Meet Halo 5 Guardians’ Team Osiris and Team Blue

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Arleigh

Video games are something I will probably never outgrow.

While I’ve slowed down in the amount of time I play them, I still put in the time when it comes to some of the more classic and iconic video game franchises. One such franchise is set to mark it’s return to the video game world with the release of it’s first title on the Xbox One. The game I speak of is Halo 5: Guardians.

Halo was a franchise that helped revolutionize the first-person shooter on the console platform and added a touch of the cinematic to what in the past were just your typical run-and-gun gameplay. As console platforms become more and more advanced the very gamers who buy them demand better graphics, gameplay and, for some, a much more immersive experience.

I will say that I am a huge Halo fan so this upcoming title in the franchise is very much in wheelhouse. As more and more information filters out of Microsoft Studios and 343 Industries (producer and developer) about this title I’m more than hyped to see how they plan on making Halo 5: Guardians stand out from the previous titles in the series and from the multitude of other first-person shooters set to come out this holiday season.

For now, time to meet the two rival teams that the game will focus on during the games very cinematic campaign gameplay: The upstart Team Osiris and the old-school Team Blue.

Team Osiris Opening Cinematic

This cinematic literally will open up the game’s campaign and the action is very reminiscent of the opening action scene in this past summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron with it’s sweeping camera angles that moves in concert with the characters. The only thing missing is a slo-mo reveal of Team Osiris.

Team Blue Opening Cinematic

Where the Team Osiris opening cinematic showed just how badass the genetically-modified Spartan-IV members of Team Osiris act when in concert against a large number of enemy forces, we get with Team Blue’s opening a more subdued, but no less kick-ass opening. Where Team Osiris was all about shock and awe. Team Blue’s older Spartan-II super-soldiers show that one doesn’t need to overpower an enemy force to defeat them. Sometimes a battle could be won with a minimum amount of fuss.

Trailer: Halo (Official E3 Trailer)

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Arleigh

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.

Trailer: Quantum Break (Official E3 Trailer)

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Arleigh

Remedy Entertainment announced just a few weeks ago that they will be releasing a new title for the upcoming new Xbox One console. This game is Quantum Break.

Remedy has made it known that the game will blur the lines between what is a game and what’s tv. The studio’s previous title, Alan Wake, did a great job in creating a game and using the tv episodic narrative to help propel the gameplay forward. It was like playing a tv show throughout a full season.

Will Quantum Break finally break the wall which separates the two entertainment medium? Only time will tell, but if Remedy promises to have the game run on the very graphics engine the trailer was using then it may just end up being the standard bearer of what a next-gen console game should look like.

Quantum Break has no set date for release but will only be available on the Xbox One.

Trailer: Dead Rising 3 (Gameplay Trailer)

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Arleigh

I will admit that zombie entertainment will always catch my attention. Yes, it probably has reached oversaturation, but guess what…I don’t care. I’ve always enjoyed the apocalyptic, Last Man On Earth possibilities that zombie entertainment has offered gamers, readers and viewers. This was the case with the first Dead Rising by Capcom and then by it’s sequel Dead Rising 2 a couple years ago.

Dead Rising 3 has now been announced as an exclusive title for the Xbox One and it looks to take the power of the One to upgrade the graphics, gameplay and overall experience of the title. This time around instead of set inside a mall or a Las Vegas strip-style location we have a game that’s more akin to Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row in terms of open-sandbox gameplay. This looks to be a natural progression for a franchise that seem to get bigger and bigger with each each release.

This gameplay trailer during the Microsoft E3 Presser just shows how much bigger and interactive Dead Rising 3 than it’s two previous predecessors.

Dead Rising 3 is set to be a launch title for the Xbox One.

Trailer: Crimson Dragon (E3 Announcement)

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Arleigh

Panzer Dragoon is a video game franchise that’s beloved by small, but very vocal group of gaming fans. The series first appeared in the SEGA Saturn way back in 1995 and last made an appearance on the Xbox in 2003 with Panzer Dragoon Orta.

