Help Haiti By Playing Halo!

Well most of you have probably heard about the earthquake devestating the Island of Haiti recently. I thought it would be a good idea to show some ways to help support and donate to the relief and rescue efforts. Bungie just recently posted a blog on how you can help donate. CLICK HERE TO SEE POST.

I know I will be showing my support and also playing some Halo on the 20-21 of this month so feel free to join me or donate if u can.

Halo 3: ODST Review

Halo 3 ODST was not as hyped as Halo 3, it did not have a huge luanch event or a helmet packed in with the special edition. Most of all, some people didn’t even think the game was going to be any good, boy were they wrong.

When you first drop into ODST you experience a little prelude text movie, I have to admit it was not all that great, it made me feel like I was 5, because of all the simple words. But as you get into the main menu screen, you see It is very similar to Halo 3, well of course. The other menus are a lot sleeker, and the games load a heck of a lot faster. There is not much customization that you can do with your character, other than taking their helmet off, and that looks pretty dumb. OK, so into the game. You are introduced with a cutscene where the ODSTs are about to drop into New Mombasa to take over a covenant ship. This game takes place in the events of Halo 2, by the way. As they drop, regret jumps into slipspace, causing an explosion that makes the drop pods go off course, but does not kill everyone. Your drop pod gets stuck in some debris and the tutorial begins, when you finish you jump don into the street, and, you take fall damage! Yes, that is new, so you can’t just jump from 200 yards and not have your legs cave in from under you. Your health is also extremely low, so, when your main health bar gets low, you better run for cover and wait for your “stamina” to recharge. Back to the game; Your first impression is, “Wow, it’s really dark,” until you turn on your VISR. Your VISR is basically your night vision, it puts orange lines around geometry, red lines around enemies, green around frindlies, and lights up objects of interest which you have to find to find out what happened to your squad. The new weapons are extremely effective, and you are never going to want to put them down, but they do run out of ammo pretty quickly. As you first encounter the super intendent you receive uplinks to the city’s navigation (that means you get a fancy world map) where you can place markers to follow. So as you find the objects of interests, or beacons, you trigger a cutscene and then a mission; where you play as one of your squad mates to find out what happened to them. When you get into the mission, it is light outside, which means the game takes place all in one day. The graphics are a bit more refined than Halo 3, and the AI has definitely been improved. The one new enemy is the engineer which is a pain in the but. You don’t get to see Elites (well there are some dead ones, but still). The story is pretty interesting and the characters are funny and you will love them till the end. Firefight is the big purple gorilla in this bundle. Sure it also comes with the Halo 3 multiplayer, and that’s cool at the very least. But firefight is a huge step forward. It basically works like this: There are 5 waves in a round and 3 rounds in a set, if you finish the set, you continue on a different map. Between waves, sets and rounds, there are weapon drops and bonus rounds. The bonus rounds are just tons of grunts pouring in and you have to kill every one that you can (did I mention all the skulls are on). Speaking of skulls, as you progress there are different skulls that turn on to make everything harder. Bottom line; firefight is the new horde.

With everything ODST has to offer I say it’s defiantly worth the sixty dollar price point. And with the new features, modes, and campaign, ODST gets a…9.5 out of 10

ODST: First Ten Minutes

No this is not a Live Play, I will do one of those for firefight. This is just my impression of the first ten minutes of the game.

The first thing you realize is that you walk slower and you jump slightly less high. This is obvious because you are not a super awesome spartan. When you first enter the "Hub World", everything is dark, therefore you have to use your visor. The visor is pretty cool and very useful. The visor puts orange lines around geometry, green lines around friendlies, and red line around enemies, it also lights things up a bit so it isn't so dark. You start out with the silenced SMG and the silenced mag. The SMG is alot more powerful than th older versions, and the pistol is back to it's Halo 1 days where it's basically a cannon in your hand. All the weapons have kickback, so you will have to fire in short accurate bursts, well, you should be doing that anyway. Then finnally, at the last part of the first ten minutes there is the Super Intendent. The SI helps you through your merry way along the huge mege city, he goves you hints to where things are, and every now and then you wll see signs that say: Go This Way or have an arow pointing to the side. Another cool thing it the squad system. The squad system is basicallly this: the enemies are program into squads, which patrol the area every now and then, so you wont be fighting covenant in the same area twice, or, at least, in that same exeact area.

Overall the first ten minutes are a great introduction to the game, the cutscene is awesome and the training part is helpful and well integrated. I cannot give a score based on just this segment, but expect a review up soon, as well as the firefight Live Play.

G.I.N Official Halo 3 Griffball Tournament!

Many Halo fans out there know what Griffball is, right? Well, whether you know about it (which you should) or you don't, we are having a tournament. It will be a 4v4, standard map and rules apply. Sign-ups start now through next week Friday (that's the 26th of June). All you have to do is send an email to gamesinanutshell@gmail.com or post in the comments here the Gamertags of your team. Remember, 4 people in a team, you may also have a runner up if one person can't make it. There will be no specific time to play your matches, just a time period, and you and you opponent will have to work out the rest. Once I get all the entry's in, I will put up a post that explains more on the 26th. If you can work your way to the top, you will be challenged against my Griffball team, if you win then you win something cool (we still haven't figured out what, it's just going to be cool). If you don't win, you'll still get something cool, but you will have the pity of losing to my team. Good Luck.

