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Rifle-butting the aliens
Thanks to Zypper, who pointed out that this week’s Halo Update is over at Haloplayers… and it sounds like they might just be ready for Gamestock. New music (this might be the bestest part), better AI, and lots of gameplay tweaks. Go read it for yourself… and brace for Monday/Tuesday’s impact!
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MS’s Gamestock 2001 placeholder up
Thanks to MoBill, who pointed out the (future) link of Microsoft’s Gamestock 2001 page. There’s nothing there yet… but there will be, on Tuesday.
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what’s with the bippin’ and the boppin’?
black flag and a red star posts his second weekly (well, sort of) HBO Forum Update (not to be confused with Matt Soell’s weekly Halo Updates), and the big question is, can he keep it up? (Matt’s been going for 17 updates now, over a 22 week span – it’s a tough act to follow.) And bf… some of us DO know what the jazz is all about.
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Gotta love those suits…
Heh – Jack, on our forum, points us to an image that seems to sum up the feelings of a lot of Halo fans about the upcoming MMORPG, Planetside. It’s all in fun…
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CGW wonders, when’s dessert?
Kudos (hehe… he said kudos) to Paul Collette, who spotted a Halo mention in the March 2001 issue of Computer Gaming World:Halo: “Graphics” is the focus of the Halo team. Most of the developer updates from Bungie have been discussing graphical tweaks and accomplishments, which is a bit worrisome. We still have faith, due to their past history, that they have their design chops. But when will we read more about gameplay and less about the cinematronics or the kinematics?”
Heh… the question couldn’t have come at a better time. Will they see something they like on Monday?
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Schwag for Meg
Thanks to both Daedalus and EvilBastard, who sent us closeups of the Halo shirt (a pic which will probably remain on the Bungie Webcam all night) within 10 minutes of each other. No more, please. 🙂
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Gamestock, here we come…
Thanks to Zypper, who sent in this Bungie Webcam shot of Mat Noguchi modeling a new Halo t-shirt. This is the same Mat who said that the entire Bungie/Halo/Online team was concentrating 100% on Gamestock? Looks like they’re ready…
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Fan Fiction section updated
I saw a fireball erupt behind the main body of troops and the communication tower leaned slowly and crumpled in a heap of rubble.
Todd Hansen sends in the first chapter of a Fan Fiction piece that ‘has grown quite colossal’… if you’re interested in seeing the rest, send him mail! (Read the beginning of ‘Vision of an Apocalypse’ in our Fan Fiction section.)
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Take heart, modem users!
Interesting. Hot on the heels of a query on our forum about the playability of Halo over a modem comes a news article at Daily Radar about a company (Xtech) who’s producing a narrowband solution for the PS2 and Xbox. Details are sketchy at the moment, but Xtech says that they’re aiming to bridge the gap between broadband-enabled-only consoles and the vast majority of online gamers. (I’m not implying that the news article is in response to the forum query – we’re not anywhere near that egocentric here – I just thought the timing was interesting.)
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Rehashing old stories
Oops. Thanks to Dan Rudolph, who set us to looking in our own news archives… Seems the MSNBC story we mentioned yesterday is old news – we reported on the existence of the V-Chip-like control way back in September. Blame Louis – he’s lazy. Pax.
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Halo-Australia back online
BluR writes to say that Halo-Australia is back online again – stop by and check ’em out! Pax.
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V-chip Wants Xbox, Yes
Thanks to Pallor, who noticed (on R.net’s forum) that MSNBC has an article about a V-chip-style control to be included in the Xbox. It’s not clear how this will affect Halo, since without the chip, parents concerned about violence levels would simply not buy it anyway, but it’s possible that overall, more units of the Xbox will sell because of the chip. Details about the actual hardware won’t be revealed before E3, in May.
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Mere screenshots? Pshaw!
Something other than ‘mere screenshots’, says Matt of the Halo offerings at Gamestock. Also, the bungie.com website (not just the Halo page) is about to undergo testing, prior to public display. Good stuff a’comin’!
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‘Private Reg’s Last Day of Combat’ updated
Thanks to Maszimo, who sent in a rewrite of ‘Private Reg’s Last Day of Combat‘. I haven’t altered the submission date, but it’s still available in our Fan Fiction section.
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Halo SETI Team 7 day stats posted
After 5 days of downtime, the SETI servers came back to life on Saturday… the output of the Halo SETI Marines suffered. Total units processed were down from ~3000/week to 600 this week. Ouch! Check the gory details on the 7 day stats page.
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Halo Updates database gets bigger
It’s Monday again, so it’s time to increment the Halo Updates database. The update posted at BGH on Friday has now been added. The word of the week is ‘fun‘ – how often has Matt used it? (And does it tell us anything about the state of mind, over time, of the Halo team?)
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Ace in the hole
PunkRocker finds ANOTHER Halo news item, this time at Daily Radar. It’s a preview of Gamestock, Microsoft’s press-only event coming up in a bit over a week, and they refer to Halo as “the ace in Microsoft’s hand”. Heh… 5 card stud, anyone?
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Xbox Preview Guide goes up
Still using the oldest known screenshot, but with nothing but kind words, xbox.ign.com puts up an Xbox Preview Guide, and says of Halo:Expected to make its Xbox debut at Gamestock 2001, this highly touted FPS title from Bungie is expected to change the face of action gaming with this Xbox-exclusive. This probably the best looking game we have ever seen, and the fact that it will be all about advanced AI, vehicle use, and more Online multi-player options than you can shake a stick at get us more than a little excited.
Nice to know that even without new material (nobody’s seen anything new from Bungie since June of last year), they’re still talking nice. (Thanks to PunkRocker for the heads-up on our forum.)
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Back to huntin’ critters
Erbium-=SUN=- writes to remind us that the SETI servers are online again. (They came back yesterday morning, but due to the huge demand for new units, it was often difficult to tell.) Let’s get crunching again!
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The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft
