Well, it’s out now. I’ve spent a few hours with it and am somewhat impressed.

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A commercial for Halo Reach. Not only a great example of games promotion and what you can do with original shoots as opposed to renders or in-game footage, but also a phenomenal excuse for me to talk about my reignited excitement about Halo. The beta starts soon, and my poor 360, after two red rings in the past four months (never buy hardware from a software company, I guess), is theoretically ready to get on that shit. I haven’t played games much lately, and even less time is spent with online multiplayer – none at all, in fact. But I can feel the Halo meter rising. People at work are talking about playing again. And hey, two words: jet packs. Or if you’re busy, just one: jetpacks.

Did I mention the jet packs?

Everyone’s favourite games conference aka press release orgy is here! The most concise way to catch up on E3 press conference porn is to read three posts from Offworld:

• Sony
• Nintendo
• Microsoft

Sony and MS are both trying to catch up to the Wii’s motion-sensing Wiimote, and MS’ Project Natal seems most interesting, as it’s a controller-free system, relying entirely on cameras to sense your body position and even recognize faces. That said, until practical questions can be answered (how much? how many games will support it?), it’s best to consider it as a rhetorical salvo in the PR wars and not an actual, tangible thing. Sony and MS both trumpeted their lists of exclusive games, most vague and ages from shipping. Some of them no doubt will be good, but neither could get through their presentations without showcasing some cross-platform games as well.

Nintendo, meanwhile, renewed its license to print money. No, they tried to make nice with the hardcore by announcing a truckload of Mario games.

A few things caught my eye. On the Microsoft side, more details of Halo 3 ODST are welcome (sounds like The Killing with space marines), and I’m happy that Bungie is doing another game in Halo Reach, but I was kinda hoping they’d give the Halo thing a rest for a while and try something new. Alan Wake looked cool, and I really hope Natal works and doesn’t cost a mint, but judging from MS’ track record, that’s unlikely. How much for that 160 gig hard drive again….?!

Sony’s PSP Go! was of course no surprise. But it looks slick, and it sounds like Sony is doing all the right things (woo developers, improve media experience, ditch UMD) to keep the PSP alive. And boy are there a lot of games coming for it, including a new Metal Gear, Assassin’s Creed, and Little Big Planet. But I’m of two minds about Sony. They’re currently fighting two losing battles and I wonder if they shouldn’t just cut their losses on the PSP and concentrate on overtaking MS for 2nd place in the living room. They’ve got so many first party developers tied up with PSP projects, it’s hard to see the logic. I was also really hoping for a price cut on the PS3. Why, why, why, are they not doing that. It’s insanity. I say that selfishly, because I’m looking to get one of the damned things, but it also seems crazy that Sony is sitting in third place with a console almost twice as costly as the competition, and not slashing their price.

In Halo Wars, two worlds collide, and not just the Covenant and human space forces as they space-battle for space-supremacy. No, I’m talkin’ real-time strategy buttin’ heads against the juggernaut Halo franchise. So is it peanut butter and chocolate, or… peanut butter and bacon?

Note: I’m cross-posting this from the Space blog over here, where I’ve been contributing. It being my employer, and I being a blogger, it seems only natural. I’ll probably continue to cross-post here, at least for longer stuff.

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I’ve sampled two recent real-time strategy games on the 360, Tom Clancy’s EndWar (also available on the PS3) and the demo to Halo Wars.

RTS is a genre born on PCs that rarely works on consoles, despite many noble attempts. The key problem is control. There simply aren’t enough buttons on a console controller, and something designed with rapid mouse movements in mind doesn’t necessarily translate to analog sticks.

EndWar presents a possible solution to the control problem: voice control. Using a simple subject-verb-object palette of grammatical chunks – “unit one attack hostile two” – it’s possible to fight a battle without using the controller at all. I played through the bulk of the single-player campaign this way, and it works surprisingly well, with maybe 90% accuracy. Sometimes, you wind up using the controller because it’s quicker. But voice control is not only more graceful, it’s actually more true to what the game is simulating.

Unfortunately, EndWar has little else to offer. The missions are all the same and the difficulty curve leaves a lot to be desired. If there’s ever a sequel, it could theoretically kick ass, though.

The Halo Wars demo has only two levels, so it’s hard to judge the game at this point. But what you are presented with is a slick, carefully packaged narrative experience with simple, almost casualized gameplay. The control is traditional for console RTS – the left stick controls your cursor, and so press one face button to select units, another to give them a target. The levels required very little actual strategy. You could beat them without anything other than ‘select all units’, and so the feel was more like an action game with a little base-building than an actual strategy game.

Not to get all Sun Tzu here, but that’s a problem with console RTSes. Because the control is a lot harder and slower, the developers can never assume you’ve figured out how to command more than one group at a time, and so the combat never requires much in the way of strategy. A certain level of difficulty is required for strategy games to make sense. It’s not just the usual rock-paper-scissors system of unit strengths and weaknesses, it’s feinting, luring, splitting the defence, etc. Select all and attack isn’t really a strategy.

