Rampancy

Mike Donges of Mumbo Jumbo has updated his .plan. Donges had this to say about Myth III's release:

We have been a bit quiet over the last week, in order to capture feedback on the game. Believe me that we have been paying close attention to what we have seen and compiling a list of the issues and comments that have cropped up. MumboJumbo will be releasing a patch within the week to resolve a great number of these issues. This patch will focus mainly on fixing up issues that have plagued the MultiPlayer User Interface and some important compatibility issues. When it is ready for release, it will be available from Take 2's support website and we'll get the word out to you.

He goes on to comment on the Mac version of Myth III:

A word on the Mac version...it is very close, and MacSoft is gearing it up for the holiday season. They are as committed as us in getting it to the eager Mac users. The fact of the matter is that we ran into some unforeseen issues that have caused it to take us a bit longer to get it ready for release. I don't think that the few extra weeks of practice that the PC users have will do them any good once the Mac users start hitting GameSpy (this coming from an ex_Applite).

Nothing specific there, which is disappointing. Though, you have to respect someone who tells it like it is rather than just saying what the public wants to hear.

The folks at MacGamer have been playing a bunch of Myth III and took the time to write a nice preview of it. The preview talks a lot about the new units, story, graphics, and interface, but it also talks about Mac specific issues:

Testing Wolf Age on a G4/400/320 MEGS with an AGP Radeon did tax my system. However, texture and detail settings can be lowered to improve performance. Many of the 3D modellings require significant hard RAM and a healthy dose of megahertz can improve performance. But the system requirements aren't obscene and with RAM at such a low premium right now, what better excuse to splurge? Also, under OS 10.1 -- yes, that's right, it's carbonized baby -- Myth 3 ran beautifully.

One interesting thing to note that there is no mention of bugs whatsoever in the entire article.

Also, it seems that the PC version only has GameSpy as a multiplayer option, but MacGamer said that multiplayer also worked with TCP/IP and LAN connections. Perhaps these features will be added in an upcoming patch?

Sam posted about his experiences playing Halo at a kiosk in a local mall over at HBO. Besides saying that the Xbox controller wasn't anywhere near as bad as suggested, he was impressed with Halo in most respects, especially the graphics:

Halo is like the Matrix. You cannot be told what Halo is. You have to experience it. Seriously. The cutscenes, the movies we've seen.... [They] pale beside the real thing. Debating getting an Xbox? Go check out Halo in action. It really does put the movies to shame.

Sam also noted that he didn't see any framerate drops during his play, and level loads were all less than three seconds.

Thanks to ax for pointing out that Strike over at MWA has posted a bunch of screenshots from the Myth III demo. You can see that things pretty much look the same except that the interface isn't 640x480 any more (as it was in Myth II), but rather the resolution you have selected for gameplay.