Slashdot Mirror
Doom on Xbox Live, Jackson Making Halo Game
Microsoft is pulling out all the stops in its X06 Keynote today in Barcelona. The announcements are flying fast and furious: Ensemble studios is making a Halo RTS, and Peter Jackson is making a new Halo game (unrelated to Halo 3 or the RTS). The HD-DVD will be $200 in the U.S. with a release aimed at November of this year. They've got a good deal of 360 exclusive content including the next Splinter Cell and GTA IV Episodes, and (initially) Bioshock. Bioshock will also be on Windows, of course. Windows is also the platform on which Microsoft is announcing a new Massively Multiplayer game from Cryptic Studios, a new super-hero MMOG based on Marvel Comics' IP: Marvel Universe Online.
I was wondering what I'm going to do with my Windows machine...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Please don't work on the Halo thing until after The Hobbit.
Your actors aren't getting any younger.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Halo the toilet paper, Halo the lunchbox, Halo the flamethrower! (The kids love this one).
Good thing the game industry is such a source original thought and creativity.
I think I just heard Sony slit their wrists.
Really though...these are some big announcements and I haven't heard Sony coming with anything to match them yet.
Did anyone else read that title and think: "Sweet. Steve Jackson is going to make a Halo game!"
What we all suspected when Microsoft issued a cease and desist to the modders behind Halogen (the Halo themed Command and Conquer mod) has turned out to be a reality. You have to give props to MS for responding to all of the interest for a Halo RTS by creating their own (albeit based on the Age of Empires engine). The official site has already launched with trailers and screenshots (mostly prerendered) at http://www.halowars.com.
There are alot of people who would like to be me. I just haven't met them yet.
Doom costs 800 points.. that's 10 dollars for those of us who don't remember the conversion.
Seriously XBLA used to be a place to get cheap legacy games, and interesting unique games, now with every game coming out at 800 points it's sad. I'm probably going to end up buying doom at some point, but while it was a impulse buy at 400 (1.25 per episode, 4 episodes) I'm going to have to consider it now.
Any game that's older than 10 years needs to either have significantly new gameplay (not just co-op, time pilot, but you were 400 points so I love you more) for a 10 dollar investment.
Spider-man.. Spider-man.. does whatever a Spider can...
/laugh /spit /dance /violin /vanish /vanish /vanish
THREE UNDEAD ROGUES APPEAR
Cheap shot! Cheap shot! Ambush crit!
"OH NOES SPIDEY USE YOUR WEBZ!"
"HE CAN'T! HE WAS BLINDED/KIDNEY SHOTTED/GOUGED/VANISHED/CHEAP SHOTTED FIFTEEN TIMES!!"
"EEEEERRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHZZZZZZZZZZ!!"
Can't wait.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
And, don't give me that "FFXI" bullshit, either. That was just a poor port of the PC version ("Wait, I need a USB keyboard to talk, WTF?!?!?!"). If I wanted to return to the year 2000, I'd buy it. But I want a modern, *REAL* MMORPG.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why do you seem so shocked about the possibility for a HALO RTS when you don't know what the game is about? It's like saying "I've got no idea what this game is about, how could they make it into an RTS??? Preposterous!"
As for Peter Jackson, see: Petr Jackson talks the Halo Movie
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."-Oscar Wilde
The original concept for Halo was an RTS along the same lines as an earlier Bungie title - Myth. It wasn't until Microsoft bought Bungie Studios that Halo became a FPS and the Xbox launch title. There is more than just a plot to Halo, there is volumes of backstory and history in the super-secret Halo bible that is locked in the Bungie Studios vault. Google the Halo Library - that site has compiled just about all that is known about the Halo universe based on the games, novels, and other information. It is actually a pretty good sci-fi story IMHO.
There are alot of people who would like to be me. I just haven't met them yet.
Halo RTS was left to the homebrew crowd until about 3 weeks ago, when they were sent a C&D letter from Microsoft.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
There is actually quite a bit of story in Halo and Halo 2, and certainly more than your typical FPS. There's enough in the "Halo universe" to spawn a few books as well, not to mention the Halo movie that Peter Jackson is working on.
I'm not a Bungie cultist myself (although I have a friend that works there), but I think there is definately enough to like in the Halo universe, if you're a general sci-fi fan like I am. And if you don't, there's nothing wrong with avoiding what you don't like.
As for people yelling at MS to be more original, and to stop milking the franchise for all it's worth, you can easily say the same for Nintendo's games. How many Zelda, Metroid, and Mario games have there been? And how many of them have been good? Plenty. Franchises != the suck.
-- jchenx
Erm...you contradict yourself from one sentence to the next.
Microsoft has a monopoly in the personal computer space. They do not have a monopoly in the home video game console space.
Exclusive titles did not start with Microsoft - it did not start with Sony, either - and it's nothing to get all atwitter about.
I didn't see the original article about the Halogen shutdown on Slashdot until just now, but it doesn't look like anyone pointed out the fact that the sentence "We'll be Back and legal, soon!" appears twice on the page when you highlight the text.
People buy the Xbox to play Halo, get it? Not the other way around.
I'm glad, "People buy the Halo to play Xbox" wouldn't have made any sense at all...
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
heh, I will step up.
I happen to love both WoW and CoH/V.
My keys points on WoW?
HUGE Community, not that hard to find good poeple to play with, though I admit I am no where near up to raid levels (level 33 priest atm).
The game is beautiful, nuff said.
There is high end content.
The grind is not THAT bad if you are only going for levels. However if you want to actualy be viable you NEED to grind for gear/whatever. That is my first complaint.
My second one is travel time, I hate WoW travel time. All classes should be given a movement increas spell at level 30 (or possibly even lower, but with speed increasing as you level).
Also combat can bog down to same 'ol same 'ol really quickly.
Only so much customization with in class. Generaly there are 2-4 viable builds for a class.
And ofcourse cookie cutter characters suck. (lvl 60 gnome warriors with that helm look friken stupid)
On CoH/V?
Character design rocks over everything.
Alot of customization of each class between your primary/secondary choces and your power pools. a Bubbler plays 100% differently then an Empath. (this is a BIG plus to me as I am an altaholic).
I find I like CoH/V Combat alot more then I do WoW. More variation in what you can do, less "well we HAVE to have **** class or we fail it". A group full of Stalkers can be scary, a random mix is deadly, don't have an empath? so what! we have a bubbler, we are not gona be taking dmg anyway! No Defender at all? so what, we have that much more DMG/Mez.
Travel powers at a nice early level made me happy beyond all reason.
Cons?
No one plays any more and is now impossible to find a good group.
No end game content.
the last few levels suck for grind.
All in all?
I tihnk CoH/V is less grindy, with better combat then WoW (up untill end game).
However, I pick WoW over CoH/V atm because I want to play with people (the entire point of an MMO in my mind). I want to convince some of my RL friends to lay off WoW for a month or 2 and play some CoH/V with me, but I don't know if I will be able to.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Don't think of it as being about Blu-Ray, necessarily. It's not. Really, it's about the price. $600 (or $580, if you count the 20% of production that will be priced at $500) is, to many people too much money. It's really that simple.
Blu-Ray is something that many people aren't excited about that also drives the price up and the production quantity down - this makes it the obvious target for people who don't want/aren't willing/can't afford to shell out $580 for a game console before purchasing even a single game (much less any of the usual hardware accessories).
Had the DS been sold at $500, with the only obvious thing that might account for its far-above-the-competition price the second screen, then yes, you would have heard similar complaints about it. If the Wii was priced at $500 because of problems with the Wiimote, then you'd be hearing similar complaints about that.