After watching an “Inside Xbox” video about Halo Wars (which seems to be a console exclusive, so I can’t share it with you) I can say that the potential for more advanced control is certainly there. The developers seemed to have thrown a bunch of possible control schemes at the wall in hopes that one or more actually sticks. Problem with that is the controls can get confusing. I think that Lord of the Rings RTS (Battle For Middle Earth? MiddleWar? Lord of the Wars? EndFrodo? can’t remember what it was called) had a much touted control scheme, and you could in theory assign groups and send them this way and that, but in the heat of fake battle I could never remember how to do it.

Time will tell. I’ll almost certainly buy Halo Wars, if only go get a fresh dose of Halo story action. Let’s hope the controls work out.

Well, the fine folks here at Angry Robot may well be insane. This week, and I can not remember who’s brilliant plan it was (not mine), we decided to play through all of the Grand Theft Auto Games as a lead up to the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. I don’t want to go into details because we will go into details about it later in the fashion of the Halo Marathon.

Clearly we are suckers for punishment.

Strangely enough, I am not sick of them. In fact, this has only reminded me of how much I love the games and has made me want to run home and play them… right now! I love San Andreas… I Love BMXing, I Love hanging with my homies (regardless of the fact that if I used that term out side of the digital-world I would have my skinny ass handed to me on a silver platter), I love Cruising the San Andreas countryside on a motorbike, I love flying planes and crashing trains…

I don’t like the dating mini-games… but whatever.

To those who believe that these games instill violence I scoff at you and highly recommend that you go back under your rock and rot and not buy the games for your kids instead of bitching about it and making your kids want to play it more by reminding them of it’s taboo. When I play the GTA (NAMBLA) games I come off more mellow than I could ever wish for. It’s like a cool beer after a long hot day… complete and utter satisfaction.

Don’t Harsh my mellow… or my Mane…

We came, we played, we slayed. Halo 3’s Legendary Map Pack dropped yesterday, and the Robot Crew gave them a test run. Here’s what we each thought about the new maps, Avalanche, Ghost Town and Blackout.

It’s also the subject of this week’s Robot Sounds, so if you’d like to absorb more or less the material you can read here in convenient audio form, go check it out.

Blackout

D – I consider Lockout the best of the Halo 2 maps – it’s not my personal favourite, but it’s almost a perfect map from a more objective standpoint: it’s well balanced, small but not cramped, allows for different play styles and gametypes, and it’s got depth to it, mostly in the form of different jumps you can learn.

Beside the obvious visual overhaul, the main areas and paths of Lockout are largely unchanged in Blackout. But the details are different. Some spaces are slightly adjusted – the little lip underneath that was often used to hide with the oddball? That’s gone now. Also, there’s a modicum of cover down in the shotgun tunnel. A couple platforms underneath are closer together, making jumping easier. It’s a little harder to get cover on top of the BR tower. Most of the trick jumps have changed.

All told? If you loved Lockout, you’ll love this.

Nadine – Lockout was one of my fav maps of all time, up there with Headlong, Ascension, and Foundation. The ease of jumping, the dynamics of close combat with the added bonus of so many great long distance shooting points was brilliant. I loved Oddball, Slayer, and Crazy King on that map. Since this is almost an exact remake, save for a few adjustments to the lower levels for more distance shooting points, I was not disappointed. The odd thing for me was I thought they had actually overdone it visuals-wise. There was no need to add all the UNSC consoles and noisy, garish textures on the walls. I find them distracting and ugly, give me Forerunner tech any day, but even in High Ground the UNSC stuff isn’t that overwhelming.

Maybe it’s because it’s a weird kind of oil rig they had to mess with it so much, but I just find the noise unnecessary. I did love the backgrounds though, the added details of the sky and the coastal cliffs really gives you a better sense of “oh shit I could fall off on all sides into icy cold waters” whereas in Lockout I only felt that in certain areas. Now you really feel that isolation at every point on the map.

Toku – I never liked Lockout in the first place, but maybe that’s because I was never really good at it in the first place. I’ve been told that once I learn the jumps I’ll love it, but I don’t understand the point of a map that you can only play if you happen to know the little tricks that go along with it. To me, I find it too tight quartered and narrow for my own enjoyment. I don’t mind learning a map, but I think a design that requires you be able to play it blind just to be able to compete competently is…well…shitty.

The remake, Blackout, is the same map and I still have the same problems. My style of gaming gears toward more of a military style. This could be from a long history of playing such gems as Halflife, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, Gears of War, and so on. I like being able to strafe without falling off the map, I like to be able to crouch and dodge using the terrain, and I like to think my way laterally out of situations without the risk of being sworded by a camper hiding around a corner. The Blackout map leaves little room for any of this and for that reason it’s going sit slightly below Guardian and Midship on my list of Halo maps…

…I’ll still play it though.

I am indifferent on the new look, personally I don’t mind the gritty oil-rig look… but it still doesn’t make up for the fact that some asshole will always shotgun my face from some little perch he found from playing the map ten trillion times.

Ghost town

D – Ghost town is a medium-small asymmetrical map. We were divided on this one; I found it overly complicated. For a small area, there’s a lot going on. Not only are there up to three levels, multiple entry points to every room, and compromised sightlines, but there are bits of wreckage all over the place that I found myself tripping over when trying to make timely retreats.

