The Associated Press says to call it a "thinking gamer's Halo." The prequel Halo Wars whic is set in the fictional Halo world is due out in 2009 for the Xbox. The strategy game puts the Covenant armies up against the United Nations Space Command (UNSC). The Wikipedia entry says players will be able to play as the alien Covenant. You can view some Halo Wars trailers here and view the official community website here.
The countdown to the long awaited release of Halo 3 has nearly completed. It's the biggest game of the year and the buzz and hype behind the game has been noted repeatedly by bloggers and journalists over the past several weeks. The game has already sold over 1.25 million copies worldwide in pre-orders alone. It is a crucial must-succeed game for Microsoft and the Xbox console which has been carried on Master Chief's soldiers ever since the first Halo game. i4u reports that game is
receiving great reviews from game reviewers so it looks like Halo 3 will live up to the enormous hype. GameSpysaidHalo 3 lives up in the hype and that the game is the reason many people bought an Xbox 360.
For many gamers, Halo 3 is the reason they bought an Xbox 360. As the biggest title in the 360's arsenal, Halo 3 is
undoubtedly the most hyped game in existence. Notice, however, that we didn't say over-hyped. We've put in some
serious hours reviewing this game, and after several exhaustive playthroughs both solo and co-op as well as countless
bloodthirsty multiplayer rounds, we can announce that Halo 3 is everything that it needed to be to fulfill our wildest
gaming fantasies... and then Bungie showed us The Forge.
We've also listed some review links at the boom of this post. With glowing reviews like these Halo 3
may be the reason many more people decide to buy an Xbox 360.
In Halo 3 Master Chief returns to protect Earth from the Covenant. The Covenant is an alliance of alien races determined to exterminate humanity. Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117 - aka Master Chief - is the last of a group of special supersoldiers genetically and cybernetically engineered to defeat the Convenant. The first-person shooter game can be played as a solo game or as a multiplayer game with up to four other people on Xbox live. The game can be played on a regular Xbox 360 but there is also a $399 Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition for die-hard Halo fans.
There are several product tie-ins related to this blockbuster release from Bungie. USA Todayreports that
Marvel Comics has a special four-issue Halo Uprising series. Todd McFarlane has even designed special
Halo 3 controllers and miniature action figures. There was even a Halo 3 car
in the Dover NASCAR race. There's also the upcoming Halo movie -- more
details on that here.
PC World reports that a
pirated version has found its way on to the Internet. Microsoft will be trying to shut that down as quickly as possible.
At midnight tonight Halo 3 will finally be sold in stores and the buzz and hype can move on to the next hyped-up game.
Even Bungie may look into other
projects now that Halo 3 is complete. In the meantime, here are some more Halo 3 resources to keep you in the know.
Halo fans should enjoy this video that identifies ten ways to tell if someone is a Halo noob. Halo noobs appear to especially hated and there are few web forums dedicated to bashing them.
A Bungie FAQ has some important information for gamers interested in the Halo 3 beta. The FAQ says that beta registration has closed. The only way to still get one is to buy a copy of Crackdown, which comes out on February 20th.
Is Halo 3 beta registration closed?
Yes, phases one and two of the beta have already ended. If you haven't received an email by this point, then you were not one of the lucky few.
Is there no other way?!
If you didn't get in to either phase, then you can still get in by buying Crackdown, releasing in the US, on February 20th. Inside every launch copy of Crackdown is an invite to the Halo 3 beta.
How will the Crackdown invite work?
Once the Halo 3 beta has been activated (start date is still TBD) you simply go to the Downloads menu in Crackdown to download the Halo 3 beta. After that, you will need to launch the Halo 3 beta from within Crackdown. You will need an Xbox 360 with a hard drive and an Xbox Live Gold account.
The FAQ also says that the beta will not go live when Crackdown is released. It will not go live until it is ready which they say will probably be sometime this Spring. It also says that the Halo 3 beta will "only be playable for a limited time." Amazon.com is also excited about Halo 3. They have a preorder up now that includes a Halo 3 announcement trailer and Halo 3 "Starry Night."
The Bungie team is reporting that yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Halo. They also provided some scoop about an upcoming commercial for Halo 3 that will be released during Monday Night Football on December 4th.
