I know, I know, I have been away from posting my normal movie previews and reviews for a while, that is my fault!
But I’ll be back to posting my normal movie previews/reviews soon!
Until then here are some things you can look forward to me previewing and reviewing:
A Perfect Host
Alien OutBreak
Covenant
And last, but not least, You might have been…
Hope you all enjoyed my tour through my movie screeners I get to watch this month!
What would an Xbox console be without it’s flagship title. The Xbox One will have it’s Master Chief and at Microsoft’s E3 Presser we were introduced to the first trailer of what could only be the next title in the long-running and critically-acclaimed series simply called Halo.
If the announcement that the game will run on a smooth and native 60 frames per second then this trailer may just be in-game (though we’ll find out in due time if this is a correct assumption or not). Whether it is n-game scenes or a pre-rendered cinematic matters not. It’s a new Halo title and after the success both financially and critically of Halo 4 there’s no doubt that there’s now new life in the franchise that both fans and critics alike were calling dated and obsolete.
343 Industries will have a new playpen with advanced tools to make the move of the franchise from the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One a smooth upgrade.
Halo for the Xbox One is set for a 2014 release date.
As I write this it’s 2 hours and 52 minutes til the release of one of the biggest titles in entertainment for the year of 2012. Yes, I say entertainment and not just video games. The last ten years has seen the ascendancy of the video game as a form of entertainment to rival and, at times, surpass the big kid in the block: film. It was in 2007 that we saw Microsoft and Bungie Studio release the final game in the Halo trilogy. That game marked the first time a video game title beat any film in terms of first-day sales with $170million dollars on its first day of release. This record would be broken many times since and all of them on the video game side of entertainment.
In 2010, Microsoft and Bungie Studios released a prequel to the trilogy with Halo Reach which also marked the final Halo game Bungie Studios would develop and release. It wasn’t a well kept secret that Bungie had begun to tire of being known as just the studio that made Halo for the Xbox/Xbox360. So, once they arranged for the studio to leave as an internal studio for Microsoft Games there were some concern that whoever would takeover development for the series would fall in reaching the high bar Bungie had set for the series.
It’s now 2012 and 343 Industries is just hours away from releasing their first title in the Halo franchise and it continues the events which ended with the original trilogy. We find Master Chief and his A.I. companion, Cortana, stranded in deep space, cut-off from the rest of humanity. The final scene we see from Halo 3 (if one passed the single-player campaign on Legendary mode) was the two seeing an unknown planet come into view. The questions which arose from this final scene was whether this was a Covenant home planet or was it the planet where the Forerunners (builders of the Halo ringworlds) originated from.
We’ll find out when 12:00 midnight hits on November 6, 2012. In years past I would’ve called off work and stood in line at midnight to get my copy and play the rest of the day. I’m a bit older and wiser (likes sleep and making money from work) now, but it doesn’t mean I won’t pick up my copy after work tomorrow.
Whether one likes or doesn’t like the Halo series no one can deny that it help revolutionize console gaming, especially multiplayer gaming on the console, and entertainment in the first decade of the 21st century. Everyone is all about Call of Duty‘s modern iteration like Modern Warfare and Black Ops, but without Halo those games wouldn’t have had to evolve to keep up (and for some surpass) what Microsoft and Bungie had created and for 343 Industries to continue to do.
Now let’s enjoy the launch trailer for Halo 4 (both live-action and CGI) that was produced by David Fincher (yes, that Fincher) and directed by Tim Miller.
EDIT: I can be found on XBL with gamertag: ArleighTSL
E3 2010 is just a day away from starting but that doesn’t stop all the announcements from being made by all the gaming companies. These pre-E3 press conferences are usually the highlight of the Expo for those who cannot attend. Pretty much all the biggest news in gaming are done during these press conferences while the official E3 days are left for people able to attend to try out the games announced. One of these games happens to be Bungie Studios very final Halo game for Microsoft before 343 Studios takes over. The game is Halo: Reach and it looks to be Bungie Studios best offering to date.
The game just recently completed a massive multiplayer beta where millions participated and checked out the beta build of the game’s multiplayer. From how people have reacted to the multiplayer it looks to be mostly positive with Bungie building on the past mulitplayer success of previous Halo titles. This time around Bungie has finally shown what the single-player and co-op campaign looks like. The trailer above shows the game to be squad-based with different types of Spartans outfitted with varying weapon and armor types depending on their roles.
While this squad-based gameplay is not new to the shooter genre what looks to be very new is the fact that space combat looks to be part of the gameplay. SPACE COMBAT!
The space combat scenes showed in the trailer is part of the campaign, but Bungie and Microsoft hasn’t officially said that it won’t be part of the multiplayer. Multiplayer space combat would definitely make this game a fitting send-off for one of the bright stars in the Xbox franchise’s alpha franchise.
Through the Shattered Lens 