Blackstar Productions has come out with a new video. This one's an advertisement for Halo and Xbox Live featuring Stephen Hawking. We've added Mr. Hawking to our Halo Movies section as well.
Matt Soell dropped into our forum just to clarify one point: Combat Evolved was, in fact, a marketing catchphrase for Halo and not actually part of the title:
It's in all the printed materials and ads and press releases because the Marketing folks don't ever want someone who hasn't already bought the game to see the word Halo by itself. Nothing about that word screams running around with guns shooting people, and that bothered Marketing to virtually no end.
So there we have it. No word on whether or not Halo 2 would have a subtitle, though... hmm. Perhaps Halo 2: Blam! THAT at least screams running around with guns shooting people. At least, it does to us.
Ok, perhaps hit is a bit of an exaggeration. But it was played at the recent Penny Arcade convention, despite the authors' earlier expressions of acrimony towards Bungie's first Xbox title, not to mention the Xbox itself.
From today's news at PA, August 19, 2002, by Tycho:
Different games started up from time to time but never reached critical mass - Battlefield 1942 essentially stole the show. We actually melted through some extension cables and lost power to one bank of machines, which seemed less like a crisis and more like a badge of honor, a sign that were doing things right. There was a 'Cube with Super Smash Brothers on there, and the two Halo Xboxes stayed full almost the entire day. From time to time, I would get up and survey the room with a ridiculous grin.
Today's comic from them about Yahoo Maps is also pretty funny.
Where's Alec Guinness when you need him to make a wry remark about the who is more foolish?
HBO posted an update to their item about Halo 2 previews. Next month's article in the US-based PC Gamer magazine will, of course, be on the PC version of Halo rather than the Xbox version of Halo 2. Nijhazer set everybody straight, and Harry Al-Shakarchi was right all along. We get the ding for following Louis Wu wherever he goes without question, but we'll point out that usually it's not a bad policy. No blood, no foul... let's play.
Harry Al-Shakarchi and Griffon , via Louis Wu at HBO, respectively gave warning that PC Gamer in the US and Edge Magazine in the UK will be doing previews of Halo 2. Edge has a teaser graphic up.
Team Overkill, a talented Halo-abusing team, has released a new video called Causing A Ruckus. Some charming antics in it - worth watching. We've mirrored it.
Also seen on HBO: tourney writeups by 909 (Plano, Texas) at HBO and Matt Soell (Washington) at Bungie.net. Thanks Louis Wu.
Cino posted in the HBO forum that a Bungie representative showed up there and showed the Halo 2 trailer. And guess what? It turned out to be true, as Matt Soell confirmed:
This is one of those weird times when something written about us on the internet is true.I did actually show up in Renton with a DVD of the Halo 2 trailer, which I played between tournament rounds. It was on a tiny screen, and the glorious sound design suffered from the two tiny TV speakers, but it was the Halo 2 trailer, and people seemed to like it.
Looks like the rest of us will still have to wait a few days...
Xbox.ign.com has put up an FAQ page about MS' upcoming Xbox Live online gaming service. One of the most amusting parts of the page is a graphic with a red arrow pointing to the Xbox's ethernet port that is labeled Xbox Live Goes Here . Just in case you weren't sure.
There is one interesting quote about pricing:
Pricing plans beyond the $49.99 for 12 months hasn't been revealed yet by Microsoft. The company is comfortable with a 9.95/month value for the service, but this hasn't been translated into any long term pricing.
Where the comfortable with a 9.95/month value quote comes from isn't stated, so don't bank on it.
There's also this slightly discouraging piece of information:
The gamertag is permanent but there's still the potential for specific in-game handles and nicknames if a company makes a game that supports it. You can sign up for another user ID but that means opening another Xbox Live account to go with it. If you have four Xbox gamers in the house and they each want their own XBL ID then somebody is going to have to spend that $49.99 for each of them.
Here's hoping that they somehow figure out a way to handle multiple gamers on a single Xbox in a single household without depending on game-specific implementations.
Vector40 recently traveled to San Jose for a videogame tournament to be played on an IMAX dome (well, at least the finals) and Halo was one of the included games. While our good friend didn't make it into the finals, he did have quite a dramatic run, and it makes a great read. His description of the final match is particularly entertaining:
They played. They played with skill. However, all the time they were playing, Mr. Pistol was killing them.It was almost ludicrous. He ate them for lunch. These guys were GREAT, very talented, almost no shortcomings Ч highly skilled, highly trained, well-drilled players who were all worthy of recommendation. They had great moves, and all were excellent with the pistol. And the god barely blinked as he mowed them over.
It's over in the HBO forum, go check it out. Noticed first by Louis Wu at HBO.
Louis Wu at HBO gave us the heads-up that Yeroen at Bungie.net has posted the schedule for the Halo National Championship regionals. It's got the name, address, and phone number of each location hosting a regional along with the start time.
Ok, now we've seen it all. Halo 2 is so popular this is the only time we've ever seen sites do previews not for a game, but for a trailer that's not going to be out for another 3 weeks for a game that isn't going to be out for more than a year. It's... astounding.
Nevertheless, IGN has put up its own transcript/preview of the Halo 2 trailer, and it's even more enthusiastic than the others. If your Halo 2 appetite needs any whetting, head on over and take a look.
And take some clean underwear with you, they seem to be in need of some.
Aquaduct, the superior Xbox tunneling app for Mac OS X, has been updated to beta 3 today. The changes since beta 2 include:
Looks to be a good step forward for the software. Pick up beta 3 and make sure you have GameRanger so you can find other people to play with.
bikeman74 has posted on the HBO forum that a file called halo2trailer.mov on the Imesh and Kazaa P2P file sharing systems is, in fact, a hoax contrary to earlier claims.
As seen on Voodoo Extreme, GamesFirst has put up a preview of Halo 2. Basically the same information as everyone else, and the same screen shots, but we mention it here for completeness.