That said, it looks great, and it does present some interesting possibilities. We had white-knuckle thrills and moderate success holding down certain areas, like the base and the ‘green room’ (where the sniper spawns). I’m just not sure I’ll ever prefer it to some of the other maps.

Nadine – I thought I was going to hate this one, but I really like it. Almost instantly I took to its broken, bombed out corners and gutted floors. It reminded me of an overgrown Turf that had the shit kicked outta its bawls. We played some games online against some pretty heavy hitters, way beyond my skill level, but the map gave us hope and kept us in the game with some dignity to boot. The level is made for offense/defense objectives for sures. There is one main base with several ways for enemies to get in on the right, center, and left but if you have your points covered and a man to back you up, things can work out.

Grenades are also great on this map. Long distance throwing is kinda moot, but tossing around corners and into all those openings I mentioned is super sweet. You can really do above and below attacks on this one, you can be surrounded by three guys from so many sides in such a short time the desperate guerilla feeling is painfully present. If that’s how all those Call of Duty 4 dudes feel when they are playing, well, damn. But I guess you need to feel high anxiety levels to get that exquisite chemical victory flush in your brain. This map is a goodie, I’m looking forward to lots of Assaults, Capturing Flags, and Zombies.

Toku – Huzzah, a map that appeals to my combat sensibilities, unlike Blackout, Ghost Town makes me feel at home and it could be a simple case of “I like the way it feels.” I tried to explain why I like this map poorly on the podcast, but I’ll give’r a better shot here.

The map feels like playing in a block of Swiss Cheese, and that’s a good thing…It’s chock full of holes. If you are playing Team Slayer you can get with a group of friends and defend any number of points on this map with some degree of success, but not so much so as to ruin the challenge. If you are playing on the attack it is very easy to invade any “base” on this map through any number of side passages.

I was afraid this would be a “shotgun” map, and that the Guru’s online would just camp with each other and wait for the one shot kills, yet this doesn’t seem to happen, and I think it is because it is very difficult to stay in one place for any length of time. Any hideaway you might find is most likely easily accessible from other points. I can’t see playing King of the Hill or Hammer matches here enjoyably, but Zombie and Carry the Skull would be a riot.

Avalanche

D – Avalanche is a ‘re-imagining’ of Sidewinder from Halo 1. The improvements come in the form of teleporters and man cannons, ensuring footsoldiers can move about almost as quickly as their vehicle-borne counterparts.

I love this one, but as a large map I’m not sure how much I’ll get to play it. You’d need a lot of people to get a good custom game going on it, and outside of Big Team Battle I can’t see it showing up in the matchmaking playlists much. The vehicle mayhem is fun, but we think the Hornet might have been nerfed just a little bit too much.

Nadine – I adore outdoor maps with wide spaces for dog fights and tank busting. Avalanche was a surprise because I really did not like the original Sidewinder that much, kinda too big and too barren. This horseshoe shaped map is a great size with excellent tunnels, lots of great default weapons, and an interesting base design. The bases are very small, pretty much just a ramp up to a man cannon and a teleporter to a turret and rockets. In Assault you gotta haul ass to grab the rockets and get back to base, station a man at the turret to block the midpoint overpass from enemy vehicles, while another person should most def man cannon out to the mountain tunnel entrance to either get the spartan laser, or guard that entrance.

See, that’s just basic strategy though, there’s a lot of variation depending on how many players you have. I’d love to play six on six flag on that map, it would be crazy town. I’m very pleased with the look of this map and I really enjoy it. It’s that outdoor feeling, I love the big open spaces, makes me feel like I’m playing campaign I think. Great map, most awesome indeed.

D – Just wanted to add: Yeah, that campaign vibe. You hit the nail on the head.

Toku – Oh, sadly this is not going to be a often played map and I can see why. It will be a hard one to jump online and play with a few friends because you really need the numbers, and joining with strangers really runs the risk of matching up with TARDS who think driving mongooses headlong into enemy territory yelling “Take this you bitches!” is a fun idea… and then of course DYING on the vast expanse that is Avalanche because a much better player pops him with a well placed sniper shot. The map is VERY open and vast, and yet allows for quick movement on foot using a variety of teleporters and man-cannons. There are also plenty of tricky little tunnels and ridges which means a guy on foot won’t immediately die to another guy in a wraith or hornet. We proved this week through some random playing that vehicles DON’T mean you have the upper hand, and that is a nice change (Valhalla Anyone?).

That said… I DON’T like the fact that you practically have to ONLY play Team Objectives if you want to get any use out of this map. Social Slayer would bite steaming piles of ass, and don’t even get me started on Zombie or Crazy King.

Oh yeah…and to the guys who want to play Rocket Race in this map. If there weren’t so many jerks out there who just play beat-downs and don’t race it would be fantastic on this map. To all those who DO do that, screw you and the horse you rode in on, you ruin Rocket Race for the rest of us.

It’s all about Halo and the three new maps released this week! D, Toku and Nadine drool, analyze, and lament!

Angry Robot Sounds 15

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Today’s all about the Legendary Map Pack, and I refuse to acknowledge there could be any other gaming news. Since we’re such halo whores, we’ll be trying the new (ish) maps out and putting up a special halo-only podcast later tonight. Unless we get really caught up playing the new maps, in which case it might be up tomorrow morning.