Now to the business at hand – There's some juicy Halo information to absorb and process. First up is the announcement of an exclusive worldwide Halo 3 TV commercial set to air during Monday Night Football on December 4th. Naturally we don’t want to spoil the fun but we did want to clear the air on a few points up front to set your expectations appropriately. As the press release mentions, this ad will feature CG scenes that are being built by a 3rd party agency (known as Digital Domain). Now you may be thinking to yourself - "CG!? But Bungie doesn’t do CG!" - and you would be correct... until now.
For the purposes of this holiday commercial and knowing the tight timeline with which it had to come together we decided a long time ago that utilizing real, final, actual gameplay just wasn't the right thing to do. As you know, we're very protective of our baby and we will only show it when we feel it's ready to be shown (and even then it's sometimes pried from our protective fingers). We all agreed that a cooler thing to do would be to move as far away from gameplay-style footage as possible, and make something more movie-like. Let our fans see what the Halo universe looks like in a photo-realistic fashion.
We didn't want folks to think we were trying to pull the wool over their eyes, when we had such a great opportunity to do something cool and worthwhile.
Now don't get me wrong - just because this ad isn't gameplay doesn't mean it's not really cool. In fact, we provided the folks at Digital Domain with all of our new in-game models and assets. They then polished them up to movie CGI standards, animated them and rendered them to a degree of stunning beauty. There will be a lot to like in this ad and we're happy with how it's turning out. Just because you're seeing a kind of "real-life" representation of Halo 3 doesn't mean you aren't seeing real gameplay elements from Halo 3.
Of course you'll also hear Halo 3 as well, with new music composed by our own Marty O’Donnell. We'll leave it at that for now. After the commercial airs on television, it will be available on Xbox Live Marketplace in full 720p glory for you to dissect and discuss.
They also said a public beta of the game will be available before the game is released.
Perhaps the biggest bomb that was dropped today, the MOAB of press announcements, was the indication of a public beta for Halo 3 coming next Spring. What exactly does this mean? Well, again we can't really get into the details quite yet (notice a theme here?) but we can confirm that our fans will have an opportunity to play Halo 3 multiplayer over Xbox Live BEFORE the final game is available. You'll be playing a little multiplayer and simultaneously providing us with some valuable data to help our development team. We're still working out the details on timing and scope and there will be a lot more info coming in the weeks ahead. We can confirm that you will absolutely be required to have an Xbox 360. Probably not a huge surprise.
Bungie has a lot to live up to after the success with Halo 2 which one countless video game awards. There will be high expectations from Halo fans. Fortunately, the Bungie staff sounds very dedicated to the task and determined to turn out another excellent product with Halo 3.
The BBC reports that Microsoft has decided to limit the PC version of the popular and multiple award winning Halo 2 Xbox game to the Vista operating system. Vista is expected to come out later this year but it still has not been confirmed by Microsoft. There will not be a version of Halo 2 for Windows XP.
Deciding to make the best-selling Halo 2 Xbox game a Vista-only title is likely driven by Microsoft's desire to get people upgrading to the new version of the Windows.
Minimum specifications for Vista (formerly called Longhorn) will be released in the summer but information gathered from reviews of pre-release versions have given clues about its hunger for computer power.
With Vista, Microsoft has made big changes to the way it handles graphics. Unlike other versions of Windows, it will need an advanced video card to get the most out of it.
It is also likely to demand a lot of computer memory and a sizeable hard drive. While these requirements are likely to be met by dedicated players who want to get the most out of games, many less keen players could struggle to comply.
The BBC also says Microsoft's decision could make it a costly one for gamers who have to buy Vista as well as new PC hardware just to play Halo 2. It is really the wrong path Microsoft has taken with Halo 2. They already angered gamers with the Xbox 360 delay. Instead of doing a Vista-only release they should have gone ahead with a version supporting the current Windows XP operating system. Bungie, the developers of Halo 2, posted that they aren't jerks who are trying to force people to upgrade to Vista.
But we're not idiots and we're not jerks. We realize that the underlying sentiment here, is that there are a lot of XP (and Mac) users out there, who feel like something has been wafted under their nose and then snatched away. Well, that's simply not our intention. We want as many people to enjoy as good a version of our game as possible, but the fact remains that when Microsoft publishes Halo 2 for PC - it will have released its new, bigger, better operating system and our game will take full advantage of that fact, and Microsoft will take full advantage of our game.
Gadgetspy also has a faq about the Vista version of Halo 2. Checking a few messages in the blogosphere you can see hundreds of blog posts about Microsoft's decision and some of them are unhappy posts by unhappy gamers.
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