Halo Reach Editions announced

Well, I am a halo fan and Halo Reach is looking very good from what I can see.

Now to prepare myself, for buying. Lately, the amount of special editions of a single game come in threes. I should know, buying the Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2. Oh what a glorious day that was, and man those night vision goggles are sick...

Whoa, i'm getting off topic.

So for Halo Reach they will offer three editions. The familiar green case game, the limited edition with extra paper and plastics and...OMG.

Well obviously the standard edition will have a booklet, maybe a free 48 hour card.

As for the Limited edition, from what Bungie's site shows...It has a cool looking ONI box, Dr Halsey's journal and some curious items underneath on the right. Is that plastic clear thing like; a keycard? Oh man thats ultimate nerd prop collection, and...am army patch..also cool as well as other papers the game now has a black box instead of green. That's a nice identifying mark to differentiate the copies of the game, perhaps the game itself will contain more inside? Plus an elite armor specialty code.

I'm definitely going for this one if I don't get...

The Legendary Edition.



Nuff said, plus a special spartan unlock. Some speculate it to be the flaming helmet, and I don't care. Honestly I don't have the room nor the reason to grab this. Yet I want to, maybe because getting the Prestige MW2 felt so good and is such a site whenever I enter my room. That box looks so close to in game crates, and it seems to have a really fancy packaging.

I didn't for Halo 3, and i'll probably stick with the Limited Edition. But I have time to think it over, the question really is what will you get?

Halo Reach Trailer Impressions

It's long overdue, but I felt that better quality videos of this trailer needed to seed youtube before I actually posted one. So before you even consider my opinions on this matter, check out the trailer:



When viewing this trailer, I was pretty excited. The graphics/visuals are good, and Bungie stressed the importance of the cinematic scenes being on the in-game graphics capabilities. Good idea Bungie.

Visuals are all nice and everything, but among the ODST soldiers I did not see a single Spartan. True, Spartans like to act alone but seeing one would have been nice. Having said that, the encounters with the characters were entertaining at the very least. I noticed how different each ODST was dressed, i'm a fan of more customization for your character during online matches.

(rant)The helicopters in the trailer excited me, but for a different reason. Many Halo fans wish to drive the pelican, but i'm willing to forgo this in favor of aerial firing. It would be really satisfying to have a mission, where thousands of covenant litter a valley. Your Spartan/ODST would have to "spray" the field, then get down there and finish all of the rest. That is wishful thinking by me, and merely a rant.

For the most part the trailer was good, but there are clearly dissenting people who think the trailer was nothing special. Sure I would like to see gameplay, but it's quite unnecessary since we are getting a beta in Spring 2010 (at least that is what I have heard).

The Halo franchise brought me into gaming, Halo: Combat Evolved was the very first game I played on Xbox. So this early adoption of the Halo franchise makes me biased in many ways, and I get into arguments regarding Halo 3 and Halo: ODST many many times. Halo Reach is going back to the beginning of the fight, the brutes that dominated Halo 3 don't work with the covenant quite yet. So we're going to get more elite combat action, something I feel the lack of made Halo 3 and Halo: ODST disappointing.

So maybe the franchise has fallen in popularity with some, but would gamers truly consider a Bungie made game bad? No, they are a company who has made good games. We can hope Halo Reach is truly magnificent as a game, but we need to calm down when analyzing the trailer. It is just a trailer.

Halo Legends "The Babysitter" Review

Halo Legends has been a subject of controversy on Geeksquisite, TJ especially cringed at the post production pics where you can see a teddy bear on the ground near a spartan in one picture. Teddy Bears may have been "useful" when killing people in Fallout 3, but what were the animators thinking putting stuff like that in Halo Legends?
*end rant*

On Halo Waypoint the premiere episode of Halo Legends was available, and future episodes will be viewable every saturday. Despite my concern with how Halo would translate into anime, I decided to analyze the episode carefully.

Overall Design in the animation is a mix of good and bad, but the freedoms the animators took are specific. Vehicle Designs are pretty spot on and very cool as far as I am concerned. Especially with the Phantoms, oh my those looked great. Weapon designs and interface on the anime was pretty good too, they had a sniper rifle zoom in moment that looked pretty nice and reminded me of the game.

When it came to the character designs, this is a much much less good side to the anime. Humans, ODSTS, all look okay, but of course the main character and focus of episode 1 had spiky overdone hair. This is why I was worried about Halo Legends as an anime, anime style is a difficult adaption for existing character design in the Halo franchise. Would the army EVER let someone have such crazy looking hair? NO. The spartan for this episode is horribly designed. I can't describe it too well but while the ODST's look okay in their armor, the spartan looks chubby in his armor and is an insult to the Master Chief's design burned in my head (very minimalistic too which means they aren't doing the spartan's justice). As for Brutes and grunts, they seemed okay. Elites, oh man they looked awful, they really messed up on the elites. The prophet they had was okay, but in a nutshell the non human character designs are pretty half assed.

Story and voice acting, that was okay. I am happy to say that they kept this good for the most part. One thing regarding story they did for this episode felt like a breaking of an old Halo tradition regarding spartans.

SPOILERS

They made the spiky haired kid a hero and made the Spartan take the beating from a brute with a hammer for the kid, killing her. That's right, I said HER. the ODST's removed her helmet revealing her bloody long white haired face, okay first of all...

One of the biggest things about Spartans is their mysterious identities, this Spartan kept quiet as she should but they made it so easy for the ODSTS to rip off her helmet. Spartans remain extremely mysterious and rarely allow removal of their helmets in public, or so the novels seem to indicate. It felt wrong that they unmasked a spartan, but that's not the worst part. It also drove me crazy that she got so emotional in the moments she was dying, i've read the novels and spartans shouldn't be "tell all" as they are dying. Or at least, they should have put less human interactions between the spartan girl and the ODSTS. Spartans make emotions take a backseat much of the time, so it felt like they messed up there. BIG TIME.

So for the most part Halo Legends is quite a departure from the designs and story arcs we are familiar with. The main flaw is lack of creative control that is so clearly not there with the death of the Spartan woman. In the beginning of Halo 3, it's clearly established that soldiers don't tend to a spartan that way. In fact, watch that part with the unmasking in Halo Legends, and then watch Johnson and the Chief in the beginning of the first level of Halo 3 and tell me which scene was better. I'm betting the cinematic video game scene looks better, and thats mostly because the chief is not treated like a non human/alien like in the anime.

Set your bar a little lower because it has depreciative qualities, I will hope in future episodes it isn't as bad.

Police Swarm Bungie Studios

Link

Kotaku Writer Stephen Totilo posted a very hilarious story here, where someone caught a Bungie employee carrying a sniper rifle replica through the studio. The problem was that somebody called the police thinking it was a shooter, and so Drama ensued.

Walking with that sniper rifle must look intimidating, and of course you would be worried if you didn't know that can't be a real weapon because it resembles one from a game. Nothing bad happened when the police came according to Totilo, but he said the police insisted more discreetness when carrying around such intimidating mock ups.

Totilo even posed with the sniper



Looking at the sniper, first of all, that's not very easy to handle let alone use, and wouldn't a sniper be hiding somewhere instead of walking around so casually. Don't forget that snipers shouldn't be that big to begin with unless it's open warfare, but really, I laughed over this misunderstanding and i'm sure many others will too.

Xbox Live is limited by Halo 2?!

the friends list question

Many Xbox Live users have occasionally wondered whether the maximum for their friends list will ever grow from 100 users to...well, more. I happen to be one of the people finding it harder to empty my friends list for someone else to send me a request due to a MAJORITY of my current friends being unremovable.

It wouldn't be hard to increase the maximum for the friends list on Xbox Live, but some writers at 1UP indicate of insiders that such an upgrade alone would cease Xbox Live support to Halo 2. That is odd, but if it were true, would people be okay with online multiplayer being cut from Halo 2?

Personally, it's not necessary. I do suffer from running out of room on my friends list, but I occassionally go back to Halo 2. The fact that it holds back Microsoft from increasing the friends list limit is a question of priority. Do people want an even more extensive ballooning of their friend's list, and Halo 2 becoming a single player experience at your home?

I don't.

New Halo ODST Vidoc

Nathan Fillion rocks :)

I have to say, this Vidoc should have been the one shown at E3. It immerses me in the Halo universe while also touching nostalgia for Firefly the series, as a browncoat I was delighted. I had no clue Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk were in this game too, but the story really got to me. This is truly a modest heroes story, and I hope Bungie made these characters as cool as they sound. I want to see unique fights against the covenant involving the pelicans since the cinematics showed Banshees mixing with pelicans. No matter what, I gotta pick up this game.

But watch the video, its a nice one.

