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Friday, September 21, 2007 |  |
Frags, Lies, and Videotape
Paul Maestri, who we haven't heard from in a long, long time, is back with a new Halo Heads - and it's spot-on. Check it out! (Louis Wu 20:09:45 UTC) (permalink)
Halo at the Parkwood
Owen Imholte and his brother are organizing a Halo 3 release party at a local theater in central Minnesota. Things kick off at 11:30pm on the 24th, and run... well, for a while. Tickets are $7 to get in, and play is assigned by raffle. Looks like a good time! If you're in the St. Cloud area, check this out! (Louis Wu 20:04:14 UTC) (permalink)
Security can be a buzzkill.
Odd story about the Master Chief being kicked out of the Sydney Opera House, over at IGN. Thanks, Marcus-626. (Louis Wu 19:58:25 UTC) (permalink)
Tag Teaming the Cutscenes
Rampancy.net found a pretty cool story about damnfx, a studio that helped out with the Halo 3 cutscenes. Go look. (Louis Wu 19:55:37 UTC) (permalink)
Halo 3 Media Contest
Here's a fun little contest at ShackNews - are you any good with a graphics program? Go see if you can win some cool stuff. (Louis Wu 19:52:36 UTC) (permalink)
SpikeTV's Hail to the Chief
This morning, we mentioned a Variety article that discussed some of the TV coverage Halo 3 will receive next week. We just got a press release on SpikeTV's coverage - take a look! (Louis Wu 19:41:39 UTC) (permalink)
eBayage
Quikthnkr sent in links to a couple of eBay auctions that might interest some of you; one is an enormous bronze casting of a Master Chief, 7 feet tall. I don't know what it weighs, but eBay's shipping calculator wants to charge me nearly $400 to move it about 200 miles. Starting bid is just under $5000. If that's a little out of your price range (or maybe your floorspace range), he also pointed out a pair of Halo 2 magnums, made by Westerfield, with a starting bid of $55 and a Buy it Now price of $75. Something for everyone! (As long as everyone wants a giant statue or some handgun models.) (Louis Wu 17:49:04 UTC) (permalink)
Singapore Believers - Unveiled
Thanks to Qdepartment, who gave us an inside glimpse into the Believer campaign in Singapore; if you want to see the latest news release for yourself (which shows all the goodies Singaporeans can snag by showing up to these events), visit this page. You'll have to have an account to see that - and to get an account, you'll need a valid Singapore Postal Code... but I'm sure most of you have l33t enough Google skillz to come up with one of those. Those folks in Singapore - they get some good stuff! (Louis Wu 17:32:38 UTC) (permalink)
Everyone wants in on the buzz
Chris Daley points out that CNBC has a Halo 3 portal of its own - there are a few news stories, and some videos that are mostly taken from released footage. (The videos are, as far as I can tell, completely unplayable on a Mac. I suppose it's good that there's not much new there.) (Louis Wu 17:20:26 UTC) (permalink)
Irish Gamers Attempt To Set Halo World Record
Wow, I nearly missed this - apparently, a gaming center (sorry, centre) in Dublin, Ireland is running a competition this Saturday, starting at midday - if folks can beat Cody Miller's world record of three and a half hours on Halo 2 Legendary, they'll be up for cool prizes, including a Legendary Edition of Halo 3. There's no mention in the news story about the most critical part of that record - that it was completed with no deaths. I mean, the HighSpeedHalo community has put together a composite Legendary run under 2 hours... but there are deaths, and each level is done separately. Interesting to see if they'll hold players to Cody's full parameters... (Louis Wu 16:55:56 UTC) (permalink)
Cinema Paradiso - More Organized
Yesterday, Bungie released Cinema Paradiso, their last VIDOC before Halo 3 hits the shelves. The HBO news post about it is... rather large, and rather rambling; it's hard to tell what's available, and where. So here's a summary. First off, there's a written story that goes with the video at Bungie.net. You should read this. Then, you can download your favorite flavor of the movie; all formats contain the same size films (small - 320x180; medium - 640x360; large - 1280x720). You have three format choices: Windows Media Player 9, H.264 QuickTime, and Sorenson 3 Pro QuickTime. Microsoft's hosting the WMV files, we're hosting the QuickTimes. All files are direct downloads, except the two large QuickTimes - those are BitTorrented. (Sorry, for those who can't handle that. We'll do our best to make them directly downloadable at some point in the future - but they're huge, and until demand dies down...) The H.264 QuickTimes are larger, and harder on older machines, than the S3Pro QuickTimes; we're offering them because that's what Bungie provided us with, but we'd recommend getting the reencoded versions. Okay - that all said, here are all the download links in one place:
- WMP9: Small (32 mb) | Medium (84 mb) | Large (338 mb)
- QT, H.264: Small (47.8 mb) | Medium (154 mb) | Large (424 mb)
- QT, S3Pro: Small (27.1 mb) | Medium (79.7 mb) | Large (294 mb)
If you didn't grab this yesterday, grab it today! There are no spoilers, and MAN, it'll make you want to play with Forge and Saved Films. (Dropping tanks on people's heads never gets old.) (Louis Wu 16:42:51 UTC) (permalink)
Going Postal.
