#pressplay
The day after I posted a clip of my Halo: Reach helmeted Xbox 360 avatar playing DJ Hero I went online to do battle, and found a truly worthy adversary. More »
Even if you've never touched a Halo game, you're likely familiar with the basic story. But as only the devout know, there's another, deeper fiction behind Bungie's baby that predates even the series itself. Today IGN encapsulates that daunting mythology in a new feature that's well worth a read.
#thats*crag*inteamwork
Get ready to reach for the replay button, as this brief Halo: Reach clip highlights one of the best multiplayer kills we've seen to date in Bungie's newest sci-fi shooter. More »
#pressplay
While the rest of Noble Team were desperately trying to save the planet Reach from the Covenant, DJ Tubby Noble Six snuck off to check out the New Alexandria club scene. More »
Whether you need it for home security reasons, or whether you're just a collector of man-sized gaming memorabilia, a super limited edition Halo: Reach statue, modeled after Noble Team's Captain Carter, can be yours if you've got the wherewithal to win this pricey eBay auction.
Though we're dutifully saving our hard-earned Halo: Reach credits for the "Pestilence" armor effect, some of you may already be thirsting for new duds in the game's Armory. Bungie's latest weekly update reveals that not only will Reach players get new armor options in the near future, but also the ability to blow past the game's max rank of Lieutenant Colonel Grade C -- all players have to do is complete 117million daily and weekly challenges first!
Though that might sound somewhat lofty, Bungie predicts that its community's goal will be hit "sometime in November." We'll start doing our part for the cause right now, if you'll excuse us.
#halo
The latest update from the minds behind Halo: Reach says the game's rank cap, currently limited to Lieutenant Colonel Grade C, will be lifted once the game's community completes 117 million daily and weekly challenges. More »
You can learn a lot from this behind the scenes look at the Halo: Reach "Deliver Hope" ad. For example, did you know that the ad marks the first appearance of a fully suited, live-action Spartan? And did you know Spartans aren't actually real? Yeah, we're bummed too. Thanks a lot, Microsoft.
#clips
Deliver Hope, the live action commercial for Halo: Reach, was the highlight for the Bungie shooter's marketing, giving us a short glimpse of what all of that upcoming gameplay might look like in real life. More »
Now that the NPD has decreed our mere mortal minds are unfit to handle hardware sales figures, we're tasked with finding information from alternative sources -- wait, what's this? Aaron Greenberg just tweeted that the Xbox 360 bested the competition for the fourth month in a row? Search: complete.
Consider it the Halo: Reach bump. Previously, the Xbox 360 enjoyed three months of strong sales thanks to a hardware refresh, but Bungie's 343 Industries' franchise has been known to move consoles, so it's no surprise Microsoft dominated September. Greenberg elaborated in his following tweet that Microsoft sold 483,989 hardware units in September, "a 37% increase over last year." He also claimed the console is the only system with higher sales year-over-year.
So help us settle a bet: how many of you picked up the special edition Reach console?
True story: Just yesterday we were saying, "Huh, not as many people seem to be talking about Halo Reach lately." Then, this morning we wake up to find that Bungie will be stoking the flames on November 30 with the downloadable Noble Map Pack. Get out of our heads, creeps!
Ten bucks gets you access to three new environments. The first is Tempest, an abandoned shoreline facility featuring two symmetrical bases for 8 - 16 player fights. Anchor 9, an orbital dry-dock controlled by the UNSC, is a more intimate 2-8 player affair. Finally, there's Breakpoint, a series of frozen, modular archaeological labs for 8-16 players fracases. Oh, and there are 250 more Achievement Points to be had, which we know is all you really care about. Monster.
If that's still not enough new Halo, Bungie's challenging fans to make some of their own with the "Forgetacular Map Design Contest," the full details of which are right here. We'd love to participate, but we'll be too busy making foil hats to protect our precious thought waves.