Say what you want about how great Blu-Ray is, or how it's actually for games, not for pushing Sony's pet format, or whatever else you want to say about it. But what it comes down to is that, for (seemingly) a lot of people, $580 is just too damn much money. And it doesn't matter how cool Blu-Ray is if the price is more than people are willing to pay.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
If you think COH/COV is a grind fest try out a Korean designed MMO sometime. Seriously checkout Hero Online, it's free and holy cow is it a grind.
COH was my first MMO, played it for about a year, got my level 50 and then moved to WoW. Played WoW for about a year then bought CoV.
I have a love/hate relationship with CoH/CoV, I totally understand what you mean about it being a grind. The game really has almost nothing to it but combat. I think the combat is pretty entertaining but doing mission after mission can be taxing. What I do like about it is that it works well in small doses. I usually play with a friend for an hour or two a night. From logon to mission your are playing in a couple minutes versus the high end of WoW which is very time consuming.
Lately the server population seems to have dried up, especially at the high level (my villain is 41). So the social aspects of the game have pretty much disappeared. CoH was a much livlier place during the first year with tons of players and much more social activity (player run things like costume contests were common). Without the player base you are just left with the mechanics of the game.
Normally I think it would be surprising to see the developer building the Marvel MMO seeing as it stands to be in direct competition with CoH/CoV but I see it as a sign that Cryptic is aware of CoH's decline.
In terms of CoH being slow to level though, you can easily do levels 1-20 in a week which at least gives you a lot of powers and a good idea if you want to keep playing that class. Now once you hit 30 the grind really kicks in and 40-50 is just plain brutal. I think I'm doing about 1 bar of XP every 2 hours at level 41. Just be glad they reduced the debt to less than half of what it used to be. My hero had maxed out debt at lvl 49 - something like a million points.
At this point I'm just waiting for something new. I don't have any desire to go back to WoW. I think MMO developers are waiting on releases because of the Burning Crusade.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Now, it may be that Halo was originally a RTS game, but it was definitely demoed as an FPS before the Microsoft buyout. It was originally demoed at the 1999 Macworld Expo in NYC.
It was a sad day when Microsoft bought Bungie in preparation for the Xbox release and postponed the Mac OS and Windows releases of Halo till after the release of the Xbox.
Linkage:
http://www.themacobserver.com/perspectives/soare/
or even better wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo:_Combat_Evolved
The noisy-ness and size of the XBox360 are the main things that kept me from getting it originally (along with my general happiness with the PS2 I got a few years before the XBox's launch).
:)
I'm thinking of biting the bullet and upgrading to HD-TV this year (between the drop in HD-TV prices and TiVo's new HD unit), and the PS3 is starting to look like the perfect option to handle the "GameConsole/DVD/NextGenMedia" portion and round out my new TV stack. Going for the PS3 is an easier choice than a stand-alone Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player. I KNOW the Blu-Ray format is going to be used for the PS3, wether movies come out for it or not, and I expect it should be a decent DVD player also. If the format takes off, great. If it doesn't, yes, it sucks, but the hardware is still usable as a storage media for games (take a look at UMD, yeah, there aren't many UMD movies being planned, but I don't see UMD games for the PSP being phased out any time soon).
Granted the whole TV Stack is probably ~$2500-$3000 whereas my current installation is closer to $1000 (TV, VCR, TiVo+DVD Player, CableBox), but I'm actually excited about the quality difference, and analog TV Phase-out is right around the corner. Feb 17th 2009 doesn't seem that far away to me right now, especially since the HDTV acceptance rate has been climbing and is probably primed to really take off this holiday season. Once that rate climbs, there is no reason to assume that consumers won't demand more HD media (including Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and Consoles supporting HD formats).
Call me a sheep, but I think the pastures (or at least pictures of them), will be greener.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
It's external on 360.
360 + 360 power supply is a lot larger than PS3.
360 + 360 power supply + HD-DVD drive is about double the size of the PS3. And a lot louder.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95