I have a problem. I have a Halo addiction and I am told the first step is to admit I have a problem.

So… I’ve been drawing my ASS off… trying to get AS many comics done as I can before my life gets super busy (with an income, as a bonus!) I’ve been trying to come up with comics to do because there has been a shortage of games recently, but with the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 4 (or NAMBLA for those who love acronyms) and others I will soon be rolling in happiness again.

I’ve been craving Battlestar Galactica…

but…I am too cheap to buy it. As a bonus though Nadine and I do have the Ark of Truth, which is admittedly not as COOL as Battlestar, but it’ll do…

Anyway, have a good one.

Okay, I’ve been thinking. I’ve recently discovered that I’m filled with ire by the lack of variety of sexuality and gender in the gaming world.

In popular culture, well, in all culture gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/ two-spirited people get lost in the overwhelming difference in population percentage. Let’s be realistic (yes, some people are not what they seem though they may never act on it) and give all of the above around 15% of the total population. Books, television, movies, games are all made for the main goal of profit. You need to sell more cake, so make the kind of cake most people want and thus you sell more cake. Oh sure, you can have some other flavours, even pie sometimes, but mostly you’ll have the one cake that most people want and the rest can either go along with that choice, make their own damned cake, or find a smaller bakery to suit their needs. This analogy is making me hungry for sweet things, and I digress.

When I was just entering my teens I found myself yearning for something in my entertainment that I did not fully understand at the time. I was drawn to certain characters in tv and film that emanated a certain energy or had characteristics I found interesting because they had something slightly off about them, slightly out of sync with the rest of the characters and archetypes to which I had grown accustomed. I soon found out what I was picking up on was the fact that they were gay, or as close to it as they could be to fly under the censor radar. I also found out I was gay as well. Super gay.

I remember searching through the local library for anything I could find on the subject. I feel as if it was a rite of passage to take those books up to a very sour looking older woman as she scanned them quickly and offered me such a glare that to this day I’ve not forgotten it. I needed to seek out gay content to satisfy this fierce need within me to feel normal. I needed to read, hear, and see experiences that mirrored my own. If I couldn’t find that in the media around me, I just had to go digging for it. Glares be damned.

For any person who identifies as “not quite straight” the ability to see media through pink glasses is surprisingly easy and instinctual. I would see characters on tv and just automatically think of them as gay, even if series canon dictated otherwise. I would just click it in my head that they were and proceed enjoying the material. For games, however, being able to read between the lines and read subtle facial movements in different ways isn’t that easy. There are no pink gaming lenses as of yet.

When I play games I set myself up to explore a world and go on an adventure, much as I would when reading a book or watching a film. I accept that this is someone else’s vision and story and that I am merely the audience. I also accept that making a game is a complex beast and certain choices need to be made. Hero: male or female? For a long time the choice was almost always male. For many of the “hardcore” games this still rings true. Only recently have games like G.R.A.W 2 included the ability to make your character a female, for online play anyway. My beloved Halo 3 simply has a female voice feature for online multiplayer. Yippee.

It was only when I played Jade Empire years ago that the strange feeling I was so accustomed to, just like in my teens, lifted. Jade Empire was my Xena of gaming. In Jade Empire I played a female character, but another female character reacted to me in the same way she would if I had chosen a male lead. I was astonished. I would refer to her as “my girlfriend” when I was chatting with my cousin as he watched me play. And when he played as a male character I would tell him to “be nice to my girlfriend” even though he chose to be super evil and sell innocent people to slave traders, and also kill my gf at the end of the game. What a bastard.

Jade Empire showed me that I was lacking in the fulfilling experience part of my play. That the majority of games took a certain road in storytelling that I had taken as an unbreakable norm until Bioware showed me that was incorrect thinking. They came back again with the much talked about “lesbian” sex in Mass Effect only this time their approach was a little flawed. The fact that you could be female or male was terrific. And getting with an alien? Brilliant. The flaw was that the alien had so many “female” characteristics, complete with a lilting voice. This excluded the male/male alien sex perspective entirely. Oh Bioware said it was a sexless being, but our eyes and ears said “that’s a she-lady!”.

Yet this game was so close to the mark for what I want in every game from now on. Bioshock? That’s First Person, so why not make a female character too? Give me the choice! Halo? Samus was a fully loaded cybernetic warrior, I don’t need much and the extra voice work is nothing with the pithy amount of lines Master Chief delivers. He’s super big anyway, what difference would it make to have a female version?

Fable let me woo any gender, but I was still locked into being male from the get go.

Now you may be saying, “What the hell! You can’t choose the sex/gender of every protagonist in a book or a movie! Suck it up!” No, I can’t do that. But those are linear, and in some ways, limited experiences. A game is an interactive story with so many gameplay variables, why can I not play through the story with the gender and sexuality (when applicable) I choose? Why can’t I play Halo as a woman? Why can’t I play the way I want to? When Cortana talks to the Chief with such a special fondness, why can I not experience that as a male or a female?