As part of its line of RC Halo toys, NKOK will soon release a new RC Warthog. The hog sports a rocket turret -- though regrettably not night vision -- and includes figures of Noble 6 and Carter from Halo: Reach. The diminutive ride will retail for $25, but can you really put a price on childhood?
Halo: Cryptum, the first Halo novel in a planned trilogy exploring the Forerunners, will be published in January 2011. Announced in April of 2009, the novel will be written by acclaimed, hard science fiction author Greg Bear, who is best known for his novels Eon, Darwin's Radio and The Forge of God.
Bear's trilogy will be the first major work to take on the story of the Forerunners, the species responsible for the Halos and controlled galactic genocide. An unabridged audio book will also be available at the same time as the novel, so go ahead and play Reach while your ears read the book. The full cover of Halo: Cryptum can be found after the break.
During a panel last night at the New York Comic Con, transmedia company Starlight Runner -- a business that helps plan cross-media campaigns for various properties, including Microsoft's Halo franchise -- gave a presentation on its work. Among the slides shown, company president and CEO Jeff Gomez previewed one that gave the audience a look at the future of Halo: two new trilogies starting in 2012/2013 with a major motion picture set for release by 2014.
Microsoft and Starlight Runner have yet to issue any official comment on the news, though we have to imagine that Master Chief is rolling in his ... uh ... sleep capsule. Either that, or he's already working on motion capture -- one of the two.
#halo
Campaign matchmaking playlists will come to Halo: Reach on Oct. 19, and the game's rank cap should get raised sometime in the month or so, Bungie said yesterday in its weekly update. More »
Awesome Reach, brought to you by the creator of the evergreen Metal Gear Awesome, may be the most disturbing piece of animation since Tetsuo's transformation in Akira. Definitely not safe for work or for those barely hanging on to sanity.
We're no Bussinessologists or whatever, but we're pretty sure the best way to keep your fans coming back for more is to portray them as hideous, ill-mannered freaks who bathe with their Xbox 360 headset on. It just makes sense, right? It's the only way we can explain Apt. 117, a real thing that's apparently coming to Halo Waypoint "soon."
Developed by Powerhouse Animation Studios in collaboration with 343 Industries, the animated series follows "a boring average guy who lives with a Halo-obsessed idiot." Head past the break for the announcement trailer.
The success of Halo: Reach has spurred interest in a Halo film again, apparently -- this time with Dreamworks. As you all know, the idea of a Halo movie has been batted around for quite a while. Spielberg was rumored to be interested and Neill Blomkamp of District 9 even spent five months working on the film.
Now it's in limbo, though a piece by Vulture offers fans hope. Dreamworks is apparently looking at novelizations of the game as source material, thus avoiding the quagmire of troubles Universal and Fox ran into sinking resources into developing a video game adaptation for the big screen. The Vulture piece says Fox and Universal resolved their issues out of court.
So by focusing on the books, Dreamworks can claim that its project is something entirely different, allowing it to bypass the hefty costs the original project accrued. Oh, and before you get your hopes up, know that even if the movie is an honest possibility, it's still a long way out: as of now, there's been no writer hired, nor has a script been produced.
#xbox360
Developer Bungie has deployed the first playlist update for Halo: Reach, bringing with it a long, long list of changes and tweaks to multiplayer maps, game types and playlists, with the promise of more updates to come. More »
If you've started to lose that lovin' feeling for Halo: Reach's online multiplayer component, you may want to dip back in to check out the broad changes applied to the shooter's Matchmaking playlists in an update launched earlier today. The update also makes some minor adjustments to a handful of multiplayer maps and game modes -- the full list of which can be found just after the jump.
Bungie has also announced that it plans to fulfill its promise to add Campaign Matchmaking to Reach in a smaller update, due out either Oct. 12 or Oct. 19, depending on how long it takes for the developer to finalize the patch. We'll let you know once Bungie's settled on one of the two.
