Author: narcogen

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.

It’s hard to escape the concept of repetition in entertainment, especially in gaming. While the word “repetetive” itself is often used as a criticism (hello Halo 1’s interiors) games are designed to be played repeatedly, and incorporate repetetive elements into their designs. It’s understandable. As an object lesson in entertainment economics, look at the DVD…

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.

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…

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…

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.

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 Zu…

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 smok…

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.

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,…

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…

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 compan…

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 gam…

GameSpot interviews Wideload’s Scott Corley, formerly of Red Mercury and High Voltage Software, who is now heading up the Wideload Shorts department. Wideload Shorts is currently working on an Xbox Live Arcade game, said to be “nearing its final stag…

Gamasutra has a five page interview with Alex “The Man” Seropian at Wideload; not too much new or substantive there, but he does confirm that Hail to the Chimp uses the Unreal engine, and that the studio has grown to 20 or so full-time and that sum i…

In French, the phrase “syndrome de la page blanche”, or white page syndrome, is intended as an expression of writer’s block; the inability to begin a project faced with an empty page. Myself, I always viewed it as an expression of the usefulness of li…

Some of us senior citizens are having a blast now that Marathon: Durandal is out for Xbox Live Arcade. I’ll post later in greater length about how this adaptation is simultaneously absolutely faithful to the original while still timely and fun, and h…

It seems that Luke Smith first dropped the one-word bomb of confirmation in the NeoGAF forums, but in case anyone had any doubts, Smith immediately followed up with an official post on Bungie.net, which was then posted about just about everywhere, in…

Major Nelson says that Marathon Durandal is one of two games that will hit Xbox Live Arcade this week; specifically, on Wednesday, when XBLA gets its weekly update. Durandal wll cost 800 points. For more information and screenshots, check the Maratho…

Spartan182 has sent in a PrintMusic file of the piano solo from the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer. We’ve added it to the Halo Sheet Music section, check it out!