Halo 4 Message Board older than one year ago

Microsoft's 343 Industries, which inherited the Halo franchise after Bungie walked away, actually pulled off Halo 4. Actually, that's not fair. 343 didn't just deliver a competent game, it took the collective cynicism of the internet and created, as our review put it, "one of the finest shooters in years."

• Destructoid (100/100): "343 Industries have done a remarkable job at continuing the Halo legacy. They've gone all out, creating a fantastic sequel that brought forth a major focus on storytelling while upping the visual and audio direction to a level that will be tough for anyone to rival with these few remaining years of the current console generation."
• IGN (98/100): "Halo has been rebuilt. It has been redefined. And it has been reinvigorated. The Xbox's original king has returned to his rightful place on the throne."
• Game Informer (93/100): "343 Industries introduces an episodic cooperative experience with enormous potential to change the way post-release content is delivered in games. Spartan Ops brings a new cinematic episode every week, along with five connected missions. The large battles and objectives available in these missions are ideal for a group of friends, and at a little over an hour per episode, it's perfect for a weekly gaming meet-up."
• Gamespot (90/100): "Halo 4 is every bit the massive shooter package that its predecessors were, and it holds the series' standard high. The thrilling and emotional return of Master Chief and Cortana is the highlight, and the campaign breaks new ground in narrative quality for the franchise. The top-notch competitive multiplayer picks up where Halo: Reach left off, infusing the action with some mainstream elements while still remaining undeniably unique. Spartan Ops may stay a mere sideshow or prove its worth in the weeks to come."
• Eurogamer (80/100): "At the end of Halo 4's campaign, after the credits have rolled, 343 Industries posts a short message thanking fans for trusting the company with their beloved universe and asking us to remember that this is just a first step. It's a telling memo that reveals a certain nervousness about the task at hand: a plea that we understand the weight of responsibility these creators have felt in adopting Master Chief."

The good news: There's an official Halo 4 game on iOS. The better news: it's free! The moment you become furious with us for those first two sentences: the full name of the app is "Halo 4: King of the Hill Fuled by Dew." Yes, "fuled."

The exclusive soft-drink soaked experience brings in 7-Eleven and Doritos for the most authentic Halo experience, allowing you to compete to become "king of the hill." And by "hill" we mean "7-Eleven," by "king" we mean "person who is always in a 7-Eleven," and by "compete" we mean "scan Mountain Dew and Doritos products in that 7-Eleven you're constantly loitering in."

You'll unlock double XP and an "Exclusive Custom Locus Helmet" for the non-Dew-fueled Xbox 360 Halo 4 by playing, and you'll forever associate "alien warzones" with 7-Eleven. Just like they want you to, apparently.

Halo 4 is adamant about proving its competence and convincing you of its necessity. You don't often see a monolithic franchise putting up a fight for fans, but longtime developer Bungie's departure has awakened enough doubt to incur a fierce response from Halo's new custodians at 343 Industries. And so the developer launches the best kind of protest, which is to wave an impressive, throbbing shooter in your face. Trust me, you want this.

The speed at which that uncertainty evaporates is the real surprise. You enter with a fair fear of Halo being stale; then Master Chief exits the cryogenic casket like a crisp piece of let-us-start-killing-things. Meanwhile, his companion Cortana skirts around fatigue, madness and Microsoft metaphor - the inevitable fate of software that's been in service for much too long. But she too comes out stronger, more endearing and heroic than ever before. Maybe she's just been inserted into one too many alien plinths over the years.

