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Halo 3 Almost Done
The word from Bungie is that they consider the final chapter in the Halo story 99.9% complete. They're now in the home stretch, with time to polish. Says Luke Smith, "That last .1% percent is pretty important, however. Right now, some testing is being done in a controlled retail environment via our Halo 3 Epsilon. You've probably seen reports online or even folks on your friends' list playing it, so here's the scoop: The Epsilon is a closed, final phase testing for Halo 3. We won't be making the Epsilon available for public consumption, so while that's immensely disappointing for folks hoping that Friends and Family invites would be extended for the Epsilon, just know that each day you wait in agony is another day closer to September 25." Wired has a huge blowout feature on the title, with lots of screenshots, discussion of how the game was made, and more.
Seriously, why is this news? I mean, they already set the frikkin release date some time ago, of course Halo has to be "almost done" by now!
And considering they will need a bit of time to press the discs and ship them to retailers, it is about time that they are almost done now.
Sheesh, if they would have declared Halo 3 gold master, that would at least have been some sort of news, but "It is almost done" is not the least informative; right now, it is to be expected if they want to honor their release date.
So where's my jar of honey?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Coming to you on PC in December 2016...
Did anyone else read this bit? Another case of terrain-sprawl trouble popped up a few months later in one of the upper levels. The level is intended to introduce vehicle combat, with players following a bunch of their fellow marines as they clamber aboard Warthog ATVs and ride out over a wide-open plain. But Pagulayan's data showed that a significant number of players were trudging across the plain on foot. It turns out the designers hadn't put enough vehicles in the scene, and the artificial-intelligence marines were taking them all before players realized they were supposed to hop aboard. The solution: More Warthogs. WTF? You need an advanced data extraction tool to tell you that there aren't enough Warthogs for the player to use? Give me a break. This is what play testing is for, not to mention a little addition and subtraction. I think they are making this Pagulayan guy out like he is going to save the game from bad level design by making a bunch of graphs and charts. A lot of the issues he discovers with his data analysis could be easily solved by common sense.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Wow after reading your posting history Dr Kool, im AMAZED that you would think Killzone 2 trumped Halo 3. Seriously, Im just stunned! /sarcasm
This sounds like how the typical programmer seems to think when designing progress bars. Sure, it only took 5 minutes to churn through the first 95%, but the last 5% is SO important, it's OK to wait another 10 minutes or so.
(If you've ever installed Visual Studio, you KNOW what I'm talking about!)
I don't see what the big deal is. Trent Reznor's already up to Halo 25
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
I guess so...here's the Game Announcement:
Bungie announces Halo 3, the third and final game in the Halo Trilogy. Halo 3 will be released for Microsoft's Xbox 360 in 2007.
I think it's open to interpretation, so they could get away with declaring this the final chapter in the arc. I'll chalk it up to clever marketing speak and leave it at that.
As a PS3 fan over the 360, I'm really not holding my breath for Killzone 2. I really didn't like the first one (controls sucked) and I see similarities between the first and second games that make me nervous. The only thing that has me still semi-interested is that Killzone for the PSP was fun. I'm going to wait and see what the reviews and buzz is before I declare Killzone 2 even close to Halo quality.
The thing that made Halo great was that it was a total package - fun gameplay, great multiplayer, and an entertaining story. The mechanics weren't radical, but it was the first game that really brought me back to console land from PC land. I could safely say that Halo was the prime reason that I picked up an Xbox and now own a PS3 instead of upgrading my PC.
That said, Halo 2 was a rehash that was forgettable. I'm not going to buy Halo 3, although I'll probably try and check it out in the stores just to see what it's like. But there's no way you can compare Killzone 2 to Halo at this point solely on graphics alone - Halo was never about being a gorgeous game, it was always a total package. Killzone the original was a buggy mess.
Sheesh, it's just an example. The depth of information they are getting from details statistical analysis goes 100 times deeper than the immediate feedback from playtesters (which they are also using). For instance, the visualizations of death frequency over thousands of matches revealing where maps are uneven.
Killzone 2 graphics have to be better than Halo 3's, or it will most likely die. After reviewers have been giving KZ2 such stellar reports as 'non-innovative gameplay' or the gem where fighting a mini-boss was 'uninspired', graphics sound like the only thing going for it.
-- toolie
There's no predicting, at a million pre-orders when last reported, the game is already a qualified hit and we're just over a month out. Assuming an average price of $80 USD (regular @ 60, special @ 70 and collectors @ 130) its generated roughly 100 million in sales just on pre-orders thus far. Halo 2 sold something like 1.5 million pre-orders, and I expect halo 3 to top that, ending between 1.5 and 2.5 million pre-orders when it's all said and done. Add in walk-in sales for the first month, and you're looking at something that may be approaching a quarter billion dollars in sales. Add to that the fact that its going to be a system-seller going into a Christmas where the the PS3 lineup is still pretty weak (the 360 library is comparatively strong in the months leading into Christmas) and the Wii which is still largely unavailable due to high demand (not to mention that it doesn't really compete for the 360/halo audience -- then again, it is Nintendo and they do have a strong holiday lineup as well so they'll be able to sell every Wii they can produce.)
Also, the E3 Halo footage was still Beta content, we know that it looks better by now and also that its a smooth 60 fps. I'm not sure whether Killzone was in-game footage or not (I know that there was a hoopla earlier over their use of pre-rendered footage) and we also don't know if it was running at the desirable 60 FPS mark. Thus far, I have yet to see anything on the PS3 which tops the 360 graphically and doubt we ever will (the 360's GPU technology is a generation ahead of the PS3s after all, and was designed for the console, rather than a PC part tacked on late in the design process when they discovered that multiple Cell processors didn't provide the graphics power they desired at a cost they could stomach.)
My one prediction for this holiday season is that the 360 and Wii will widen their respective leads over the PS3
Gameplay is always the last thing to be tacked down on any game, so this isn't indicative of any problems whatsoever. They're not making sweeping changes at this point, its all spit and polish -- fine tuning. Something as small as moving a weapon spawn-point a few meters in-game can really alter the outcome of a multi-player game, or the number, type and placement of grenades can drastically change how you approach a campaign map.
Finalizing gameplay is a bit like making a collage, you lay out all the pieces and see how it looks, you fine tune and look again, repeat until you're satisfied, then glue it all down -- of course, through the magic of software you can continue to fine-tune after its out in the wild as well.
Its standard practice that gameplay isn't in its final form until a week, or even days, before being sent off for manufacture.
Halo is playable on XBox, PC, and (omg) Mac.
Whatever small fanbase they lost, it was only a fraction of the fanbase that they gained.
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Why are they releasing Halo 3?
I'm still waiting for the remaining half of Halo 2.
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