Games are engineered, and in this rapidly evolving art form why is it that I am forced to play as a man and have all interactions under the assumption that I am straight and I enjoy straight content. Bioware has shown that with a little extra effort this assumption can be removed from the equation altogether. That the experience of the game can be varied with no damage to the overall feel or plot of the game. Jade Empire is sadly my only example of this. There may be others I am not aware of, I hope there are, but right now what I am seeing and feeling in my playing experience is a limitation. And limitations in an arena of unparalleled freedom to create experiences and new visions of storytelling are a sad thing.

I understand it takes a huge amount of effort to make a game. Character animations, cinematics, voice acting, I get it. I understand that not every story can be told in a genderless way. I want to play Conan as a male, I want that kind of game too. What I am talking about here is the option for more. That the default setting on storytelling does not always fall into the majority cake factor. I want to enjoy a variety in games. I think now is the time to be critical of this tradition in gaming. Bigger, better games are coming and they are coming fast. I’m not asking for equality in those games, no that’s not the issue, I’m asking for variety. Let the vast human experience have just a wee bit more room in the realm of gaming.

I sincerely hope that the future of gaming is not constrained by a begrudging and slow acceptance of that other 15% percent. In the past twenty years gay and lesbian content has soared in books, magazines, tv, and film. I just hope it doesn’t take that long for the world of gaming to do the same.

Word is in on the remaining map from the Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack: it’s Blackout, a remake of Lockout. I didn’t think that would happen as Guardian is so similar, but there we go. Bungie producer Allen Murray says “Lockout was leaps and bounds ahead of every other map in terms of games played and the public demand.” It’s a classic, that’s for sure.

So… I’ve taken a week break from Eyeless Max in order to horrify our readers with a drawn representation of my naked body. Not even steel wool will be able to scrub that one out of your brain.

D and I have been going Halo nuts. D has been even analyzing past matches to find our weak points. So let me sum up what we’ve been doing in our matches:

We are sub-par Halo players. We are far from the best on the net, but we aren’t terrible… no random blind shooting in the hope of hitting things. We have been mysteriously winning most of our matches, however. How? well… Any combination of D, Rugatu, Leto, Nadine, Duiker, (and a few others that I’ve most likely forgotten) go online as a team and talk to each other rapidly. We’ve found that we actually fare pretty well against people who would normally have us dead to rights by just sticking together, covering each others asses, and holing up when things are tight…

Some recommendations…
a) Bubble shields are your friends: Plug up small entrances with ‘em… prevent your enemies from making long distance kills by forcing them to come to you.

b) Keep your distance: Guru players love instant kills with shotguns, hammers, and beatdowns… they wait around corners and don’t move so they don’t show up on the radar, so tread carefully and remember… your battle rifle is an amazing tool for taking them down without getting close… Aim for the head…

c) Go in twos. This way you can cover entrances easier, bump off weakened enemies who just pegged your pal, and move with relative safety.

d) Go for the bigguns: Learn the maps on your own and where the heavy hitting weapons are. If enemies learn that all you use is a rocket launcher they’ll think of you as a threat and find a way to kill you… but if you use it randomly and sparingly enough you can really throw people off balance. Show them you have the power but not the ego to abuse it. keep them guessing…

e) Jayne’s favorite toy: Grenades! that’s right…. they’re everywhere… when in doubt… toss a grenade. They keep your enemy mobile and prevents campers, they flush out corners and corridors, they cause you enemies attention to briefly go elsewhere… they are a fantastic tool. And it’s a great surprise for the asshole hiding in the dark with a Grav Hammer.

f) Finally: Talk… give your pals a running commentary of where you are and what you see. Information is the key… use it.

That’s it kids…. have a good one

Hey, Team Halo! Your new, expensive maps are here. Or rather they’re coming April 15th. The New Legendary Map Pack includes the huge “Avalanche”, an update of Halo 1’s Sidewinder (with Hornets and tanks and Men Cannon).

There’s also Ghost Town, a new, asymmetrical, smaller map.

There will be a third, as-yet unrevealed map that the press release describes as a “returning classic… fans of smaller Slayer maps, it’s time to get excited.” I don’t think it will be lockout, so.. Foundation? The Map Pack costs the same as the Heroic pack did, 800 Microsoft Points. There will also apparently be some new Forge options.

Now I know why we get beat on Live so often when we play Halo 3 – there are actual soldiers playing that shit. It’s an interesting article, not really because it talks about soldiers playing games, which we know they do, but because it places it in the therapy context. It’s really only one quote: “video games are a way of calibrating and managing the overwhelming pulses of stress that comes with combat zone living.” Normally that sort of statement gets lost in the noise of the videogames-and-violence debate, but that obviously doesn’t apply to soldiers – or maybe if they didn’t play so many violent games, we wouldn’t have war in Iraq? Yeah.

So are games good for regular people? Do we calibrate and manage our stress by playing them? I think so. Shooters like Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 are indeed stressful situations, requiring situational awareness, lightning-quick perception, and tranquility in the face of multiple stressors, not just motor skills. They’re almost training for multitasking. And then there’s the quick communication and group coordination required to advance in their multiplayer modes.

There was an MLG contest to make the best maps in Halo 3’s Forge, and the winners have been posted=. There are some interesting looking things there, and I hope to try some out tonight.