I’ve never seen Halo like this before. Halo 4 is emotional, something I’ve never felt from the franchise quite like this. Sure, invested fans will protest and say that the lore is fascinating and the war struggles moving, but I can safely say I’ve never sat through a Halocampaign quite at the edge of my seat like I have in the first title by 343 Industries. People, especially gamers, seem to be afraid of change. That’s understandable when it comes to the Halo franchise. Halo is a legacy. When Bungie introduced the sci-fi, first-person shooter franchise over a decade ago, it wowed fans with a perfect formula of alien creatures and versatile weapons. People obsessed over the game’s multiplayer modes, playing iterations that were years old, even after new titles in the series were released. Halo sold Xboxes. It’s a household name, and for good reason. So change seems like it would be scary. Like it might ruin the integrity of something that’s formed such an impressive community. Hardcore Halo fans can rest assured that 343 has stayed true to the core of Halo, and I urge them to keep an open mind when confronted by its new skin. Because that skin is beautiful. It’s cinematic, and features lovely music. Cut scenes look absolutely phenomenal, with performance capture done so well that I sometimes confuse the rendered characters for real, live actors. The soundtrack, by Massive Attack’s Neil Davidge, is expectedly wonderful, and the realistic sound effects are a delightful surprise. The crunch and squeaks of Master Chief’s armor as he moves around, and the hazardous hum of damaged vehicles are little details that go a long way. 343’s take on the franchise humanized what was up until now mainly just a really fun, well-made series of games. <iframe width=”853” height=”480” src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/GO376G4tbGM” frameborder=”0” allowfullscreen></iframe> Master Chief is an icon, in both our world and the Halo world. He’s a super soldier and the people of the future look to him for safety and assurance. When he walks through those doors, there’s a sense of ease that washes over the other soldiers. Everything will be okay now. I have never felt that connection to Master Cheif like I have in Halo 4. But I’ve also never been able to see under his helmet, at the kind of person he has to be to maintain the hero status. If you read all the Halo novels and get really invested in the Halo culture, you’ll know that it’s a struggle to carry the weight of the universe on your conscience. But this was something that never quite came across in the video games. Halo 4’s single player campaign feels like two stories. It’s a story about war and the introduction of a new species of enemies: the Prometheans. It’s a story about a fanatical sect of the Covenant that, ignoring the peace treaty set during previous games, are fighting humans again. It’s a story with religious subtext and dense lore. But it’s also a story about Master Chief, a human who can barely connect with humanity anymore, as he is so strongly focused on carrying out his obligations that he doesn’t allow himself any other response to tragedy other than a devotion to eradicating it. And it’s a story about Cortana, who has stuck by Master Chief for years. Their relationship is a strong one. It might be the last shred of any sense of normalcy Master Chief has left. This half of the story lends itself to Halo 4’s emotional side. And it is a fascinating and lovely experience. The other side of the story of Halo 4—that dense lore—is hard to approach. New concepts and names are thrown at you in such rapid succession that it’s difficult to follow along. I imagine this will be especially hard on newcomers, who might have a vague understanding of the sci-fi universe they are entering, only to get bombarded by such inaccessible lore. This is unfortunate, because I really want to love the Prometheans’ backstory. So I can’t help but feel that Halo 4 does a disservice to players who are new to the franchise by rattling off so many new concepts without giving proper time or context to digest it all. I suspect even veterans of the games might find it difficult to parse the information as fast as the game is shoving it down your throat. The Covenant’s reemergence as a threat, for instance, was confusing. Certain parts of the story aren’t explained well, and it’s easy to get lost in new characters and abstract concepts that the game hurries to explain, and then just as quickly abandons. Fortunately, digging into the Spartan Ops—solo or cooperative missions that will release weekly in tandem with cinematic episodes—reveal more detailed information that will hopefully help explain the campaign’s thick storyline. Unfortunately, I found the Spartan Ops missions to be fairly boring. I played five missions, each better than the last, but they didn’t interest me beyond functioning as another way to gain experience and therefore access new guns, abilities and perks. I can’t speak to how much you can learn more about the behind the scenes stories, because the first week’s content was severely limited and dry. I admire that 343 will release new episodes every week, but so far they’ve been mainly lengthy chores of killing waves of enemies with forgettable plot lines. But what of the basic structure of the game itself? Is that formula of grunts, elites and jackals still respected? Are all your favorite guns included? Halo 4 still feels like a Halo game. It’s full of Banshees and battle rifles. It has impressive setpieces. Some of the multiplayer maps are even recreated—or at least inspired by—classic Halo maps. Halo 4 is proof that 343 is clearly in tune with what fans love about the Halo franchise. But, as I’ve said, gamers are afraid of change. So the addition of ordnance drops in multiplayer—basically a bonus given to players who do well during a match—might not be desirable to you. I think it works. You might not. That’s fair. Of course, you can tweak and customize multiplayer rounds to your liking, even opting to play around with ordnance options. There are a plethora of modes to enjoy, as well. I was particularly fond of the Flood mode, which pits a few players as Flood and most as human Spartans. As you kill the Spartans, they become infected and fight until there’s only one man left standing. In first-person shooters, it’s not uncommon for the community to take it upon themselves to invent their own game modes, listing out rules and relying on the honor code from players to carry it out, effectively creating their own unwritten mode. This Flood mode is a multiplayer game born of one such community-made mode from Halo 2, so it’s nice to see 343 giving that community a nod. The other multiplayer modes range from the classic Team Slayer, which pits the red team against the blue team, to Oddball, where the goal is to hold onto the ball the longest. Every mode had me cursing and giggling simultaneously. Granted, my experience may have been the most optimal, as I was in a room with roughly nine others, all of us calling out playfully to one another in the competitive environment. But 343 has added exciting new single player gameplay options, too. Like the addition of mechs. Even if their placement in the single player campaign is a rarity, it’s very exciting to hop in an armored suit to shoot rockets and stomp enemies with your metal feet. In fact, there wasn’t much of an emphasis on vehicles in general, though you do get to play around with the Pelican aircraft. I have fond memories of flying around in space battles in Halo: Reach, and though flying missions do reappear in the latest title, they don’t feel as emphasized (or as cool as that space battle). They’re more like quick intermissions between main events. Prometheans as a new enemy class are more annoying than I expected. They’re cowards. They immediately flee as soon as you shoot them. I expect AI to react to my threat, ducking under cover as needed. But I didn’t expect to play hide and seek with them. A few of these species are more aggressive than others, warping in front of your face with the protection of their tough shells of armor. But others—especially the service-type species that can heal the other Prometheans—dart away from your line of sight and stay hidden. Though fighting them grew stale very quickly, picking up their weapons was not. The design of the Promethean weapons is impressive, even doing a neat trick where the gun disassembles and then reassembles itself to reload. From shotguns to snipers to rifles and pistols, every gun feels great in my hands. I always prefer alien weapons in Halo games, but these new, orange/red-glowing weapons trump even the Covenant’s stock. There are a few issues to pick out in Halo 4, whether they’re to do with the storyline or gameplay. But my experience with Halo 4 was an enjoyable one. The campaign held my interest as I watched Cortana and Master Chief’s emotions unfold. Missions were fun. Multiplayer is diverse and just as fast paced and unique a first-person shooter multiplayer experience as I have come to expect from the series. As afraid as you may be of Bungie passing the torch to a new development team to handle a franchise that has the foundation of years of quality behind it, I strongly urge you to keep an open mind for Halo 4, because you just may enjoy it as much as I did.

Armor customization is merely cosmetic, but there are some cool helmets and stuff to unlock.

Did the new team at 343 Industries break Halo? No, not at all. Taking over the franchise from its creators at Bungie and creating a new, numbered sequel starring the Master Chief seems like the sort of daunting task that could have blown up the entire franchise if it had gone poorly. But the developers have executed quite well, developing a Halo game that gets that Halo feel down nicely while also playing around with the periphery of the experience in an attempt to modernize things a bit. Some of those new ideas work better than others, but if there's any actual issue with Halo 4 it's that the game plays it a little too safe. Master Chief starts the game surrounded by mystery, but it relies too heavily on the use of existing enemies and weapons, and by the end of the campaign it sort of feels like the Master Chief is right back in the middle of the same conflict and theater of war he seemingly left behind at the end of Halo 3.

The action opens with the Master Chief being woken out of his stasis only to find danger. Covenant forces have boarded his ripped-up ship and this whole mess is headed for a Forerunner planet called Requiem. Before too long a human ship called the Infinity joins the fray, giving you the standard factions of a Halo game. Mixed into this conflict is a new batch of enemies called the Prometheans. And tying it all together is a central bad guy known as the Didact. The story starts to head in some interesting directions. Your ever-present AI pal Cortana, for example, is falling apart due to being "alive" for more than seven years. As she breaks down, it's harder for her to maintain focus and help the Chief complete his tasks. It's also really interesting to put a face to the antagonists in a Halo game, rather than larger species or concepts like "the Covenant." That said, however, you sure do spend a lot of time fighting old enemies.

The most dramatic change you'll see on the enemy front is a floating Promethean Watcher that hovers above its allies, emitting beams that shield the Knights and Crawlers below. It'll also snatch any grenades you toss in their direction and fling it right back in your direction, which is sort of a jerk move if you ask me. But it also does a mean Doom II Arch-Vile impression by resurrecting some enemies after you take them down. In short, shoot the Watchers first. The other Promethean enemies aren't dramatically different from the types of enemies you've been facing in previous games. Crawlers can crawl down from the walls and the bipedal Knights can teleport, allowing them to warp away from the business end of your battle rifle and reappear behind you.

These mechs pop up in multiplayer and campaign.

But you'll also face a lot of Covenant opposition, including Grunts, Elites, Jackals, and Hunters. Fighting these guys feels the same way it always has, for better or worse. The Grunts are total chumps, the Elites are fun to bash in the face, the Jackals are never left-handed, and the Hunters are large and slow. As before, the game mixes up your various enemies to serve them up in different configurations. On the normal difficulty, this doesn't make much difference, as you can just plow through the opposition the way a big, armored dude like the Master Chief should. On higher settings, the action gets a little more tactical, forcing you to poke out, do some damage, and hang back to let your shields recharge. Again, this shouldn't sound like much of a surprise to people who have played a Halo game before, but it's just another example of the ways that this new development team made a game that feels very similar to Bungie's work on the previous games. That said, the promise of landing on a new planet and the potential for new experiences and encounters that the change of setting could have allowed for makes the notion of spending what feels like most of the game fighting enemies from old Halo games a little unfortunate.

You'll pick up some new weapons along the way, and the Chief himself has been given some additional abilities. Most of the new weapons drop from the new Promethean enemies. They look great, and the first time you pick one up you'll see it sort of form together into a gun. It's a nice introductory animation that, thankfully, doesn't play out every time you pick up a weapon. While the new weapons look nice, most of them just plug right into the existing Halo archetypes. You'll see a shotgun, a pistol, a fully-automatic rifle, a single-shot rifle that fires three slugs at once (though one sniper-like megaslug if you're zoomed in), a new grenade type, and so on. The new weapons are disappointing for that reason. They don't feel like they fill any real need or plug into any gaps in the existing Halo arsenal. They're just more ways to do the same thing. The game also offers you the chance to pilot a large mech suit in a couple of spots, but taking a large, slow-moving armored guy like the Master Chief and slapping another larger, slower layer of armor around him for a couple of shooting gallery-like sequences isn't exactly my idea of a good time.

Thankfully, the Chief has some more movement options to keep the game running at a solid pace. You can sprint at will now by clicking in the left stick. This does a lot to speed up the pace of the game, as you might expect. But in addition to that, there's also an equipment slot that lets you use armor abilities, similar to the style of Halo: Reach. These include things like Promethean Vision, which lets you see through walls, or Active Camouflage, which gives you a Predator-style invisibility that the AI seems to be able to see right through most of the time. You can also equip abilities that let you deploy auto-sentries, use a large shield, and so on. Being able to sprint without having to equip that as your armor ability is terrific.

This shield is one of the armor abilities you can equip.

Overall, the Halo 4 campaign is pretty good. It looks fantastic in some spots and it takes you to a lot of different-looking places along the way. It sets up a few story elements that won't pay off until later on in this new trilogy of games, but a lot of the story plays things very safe. At the opening of the game it feels like Master Chief and Cortana could be set off onto some great new mystery in a mysterious place where everything could be different. Instead you spend a lot of time fighting old Halo enemies and, by the conclusion of Halo 4's story, I felt like much of the promise inherit to this potentially new setting had been squandered. Maybe that's on me for wanting Halo to be something other than Halo, but without getting into the specifics of the characters and their fates, where things are left at the end of the game feels like a stopping point that sets you up for more of the same enemies and settings in the future.

The multiplayer side of Halo 4 brings in those new weapons and movement changes, so you can sprint there, as well. There are also additional armor abilities to play with and, overall, it feels like the team sat down with a recent Call of Duty game and found ways to plug some of those concepts into Halo. Some of them are cosmetic. Any points you earn during a match pop up right in the center of the screen. When you die, you get a killcam feed of the person that took you out. But some of them are more dramatic, like more customizable loadouts that let you pick your primary and secondary weapons, a starting grenade type, and a few perks, like shields that recharge more quickly, infinite sprint, the ability to scavenge grenades from fallen Spartans, and so on. As you play, you'll earn experience points that give you unlock points, but some items also have a level requirement before they can even be unlocked. So you'll have to play for a bit before you can start out with plasma grenades, and you'll have to play a little longer before you can equip things in all of your perk slots. Halo has done loadouts before, but this is a deeper, and ultimately, more interesting set of options. As before, you'll also unlock various armor pieces as you play, gain levels, or complete challenges. New helmets, shoulders, chest pieces, and so on are also available for you to play around with.

These portals teleport you around the planet in the campaign.

The modes you'll play when playing with the public are your typical sort of Halo modes, but with some changes here and there. Team Slayer (as well as some of the other modes) now allows you to call in ordinance after a set number of kills. Don't start freaking out, you're not calling in air strikes or UAVs or anything that dramatic. And it doesn't require you to earn all those kills in a streak. But when you fill an on-screen meter, it gives you the option to call in one of three different things. They might be weapons, like the SAW, a very rugged light machine gun. Or you might have the option to get an overshield, a temporary speed or damage boost, and so on. One time I got the gravity hammer, but was immediately killed before I got to run around and smash people with it. It's a cool little addition. Other modes include Regicide, which is a standard deathmatch mode but the lead player gets marked by an on-screen indicator and also has an additional bounty on his head. Killing the king gets you that bounty, but doesn't automatically make you the king--you need to be in the lead to wear the crown.

You can also get in and build your own custom matches with a variety of rules settings, and the Forge mode that allows you to alter the placement of items in the multiplayer maps (along with a set of Forge-only maps) also returns with some additional options, like the ability to fuse items together. And, as before, you can take your custom games, screenshots, game clips and so on and share them with other players.

There's no wave-based survival mode in Halo 4. In addition to the campaign, the game also has a cooperative mode called Spartan Ops. This is an episodic series that follows a team of Spartans that work out of the Infinity, a large ship that shows up in the campaign. These episodes are going to be released for free on a regular basis as downloadable updates and will contain video clips that help set them up. The first such episode is included alongside the launching game, and as such that's the only one I can really review at this point. The story opens with a video showing Spartans reporting for duty on-board the Infinity. From there, you're tossed into a set of five missions. The locations are ripped from other parts of the game and are extremely combat heavy. And once you're past that initial cutscene, any additional dialogue is delivered via radio chatter. If you're into the combat of Halo and like playing with others against occasionally overwhelming batches of enemies, the missions are passable. But don't go in thinking that this is some sort of elaborate and unique segment of the game that's going to give you a campaign-level experience. It's a set of co-op missions with a loose story wrapper around it, nothing more, nothing less. You can bring in your custom Spartan from the other multiplayer modes and earn experience points by playing Spartan Ops, and there are mode-specific challenges to complete here, as well.

Shoot the flying dudes first.

The presentation end of Halo 4 is quite nice. The music is outstanding, breaking away from the franchise's past a bit by updating the sound and getting away from some of the overt monk chanting that one still tends to associate with Halo. It helps make Halo 4 sound like its own thing, and that goes a long way. Visually, Halo 4 has some terrific moments that really stand out, but it also holds up well on the technical end with a good frame rate, great lighting, and, for the most part, sharp texture quality. Again, these things help to make Halo 4 look and feel different from its predecessors, probably more than the gameplay does.

From the moment I saw Master Chief put himself back to sleep at the end of Halo 3, all I could think about was how his next adventure--if he would even have a next adventure--should be something dramatically different from the adventures we had already seen. Moving him out into the middle of nowhere and cutting him off from his allies is an idea with huge potential. So that's why I find the storytelling side of Halo 4 to be fairly disappointing. Within the first few hours you've fought enemies that go all the way back to the first game in the franchise and you've reconnected with the human race. That's not to say that the entire story is a bust--and it does set up some potentially interesting things for the next couple of games to address--but it's good that the developers have backed this story up with sharp, time-tested gameplay that gets enhanced in meaningful ways across all modes.

The Halo franchise is up to 46 million games sold worldwide. Microsoft gave us the impressive figure today ahead of the launch of Halo 4, which was recently revealed as comfortably Microsoft's most expensive game to date.

According to Microsoft, Halo has so far generated $3 billion in revenue, there are 120 million pieces of user-generated content in Halo 3 to date, and 5 billion hours have been logged into Halo games via Xbox Live. We won't speculate on what all these figures may rise to following Halo 4's release next week.

Get psyched for season one of Halo 4's episodic co-op mode.

343i and IGN take you on a tour of all 10 Halo 4 multiplayer maps including an exclusive first look at "Vortex."

A fresh trailer for Halo 4's Spartan Ops mode has surfaced on the web. The trailer shows off some gameplay as well as a few of the cut-scenes from the episodic series of cooperative missions. It looks like the Covenant are at it again - despite that whole "truce" thing - and the UNSC has deployed a fresh batch of Spartans to take care of business. Check out the trailer above.

Funko's Pop! Vinyl line of collectible figurines is welcoming four new Halo 4 figures into its already plentiful ranks of super-deformed pop-culture characters. Available on November 8, the new line includes Master Chief, both red and blue Spartan Warriors, as well as the unbelievably cute Cortana figure seen above.