Stuntmutt's gotten off the net, to save himself from being spoiled before next Wednesday (yeah, he's in the UK, so he has to wait till Wednesday). See how this affects YOU in today's One One Se7en. (Louis Wu 16:10:14 UTC) (permalink)
Halo: Skies Edge
Wow, cool. Matt 'Traize' Hyne sent word that a story he'd written, in graphic novel format, was available for downloading in PDF format from Britbox.co.uk. It's a great tale set in the Halo universe - go grab a copy! (Also, anyone who considers Alastair Reynolds their favorite author can't be all bad...)
(Louis Wu 15:35:37 UTC) (permalink)
Using AI Effectively
AiGameDev has a list of the Top 10 Most Influential AI Games - Halo pulls down number 4. Interesting discussion in the Comments section, as well. Thanks, Red_Breast. (Louis Wu 14:44:36 UTC) (permalink)
Halo 3 Charity Event in Seattle
Are you in or near Seattle, and looking for something to do Monday night? Check this out - a charity launch party that benefits a group helping special needs children and their families. You play Halo 3 a little early, you eat, drink, and be merry - and you stand a chance of winning some cool stuff! Thanks to FileFront for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 14:33:39 UTC) (permalink)
Halo Armory
Over at Yahoo Launch Central, there's a new series of video clips - Halo Armory runs down the weapons and vehicles you had access to in Halo and Halo 2. Thanks to Sean Jackson for the reminder to revisit the portal. (Louis Wu 14:02:51 UTC) (permalink)
To the roof! We need the ElneaSymbol!
Today's Countdown to Halo 3 activity over at Hawty McBloggy involves making comics with your action figures. It scares me a little that she's actually SUGGESTING poop jokes. See if you can offer up some cleaner funnies. (Louis Wu 13:33:29 UTC) (permalink)
A small figure collection, for sale
Adam 'digikid' McDougall is trying to put together some money to pay some medical bills - he's selling off his collection of Halo 1/2 figures. This is what he's got:
- 1 Golden hog with the silver hubs
- 1 Orange Spartan
- 1 Pink Spartan
- 1 Active Camoflauge Grunt
- 1 Battle Damaged Warthog
- A smaller collection of mint Brown spartans
- 1 halo 1 PC Rocket Warthog
If you're interested in buying this collection from him, you should send him some email. (Louis Wu 12:58:54 UTC) (permalink)
Spectacular Halo 2 statue on eBay
BARBARIC RAGE is selling an extremely rare piece of Halo schwag - it's a European 7' tall Master Chief statue, sculpted by Studio Oxmox, in Australie, produced by Muckle Mannequins. There are fewer than a thousand in the world, and only a handful in the US. (Bungie's got one.) I've got a mini Muckle statue, and I have to say - the craftsmanship is astounding. Current bid is $51, with just under a week to go (don't get excited by that; the mini statues, which stand about a foot tall, generally go for $100-150 when they show up on eBay, which isn't very often).
(Louis Wu 12:56:26 UTC) (permalink)
A Symphony for Achievements
Sean Mortensen has decided to compose a symphony for the Halo 3 Achievements. He's sent us movement 7. (It's the first one he wrote, but it's movement 7.) It's in D Minor. Full title is 'Movement 7 of 9 for the Halo 3 Achievments, Symphony in D Minor'. (Louis Wu 12:49:40 UTC) (permalink)
General Halo 3 News Roundup
Tons of good news bits out there today... here's a roundup.
- TG Daily mentions that Halo 2 is back on top of the Xbox Live charts, beating Gears of War for most popular title played online. (I tried to confirm this through Major Nelson's blog, but he doesn't seem to cover that list any more.)
- Geekzone is giving away a Limited Edition copy of Halo 3 to some lucky New Zealander - check the page for more details, and to enter.
