My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • Saving money, Bungie-style

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    A tidbit of good news, in the face of the disappointments yesterday: Matt Soell, in defiance of Microsoft corporate policy to milk gamers of every possible dollar, points out that the ‘System Link Cable’ that Microsoft packages for the XBox (sold separately for, generally, $15) is, in reality, just a 20′ crossover cable. These are generally available for much less than $15 – for example, a quick web search turned up this company, selling them for $5. Interestingly, they’re no longer listed in the hardware list at xbox.com.

  • Coop = splitscreen, sorry

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Details on gameplay continue to emerge – Rampancy.net gets confirmation from Matt Soell (via email) that cooperative mode is limited to two players, on a single XBox in splitscreen mode. This is the only multiplayer mode with this restriction – all others can handle up to 16 players with a maximum of 4 linked XBoxes, with no splitscreen requirements. (Of course, if you’re putting 16 players on 4 boxes, you have to employ splitscreen… but you can play 4 players on 4 screens if you choose. Coop play, in contrast, cannot be played on two screens.)

  • Fan Fiction – lost one, gained two

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Lots of action on the Fan Fiction front today. Mr Bill Jr V has asked us to pull his story, ‘The Answers’, because he didn’t think it was up to snuff… but he’s submitted a new one, ‘Escape‘, to replace it. Almost simultaneously, Jasper, whose last story came in back in May, dropped us another fun one – ‘Elevator‘. Be sure to use the comments system to let the authors know what you think!

  • What – no films??

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Aaauuggghhhh! No films. 🙁 Matt Soell dashed hopes for one of the most commonly desired features today – Halo will NOT have a method for saving films. A sad, sad day for Bungie fans…

  • It’s MUCH older than last year

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Not that you should listen to the man, or anything – and it’s not as though it’s the first time he’s said this – but Matt Soell steps into a thread about Halo’s gameplay to smack down the theory that Halo was converted to a first person view (from third person) in order to fit better with the Xbox controller. As Matt says,

    The decision to go first-person was made before MS entered the picture.

    But Matt, you know, is full of it – he’s just making it up because he already sold his soul to Bill Gates. Or something.

  • Hmm…

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Not sure how long this thread will exist… or how many of you want to read it if it’s full of spoilers… but someone who obviously playtested Halo recently has broken his NDA and described his experience on the IGN Forum. The link (for now) is here. It’s all multiplayer stuff…

  • Gamespot pics are OLD

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Before we get MORE mail about it – it seems that Gamespot has updated their Halo screenshots recently (yesterday, actually)… but all the new shots are OLD. There are some from October 1999… others that are screen captures from the E3 2000 movie… they’re ALL old. (Interestingly enough, the screen grabs from E3 2001, listed as having been posted May 18, have some very nice shots in the collection… The fun stuff starts on page 4, and runs through the top of page 7.)

  • Halo Developer Diary 4 at PlanetXbox

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    PlanetXbox has published Part 4 of their Halo Developer’s Diary, and this one is chock-full of details about what makes Halo different from other games of its genre. There are some really fun bug-discovering snippets:

    Two days ago some crazy (but diligent) tester stacked enough Warthogs to jump on top of an ‘unclimbable’ cliff on one of my levels.

    There are descriptions of the complexity of gameplay, in both solo and multiplayer modes:

    The guy riding shotgun in your warthog during a multiplayer game can toss a grenade into the enemy base from his seat, then leap out of the warthog, grab the flag, use the flag to smack another defender and jump back in without you even letting up on the accelerator.

    And there are accounts of the dramatic nature of Halo:

    I’ve seen a warthog drive out of a second story window, do a complete back flip and land right in the middle of a squad of Covenant just as one of them said “Does anybody see him?”

    All in all, chock full of good info. (Unfortunately, it seems to confirm that cooperative play is limited to two players.) Go read the whole thing!

  • New Fan Fiction

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Death and destruction on the Halo fill Mr Bill Jr V‘s latest story, ‘The Answers‘. Related to previous works… yet different. You’ll find it (and many others) in our Fan Fiction section. It appears that the new comments feature is a success!

  • Where’s Ripley when you need her?

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Yesterday the Marathon’s Story page mentioned an interesting little comparison between the Covenant and the Pfhor, from the Marathon series, created by fan Joseph E. Haake. Today, Joseph points out a modified version… which implies a different connection.