Toku and I have really been freaking out in Forge of late. There’s a real dungeon master appeal there, and it’s pretty addictive.

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Remember this thing we did in september, the Halo 3 tournament that aired on Space? I just uploaded it to vimeo, for easier viewing.

Look! A List! Wow! Tis unique indeed! No seriously! For realsies!

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Everyone else is making lists… I just couldn’t help myself.

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Isn’t that beautiful? No, it’s not Marcel Duchamp’s impression of a Banshee, it’s the result of a glitchy graphics card in Thos’ 360. More screenshots in his bungie.net profile.

So one of the downloadable maps for Halo 3 last week was Foundry, a blank canvas sort of map intended primarily for use with Forge, Halo 3’s built-in level editor.

Literally overnight the community was bulging with Forge creations, including an ATV race, soccer, a Pac-Man remake, and much more (check Rampancy’s new Forge Database).

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The ten things that made me say, “For shame, Bungie. For shame…”

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So I sit here charged with the heavy task of reviewing the new Halo comic title. Like many, I waited for the midnight release of Halo 3 so that Nadine, D and I could run home like a gaggle of ADD kids on crack and play it through hopped up cola till the wee hours of the morning. Through the wonder of XBOX live, we played the co-op campaign, swearing like sailors while Flood pods rained down on us.

It was wonderful…

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So funny story, this past weekend I arbitrarily decided to go to Northern Digital Expo (NDEX or as we better know it, NAMBLA) and the first Canadian Open Major League Gaming Event (yippee.) I was greeted kindly by a young girl standing beside an enormous bin filled with IceBreakers breath mints and was promptly informed that I entered through the wrong door. Oh well…

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Nadine was fired from the show and replaced by the much more Harvest Moon-friendly Mark. Kidding, Nadine will be back next time. In a perfect world, it will be all three of us!

Anyway, Mark and I do go on, about: first person shooters (incl. Halo of course), post-Oblivion RPGs, “you got your narrative chocolate in my nonlinear sandbox experience”, the lack of a good giant robot game, and retired pipefitters playing Wii games. And yes, Mark defends Harvest Moon’s honour.

Angry Robot Sounds 6 (16MB mp3, 49mins)

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We talk Halo 3, Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, and how Nadine is racist against anime(?). Plus, games we are looking forward to.

Angry Robot Sounds #5 (16MB mp3, 35mins)

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The Master Chief Challenge site is now live, and the 3-minute special segment airs as part of Space’s Hypaspace Weekly show tonight at 5:30et and tomorrow (october 6th) at 4:30et. It’s a game from a mini-tournament between us and the Space team, and the bulk of the footage is in-game action via Halo 3’s innovative ‘saved films’ feature. The segment will find its way to the website over the next couple of days, and there will be two more following it. Enjoy!

UPDATE: The video is now on the site, you can see it here
UP-UPDATE: A writeup from Kris Abel of Tech Life, who played on Team Space. Props, Mindslinger!

Nothing comprehensive here, but I just wanted to mention a trio of good articles about everyone’s favourite hype-fattened juggernaut. This interview with Brian Jarrard of Bungie is mostly about how Bungie was disappointed with Halo 2. Then there are good pieces by Clive Thompson in wired, one about AI in Halo 3, and another on the topic of the game’s level design.

There’s also an interesting interview with Claude Errera, webmaster of halo.bungie.org, in Online Journalism Review.

Here’s the complete video of us dorks ODing on Halo on saturday.

The Angry Robot Halo Marathon from Angry Robot on Vimeo.

Big thanks to Chetan, Chris and Steve for taking part. And now back to Halo 3.

Recorded just after we played Halo 3 campaign for the first time, this episode naturally concerns Halo and only Halo. It’s not really a review since we didn’t finish the game, just the thoughts that came to mind.

Angry Robot Sounds #4 (5MB mp3, 10mins)

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1:04pm – It has begun. We breezed through the first couple of levels, but hit a snag during Truth and Reconciliation. You can’t switch controller setups in-game, so when Chetan came and no-on wanted to use my wacky inverted controls, we quit out thinking that boarding the ship was the start of the level, and we could pick up where we left off. We were wrong, and we had to replay the beginning of the level. We’ve caught up now. I’ll update this entry as we go.

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So, there go the end credits… and now the little post-credits cut scene… and it’s over. Well, that was anti-climactic. I’ve just finished Halo 2 for the first time (yes, I’m a little late to this party) and I can honestly say that I get why people were a little miffed by the ending. I understand that Bungie was focusing primarily on creating “the greatest multiplayer experience in history,” but come on…

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As previously mentioned, this weekend we get all cra-Z and play Halo and Halo 2 all the way through. We will ingest beef jerky and Guinness and meatzas. We will relive fabulous memories, and get pissed off when Nadine charges ahead blindly without telling me.

For what it’s worth, we’ll update throughout the weekend. There’s a delicate balance between doing something and recording the doing of the thing, and we’re not sure how it will play out, but I’d expect some kinds of updates through the day and certainly when the whole affair is done.

And here’s the surprise ending: we’re going to play a few hours of Halo 3 sunday afternoon. Shortly thereafter we’ll provide some thoughts sunday night. Probably in the form of a podcast.