Halo 3: ODST Pre-order Goodie

Listen up all you Halo gamers! If you pre-order Halo 3:ODST right now, you will get an exclusive-to-pre-order playable character, SGT. Johnson. Yes your favorite black sarge from all the Halo games, but, you can only play Johnson in the new game mode, Firefight. Firefight, if you don't know, is basically Gears's Horde and Left 4 Dead's Survival mode put together. Throughout the waves there will be random skulls activated to ramp up the difficulty. And you have an unlimited time to fight off the waves of Covenant. So, you Halo adcicts, go out and pre-order you teh Halos. Source

Halo Wars Review

Yay! Finally, as I promised, the Halo Wars review.

The first thing that people might think when heard the word Halo (other than it being a extremely drawn out franchise) is the story, hence, the thing I'll start with. The story is amazing, you would never think that this story would be for an RTS, because usually with an RTS, the story is the last thing that the developers worry about, but nope not Ensemble.The thing is, there really isn't a twist that you won't expect other than (spoiler maybe?) the contact with the flood, because the first contact with flood was supposed to take place in Halo: CE. This game takes place before Halo: CE, I don't know the exact date, but you get the general time. Next is the Game play ie: controls, feel. The controls are extremely simple, as a hardcore RTS fan going into this game, it was a little bit tough and maybe a little bit too simple. There isn't an extremely strategic element to it, such as in Command an Conquer Red Alert 3, there were tactical things that you can do like move you troops to a spot while they face the enemy so they are going backwards and they have more defense and blah blah blah. No, none of that here. Just get a krapload of money, pump out as many troops as you can, and "Zerg Rush". You can be tactical, such as flanking enemies on each side, and pairing you aircraft with anti-aircraft, anti-vehicle, and anti-troop units to make an unstoppable force, but who does that. This game is all about who can rush who. The controls are, once again, simple (for the layout just look at the Halo Wars demo impressions). It is definitely the console RTS that Ensemble claimed it to be, and probably the best console RTS out there, as of right now. Now the Graphics in-game are not really that impressive, Command an Conquer 3 has better quality in-game graphics than Halo Wars. But, the thing that is un-matched by any game out on the market, in my opinion, is the cut-scene graphics. If you can make a movie jsut with cut scenes from Halo Wars, you just made the best CG Sci-Fi movie in the world. The cut scenes are very deep and detailed. Alot of the story depends on the cut scene quality, because if the cut scenes were just tacked on, the story would seem boring an incomprehesive (I admit I have no idea what that word means, but it sounds smart). The lighting is also something the developer did very well. If you would look closely the lighting effects are very detailed, even down to the shiny hood of a Warthog. One map (I'm not going to attempt to put a name on it) has, not exactly real time, but it does have a day and night cycle. The mutiplayer is also superb for an RTS game on the console. The Co-op campaign is where its at. They do alot of really cool stuff in the campaign for co-op and single player. In co-op you can give your buddy your troops, but you can't in single player. You can also collect skulls, which you can use in campaign and private multiplayer and single player matches. The mutiplayer is very fun. There is 1v1 2v2 3v3 and ditto with deatmatch game type (in which you already have a whole bunch of supplies and a limited amount of unit space, but as you build more bases, your unit limit expands). The objective for multiplayer is; coordinate with you team to , once again, rush you opponent before they rush you. In 1v1 your alone and, you guessed it, rush your enemy before he/she rushes you (remember; a good defense is a good offense (turrets ar'nt good defense though)). Overall this is a high quality game with alot to stand up for, which it has as a good console RTS. The good things are the controls, multi player, and cut scenes. The let downs is the somewhat confusing story, the in-game visuals, camera, and if you are a hardcore RTS player, don't expect to be very good at this game on you first try, it'll take a while. So Halo Wars for the Xbox 360 gets a 8.5 out of 10.

Lots of DLC

A new gears of war map pack will be released on March 31. The Snowblind map pack will cost a pretty much standard 800 Points ($10). The pack contains 4 maps with a snowey/winter theme. They include Grindyard, Under Hill, Courtyard, and a version of the the Gears 1 map Fuel depot. Epic has also stated what fixes will be in title update 3 as well as some new achievements. Check out the full list here, and it should be released by the time the map pack it released.

On April 9th the Mythic map pack for halo 3 will be released for 800 MP. This collection contains 3 maps: Orbital, Assembly, and Sandbox. I will have some map impressions sometime before they are released. There will also be some new forge items as well.

And Finally Left 4 Dead is getting a new mode (survival) plus all 4 campains becoming playable in versus. Valve said that the DLC will be out on April 21 and the best part is that it will be free.