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Friday’s Fanfic
There are eight new pieces up for your reading pleasure this week in the Fan Fiction section – go get ’em!(Louis Wu 11:50:27 UTC)
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Marathon: Durandal DLC Back Online
Hippieman sent me a message on XBL a couple days ago.. the two downloadable netmap packs for Marathon:Durandal, the XBLA version of Bungie’s classic Mac and PC scifi shooter, the grand-daddy of Halo, are now online in the Xbox Live Marketplace.
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Captain Spark Reviews Halo 3
You know Captain Spark. The guy who records all those audio snippets from Halo games? Yeah, that’s him. He’s weighed in now with a review of Halo 3’s campaign. He starts by getting two beefs of his chest (the over-aggressive Arbiter and the so-called “Cortana Moments”) before getting to what he likes. Well worth a read, go check it out.
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Bungie To Mattrick: We’re Not Laughing
Bungie President Harold Ryan denied claims by Microsoft’s Don Mattrick that he laughed and acquiesced with the publisher’s decision to indefinitely postpone Bungie’s E3 announcement.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Mattrick once again explains their reasons for delaying the event, with no mention whatsoever of why it was made on such late notice– less than a week before the event for their exclusion from the press conference, and less than 24 hours from their separate announcement before that, too, was cancelled.
Mattrick described Bungie as “disappointed” rather than angry and tried to suggest that Ryan laughed and agreed with the decision. After the interview was posted, Ryan remarked to Eurogamer that he neither agreed, nor found it funny:
“Keeping things clean, I certainly didn’t agree with the decision to delay our news until sometime after E3,” Ryan told Eurogamer today.
“Bungie is always concerned first and foremost with our fans. Whenever we are prevented from exceeding their positive expectations it is not a laughing matter.”
Nice to see Ryan sneak “keep it clean” in there. Now if only MS could keep things clean…
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Escapist Reviews Hail To The Chimp
The Escapist is usually a cut above other gaming sites when it comes to content, especially long content. They’ve done a short review of Wideload’s Hail to the Chimp, and the long and short of it is, they didn’t like it much.
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Double XP Weekend – Team Snipers
Team Snipers Double Experience Weekend has started – go shoot someone!(Louis Wu 19:39:57 UTC)
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Steve Downes to appear at Arlington Racetrack
Over at NeoGAF, Chamellion posted what looks like a press release for an event at the Arlington Park Racetrack near Chicago. (I hunted around, but couldn’t find the original.) This Sunday, July 27, Steve Downes (voice of the Master Chief) will be on hand to sign autographs and any Halo merchandise you bring him, and folks will have a chance to win a new Xbox 360. If you live near Arlington Heights, IL, make some time Sunday afternoon!(Louis Wu 19:02:47 UTC)
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Halo 3 RPG Released
Scotty wrote to let us know that Halo 3 RPG is now online – sign up to play Halo in this web-based RPG. There’s a guest account if you want to see what you’re getting into. Just tried it out… not sure I understand how it works. (I picked a playlist, it said I won. I picked another one, it said I came in 4th. I went head-to-head with someone, the next screen said I was beaten 5-0. And so on.) Check it out for yourself! (Louis Wu 19:02:01 UTC)
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Bungie and PAX and You
Bungie’s posted a note about their involvement at PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo coming up at the end of August. They’ll be on the show floor, and they’ll be showing off some brand new Halo 3 multiplayer content, among other things – w00t! On a sadder note, the huge fanfest they’d been planning has been postponed – one can only assume that it depended on information/material that may or may not be revealed by the time the event rolls around. Ah, well… such is life!(Louis Wu 18:09:48 UTC)
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Bungie @ PAX
The Penny Arcade Expo is rapidly approaching and while some of our plans have changed, we are still planning some goodness for fans who plan to attend.
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Weta unveils Halo Collectible Statues
Weta, the New Zealand studio that created all those cool props for the Neil Blomkamp Halo shorts (along with other little tidbits like, say, the Lord of the Rings movies), has announced a new line of Halo collectible statues. These will be on display this week in San Diego (during the Comic Convention) – you can see some shots from the show floor at Ain’t it Cool News (thanks, Wolverine Monkey). They’re also creating four very special versions – one each of four statues – that will be silver-plated, with solid silver elements; these will go on sale on eBay sometime after the Convention. The Weta NZ website has pictures of all of these items, as well – but they’re getting slammed, and their pictures are actually pretty small. (You can see some of them at Hawty McBloggy’s place – she wrote up an article about this stuff this morning.) If you really want a good view, though, swing by this page – we’ve gotten our hands on high-res versions of these puppies, and man, they’re pretty slick.(Louis Wu 17:08:21 UTC)
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Tons of Sparks – no Guilt
Pretty interesting article over at Gamasutra – Bungie’s Steve Scott gave a talk at Microsoft’s GameFest 2008 on the importance of effects artists for today’s videogames. Lots of cool Halo 3 details. Give it a read! (Louis Wu 15:25:37 UTC)
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Halo 3 Campaign Review
Google Alerts brought me news of a Halo 3 Campaign review from Captain Spark – but before I could post it, Rockslider pointed it out in our forum. Go read the musings of a longtime HBO contributor! (Louis Wu 15:23:20 UTC)
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An ongoing work-stream
Eurogamer’s posted their full post-E3 interview with Don Mattrick, and Halo comes up quite a bit. Very little new information, really, but the wording is interesting.(Louis Wu 15:22:58 UTC)
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New Halo 3 Panos from TheGuardian
TheGuardian let us know he’s been working on some new Halo 3 Panoramas – you can see them over at DeviantART. I really like ‘The Gap’! (Louis Wu 15:20:50 UTC)
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NC Dream Map Contest
HeavenlyYeti wants to build your next Forge project. Swing by NinjaCritic for the details.(Louis Wu 15:20:33 UTC)
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G-Phoria 2008 – go vote for Halo 3!
G4’s Awards show, G-Phoria 2008 is open for voting – Halo is up for a few categories. Best Downloadable Content, Best Online Multiplayer, Best Shooter, Stride Longest Lasting Game, and Game of the Year. Vote now – winners announced on August 7th at 8 pm! Thanks to General Vagueness for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 15:11:48 UTC)
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Fighting Game-Related Motion Sickness
The Escapist has a short article up on methods to combat various forms of motion sickness sometimes related to video gaming.
Bungie fans will recall some of the problems fans had with the XBLA version of Marathon:Durandal that caused motion sickness in some players. It was speculated that the problems were related to the field of vision and framerates being different between computers from the era in which M:D was originally developed and the Xbox 360.
In short, the suggestions are: sit further from the display, have some ginger, and just grin and bear it– the effect can lessen with time.
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The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft