted Rock Band drums and guitar.
Mike Lattanzia, QA: Hellgate: London (testing out new Blademaster builds), Rock Band, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4 (I finally gave in), Savage 2, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (getting close to finishing the main story!), Super Mario Galaxy; way too many games right now, I’m almost glad that Smash Bros was delayed.
Since starting up a few months back, MTV’s new gaming blog, MTV Multiplayer, has become one of my favorite sites to check daily. Yesterday, the site kicked off a year long venture to find the “Greatest Animal in Video Game History.” To kick off the event, they’ve created a list of potential candidates for the Greatest Horse in Video Game History — a list that already includes the horses of Oblivion. It should be noted that this isn’t a final list, as they’re always looking to hear from the community on what other memorable horses from gaming should be considered.
It should be interesting to keep an eye on this as the year progresses. Hopefully, the winners will square off in an NCAA Tournament-esque bracket. I for one am eagerly awaiting the Best Gorilla vs. Best Marsupial match-up in the Sweet Sixteen.
If you’d like to see your favorite horse come in first, head over to the Multiplayer blog and speak your mind. If you want to start thinking of other animals in Oblivion that deserve to get some props, you might want to check out the updated Oblivion Bestiary — which was written up by Sinder Velvin over at The Imperial Library.