Seriously, it's like if Betty Boop were a hyper-intelligent, holographic artificial intelligence from the future. Check out all four figures in the gallery below.

If you've been keeping up, you'll know the situation in Halo 4's live-action tie-in is definitely up to red alert. So it's about time a certain somebody showed up, really.

Halo 4 is the most expensive game Microsoft has ever made, Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer tells Polygon. It is "absolutely" the most money Microsoft has ever spent developing a game, he says. "Nothing's even close."

Estimates for development costs of Halo 3: ODST average out at $60 million, and that was including a massive marketing budget of about $30 million. Halo 3: ODST ended up bringing in more than $170 million in its first 24 hours on the market. Overall, Halo is a $3 billion franchise, Spencer says.

Halo 4 lead multiplayer map designer Kynan Pearson takes us on a tour of the "Exile" map.

The War Games Map Pass that we noted comes in the Limited Edition of Halo 4 is just what it sounds like - a season pass with a fancy name. Sold separately, the War Games Map Pass runs $25 (2,000 MS Points) and grants access to three multiplayer map packs scheduled for December, February and April: Crimson, Majestic and Castle. This is a 15 percent discount if bought individually at retail price.
Crimson, set to launch in December, includes Wreckage, Harvest and Shatter maps. Majestic includes Landfall, Monolith and Skyline, and is set to launch in February. Castle has Daybreak, Outcast and Perdition, set for April.
The War Games Map Pass also includes two in-game helmets and a unique emblem.

If you prefer your trailers heavy on the action and light on the live, check out this little number for Halo 4 which made its debut last night on FX.

Witness the return of the Master Chief as he faces a new threat on a mysterious Forerunner planet called Requiem.

#halo Putting aside the fancy live-action stuff for a day, Microsoft tonight released this "gameplay" launch trailer for Halo 4. More »

Microsoft confirmed today SmartGlass will launch alongside Windows 8 tablets on October 26, with Dance Central 3 and Forza Horizon among the first games to support it. The Xbox 360 app, which turns devices into secondary screens for the console, will be available for Windows 8 phones at launch on October 29. SmartGlass is expected to arrive on iOS and Android in 2013.

SmartGlass is implemented in the latest Xbox dashboard update, which Microsoft tells us it's rolled out to 3 million users so far. Another wave will receive the dashboard update today, so more users should have access to SmartGlass when the companion app becomes available for Windows 8 tablets on Friday.

#halo We got Halo 4 in the office today. The $100 Limited Edition... plus the $400 special edition 32GB Xbox 360 that comes with the game packed in. So what's the deal with these things? More »

Wanna know what the Limited Edition Halo 4 Xbox 360 console looks like? Take a look!

Curious what physical goodies you get when you pay $40 more for Halo 4? We've got the answers!

David Ellis from 343 Industries stops by this week to tell us about is crazy career path, from politics to prison guard to games press -- the long road to designing Halo 4's Spartan Ops campaign, essentially.

David Ellis discusses his career path spanning his time in politics, his years as a prison guard, and how he ended up on the presses side of things before he became Halo 4s Spartan Ops designer.

Once there was a boy named John. He became a cybernetic super soldier and fought some aliens and stuff. THE END...?

#halo Halo 4 doesn't come out until November 6th. Millions of people are eagerly awaiting the highly anticipated next chapter in the Master Chief saga, pouring over every bit of info released about the game. But some others aren't waiting at all. They're already playing and selling Halo 4. More »

#halo More »

If you need more live-action Master Chief in your life after the Halo 4 launch trailer reveal, the third episode of Forward Unto Dawn is here to help you - albeit with only a tiny bit more Chief. If you've not been keeping up with Machinima's tie-in series, you can check out the first and second episodes here on Joystiq. As for this episode, things start to get really serious when those ever-daunting words of "this is not a drill" ring through the halls of the Corbulo Academy.

Check out the stunning launch trailer for Halo 4 Produced by David Fincher and featuring the origin of Master Chief!

#halo The Halo 4 launch trailer was predictably big budget, but what I found most interesting was how human they made Master Chief look. We usually just see him as a giant hulking killing machine, all armour and visor, but Tim Miller and David Fincher's clip literally takes the mask off the hero. More »

#halo I started in this job nearly six years ago. If you'd told me back then I'd be writing a headline like that in 2012, I'd have either laughed or given you a real strange look. More »