My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • Huffington Post Shows Chimp Love…

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    narcogen

    …or rather woodchuck love, as a new blogger, the animal kingdom newscaster Woodchuck Chumley has shown up at the Huffington Post with his own blog. Perhaps he’ll be answering the age-old question, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck. Or maybe he’ll just talk animal kingdom politics:

    As we approach election year, I feel it’s only appropriate to step outside the usual role of ambivalent newscaster and tell you not only what I know about the candidates and their platforms, but what I feel about them as well. Perhaps some of you will complain that journalists ought to keep their opinions to themselves and strive to remain unbiased. If you don’t like it, go back to your feed bag and keep swallowing what the rest of the media is spoon-feeding you. Because they’re doing the same thing. They’re just not as honest about it.

    Whoops! Did I say that?

    Be sure to watch that space in anticipation of information about Hail to the Chimp. Or at least a few more funny reads like this one.

  • That guy’s nuts.

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    You think YOU’RE devoted to Halo? You ain’t got NOTHIN’ on Alterb0y, a soldier in Iraq. He had his wife pick up his copy Legendary Edition copy and FedEx it overseas. Legendary Edition of Halo 3: $129.99 (plus tax). FedEx shipping: $326. The ability to play Halo 3 with your buds in the desert – well, not quite priceless. I’m thinking it’s closer to $600. (Louis Wu 22:57:43 UTC)

  • Suck it, Spiderman

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    Major Nelson posted a press release about yesterday’s sales – Halo 3 is officially the biggest single-day sales event in entertainment history. $170 Million in the US, in 24 hours… not too shabby. Thanks, KP.(Louis Wu 22:46:39 UTC)

  • Teh Funniez

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    Comic roundup for Wednesday:

    • LostRock11 noticed that SORE THUMBS had Halo 3-related strips on Monday and Wednesday – they both hit home
    • Ure Paul let us know that ActionTrip celebrated the release of Halo 3 with a Muppets-inspired comic (I love those guys)
    • Subnova comes back online with a new .Comic – and a mini-review of Halo 3 to boot

    Good stuff!(Louis Wu 22:44:48 UTC)

  • Halo 3 Launch Week FAQ

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    Bungie.net’s Recent News
    Now that Halo 3 is released, many of you have questions. Fortunately we have answers.

  • Halo 3 Launch Week FAQ

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    narcogen

    Bungie has put up a Halo 3 Launch Week FAQ to cover some of the most common new player questions, especially about issues surrounding screenshot uploads and other features that might be having the kinks still worked out.

  • More News Than You Can Shake a Stick At

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    News roundup:

    • The New York Times wrote a pretty long article about Halo 3 – not a lot new in it, but significant for the column space in a paper like the Times (thanks, Usul)
    • TalkXBOX wrote up 10 Reasons they’re Pumped for Halo 3 – thanks, Rishi Modha
    • ESPN (really? ESPN?) checks out what makes Halo 3 special – thanks, revan09
    • Master Chief rang the final bell at NASDAQ yesterday – Major Nelson has pics, Xbox Scene has a story (thanks, RVideo)
    • You can buy a pretty nice Brute Spiker replica on eBay (auction ends in less than 4 days) – current bid is $250 (thanks, Dualist)
    • TeamXbox posted all 300 pictures distributed to journalists by Bungie a couple of weeks ago – I’m sure they’re elsewhere, too, but most folks put up representative samples. These are scaled to 1000 pixels wide.
    • Roger Travis has talked about the epic nature of the Halo story before (we mentioned him in May) – he’s back, with an update for Halo 3
    • Heather Newman of the Detroit Free Press gets a reader to help with Halo 3 review (they completed the whole campaign in 4 hours with 2-player coop; they must have been playing easy or normal)
    • Data Mining looks at Halo mentions in the blogosphere compared with Resident Evil (the top video game release from last week), the Bourne Ultimatum (one of the largest movies of the summer)… and the iPhone.
    • Drost, of 2Old2Play, posted a full Halo 3 review a couple of days ago – he says “it’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing a game.”
    • Entertainment Weekly reviewed Halo – both reviewers gave it an A
    • Techtree.com (in India) previewed Halo 3 – and liked it
    • Apparently, Walmart in Canada plans to sell Halo 3 at price parity with the US, which will make the game cheaper at that store than at most stores in Canada (their price for the standard edition is $59.83 – about CDN$10 below everyone else)
    • MTV wrote up an interesting piece on Saved Films – check out how a cool screenshot came to be
    • A Guardian Unlimited blog discusses how many cliches were hit in the Halo 3 coverage
    • Joystiq is giving away some amazing stuff – go visit and see if you can win (thanks, Engadget)
    • Business Week wrote a really nice piece on the social aspect of Halo 3, and where it might be leading us (obDisclosure: I have a quote in this one)

    Good lord, that’s a ridiculous list. Unfortunately, that didn’t even clear out the queue; there’s more coming. I’m not sure if I can get to it right away.(Louis Wu 20:46:10 UTC)