Halo 10 year anniversary

Today is Tuesday July 21th 2009 and you know what that means? It means it's the 10 year anniversary since Halo was announced at Macworld 1999. This was before Microsoft even owned Bungie. Steve Jobs announced that Halo would be the game to put Mac gaming back on the map using the OpenGL platform. Microsoft announced that it bought Bungie on June 19th 2000. Then a little over a year later on November 15th 2001 Halo: Combat Evolved hit consoles changing the view on console shooters forever.

It's hard to think that Halo has been with us for so long. I remember going with my mom to buy a bundle on day one from Toys R' Us. The bundle didn't come with Halo so I returned two of the games and got Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Halo: Combat Evolved. I always liked games but I don't think I officially became a "hardcore" gamer until Halo came out. So even if the Halo franchise isn't the pinnacle of gaming the way it once was it will always be a part of my life as a gamer. Thank you Bungie :)

Gamestop unveils Halo ODST Exclusive

Gamestop Offer

Gamestop is offering a nice package for those pre-ordering Halo ODST to order from them, in return you will get a controller, a code to play Sgt. Johnson in firefight, the game and the beta code. Wait....PLAY SGT. JOHNSON IN ODST!

This will probably appeal to many hardcore Halo fans, I am one of those people. But to put this in an economic perspective the price tag for this pre-order is a 100 bucks. People are already up in arms about the price of Halo ODST at 60-65 dollars, getting a code for the Reach multiplayer beta was a nice "cushion" among other things to make people believe it's worth full retail. And I won't be stopped by price to get ODST, but the Gamestop deal I'm probably going to pass.

I have three controllers, and while I could use a fourth controller while making machinima, I'll pass. Being able to playing Sgt. Johnson makes me envious nonetheless, but the killer for me is that Project Natal is replacing the controller for about 30 percent of your controllers functions. Only time will tell if it replaces a handheld controller more, but with the rumors of a new console as well I'm not in the mood to hold four controllers for a possibly obsolete console.

But should anyone take this deal, its a sweet deal to be sure. The controller looks sick :D, and being able to play Johnson is pretty awesome. It's kinda funny though, because I kept talking to Rob saying "where does he fit into ODST?" since ODST's trailer clearly shows it takes place after Regret left Earth in Halo 2. And Johnson went with the chief after Regret, but since this is in firefight it makes sense now. But to be able to play only in firefight? meh it's not much for me.

So since an Xbox controller costs about 40 bucks, and this one is special. Your not really paying for the Sgt. Johnson extra, so it's a nice deal. It's not for me, but if you don't have more than two controllers, I recommend it.

Halo: ODST Impressions

When we got a first look at Halo ODST at Microsoft E3, I was a bit skeptical when all of us saw the ODST Shock Troops with Recon and ODST Helmets, those helmets looked silly on the soldiers since i'm used to seeing full spartan armor going with it. I also was hunting to hear Nathan Fillion's voice (being a fan) since he's playing the captain in ODST. Anyway onto impressions...

First of all, Joseph Staten delivered on a fanfare by showing that the "power" of the M6D pistol from Halo: Combat Evolved is back! yes it was stronger than a pistol should be but we loved using it and we finally get it back. No Zoom? either they didn't show it or it made it too strong but that's not too bad. At least we get the power of the M6D slugs back. 

You know how Master Chief didn't really talk? so the ones around him weren't ready to engage in conversations. Well since your playing a rookie marine, I expect some more dialogue in gameplay, bungie had some good dialogue in Halo 3. So I'm betting there are some funny moments coming for us. 

Also, the HUD is different as T.J noticed before I did. But then again it's expected when you aren't a Spartan this time around. 

One of the biggest things finally answered for me was the timeline. Halo ODST comes before Halo 3, but exactly when was not specified until now. At the start of the trailer you see the Prophet of Regret's ship going through slipspace over New Mombasa, you would of thought from the way they handled that in Halo 2 that New Mombasa was destroyed. Nope.

The Gritty, technological future of New Mombasa excited me for the little I got to see, but it looks like you'll tour the city fighting the covenant. Which is great, because when they showed the Halo 2 demo, we got to see the city. We wanted to tour the city ourselves but it never came to be in Halo 2 or Halo 3. But now we shall have that chance. 

One of the things i'm concerned about is, once again, you're not a spartan. So I hope they take the idea that marines might have a harder time against brutes, elites and various covenant. 

Otherwise, can't wait for Halo ODST.