There’s more news. In conjunction with Space, we are doing a Halo 3 tournament, tentatively titled “The Master Chief Challenge”. It’s Team Space vs. Team Angry Robot. We’re shooting it next weekend, and the first of three segments will air on Hypaspace the following friday (the 5th of october). We’ll give you a heads-up before then, though.

Excited!

So Halo 3 will have a map-tweaking mode, “Forge”, and Bungie has written three articles – one two three – about how it works. But nothing brings it to life like the idea of rocket baseball, which Frankie mentions in this interview, and a poster on this forum speculates how it could work:

Everyone has rockets on D everyone has gravity hammers on offense, and on the pitchers mound is a quickly respawning pack of grenades with really long fuse timers (take a while to explode). The pitches are with grenades, and obviously hit with the gravity hammer. as soon as the grenade, after being hit with the gravity hammer, hits the ground in fair territory, the fielders can start to shoot rockets at the runners.

Each base is protected by a bubble shield with a infinite (or really long) timer so they cant be hit with rockets while “safe” on a base.

Craziness, huh? It’s beautiful to see Bungie enabling fan creativity with both Forge and the saved films, and it’s also beautiful to think of what insane possibilities are yet to be invented. We used to play a homebrew gametype called “Smashy Smashy” on Coagulation that was intended to be an all-vehicle bang-em-up, but it was hampered by our lack of control over vehicle numbers and spawn times. That would no longer be the case. And of course it just sounds pathetically uninspired next to Rocket Baseball. Oh man.

Stephen Tolito plays the entire Halo trilogy. Retronauts writes up Halo and Halo 2 and even the entire Marathon trilogy.

Clearly, Bungie retrospectives are in the air. And we’re getting in on that.

The weekend before Halo 3’s release, Nadine and I are going to rock the preceding Halos co-op style. We’ll ‘cover’ that as best we can… (air quotes because hell, we’re not in Darfur or Kabul, we’re playing videogames. But whatever.) And then onto the third big ring. For which we also have big plans, but more on that later.

And oh yeah… I lied about the podcast. I forgot the mic, so we just played games instead. Tee hee!

This irks me.

Halo bashing is lame.

“Halo suxors!” “XbxSUCKS!” “Sony RULZS!*&%$!”

Lame, super lame, uber lame.

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Well, that’s a not a full truth. I felt like I was in Stargate whilst playing The Halo 3 multiplayer map Sandtrap. It’s my new all time favourite map ever (yes yes I’ve only seen five maps so far but this one is awesome).

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And I’ll tell you why.

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Today I got a peek at Halo 3. We played some multiplayer, and then I saw about a half hour of the campaign as played by a very pleasant Steve Scott, lead effects designer on the game.

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We got a look at some stuff at Microsoft’s fall press event today: Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Halo 3. I’ll be writing ‘em up imminently; I hope to have Halo 3 impressions later today.

The avalanche of Halo 3 media is going to bury us all, and I won’t try to link to all of it, but it’s worth noting that Halo 3 was the surprise final game of the Omegathon at Penny Arcade’s enormous PAX expo – here’s a joysitq writeup. More entertainingly though, there are videos of the gameplay here and here, featuring commentary by Tycho.

There’s a delicious cover article in the new Wired by Clive Thompson, entitled Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play. It focuses on the rigorous play testing that has gone into the game, but contains plenty of interest, including admissions from Bungie employees that Halo 2 wasn’t anywhere near what they wanted it to be.

There are a few other bits and pieces, including sidebars, new screens, and a so-called video primer. Of interest to Halo nerds: the number of vehicles has doubled to 16, the brute hammer is a playable weapon, a remade Lockout will be one of the multiplayer maps.

• the port is well done; the interface is by necessity different, but true to the original. They even kept the loading screen illustrations.
• Was that menu music in the original? It must have been. No one would make music like that today.
• Graphics shock. I’m not someone who fetishizes graphics, but nonetheless you can’t help but notice that cutting edge graphics from 12 years ago are very different from those today. It’s like watching a bunch of modern $100-million films and then switching to a Cassavetes film.
• Juice notes, “that must be an old school game.” True school, baby.

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Two related items came to my attention today: this article about the growing importance of game trailers, and Narcogen’s shot-by-shot analysis of the E3 Halo 3 trailer – the latter clearly an example of the ‘forensic approach’ detailed in the former.

It is worth noting that the two examples the article gives of trailers backfiring were Halo 2’s 2004 E3 trailer, and Killzone’s 2005 trailer. The article implies that gamers’ expectations can be raised too high, and thus trailers can backfire. Sure, that can happen. But the reason for the backfire is clear, in both cases: the trailers were deceptive. The Halo trailer contained gameplay footage of levels that didn’t appear in the game. The Killzone trailer was pre-rendered, so it had no relation whatsoever to what the game itself would look like. Small deceptions abound in film trailers (different music, sound effects, severe dialogue editing), but if you made a trailer that different from the actual film, you’d likely run afoul of fraudulent advertising laws.