It’s now been a decade since that last title and now the franchise returns with Crimson Dragon which also includes the return of the series’ original creator in Yukio Futatsugi and the series’ composer in Saori Kobayashi. Crimson Dragon doesn’t look to deviate away from it’s rail-shooter origins and for fans of the franchise that’s a relief. This new title looks to upgrade the series’ usual beautiful graphics by using that venerable graphics engine from Epic: Unreal Engine 3.

The title will be an Xbox One release but also only available through Xbox Live Arcade. There’s been many titles announced for the Xbox One, but Crimson Dragon looks to be the first one that’s developed to be released for the Xbox One through the Xbox Live Arcade game download system. Also, it looks like the game will feature the use of the Kinect sensor on the Xbox One to monitor a player’s right and left hand when it comes to aiming the homing missiles at targets.

Crimson Dragon has a tentative release date sometime in late 2013 and just in time for the Xbox One release.

Song of the Day: 117 from Halo 4 (by Kazuma Jinnouchi)

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Arleigh

It’s now been three or more weeks since I began playing halo 4 and to say that it has surpassed my very high expectations for this title would be an understatement. Even the soundtrack has been such a wonderful surprise that I’ve been listening to it almost nonstop. I already profiled one of my favorite tracks from Neil Davidge’s work on the score with the song Green and Blue and now I pick another track from the soundtrack for the next “Song of the Day”.

This one wasn’t composed by Neil Davidge but from another composer brought in to create the final end credits song. The game could easily have settled for using music that played during the game to score the lengthy end credits, but everyone involved went for broke and decided really remind gamers that what they’ve just gone through was epic both in gaming terms but also in cinematic. It’s hard not to listen to Kazuma Jinnouchi’s contribution to this title’s score, simply titled “117”, and not imagine some sci-fi blockbuster film rolling up it’s credits with this type of song being played alongside.

From just listening to “117” one could hear some early James Horner influences in Jinnouchi’s composition in the track’s beginning and middle before it transitions in it’s last third to something that resembles one of Basil Poledouris’ epic martial scores. For fans of Martin O’Donnell’s own work in the previous Halo titles this song reaches a crescendo around 6:05 mark with a very familar musical cue. For those who complained that the Halo 4 soundtrack abandoned the iconic sound of the Bungie Studio produced Halo soundtracks should listen to this song around that mark much more closely.

While Neil Davidge deserves all the praise he has been getting for his work on the soundtrack for Halo some of it should also be heaped Jinnouchi-san’s way for the very epic (yes it bears repeating that word) musical composition he created to end the Halo 4 title and leave fans wanting the sequels to arrive now rather than later.

Trailer: Alan Wake’s American Nightmare

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Arleigh

One of my favorite video game titles of 2010 was the Remedy Entertainment and Microsoft Studios psychological thriller game Alan Wake. This title was a psychological thriller mashed up with survival horror that was influenced by Stephen King stories and David Lynch’s eccentric tv series, Twin Peaks. It was one of the few games which put a major scare to me whenever I played it which was usually at night. While the game didn’t sell copies in the Modern Warfare 3 level it did sell enough that it gained quite a huge fan following who clamored for more of Alan Wake and his fight against the malevolent Dark Presence. (Lisa Marie’s been trying the gaming thing lately and I must admit that Alan Wake is right up her dark sensibilities). Fans ended up getting two DLC chapters with “The Signal” and “The Writer”.

There had been rumors and talks about a proper sequel in the works within Remedy Entertainment, but such things continued to be unsubstantiated. While a rumor of sequel continued to persist the developers finally announced that there will be a new Alan Wake game, but it wasn’t going to be a sequel. It was to be a stand-alone Xbox Live Arcade title that should keep fans of the franchise happy while a sequel was being bandied about within the studio (I believe a sequel is already in development but still unconfirmed). This latest title was to be called Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.

The trailer for this title first premiered at Spike TV’s VGA 2011 and the game has tentative release date sometime around the Q1 of 2012.