Student Gamers

Another Halo Reach Beta Map Incoming

Thomas 7 — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:30:55 +0000

After spending some time looking at the online statistics section on Bungie I noticed that there was an option to filter by map. Thinking it would be quite interesting to see how many times I had been splattered on Boneyard or “Flag-Slapped” on Swordbase I tried it out to see that four maps listed, compared to the three currently available across the multiple playlists. Could this mean that there is another game mode to be added? Or just another map added into rotation, only time will tell!

Above is the background image taken from the Bungie website, showing a little glimpse of the new map. Some up hill action perhaps?

Update: 10th May

As Broward has pointed out to us this was already an announcement that we managed to miss! The map will be used in the game mode Generator Defense, a similar mode to invasion which is actually an up hill attack and defend ( pretty good guess! ).

Export Halo Clips To YouTube Using Bungie Pro

Thomas 7 — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:17:27 +0000

Bungie Pro Video is the new rendering service offered by Bungie that allows you to take your videos straight from Theater to the world wide web via YouTube. For the small price of 750 microsoft points per year, that is nearly $10, Bungie is offering Bungie Pro, allowing you to place more videos / screenshots in your file share and, more importantly, upload your recorded videos in 720p HD goodness.

One of the limitations to this, however, is that you only get 5 “rendering minutes” a month, meaning that your clips will have to be quite short and sweet, though to be fair not many clips span over a minute. Additional minutes can be purchased at $5 for 50 minutes straight from the Bungie site for those of you who are wanting to show off hour long epics.

Subscribing To Bungie Pro

So, you have just killed someone in the most amazing/embarrasing/lucky way ever and you want to share the moment with the world so they can all bask in the glory of your awesomeness. Many of you who have played the previous Halo games will know of the Theater feature in the game, allowing you to replay old games, record clips and take screenshots but for those of you who aren’t familiar with the system look for the “Theater” option on the menu when you next load up and give it a whirl. If you are still stuck, here is a nice official guide for you.

Getting Your Clip On YouTube

Once you have your video saved to the hard drive it is then a case of signing up for Bungie Pro, to do this power up Halo 3, ODST or Reach and go into your File Share ( by clicking the File link in your user bar at the top ) and choose to “Subscribe To Bungie Pro”. Move any clips that you want into your file share and the log in to the Bungie website.

If you haven’t been on before the Bungie website offers a large database of game statistics and shared files that you and other players have on offer. Head to your file sharing section ( using the link shown below ) and select the clip you want to share. Hit “Render Film” and your clip, through a combination of magic, rainbows and skittles, will be hosted on YouTube in HD.

And that’s all there is to it! Be sure to check out some of the currently uploading videos for inspiration and if you have created and great ones be sure to post them up here and we can create a compilation post showing the best ones!

Halo: Reach Beta Available

Thomas 7 — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:58:49 +0000

From about 6:15pm today, by loading up your Halo ODST Campaign disc you can get your hands on the Halo: Reach BETA! Although you may be in for a long download there is no doubt that it will be worth it. Hopefully the server will withstand the demand and games will actually be playable ( and not another ’stimulus pack’ fiasco ).

Are you downloading the BETA as you read this? Drop us a comment and join in the fight!

You can view the BETA welcome video here for a taste of what’s to come:

Stimulus Pack Now Available

Thomas 7 — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:15:02 +0000

[ Update 2: Call Of Duty Website says an update is on the way at 6pm ]
[ Update: It would seem that until the update comes out the new maps cannot be played! Lobby systems are lagged ]

The stimulus pack is now available! Costing 1200 points from the Xbox Live Marketplace you get an additional 5 maps, with 2 old favourites ( Crash and Overgrown ) from CoD4. Activision announced that there will also be an update coming hand in hand with this pack that everyone will get when they sign in during the next couple of days.

Double XP
Originally planned to do it this weekend, but we’ve decided to throw the Double XP switch early when the new maps hit. So jump online with the new DLC and check out the two new DLC specific playlists.

Stimulus and Hardcore Stimulus Playlists
These two playlists are 100% dedicated to the new maps, and are Double XP enabled. So jump on and experienced the new DLC you downloaded, get double XP, and experience all your favorite gametypes along with some hardcore variants of them.