  • More mirrors for the TeamXbox movie

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Seems we missed a source for the TeamXbox movie yesterday – you can find another two mirrors of the 20 MB mpeg at 3D Gamers. Thanks, Frans!

  • German Fan Fiction… Ach!

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    In a first for HBO, we’re putting up Fan Fiction in a non-English language – Uriel has submitted ‘Beyond the Paradise, part 1‘, in German. Be sure to let us know how this works for you – the Comments page can be found in our Fan Fiction section.

  • Movie list finally updated

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Took us long enough… but we’ve finally added the two latest movies (the Bungie Commentary movie available at Microsoft’s official Halo site and the TeamXbox gameplay movie) to our Movie list. You’ll find all the current mirrors (in all the various formats) that were still active as of this morning, as well as links to screen captures for the bandwidth-impaired. If you haven’t seen these films… grab them now!

  • Gotta watch them Covs…

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in

    Drawing over the shattered, and dying SolCore vessel, the mammoth alien cruiser slowly begins to pull Percipere up into it’s giant docking bay, her hull turning green in the eerie glow of the ships interior. The bridge command crew, watching in terror through the transparent titanium viewports as they are sucked into the belly of the proverbial beast. Captain Ricter, wincing from cracked ribs, and a broken nose, slowly stands, and turns to his crew.

    Gordi sends in ‘Backstory‘, an early history lesson for Halo-ites. You’ll find it (and be able to comment on it) in our Fan Fiction section.

  • Nordichardware preview translated into English

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Thanks to Vid Boi, who sent in a translation of the Swedish Halo preview mentioned earlier. Lots o’ work… check it out!

  • Command THIS!

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Occasionally, mention is made of Halo’s ability to take absurdly high-resolution screenshots. We thought, when we saw the 1920×1440 shots posted by Daily Radar in March, we thought we were seeing an example of this. How silly we were… Bungie has kindly sent along an absurdly high-resolution shot – the original (440K) is 2664×2562 – and this one is obviously shrunk from its original size. Here’s the new yellow commander, in all his multi-toothed glory… for those who want more manageable sizes, we’ve created a 1024×768 version (92K) and a 1280×1024 version (178K) – both padded with black to make the non-standard size fit your desktop. Enjoy!



  • Swedish Halo preview at Nordichardware

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Magnus Esko, aka Dead Glory, an HBO Forum regular, has written a preview of Halo for the Swedish gaming site Nordichardware. We’d give him a hard time about how he got the story all wrong, just on principle, except… well, it’s in Swedish, so we have no idea what he said. There’s one part, though, that seems to suggest that the Covenant are really refugees from the planet Zebulon… we think that might be a stretch. If you’re Swedish, or can read Swedish… go take a look! (It’s probably right on target – we’re just joshin’ DG.)

  • Halo SETI Team 7 day stats posted

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    There’s a fight at the top of the Halo SETI Marines! charleya and Int_21 duke it out for top crunching honors, with Charleya narrowly edging Int_21 out, 168 to 165. (Int_21 takes the consolation prize of the Frogblast Award, leaping over 101 of his fellow crunchers to climb to 168th position.) The Marines lose ground to SETI’s math-munging servers, but remain undaunted. Are YOU crunching your best? Check the 7 day stats page to see.

  • Halo. Halo. Halo.

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Everyone’s getting in on the Mike Salmon action – TeamXbox has just posted an interview with the OXM Editor in Chief. Most of the questions are pretty general… but this one made us smile:

    Having played nearly all the Xbox launch games, which ones are your favorites?

    Mike S: Halo. Halo. Halo. The latest build of Halo is so much more then we ever thought it would be. Amazing. It is very rare that a game (or a movie for that matter) not only lives up to the hype, but blows it away. DOA3 is also astonishing (best fighting game ever, without a doubt), and we’ve been having a lot of fun with Transworld Surf (surprising, but true).

    Not only lives up to the hype, but blows it away… nice words. Thanks, Harry, for the heads-up!

  • HUD and Screenshots updated

    —

    by

    Louis Wu
    in
    Last week’s Halo Update has been added to the Halo Update Database… word of the week is ‘screenshot‘. Not bad – only two updates between the promised screen and its appearance! (The shot itself has been added to the Screenshots section, as well.)