Slashdot Mirror
Halo, Nothing But Halo
The Halo 3 Beta has been in the news just a bit lately, and with it the Halo franchise is again looming large in other formats. Director Peter Jackson is speculating that the release of the game this September may refocus attention on the movie, stalled as it has been since October of last year. Jackson still wants to make it, but only with Neill Blomkamp directing. The Halo comic, meanwhile, has been confirmed as an ongoing series. The comic will consist of several mini-series runs, with future adventures possibly featuring the return of Brian Michael Bendis (the mind behind the first series). As for the game itself, Beta code has uncovered several game achievements that will be earnable after launch. Trying to calm fans somehow disappointed with the Beta's graphics, Bungie's Frank O'Connor assures us the shipped game will look better. And finally for a broader view of the game N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo are at it again, dissecting the Beta experience with witty correspondence.
Is it just me or does Zonk seem pretty excited about Halo 3?
it's as good as "Doom: The Movie", but I really don't see that happening.
*shudder*
Please God, not another crappy video game movie.
And "attention" of consumer brands as large as "Halo" is in the FPS niche is rarely accidentally focused on a related product in a particular month, so I don't think the use of the word "speculating" is correct.
We HAVE our Halo movie.
Red Vs. Blue, baby!
I mean, 90% of video game movies (and movie video games for that matter) are horrible horrible things that make you want a refund...even when your friend just describes them to you. However that was said about Superhero movies a while ago and now Hollywood's picked up on how to make those pretty good (although they're milking spiderman WAY too much IMHO) so perhaps there's a chance for this.
/. editors would let an addict write an article about a subject they were addicted to and then put it on /., I have way too much faith in them...
This seems like a bit of an unfocused article...almost as though the poster was addicted to Halo...but there's no way the
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Just image if they took the road less traveled and based in on Red Vs. Blue. :)
When were men-in-pajamas (a.k.a. "SuperHero") movies horrible? They and their sequels been solid moneymakers for about seventy years, so they can't have been too horrible or they would have pissed off their dweeby and/or illiterate demographic a long time ago.
Don't forget the partial recall, relabelling and delay of the massively underwhelming Halo 2 for Windows Vista - all caused by an error message with a Bungie developer's hairy arse mooning away at the unsuspecting user.
You really can't make this up.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I am playing the beta and here are my thoughts:
The graphics are stepped up from Halo 2 but not by leaps and bounds. Cod3, GoW, Oblivion all look 100x better. The weapons are about the same, one or two new weapons but nothing which would make anyone go wow. I can still dominate just with the standard gun.
They are few items one can pick up: one creates a shield around you so you can have a safe area to rest (though people can still come in and kill you), one causes an EMP pulse that will knock out anyone's shields (not really used you have to be very close to use and by that time either you have killed them already or are dead), the land mine (useful), and an item which gives you a grav boost in the air (again I rarely see anyone use it). Oh there is a cloaking device (not 100%) but once you see the invisible person moving it doesn't matter.
Vehicles...the same, nothing special. You can hold multiple grenade types at once: frag, emp, sticky ones, etc. Nothing special.
Maps again nothing special. Some of them have a cool launching ramp that shots you half way across the map. That is fun.
Summary: Don't expect a massive graphics update (unless they change it up a lot past the beta), games like Cod3, GoW, Oblivion all have better graphics. If you like Halo 2 you will like this game. If you hated Halo 2 you will hate this game. Maybe the single player experience will be more of a wow factor.
OH on the plus side lots of teenagers still talking about how cool they are, women they bang, how gangsta they are, etc.
I loved the first two, except the second one didn't end. I really despise games [or movies or TV shows [Lost, I'm looking at you]] that don't have an ending, or leave themselves with a cliffhanger.
It always feels to me like open commercialisation; effectively it's a way of forcing the customer to give you more money, not on the merits of the game, and the merits of its followup, but because the customer wants to finish off what they paid for the first time.
So list me as one of the people who won't be purchasing Halo3.
Gary (-;
I dunno, he did make a rather popular movie trilogy based on the game Angband.
Or the present trends will continue and the Wii will rule everywhere.
Additionally, beta implicitly tells us that the game isn't finished. Good game developers focus on getting the whole game finished and playable, then they add the polish at the end. It's still 3 months away from shipping, and the beta was probably ready to go at least a month ago, so that's a fair amount of extra time to go. I imagine a lot of the graphical effects they're intending on are simply unfinished and probably completely chew the framerate. Bungie would get even more negative feedback if the game looked really pretty but played at 10fps.