It’s not quite what you think. Wired News interviews Epic’s Mark Rein about the Unreal Engine 3 technology. While usually it’s CliffyB letting his mouth run away with him a little bit, here it’s Rein, who is positively bubbling over the fact that Gears of War cost only ten million dollars to make.

So, while Sony is pushing Killzone 2 as their Halo-killer, Rein wants to bring Halo to the PlayStation. Except it’s called Unreal Tournament.

WN: Are you guys open at this point to another big project, like if Sony were to come to you and say, make us a Halo for PS3.

MR: We’ve got one, Unreal Tournament 3! It’s the Halo for PlayStation 3. I hope so. We’re going to do some really fun stuff with the controller, it’s going to look amazing, run well. We’re hoping. That’d be nice.

Is there a game for the PlayStation 3 that doesn’t want to either kill Halo 3, or be Halo 3?

Over at IGN, Erik Brudvik pines for truly “mind-blowing” content from Halo 3 and opines that no news is not good news:

The hype for Halo 3 is already at absurd levels. The ball is in Microsoft and Bungie’s court and it’s their marketing battle to lose now. A misstep with the beta could be more damaging than many might initially believe. Then again, beta success could send the interest in Halo 3 through the roof. Let’s all hope for the best.

Articles like this are proof indeed that the human mind can hold two mutually exclusive opinions simultaneously. Bungie and Microsoft haven’t hyped the game, the hype is already absurd, the game can’t live up to the hype, he hopes it will live up to the hype.

Here’s a news flash: We will all know how good or bad Halo 3 is when it comes out. The beta test is for just that: testing. Not to prove to IGN’s writers, or anybody else, whether the hype (that may or may not exist) is deserved or not.

Thanks to AfroRyan in the HBO forum for the heads-up.

Kotaku is reporting that a playable demo of the second installment in Sony’s Halo-killer-wannabe Killzone franchise will be available before Bungie hits Xbox Live with its extensive Halo 3 Multiplayer Public Beta. Kotaku heard it from über Halo fan Luke Smith at 1UP, and I heard it from P_40E in #hbo.

Zombie Studio’s Mark Long chooses his “games for a desert island” in a piece at Gamasutra today. Not surprisingly, for its cooperative play mode, Halo gets the nod: Halo 1, that is:

Is there anything better in the world than playing Halo co-op? No there is not; you don’t even need to think about that question. The co-op campaign was well thought out. You could tell that the designers had made a decision not to compromise co-op in any way. The co-op campaign is equal to the single player campaign. I can tell you from experience: that is a very hard thing to pull off.

Hit the link for a tad more effusive praise for Bungie’s first Xbox outing, as well as Long’s other favorite games.