Rampancy

A preview copy of Stubbs the Zombie landed in GameDaily's post office box today, and they like what they see, at first glance:

Yummy, yummy in my tummy is Stubbs the Zombie. This macabre tale of a traveling salesman and his war against the beautiful city of Punchbowl Pennsylvania is quite engaging. Chalk that up to the development team that's worked extra special super hard to make sure that this title has a presentation that's about as explosive as fourth of July fireworks shot off on September 22.

They also appreciated the game's humor-- the kind, they say, only dorks can love. We'll see.

Seth Schiesel at the old grey lady wrote his impressions of the Xbox 360 after sitting down with one at Microsoft's X05 show in Amsterdam last week. While Bungie wasn't showing anything, it is impossible for the new console to escape the shadow of its star franchise, even when nothing's actually been said about it. In comparison, it seems that the shooter slated for the marquee spot in the 360's launch lineup is faring very well:

As for the games themselves, it became clear at X05 that it was utterly unfair to the team making Perfect Dark Zero to thrust that game into the role of Halo's heir. The original Halo, in 2001, was the game that almost single-handedly made the Xbox a must-buy for serious console gamers. As the debut first-party (meaning it is being published by Microsoft itself) shooter for the 360, Perfect Dark Zero has been expected to fill the Halo role for the new system. It won't. Perfect Dark Zero is fun and well made, but does not appear to be an expectation-shattering leap forward for the first-person shooter genre the way Halo was.

Schiesel liked the look of Rare's Kameo much better, likening it to a Zelda-type adventure game, but with more action, and Epic's Gears of War, due out next year.

NOTE: Use the login/password pair "rampancy/rampant" if you don't have an account at the NYT.

The top 117 entries in the 117 Words contest have been announced by Jillybean and Stuntmutt. Your editor was tickled pink to have managed a third-place tie with Tum-Tut Mantis' entry The Arbiter's Sentence. And it's mine! All mine! It's my birthday pressssent! Stan won second place for Perhaps They Should Have Used Pimsleur. And the fix is in first place went to Bungie's own Frankie for his entry, the appropriately titled Can of Worms.

The announcement of the winners also has some special shout-outs to deserving entries, including one by Eric Trautmann that wasn't judged. Perhaps being the editor of the Halo novelizations made him too professional for the rest of us, and therefore, unfair competition.

Microsoft continues to play cagey with information about the Halo franchise in the aftermath of Gates' E3 comments and the absence of an official announcement by Bungie.

Interviewing Peter Moore and J Allard, Game Informer had the following exchange:

GI: Would you hold Halo 3 for the same time as the launch for the movie?

Moore: Halo what? What are you talking about?

Yeah, that's clever. The article does actually have information in it, too-- about the Xbox 360's launch lineup and some commentary on the process by which the Halo movie project came to be.