I can’t see how the forensic approach to video is anything but an exciting development. Perhaps it’s only coming now because the technologies required – the pause button and the internet – are relatively recent phenomena. (I think of those poor structuralist film students in the 70s and before, having to watch repeated showings of the same film before they could perpetrate a shot-by-shot analysis). Anyway, it seems of a kind with ARGs, and signifies that techniques previously only practised in ivory towers can now be done by anyone, for entertainment even. The motivation is clear, too; it’s not that “these internet losers have too much time on their hands” but rather that – as the Traxus reference indicates – the material is layered with meaning in such a way that rewards close viewing. Sure, it’s hyped-up graphics porn for the mainstream, but it’s rich with detail for the story nerds, too.

Joystiq’s trailer analysis:

Couple things I’d add. First off, we see two Spartans on screen in one shot. This could simply be an indication of co-op play and not a story element, but as we know there will be different Spartan armour models, and as Bungie tends to have story motivation for things like that, we can speculate that there will be more than one Spartan in the Halo 3 plot. Also, Nadine noticed that there’s a shot of a four-seater Warthog. It has no cannon, just two passenger seats in the back. We speculated this could be handy for the rumoured four-player online co-op.

There’s also this description of part of the first campaign level, although there’s nothing that exciting going on.

Scene It on the 360, new Resident Evil and Call of Duty trailers, yawners. Bungie heads will want to get the Halo campaign trailer, and take note that Marathon is coming to the Live Arcade. Sure, you can download it for free for Mac or PC, but for couch potatoes, $10 might be an okay price to pay.

Update: missed a couple things. Halo-wise, there’s a rather interesting video made by Peter Jackson’s Weta – you can find it at the bottom of this page. It’s directed by Neil Blomkamp, who would have been the director of the Halo film, had it not been shelved, and presumably the intention is not only to promote the game, but also to inspire a little thirst for the live-action film. There’s also a Halo 3 Xbox 360 model, and the Live Video Marketplace, Microsoft’s film and TV downloading service, is coming to Europe and Canada at an unspecified date.

A content embargo must have just dropped, as IGN has a writeup of a few new Halo 3 details, and new screenshots. Details include the maps Shrine, Epitaph, and Last Resort (Zanzibar); the armour variants, the Brute chopper, and implementation of the saved films feature, which I can’t wait to see. Oh, and an interview.

Here’s a summary of the Halo 3 “ARG” up until the present. This article claims a Microsoft spokesman says the campaign is called “Iris”, and is written by Bungie’s Frank O’Connor – 42 Entertainment, the creators of “The Beast” and “I Love Bees”, isn’t involved. In a week, Iris has had an AI posting on the bungie.net forae, mysterious poetry being emailed out, lots of glyphs in image files, a comic strip, a MySpace page, and real-life demonstrations in various cities staged by The Society of the Ancients. The speculation is that the aforementioned group will show up at Stonehenge for the solstice on the 21st. Fastest moving ARG ever?

From an interview with Shane Kim from Microsoft game studios: “Bungie is working directly with Peter Jackson on the Halo interactive series.”

What exactly does that mean? Is it a series of games? Is it a TV series with forked narrative choices? How is it distributed?

Is it Halo’s Next Top Spartan?

How about a little Halo 3 news? Yeah, I thought so. Looks like people have figured out how to get into the custom game menu, which reveals a boatload of options. Adjustable gravity, powerups, speed, etc. People have also figured out how to actually play custom games, which seems to require having already joined a custom game – and it has spread like a virus.

Right when the beta launched there were modders poring over code and finding all sorts of weird stuff (that is by no means guaranteed to make it into the final game.) An upcoming issue of gamepro yields some images that appear to prove some of the modders’ finds true: customizable Spartans, a Brute vehicle.

UPDATE: Kotaku has instructions on how to get into custom games. Pretty elaborate.

So we did a podcast, Nadine and I. Starts off with general gaming nonsense and then is all Halo 3, all the time for the rest of the half hour. This one is pretty rambly and chaotic, we’ll figure things out better next time, hopefully. Also, we recorded it on wednesday, and then I took forever to cut it down to a listenable length. But hell, you learn on your feet. I’ll update this with an iTunes link when it shows up.

Angry Robot Sounds #1 (12MB mp3, 25mins)

UPDATE:

More thoughts on the beta.

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Quite a few good articles. Snowbound review, High Ground review, Valhalla review. Weapons: spartan laser, spiker. There was a good piece on the shield bubble, but now I can’t find it.

Finally played a few games last night and thought I’d jot random, unrelated notes on the topic that will be of interest only to halo players.

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I haven’t played the Beta yet. (soon!) But as you can tell if you’ve been following my links, I’ve been reading up on it. Boy howdy is there a boatload of coverage, and it can be roughly divided into two groups:

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With a couple of exceptions, I was a stranger to online gaming until two years ago, when I got Xbox Live and began playing Halo 2 across the magic tubes of the internet.

The experience has been incredible. However, it didn’t start that way. I was not exceptionally skilled at Halo, and being thrown into maps full of asshole teens and their lightning-quick reflexes was not a pleasant feeling.

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So the Halo 3 beta is announced. It’s worth watching the ‘making of’ video, if only for the segment about saved films. What it looks like is a file that can be played after the game, but with full camera and time control: you can move the camera as you watch, and pause, slow-mo etc.

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