Rampancy

There's no dispute that the original Warthog Jump video was a success, but now Aikidoka and Halorigin are looking to upstage it with their new clip titled What Goes Up. In the original Warthog Jump, R. Glass used a few grenades and a rocket launcher to give the Warthog its lift. This definitely did the job, but Aikidoka and Halorigin figured that 53 grenades would work a little better.

They were right.

What Goes Up is 35 MB and is over six minutes long. Mirrors are appearing over at HBO and we plan on hosting the video here at Rampancy, too. It's already being hosted on RampancyHL for those of you who just can't wait.

You will need Apple's QuickTime software to view the video.

Truth & Reconciliation has had a couple updates today, beginning with an interview with Rob McLees. Some may be unfamiliar with his name, but McLees is a veteran Bungie employee who has contributed many art and story elements to the company's fantastic game library. McLees can be thanked for creating the majority of Halo's weapons; check out the interview for loads of information about the process behind this.

As if an interview wasn't enough, the concept art section has had a seventh gallery added that features some of McLees' Flood art.

Shacknews reader Walter Sochak (whether that is his real name or a homage to John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski I'm not sure) has submitted a reader review of Oni. Here's what he had to say in part:

A lot of people will have problems with the save game system, but I found it added to the replay value. The game makes saves at regular intervals that are, from then onwards, always available to the player. That means its easy to go back and play through levels where you had the most fun. Speaking of replay value, check out http://gamespot.com/gamespot/guides/pc/oni/p6_01.html . Once you've defeated the game, you can use the cheats - one of my favourites allows you to play as characters other than Konoko. Playing through the TCTF assault level as a Tanker and Fury is a refreshing change from Konoko's moves. If you feel like playing through the game with guns a-blazing, then use cheats to give yourself your weapon of choice, unlimited ammo and faster-firing weapons and go for it. Or you can flick on slow-motion to get an extreme edge of absolute control.

The review is short (and the author misspells Bungie in the usual manner) but hey... Oni doesn't get much press these days.

Lophan pointed out a Bloomberg story over in the HBO forum in which a company called Immersion is claiming that Microsoft and Sony are both infringing on patents it owns on force feedback technology.

While the Bloomberg story was not in evidence on their site this morning, a Reuters item was available on Yahoo; however, it does not mention Halo by name.

What's more, it appears that this suit is perhaps not as frivolous as many other infringement suits filed against major companies by smaller ones; a press release on Immersion's site notes they have reached a settlement in an earlier suit against InterAct accessories over peripherals they make for the PlayStation 2 that include tactile feedback features.

Apparently the suit follows long and unsuccessful negotiations with both companies. The firm representing Immersion against Sony and Microsoft, Irell and Manella, also successfully represented Immersion against InterAct, and was the firm that won a $120 million judgment in the suit against Microsoft filed by Stac Electronics over the illegal integration of compression routines used in their Stacker hard disk doubler software (even though that failed to save the company).