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Cheap Halo GonD Versions – 1 day only
The Xbox LIVE Ultimate Game Sale starts today – and today’s offers are all Halo titles. Games On Demand versions of Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and Halo Wars are each $10, while Halo 4 is $40. Act fast! Thanks, Black Six.(Louis Wu 15:52:09 UTC)
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Majestic Stair Dual of Destiny
Skywalker DSP dropped in with a fun little commentated game on Landfall – if you haven’t had a chance to check out the new Majestic maps, this will give you a nice overview. (If you have, it’s fun gameplay in any case.)(Louis Wu 15:41:58 UTC)
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The 7 Deadly Sins of Online Gaming
Cracked.com put together a video called ‘The 7 Deadly Sins of Online Gaming‘ – and while these sins are not really game-specific, Halo makes an obvious appearance. How many have YOU been guilty of? Thanks, Revenant1988.(Louis Wu 15:38:54 UTC)
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The Box Trick
SonGoharotto pointed out a fun little Halo 4 AI fail… it’s all about the lulz. Go try it for yourself!(Louis Wu 15:36:43 UTC)
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Halo 4 Majestic Map Pack Review
From Beyond Entertainment:In this video, Clicked will be giving you his honest opinion on the 3 maps in the Majestic Map Pack DLC. Are the maps worth your money and time? Watch now to find out!
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Building A Bulwark Against The Bungie Backlash
Over at Gamasutra, Shay Pierce wrote a piece entitled Game Designers and the Four Tribes of Artists, and then Sara Gross (also at Gamasutra) wrote a piece called Indie Elitism, partially in response. Response to what? Well, apparently Pierce had read some conversations on Twitter in response to Bungie’s Destiny reveal that were a bit less than positive:
A few days ago when Bungie did their first reveal of “Destiny”, my friend and former co-worker Josh (who is working on Destiny) was expressing some frustration on Twitter. Josh is a big fan of indie games, and was frustrated because many of the indie game developers he respects were seemed to be expressing immediate disdain for the game.
Josh in this case is Bungie’s Josh Hamrick, of course. Pierce started in on how the indie game community has a bunch of snobs in it, but Gross apparently thought Pierce took it too far, or perhaps not far enough, or not quite in the right direction, and anyway ended up here:
I see no reason to vehemently snub the things that shaped gaming as we see them today. Why not embrace them – appreciate what they did for us? Some were pioneers once too. Before they made AAA titles, they made games in their parents’ basements, lived on pre-packaged garbage foods, and suffered obscene deadlines to help their creations see the light of day. They started somewhere too. AAA developers aren’t so different from us, indies.
… and linked to this.
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Where The Wild Things Are
Artist Jesse van Dijk has done some of Destiny’s concept art, including the Citadel. He’s just now posted some of those Destiny images at CGHub, but and there’s other stuff on his tumblr to check out as well.
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The Code Solving Pace Increases
Another map pack, another glyph code – GunRunner48 informed us that the Section 3 crowd has already decrypted the code buried in the Majestic Map Pack. Swing by the Section 3 Completed Glyph Sequences page for the solution, or the Halo Waypoint forums for a blow-by-blow breakdown. (We found the resulting concept art gallery a bit difficult to see, so we put up a local copy.)(Louis Wu 22:05:34 UTC)
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Providing Majestic Context
DayandKnightly wrote up a quick summary of the story underpinnings of the new maps – give it a read! (Louis Wu 22:03:42 UTC)
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Halo 4 Matchmaking Update: 2.25.13
Spartan Ops this week features a selection of “Designer’s Choice” missions, selected by our very own David Ellis and Greg Murphy. Here is the layout:
Episode 3 Mission 4 – Shootout in Valhalla
Episode 10 Mission 3 – Seize the Power
Episode 10 Mission 5 – One Last Time
Episode 4 Mission 3 – Random Transport
Episode 5 Mission 4 – The Cauldron Base
The Majestic Map Pack is now live and available for download! Be sure to pick it up for a chance to play on Monolith, Skyline, and Landfall, as well as two brand new playlists: Majestic Team and Majestic FFA DLC. While Majestic Team DLC will contain a selection of Slayer and objective-based variants in a 4 vs. 4 format, Majestic FFA DLC will contain two brand new game types: Infinity Rumble and Rumble Pro. For the details of these settings, please check out the latest Halo Bulletin. Once you have played these playlists, we encourage you to leave your feedback in the War Games Feedback section.As always, these maps will also appear throughout your favorite Halo 4 playlists. We hope you enjoy this week of Matchmaking, and we’ll be back next Monday with another update!
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Bungie’s Parsons Talks Halo, Destiny With VentureBeat
VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi has interviewed Bungie COO Pete Parsons about his role with the Halo and Destiny franchises originated by Bungie. Quite a few interesting tidbits in there, but perhaps the most interesting one reaffirms the origins of the idea behind the new IP:
Destiny is very much a product of everybody at Bungie, but its inception comes from Jason [Jones, co-founder of Bungie]. This is very much a vision that Jason has. Then, he gathers a small group of really talented people who have been here a long time, and they begin hammering on it. It’s had multiple incarnations until it finally landed into what it is today. That’s fun to watch. Not just on technology, but art and story. […] As naive as this may sound, if Jason believes in something and he’s ready to go for it, I’m in.
Be sure to read the full story at VentureBeat.
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Play it like you mean it
Nevin ‘CruelLEGACEY’ Douglas was given early access to the Majestic Map Pack last week, and discovered that Halo 4 became more fun when he was playing with people who actually wanted to play the game. Go read his thoughts on the dangers of popularity.(Louis Wu 16:00:04 UTC)
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Halo 4 Forge Tutorial – Flood Setup
From Certain Affinity:This video covers how to set up Flood in Halo 4’s Forge mode. In addition to basic setup, we explain how to place weapons on maps with Ordnance and how to set up Dominion automated turrets.
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Majestic is here
As a reminder, Majestic Map Pack dropped this morning – the 438 MB download is available now for folks who bought the Season Pass (or received it as part of their Limited purchase of Halo 4), or for folks with 800 MS Points to spare. Don’t miss out! (Louis Wu 13:49:59 UTC)
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Spartan Ops… like a bawss
uberfoop posted a writeup filled with lots of images and video clips from a group run last week through Spartan Ops Episode 10 – pretty fun stuff! Go check it out.(Louis Wu 13:45:05 UTC)
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Not too big to fail
Arithmomaniac pointed out that an outage of the Azure cloud service on Friday affected not only Windows users… but also Halo 4 players. Ouch!(Louis Wu 13:44:14 UTC)
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Destiny Concept Artists Posts Images
Freelance artist Kekai Kotaki has posted some of the concept art done for Bungie’s Destiny on tumblr. Be sure to watch their tumblr for future imagery.
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Majestic Map Pack Live Stream Archive
Yesterday morning, 343 Industries live streamed gameplay of the new Majestic maps and showed off some new game types, including Infinity Rumble and Rumble Pro. You can watch the archived version here. (mastrbiggy 09:19:04 UTC)
The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft
