Author: narcogen

In yet another example of Halo becoming so cool that the only way to make yourself look cooler in comparison is to dump on it, Steve Tilly at the Edmonton Sun drops this pearl of wisdom: Halo 2 is the #4 most overhyped game ever, just ahead of Daikatana: One of my biggest regrets as…

This has to be one of the strangest Halo tie-ins. Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in Las Vegas, Nevada has added a wax statue of its first videogame hero: Master Chief from Halo. You really sort of want to know whose idea this was, and then who thought it was a good enough idea to actually…

Whagi in the Xbox Live Forums warns that US and UK subscribers to Xbox Live may be targets of a phishing attempt. An email arrives that claims to require you to login to XBL due to changes to your account, but the links in the message go to a fake XBL login page that allows…

As soon as possible being, in this case, already. Francesca Reyes, Editor-in-Chief of Official Xbox Magazine, has already played through the entire Halo 3 single-player campaign, and her ten page review will hit the streets in the next edition of OXM, day and date with the game. Technically nobody’s supposed to say a word about…

Hawty McBloggy compiled a list of top ten things to do while Xbox Live is down, (it’s back up already) while GameDaily has a list of top ten things to do before Halo 3 comes out. Just remember, this isn’t really Halo news, just an amazing NBC simulation. The items range from the practical (sleeping)…

Tex went to pay off the last installment of her Halo 3 Legendary Edition preorder and got a couple of unexpected surprises: the early arrival of the new Halo 3-themed wireless controllers, and a special Halo 3 bracelet given out to GameStop employees. Check the Queen of the Hill blog for photos.

You may have read somewhere else already that press reviews of Halo 3 (much like Halo 2 before it) are handled in a somewhat different way than other games. Bungie doesn’t mail out review copies to journalists in advance; if they did, it’s possible the game’s ending would have been spoiled by now. GamePro has…

This week’s Bungie Weekly Update– only two more to go now before the game’s out– is supposedly the biggest ever, at least in terms of kilobytes. Most of the content consists of pictures of Kotubukiya Halo 3 statues and McFarlane Halo 3 figures. The last image is interesting, though, as it seems to show the…

1Up’s Halo 3 coverage continues; this time, the Retronauts Blog is traveling further back in time to the colony ship Marathon. There’s also an indication from Greg “Hippieman” Morrison from Freeverse in the comments to that entry to the effect that if there’s enough interest, that Marathon Infinity and even the original Marathon can also…

HBO is announcing the winners of their latest Seven on Seven contest. This last competition was to put the Master Chief into an older Bungie game. The seven winners get free downloads of Freeverse’s Marathon:Durandal from Xbox Live Arcade.

Japanese publication PingMag interviews Bungie’s environmental artist Ken Taya on the cultural influences on design jobs here and in Japan: Well in terms of semantics the actual word designer and the roles associated with this position differ. Here comes an over generalisation: I feel that the Japanese game developers really focus on the feel of…

TeamXbox interviews Todd McFarlane, designer of new Halo toys and the Halo 3 controller. The first two pages are mostly about his failed baseball career and his entry into the world of comics, mainly Spawn, but by page three he’s talking about how they make figures from the information Bungie sends them: We’re developing figures…

Bungie.net’s latest feature is an interview with Robert McLees, artist-turned-writer who maintains the Halo Bible. What’s the Halo Bible? Funny you should ask: For lack of a more romanticized description it is the ponderous collection of lies, damned lies, and half-truths from which the entire Halo Universe is constructed. It is the tome which informs…

homicidal insomniac blogged something he came across in the Se7enSins.com forum; the aftermath of one of the unauthorized Epsilon players that The Hushed Casket mentioned awhile back. The upshot? Banned. Until December 31, 9999. Not just the XBL gamertag, but the console as well. So, yes: it is possible to override the per-gamertag restriction on…

Videogames Live has announced that EMI Classics will be publishing an album of the concert series’ greatest hits, available this coming October 15. Music from Halo will be featured. Check the press release for all the details. Thanks again, Wu, this time in #hbo.

Video Gaming Refugees Blog Confessionals has a two part interview with Bungie’s interface guru, Dave “Evil Otto” Candland. It covers a wide range of topics, but perhaps of most interest to fans now that Halo 3 is almost in our hands is– what will Bungie do next? Evil Otto: Well, who knows? I’d love to…

Ma1agate tipped us off that IGN has started offering a walkthrough for Marathon: Durandal. It’s got a section on basics to familiarize players of more modern games with the Marathon series and its unique quirks (no jumping, no reloading) as well as a section on gameplay tips and a level-by-level walkthrough.

Those “hidden” screenshots on Xbox.com? Turns out there were three of them. Gamersyde put up all three; here’s the one that wasn’t obvious to find, a multiplayer shot, seemingly from Sandtrap. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up.

The second part of the new spoiler system is now in place; user account level front page preferences. Click the My account link near the top of your account box in the lower left-hand column. You should see a tab called “roles”. Here you’ll see a list of all the spoiler settings, just like on…

Freeverse’s XBLA port of Bungie’s FPS classic Marathon 2: Durandal recently got an auto-update; you may have noticed the last time you played the game. Freeverse’s web page has a news post up about the update. The highlights are: Survival mode in demo More sensitivity controls FOV setting (for people with motion sickness problems) For…