Author: narcogen

Most people long since acceded that Halo 3 would sell well, and it has. The big question for the platform, though, was whether it could move consoles; whether it could take back some of the ground gained by the Nintendo Wii since it launched last year, as well as ensure they’d stay ahead of Sony’s…

DevinOlsen, goatrope, jayWHY, and EA demonstrate that with the right settings it’s possible to get through any soft elastic barrier on Halo 3 in the latest in the Trickity Trick series.

The Zero Punctuation videoblog at The Escapist proves that it’s much easier to be funny when criticizing something than praising it, and their review of Halo 3 is indeed funny. I just can’t figure out if it’s funny for the sake of it, or whether the reviewer honestly dislikes the game as much as the…

Back in August, before Halo 3 went gold, OXM senior editor Andrew McCaffrey got to visit Bungie and play Halo: We were fortunate enough to actually make it past the locked doors and get to step inside the heart of Bungie’s newsroom-style studio on Day 2, being taken up into the “loft” area where Frank…

Version 1 of MLG’s official gametypes and settings for Halo 3 are now available for download and playing on your very own Xbox 360. No word yet on whether or not every single weapon has been replaced by a Battle Rifle, or if Luke Smith has had an orgasm yet. UPDATE: Yes, the primary weapon…

Saved Films is a great feature. It lets anybody who has Halo 3 and an Xbox Live account share game films with each other. It’ll be great for documenting tricks, speedruns, the works. However, it can’t do everything. It’s not a video editing suite; you can’t add effects or music, and you need to have…

Inside Pulse reviews Halo 3, and in the process, invents more subcategories to assign ratings to than I could possibly imagine would be relevant or useful, including truly subjective things like Appeal, Originality and Miscellaneous. As the kids say, whatever. They liked the game: It’s Halo 3. It fixed everything that was wrong with Halo…

Journalist Dean Takahashi is having a lot of fun, not just playing Halo 3, but utilizing the new features, like saved films and screenshots. He asks readers to write in with their experiences playing Halo 3.

Wired takes a look at the psuedoscience of Halo weaponry and gadgetry, including the Spartan Laser and the Bubble Shield: Some of the equipment came about through happy accident. One of the most popular new tools — the “bubble shield,” a pocket of temporary protection from weapons — nearly didn’t make it into the game.…

This is the most definitive link I can find for what is so far a non-story story about Microsoft somehow letting Bungie become independent again. The official Microsoft response to reports in Jacob Metcalf’s blog that allege Bungie is leaving Microsoft was: There’s been no such announcement. That’s the kind of non-denial denial you’d expect…

Frankie says that if you post a question relating to Halo 3 in this thread, they’ll try to provide answers in the next Weekly Update.

Bungie.net has a guide on how to use the gold skulls in Halo 3 to change your play experience.

Amazing how people always choose last year’s blockbuster Xbox 360 shooter, Gears of War, when they want to suggest that Halo 3’s visuals are weak. Because Mark Rein, the guy who runs Epic Games, developers of Gears, likes Halo 3 just fine even if it doesn’t have the flashiest effects: Speaking about the enduring appeal…

Think Gabe is having trouble finding skulls? Yeah. Could be.

At HaloWars.com there’s a new monthly update about Halo Wars, written by Thunder. It’s mostly about the game’s AI: Ultimately, the philosophy that we’ve had at Ensemble Studios is that the most fun games are when you think you might lose but don’t. The CPAI should attempt to provide the player with this challenge in…

Meyeselph is working on compiling an easily accessible guide to Halo 3’s weapons, with an eye on how to maximize the effective use of each. The first weapon so examined is Halo 3’s venerable Assault Rifle. Visually evocative of the Colonial Marines’ pulse rifle from Aliens, maligned as an inaccurate bullet hose in Halo 1,…

It’s tired cliché that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Despite rampant accusations of having a story that’s derivative pulp, the first half of Halo 3 is not a tired cliché, nor does it need a second chance to make a first impression. Hearing from a number of reviewers and…

The latest episode of Major Nelson’s podcast/blogcast is on the Halo 3 launch. The Major is nice enough to remain spoiler-free, but he says that Halo 3 is a fun game and a fun story– in case you needed any more reasons to get it. As usual, the blog entry for the audio show contains…

As I see them I add more reviews of Halo 3 to the site. Thanks for the heads-up on these four reviews to Louis Wu at HBO. As always, you can see a page of just reviews on our Halo 3 Reviews page.

Stuntmutt attended the Halo 3 launch party in Waterloo and walked away with a free copy of Halo 3, which he immediately went home and played, uncharacteristically eschewing an open bar. I went home and finished the fight (going to work the following day after just two hours of sleep). I dashed through on Normal…