Halo 3 Has Gone Gold
According to Xbox.com, Halo 3 has gone gold, or been "released to manufacturing" according to the article.
Death by intelligence.
Draw Wacky Chief Adventures, Win Cool Stuff
HBO is running another Seven on the Seventh contest; the prize this time is Marathon: Durandal, the XBLA conversion of the Bungie classic by Freeverse. To enter the contest, draw a picture of the Master Chief having "wacky adventures" in older Bungie games. See HBO for the complete rules.
Replay It Again, Sam: What Makes Games Re-Playable?
It's hard to escape the concept of repetition in entertainment, especially in gaming. While the word "repetitive" itself is often used as a criticism (hello Halo 1's interiors) games are designed to be played repeatedly, and incorporate repetitive elements into their designs.
It's understandable. As an object lesson in entertainment economics, look at the DVD player. Widely hailed as the fastest-adopted new entertainment technology, it is built on the foundation of repetition; the idea that people will want to play the movies and television shows they love over and over. Given that game console hardware and software are both about three times as expensive as DVD players and DVD discs, they have to be at least as repeat-friendly to warrant that kind of investment.
There a lot of different ways to extend a game's useful lifetime and give gamers more bang for their buck by allowing for repeat plays; the Halo series, as well as many other games, provide excellent examples of this.
Since the nature of online multiplayer itself is repetition-- short competetive matches played with a seemingly endless revolving door of random opponents-- we'll leave that aside for the moment. Many games don't have multiplayer at all, and even most that do don't encompass all of their purchasers in online matches. However, there are many ways that repetition is used in designing a single-player campaign that can remain interesting after many playthroughs.
Happy Birthday Hushed Casket
Combination Halo fansite and gaming group The Hushed Casket is celebrating its fifth anniversary; head on over and check out Midnight's recap of the past year, as well as their more exhaustive site history.
PALGN: Marathon Among 'Best Values' on XBLA
Australia's PALGN has posted a review of Freeverse's XBLA port of Marathon: Durandal. Their verdict:
Marathon: Durandal is one of the best value games on the XBLA. You could spend more time playing through this than Halo, and at a fraction of the cost. There are aspects of the game that are archaic and it’s not a good game in short bursts, however, it provides a mysterious and lengthy experience for anyone who is willing to immerse themselves.
18 min of the Halo 3 campain
This 18 min of new Halo 3 campain game play. Warning some spoilers.
http://www.xbox360rally.com/halo-3-18-minutes-of-game-play-spoiler-alter...
Halo Wars Gameplay Walkthrough
Kotaku has a video it calls a "guided walk" through the gameplay of Halo Wars. No word yet on whether this is the same content as the rumored XBLM video "demo" due out.
UPDATE: Ensemble Studios has put up a ten minute video on their own site; this is what they showed at E3 this year.
Do You Have Dinosaurs In A Can?
Over at 1Up, Jeremy Parish is Revisiting Halo, going over the Cortana Letters and pre-buyout screenshots; they promise even a look at the Marathon trilogy will be on tap.
Gentlemen Prefer Marathon... Or Halo
The most recent Preferred Player column over at Xbox.com, penned by KP, is on Freeverse's XBLA port of Marathon: Durandal; specifically, an XBL cooperative game of Marathon the author played with yours truly and other notable Bungiefen Geary11 and ZuP101.
Requiem For An Xbox
Earlier this week I experienced something that, up until now, I thought only other people had to go through.
Xbox hardware failure.
I plugged it in, and instead of the familiar sights and sounds of console startup, I got a loud pop and a puff of smoke.
Is it the Red Ring of Death, people ask? Am I going to get a new unit under Microsoft's new three year warranty?
Nope, I say. Because I'm not talking about my Xbox 360. It still works fine.
I'm talking about my original launch Xbox, which gave me nearly six years of mostly faithful service, from December of 2001 until now. Sure, the past three years or so there were periodic disk errors. Sometimes it refused to "recognize" a game disc in the tray. When it was Halo or Halo 2, it was comical; how could the console not recognize those?
Halo 3 Soundtrack In The Can?
Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell has announced on the Marty Army group page that he's "back" and that this might mean he's mostly done working on Halo 3.
He's Getting Short: Escapist Interviews Wideload's Corley
Scott Corley tells the Escapist how he accidentally spent six years selling games for the Palm Pilot before catching on with old friend Alex Seropian to head up Wideload's short game division.
They've got three original games in the works right now, at least one of which is an XBLA title.
Marathon: Durandal Reaches New Fans
I've been playing the heck out of Freeverse's Marathon: Durandal on Xbox Live. As it's an "old school" shooter missing a lot of the technical features found in more modern games, I had always assumed that the majority of its players would be old-time Bungie fans like myself.
When I saw SniperStealth atop the single-player leaderboard with over thirty million points, I felt here must surely be an old Marathon hand who knows every twist and turn of each level without even glancing at the map.
That's not true, as it turns out. SniperStealth only had a chance to play the original briefly before diving into M:D on XBLA, but that can only be good news for Freeverse if more Bungie fans who haven't played Marathon check in to see where the roots of Halo came from.
SniperStealth was kind enough to spend a few moments to answer my questions about what drew him to this classic game.
Click "read more" from the front page for the transcript of Rampancy's interview with SniperStealth, the leading Marathon: Durandal campaign player.
Microsoft Allows MMO Developers To Require Hard Drive
Two and a half years ago, I said that rumors that the Xbox 360 would not have a hard drive as standard were evidence that either the speculators, or someone at Microsoft, were on crack.
I thought it was silly for Microsoft to become the first company to make a hard drive standard in a console instead of an option, only to become the first company to remove the same feature.
I thought it was silly to tease developers into depending on the hard drive, and then take that away.
Freeverse Developer Posts Marathon Walkthrough
Bruce "Hippieman" Morrison at Freeverse, the developer that brought Bungie's Marathon: Durandal to Xbox Live Arcade, has been working on a walkthrough of the game. While of course there is always the Marathon Spoiler Guide, which covers all three games, Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon: Infinity, Hippieman's walkthrough includes screenshots of environments, whereas the Spoiler Guide features only maps.