Ranger maps added to HCHQ
We’re adding a few maps to the Hardcore Headquarters Pro playlist on Xbox Live, allowing you now play all the Ranger maps in this gametype, something I know a lot of users have been asking for! These maps include Highrise, Invasion, Skidrow, and Terminal.

Title Update
Alongside the DLC, but something ALL of our users will get, is a title update for Modern Warfare 2. Included in this update is support for the DLC (if you choose to purchase it), as well as some tweaks to the One Man Army perk, some matchmaking updates that will help our international users find more locally hosted games thanks to how ping is now sorted, and various other code updates that will help improve the overall quality of multiplayer on Modern Warfare 2.

USB Storage Coming To 360

Thomas 7 — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:07:10 +0000

It was confirmed by Microsoft the other day thanks to Major Nelson that an update will arrive on April 6th that will allow up to two USB devices to be connected to it providing up to an additional 32GB of storage. Each device can only be a maximum of 16GB and unfortunately must be formatted and apparently use it exclusively with the console.

This can be used to store profiles, game saves, demos and full games if they can be squeezed onto it. I can see a lot of advantages for this update, especially when you need to back up your data for hard drive formatting. The devices can be used to store profiles, game saves, demos and full games if they can be squeezed onto it.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warefare 2 Gameplay Footage

Thomas 7 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:53:26 +0000

This impressive gameplay video shows a game of Capture the Flag with quite an epic run back to base. Be sure to check out the video here: TeamXbox.

That Little Yellow Number

Thomas 7 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:32:35 +0000

Anyone who has been onto their xbox live accounts recently will have been greeted with a mandatory update. This brought about a couple of new features, mainly relating to the marketplace including game streaming and game awards, though the one that really caught my eye was a little yellow number at the top of some of my friends gamertags. But what is it exactly?

After a little asking around I found that not many people knew what it was about, maybe relating to the new award system or a rating system. But it turns out that it actually shows how many years the user has been a member of xbox live! Quite an interesting feature in my opinion.

I currently have the highest I have seen, being “6″. Anyone got higher?!

Vandal Hearts And Gunstar Heroes On XBLA

Thomas 7 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:26:51 +0000

For all you good old school gamers who remember the amazingly under-rated stratergy RPG game vandal hearts 1 & 2 on Playstation you will be extact to know you will soon be able to play the 3rd installment coming soon to XBLA. And as if that isn’t enough to get the blood pumping we are also graced with Gunstar Heroes!

Konami will be bringing the prequel, subtitled “Flames Of Judgement”, to the Xbox Live Arcade in the coming months.

Gunstar Heroes is a classic 2D, side scrolling shoot-em up with co-op gameplay, some really enjoyable levels, especially the board game level ( anyone who has played the game will know what I am talking about! ). Both games are rumoured to cost 800 points on release and I would advise purchasing both of them as soon as they are released.

New Call Of Duty 5 Achievements With Map Pack

Thomas 7 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:00:30 +0000

The new Call of Duty 5 map pack, the second pack that has been released so far, was released today at the price of 800 points. There is currently no plan to reduce the price of the previous pack to get some more sold off but it doesn’t hurt to remain hopeful. The new pack comes with 5 new maps, 4 adversarial and 1 zombie map, and 250 points worth of zombie related achievements.

The new achievements that have been released all revolve around the new zombie map, only being unlockable by playing the zombie map in the new map pack. So get a good ol’ group of survivors and get shooting those undeads nazis! The hidden achievement, and this is just an assumption from the image, a radio, and title, “Dead Air”, would give me the idea that you have to change or smash the radio on the map. If you didn’t already know, slashing the radio on the zombie maps changes the channel so be sure to have a fiddle and comment if you unlock it.

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E3: Stream Last.fm

Thomas 7 — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:12:38 +0000

With an amazing amount of news coming from this years E3 event, one of the main things that grabbed our attention, though has not been covered by too many other sites suprisingly, is the introduction of a last.fm stream through your Xbox 360.

Some of you may be asking what Last.fm is and why it is so good. Well let me tell you why! After creating a FREE account with the site you enter some songs that you like and it will match your playlist against thousands of other people around the world to find people with similar tastes. After getting plenty of matches it will play music it thinks you like and is actually pretty accurate!

The only problem that I can think of is whether or not it will slow down the connection when playing games, but if it doesn’t happy days ahead!