  • Surround View of the ActionClix Scarab

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    Darkphibre created a “walkaround” viewer which runs in Windows – you can use it to see really cool pics of the Limited Edition Scarab ActionClix Figure (he took the pics at PAX). (Louis Wu 20:13:10 UTC)

  • Launch Writeups

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    Wow. So I was going through mail that came to email addresses other than halo@bungie.org, thinking that I’d make a summary of all the news that hadn’t gotten posted in the last couple of days before I STARTED posting – but the list is so enormous that I’ll never get through it unless I just start. So – I’ll do my best to combine like items, but beware the news flood! First up, some release night shenanigans around the country (and the world):

    I think we should probably call it a day after those; I’m sure there are HUNDREDS of writeups of local launch things (there were, after all, over 10,000 stores in the US, 1,000 stores in the UK, and uncounted numbers in other countries all open for this event), but we’ll say this is representative. (Louis Wu 20:00:23 UTC)

  • FYI: there are two important cutscenes to watch after the H3 credits

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    rapture

    There are two important cutscenes after the credits roll. One of the cutscenes can only be accessed after beating the game on Legendary. After beating the game, you can jump ahead to to certain points in the campaign, including the last half of the last level on Legendary. Go here to discuss those cutscenes (spoilers): http://hushedcasket.com/node/2381

  • Podtacular Invades Seattle

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    JVB

    Foo Mo Jive and I had the honor of attending the Halo 3 launch event in Seattle. We had a chance to interview and meet a lot of great people. Our proudest moment had to be the interview we had with Marty O’Donnell, which made me a bit nervous, so nervous that I called myself Foo Mo Jive, lol.

    Check out some more pics:



    Me and The Don Juan


    Me and PMS Kitty


    Valkyrie, Rodsmack, and Me


    Me and Trixie


    Foo Mo Jive at the airport


    Me and Miles, from Grunts R Us


    Me and Vicious696 and some Seattle Mariners


    Lukems

  • Ultra Super Mega Uber Bundle

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    Check out this Halo bundle on eBay. Zowie. Got a bunch of spare money, anyone? 😉 (Thanks to MffnMn for the link)(mnemesis 16:10:02 UTC)

  • Welcome back to the madhouse

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    The HBO forum is now back online – if you haven’t finished the game, I’d caution you to be careful. We ask that folks not post spoilers without warning (and not to put spoilers in subject lines); we’ll do our best to remove or relabel spoiler posts if it does happen (and we’ll ban folks who think it’s funny to try and ruin others’ games) – but we can’t promise you won’t see something you don’t want to… so if you’re worried, pretend it’s still closed.(Louis Wu 16:08:58 UTC)

  • Scratched Discs

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    We got more than a few notes over the last couple of days that some of the Limited Edition buyers were finding that their discs were scratched. Today, Microsoft is offering to replace those discs free of charge.(mnemesis 15:41:14 UTC)

  • Sick Skillz.

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    halo@bungie.org
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    Looks like no One One Se7en today. Hope you get better, Stuntmutt! Mythomania is a terrible affliction.(Louis Wu 15:35:08 UTC)

  • Welcome to my KILLIONAIR!

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    halo@bungie.org
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    A 2old2play regular, BatmanKM, has done a really cool retro-comic-cover of the MC. Looks great! Thanks to King Drewsky for the note.(mnemesis 15:33:39 UTC)

  • Angry Robots do Halo

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    Angry Robot had a few Halo-related items yesterday that I forgot to post. They played through the first two games (writeup and video), wrote up a rant on cliffhangar endings (specifically, Halo 2’s), and then played through Halo 3 for a few hours and did a podcast afterwards. Check it out, and thanks to daragh.(mnemesis 15:32:39 UTC)

  • Halo 3 Community Lock-In

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    Back at home, after a crazy few days in Seattle… it’s amazing how much news mnemesis and KP managed to post in the last couple of days. You’d almost think I was expendable… heh. Where did I go? Well, Microsoft hosted an event titled ‘Community Lock-In‘ – and I played some Halo 3. And stuff. Go see.(Louis Wu 14:27:40 UTC)

  • Halo 3 Splitscreen Doesn’t Use Entire Widescreen

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    narcogen

    Ah, aspect ratios and high definition televisions. Just as fans bitched and moaned last month about the fact that both Xbox 360 and PC versions of Bioshock locked displays to a single horizontal FOV setting, whether the user had a 4:3 or a 16:9 screen, now Joystiq is on about how splitscreen works in Halo 3, apparently using two 2.7:1 frames stacked on each other instead of two 1.77:1 frames.

    What’s the issue, exactly? Unused pixels:

    We’re too far into the HDTV transition for games to be wasting screen space or having other perspective issues. We understand that designers want total control over the gaming experience. But we players want to use every pixel for which we paid.

    Check Joystiq for the complete story.

  • Forum reopening

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    halo@bungie.org
    in
    If you’ve been itching to discuss Halo 3 with your fellow halo.bungie.org pals, then I’ve got great news for ya. The forum should reopen in just a few hours! So just scratch that itch for a leeetle bit longer, ‘kay?(Ding 13:08:06 UTC)