Yesterday we were told we’d be receiving a “special Halo: Reach announcement” at an invite-only press conference in London. Well, today we’ve found out what it was.
According to CVG, a “Super Squad” of UK celebrities has been assembled to compete against the UK’s top Halo players.
Last month, we were given a glimpse into Halo: Reach’s campaign revealing never before seen features, a major one being space battles. Last week at Comic-Con, we were introduced to Forge World, the largest Halo map to date designed specifically with “Forgers” in mind. Well, it looks like tomorrow we’re set to get even more.
According to CVG, Microsoft is set to release a “special” announcement this Thursday at an invite-only event in London regarding Halo: Reach.
Hulu officially announces Hulu Plus, and confirms that indeed the service will be coming to game consoles such as the Xbox 360. Right now the service is in a closed beta, and will open up to non-VIP consumers soon. But is the service worth your while?
When you played co-op in previous Halo games, you would always face the same number of enemies who follow the same action pattern as if you were playing the campaign alone. According to a recent Kotaku story, that is no longer the case. Now when four buddies get together to play, not only do the number of aliens increase, but the AI gets even more intelligent as well. Throw in skulls & the legendary difficulty, and you have the strongest enemies in a Halo game to date.
Consider me signed up. I only wish I had friends who had the skills to play with me since that sounds like it could make the campaign more fun. I guess in the worst case scenario I could just hook up four controllers and try and plow through alone. Ten bucks says that happens within the first week of the game coming out.
The new Xbox 360, which is being released this week for the masses, is now in the hands of several video game editors and reviewers. Here’s all the hardware specs: Touch sensitive on/off buttons and eject , Built in 802.11n Wi-Fi, Ports for optical audio, A/V, HDMI, Ethernet, Kinect, and 5 USB ports.
Among the multitude of features on Xbox Live are Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm and Netflix. Unsurprisingly, all of these features were announced at previous E3’s. Similarly, Microsoft unveiled another non-gaming feature at E3 this year. Now, Xbox Live Gold Members can watch 3500 ESPN events live and on-demand via Xbox Live.
Interestingly, the service is an exclusive partnership between Microsoft and ESPN. Gamers without an Xbox 360 are out of luck if they want to switch between playing as their favorite team and watching their team, which is a surprisingly quick transition. So far, NBA, MLB, college basketball, college football, soccer, and Sports Center have all been named-dropped as included content. NFL and NHL oddly, have not.
The ESPN service will feature support from Kinect. Using Kinect, one will be able to participate in actions such as voting on game outcomes. Unsurprisingly, stats and live tickers will be displayed. Though, in an interesting twist, ESPN and Microsoft have decided to give this feature for free to users who have a Gold status.
With everyone and their mother knowing who the main gaming demographic is, and with exclusivity rights, this partnership not only lends itself to being immensely successful, but quite surprising as well.
You guys better thank God I wasn’t covering the Microsoft event as you would’ve been hearing many amazing puns like the title above. At the Microsoft event, you may have been blinded by the free Xbox’s (Looking at you, Ray!) but they didn’t announce a price for Kinect.
According to Gamestop.com, it will be (as expected and reported on last month) $149.99. I steep price for a thing I wasn’t sold on before the show and now know I will not buy one. The SKU’s go like this:
“What do we perceive as real?”
That is the key question that the folks from Eidos and Io Interactive asked themselves when they sat down to make Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days. With that integral concept in mind, they set out to create a third-person shooter that was not only responsive and entertaining, but also engrossing and groundbreaking in the way it was “shot” and how it unfolded.
I had a chance to sit down a few weeks ago with Karsten Lund, Kane and Lynch 2’s Game Director, to talk to him about the plot of the game, the multiplayer, and what we could expect in general from Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days when we see it hit store shelves in August.
Natal is set to release around the Holiday season this year and a lot of people are getting excited about this new installment to their 360. However, they also have been wondering if this is going to put a huge dent in their wallets. While we don’t know any official information from Microsoft, according to Edge the price stands at $299 with an Xbox 360 Arcade unit and $149 for just the unit itself.
For anyone that has played the Halo: Reach beta you’ll be interested to know that 2.7 million people took part in the beta, which made it the largest video game beta ever. You will also be even more interested to know that a date has finally been given for Reach, September 14. It will ship with three different copies; the standard, limited, and legendary version (legendary being $150). For all you Halo fanatics out there you better make sure you pre-order your legendary copy now, since it will come with a ten-inch-tall, hand-painted Noble Team statue as well as many more extras.