- A GamesFirst editorial comes up with five reasons why the writer is tossing Gears of War in favor of next week's release title.
- In preparation for Halo 3, 411Mania.com looks back at what went wrong in Halo 2.
- Variety has an article about the Halo 3 TV coverage we can expect next week. (Hint: there's a lot of it.)
- Filefront has a book review of The Halo Effect, a very cool collection of essays published earlier this year. If you haven't read this book... you should.
- The Deseret Morning News (a Salt Lake City paper) has a general interest article on Halo 3; what made it stand out for me was the collection of quotes. They talked to everyone from kids to adults for this one.
- Gamepro wrote a Halo 3 preview, based on material they saw at the Tokyo Game Show.
Whew! That clears out the Google Alert mailbox. (Louis Wu 12:43:57 UTC) (permalink)
The start of something... odd
We got this image today - it's one of many, apparently. That's all I know. (Louis Wu 12:28:54 UTC) (permalink)
IGN's History of Halo
IGN has posted 'The History of Halo', a nice recap of the development of the game series. There are a bunch of little things they've either got wrong (Nathan Bitner didn't write the original Cortana Letters, the Halo 1 dev team was bigger than 10 people, TrueSkill matchmaking was an add-on that came in with the 360, rather than being part of Halo 2's matchmaking algorithm, etc) or made assumptions that are either totally new to me (the Brutes were engineered by Truth? Elites are reptiles?) or never confirmed (the selling price of Bungie in 2000)... but for the most part, it's a well-written synopsis of the Halo arc over the past 9 years. A mild warning - this was written to bring you up to speed on what you've already played; if you're totally new to the Halo universe, this story contains spoilers for Halo and Halo 2. Thanks to Marcus-626, who was first with the link. (Louis Wu 12:25:40 UTC) (permalink)
Tafiti - Halo-themed search
Microsoft has kicked off a Halo-themed version of Tafiti - go check it out. Tafiti is a search front end from Microsoft; it uses Silverlight (Microsoft's Flash-like layer) and Live Search to bring you lots of Halo search goodness. It requires Silverlight, which is available (for free) for both Macs and PCs, and it currently doesn't work on Safari 3 (though it does, for some reason, work fine with Safari 2) - but other than that, it should be a piece of cake to use. HBO's content, for the most part, isn't indexed yet (there was a mixup on the URLs they trawled, I think), but there's plenty of other Halo content out there on the web - and this is one pretty way to find it! Thanks, Jamey. (Louis Wu 12:08:01 UTC) (permalink)
Halo Helmet - High Quality, High Price
The frenzy for high-quality Halo armor continues. (Remember that suit of armor we mentioned on September 11? The auction closed yesterday... for a mind-boggling $21,149.00. I mean... Wow.) Cpl. Fin Aeros points out another auction containing material from the same artist - this time it's just a helmet, and the bidding currently stands at a bit over $1000, with almost 9 days to go. Read up on how he did the work, watch his videos... and if you're wealthier than the average bear, toss in a bid! (Louis Wu 10:32:37 UTC) (permalink)
Believe Ad Satire
karebearstare put together his own parody of the Believe ads - it's short, it's cute, it's available at MLG's Gameroom and YouTube. Go see what you think. (Louis Wu 10:26:58 UTC) (permalink)
Friday's Fanfic
Even the Fan Fiction writers are pumped up this week - fifteen new pieces for you. Now, I've looked at all of them, and made sure that none are OVERTLY full of spoilers for Halo 3... but I can't be positive that nobody's snuck in a one-liner somewhere just to be obnoxious. (Seems unlikely, but since I don't have the time to read every story carefully, I need to make the warning.) You're PROBABLY safe, but if you want to be 100% sure, you might want to hold off for a few more days. (Louis Wu 10:21:02 UTC) (permalink)
Painting the Controllers
Littlebigman found a cool little article on Spawn.com which shows how Todd McFarlane created the artwork that graces the two Limited Edition Halo 3 Wireless Controllers. (Louis Wu 10:12:15 UTC) (permalink)
Evoking Emotion in Halo 3
Over at Music 4 Games, you'll find a great interview with Marty O'Donnell - tons of info about how he works, how the music for Halo 3 was created, what's next for him. Mike Salvatori sometimes gets left out of the equation when discussing Halo music, because he works in Chicago, instead of Kirkland... but Marty reminds us that he's an integral part of the equation. Go read. Thanks, Greg. (Louis Wu 10:09:05 UTC) (permalink)
Thursday's news in brief:
Wednesday's news in brief:
