My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • Gamestock impressions from PlanetXbox

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    Louis Wu
    in
    Gawd… the every-day-checking of the PlanetXbox site for their promised hands-on report has finally paid off! There’s some good discussion about the ease of transition to a console controller (they liked it), and a nice description of the mission itself… but the little tidbit that stood out for me was their description of the Halo as

    …a giant world that, as Jones explained, spans over 10,000 kilometers in diameter.

    A bit over a year ago, Matt Soell, in answer to a direct question about the size of the Halo, sent this:

    I got an answer of sorts to the miles/kilometers question. Turns out that none of the figures discussed so far are accurate. Jason claims to not know where the 10,000 figure came from, as he’s still doing the math.

    If PlanetXbox’s comment is literally true, it seems Jones has settled on the figure after all… Go read the whole thing for yourself!

  • Magazine sighting for Halo

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    Louis Wu
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    Joel Stransky found this (124K) ‘in an old magazine’… that’s all the info we have. Oddness.

  • Halo’s Universe open for business

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    Louis Wu
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    It’s not completely clear how we missed this… but we got notice a few weeks ago of a new French Halo site, Halo’s Universe. Apologies for the long annoucement delay… Take a look!

  • Halo SETI Team 7 day stats posted

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    Crux Fidelis
    in
    Dink!… The Halo SETI Marines fall a notch to 48, partly due to lost units, but partly due to leveled-out crunching. Don’t blame DarthFlounder – his output has INCREASED, to over 200 units a week. The rest of the team, though… there are fewer than 1/3 that actually produce a unit each week. Are you doing YOUR part? Check the 7 day stats page to see. Pax.

  • Fan Fiction section updated

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    Crux Fidelis
    in
    A cautionary tale… Anrkey‘s latest Fan Fiction offering, ‘Joyride‘, explains why you should be careful what you get into… You’ll find it in our Fan Fiction section. Pax.

  • Breathtaking new Wallpaper available

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    Louis Wu
    in
    Every once in a while, we get an art submission that takes our breath away. We got one of those today. Jay Faircloth, who has in the past submitted impressive material to both our Miscellaneous Art and Wallpaper collections, has done it again – Check out ‘Hostilities’, on our Wallpaper page. It’s available in 5 sizes…and, well, maybe Bungie should consider the BoB armor for inclusion into the game.

  • Halo Update database updated

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    Louis Wu
    in
    Last Friday’s Weekly Halo Update (originally at Rampancy.net) has been added to the Halo Update database. The database can show you fun things, like this is the fourth week in a row in which the ‘Mighty Chris Butcher‘ has figured prominently. And is this the first time we’ve seen Chris Hughes’ name mentioned? (Hint: no.) Go check it out!

  • US counterpart to German jeep

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    Louis Wu
    in
    Jay Faircloth (Anaphiel) points out that the US military has a lightweight tactical jeep as well, though not nearly as cool as the German one. Advantage – it can be dropped in via helicopter (a dropship of sorts…). There’s a hi-res shot linked from that page – but beware, it’s almost 2 megs.

  • Another Halo-like jeep

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    Louis Wu
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    Tilo Probst sent this to Hamish Sinclair, of the Marathon’s Story page, who forwarded it to us, with permission.

    I was reading the book: “Terry Gander: Moderne MGs – Eine internationale Übersicht” (German title, but a book about modern MGs). On page 97 I found an interesting picture, showing a jeep called “Light Strike Vehicle, Wessex Stalker series”. In my opinion it looks like the famous halo jeep used by the humans!

    A bit over a year ago, there was another submission of a possible inspirational pic for the Halo jeep – the link is now dead, but we’re working on recovering the image.

  • More Gamestock reviews

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    Louis Wu
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    “After taking out some aliens with the mounted gun and running over a few more…”

    The Action Vault Gamestock report should make some of our forum regulars happy – running over enemies has been high on the list of requested features. There was also an interesting quote from Jason Jones, that must have come from the media availability session, since it didn’t appear in the Gamespot UK interview:

    “To dodge the multiplayer question a bit, there’s going to be a whole bunch of graphic differences because we don’t have to deal with the loading, we don’t have to deal with the ATI boards, for example. That was a pain in the ass back in the PC days. Even though the Xbox has built-in Ethernet, the PC has this huge installed base of freaks that play Counter-Strike and Quake and all that on the net all the time, so you might find some multiplayer differences too, but we’re really thinking about the Xbox experience right now. We’re so damn busy dealing with pressure, trying to get it ready that we don’t think about what the differences are going to be.”

    That’s about as up-front as we’ve heard in terms of how the team is thinking about PC development. Other Gamestock roundups include Happy Puppy (they didn’t get to play it, so there’s not much there) and Gameweek (a short generic description of the game). Thanks to R.net for doing the digging to find these.

  • Theory section updated

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    Louis Wu
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    Shielded Halo? Ryan Parsons thinks so. Check out his Unified Theory, over in our Theories section.

  • New Fan Fiction

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    Louis Wu
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    It was sitting awkwardly, crouched with one leg underneath, having somehow survived having most of its chest blown away.

    Up close and personal, with the latest installment of Chris Cox’s ‘The Prisoner‘. You can find it (along with the first two chapters) in our Fan Fiction section.

  • Is Halo the Xbox Killer App?

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to Lophan, who noted that in today’s GameSpy Daily, the Thought for the day was “What is YOUR killer app?” They suggested that Halo was impressive, “maybe worth buying a system for.” Guess they should talk to the Daily Radar folks…

  • Halo around the net

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    Louis Wu
    in
    Looks like a bunch of gaming sites finished the week off by putting up their Halo reviews. Gamesmania has a pretty positive take – sounds like the AI is really coming along:

    The AI of both your enemies and your allies is looking pretty good. Enemies will take cover during a fight, investigate noises and bodies of fallen comrades (it looks like bodies stay, if not permanently then for a good long while). If they catch and then lose sight of you, they will investigate your last known position.

    GamePro has a short synopsis… they liked it a lot, and I hadn’t ever seen this piece of trivia before:

    In addition, two players will be able to play through the story in cooperative mode.

    Now THAT sounds like fun. 🙂 Finally, GamePen has an upbeat paragraph:

    Even on a television, the game is gorgeous.ʦamp;lt;/p>

    We’re still waiting on the PlanetXbox review – they say it’ll be up today. (Thanks to R.net for the heads-up on a couple of these.)

  • Halo music video

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    Louis Wu
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    DigitalGolem writes that he’s uploaded a new music video from Halo clips. It requires the divx codec to watch, which I haven’t had time to install yet… but at least one person on the forum liked it. 🙂 It can be found here, and links to all the necessary software are on the page. Be sure to let DG know what you think!

  • Weekly Halo Update Goodness

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    Louis Wu
    in
    Matt’s weekly Halo Update can be found at Rampancy.net this week – as though we didn’t have some idea already how Halo was doing. 🙂 We got names for “here are two people working FULL-TIME on multiplayer” mentioned in the Q&A yesterday – Hardy and Michael – presumably Lebel and Evans, two big names from the Oni team… and we got teasers like this:

    Marcus got the lovely gorgeous waterfalls working again and placed a couple of them on the first mission you play after you land on Halo. Of course that will be at dusk and you might be distracted by the enormous structures firing huge bolts of plasma over to the other side of the ring.

    Goodness, if that doesn’t pique your interest, you should head over to the Tribes 2 sites, or something. Thanks, Matt! Go read the goodness for yourself.

  • Wallpaper page updated

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to Oliver Heilwagen, who sends in a nicely done desktop image for our Wallpaper page… go grab it! (A little bit o’ green in there, maybe to honor St. Patrick…)

  • A parable for our time

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    Louis Wu
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    In the interest of sanity, Otokam writes a story of monkeys and quilts. Definitely worth a read. All your stuffing are belong to us.

  • FiringSquad gets their hands on Halo

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to Harry Al-Shakarchi, who pointed out a FiringSquad review of Halo. No new info at this point… but it was encouraging to hear die-hard PC gamers talking about getting the basics of fighting down inside of 5 minutes. Take a look!

  • New video coming soon to xbox.com

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    Crux Fidelis
    in
    fate noticed that the Xbox.com Halo site now has the following comment:

    We have a better video coming soon!

    There’s also a fun new Halo flash animation at the top of the Games page… but don’t follow the link, it’s showing its PC origins: 

    http://www.xbox.com/Games/\games\halo
    Pax.