As Lisa marie correctly guessed I have been quite busy with some otherย things to continue my level of blog posting these past couple weeks. This has been due to my heavy immersion in something called Halo: Reach. This game is the prequel to the mega-successful and extremely popular Xbox first-person shooter franchise which first came out in 2001. I’ve been with the franchise right from Day One and this latest game pulls me back into the franchise like all its predecessors before it.
Microsoft and Bungie (developers of the franchise) have always been in the forefront when it comes to promoting their latest Halo offering with some of the best tv spots and commercials. This particular one I’ve highlighted and chosen to post just for the fact that it thanks the 100,000-plus or so players who have finished the campaign part of the game and thus seen the aftermath of the game’s protagonist, Noble Six and the rest of his comrades in Noble Team.
The video may not show it but I am one of those hundred of thousands points light. ๐
Of all the shooters profiled at E3 2010 the one which stood out the most and looked to be most fun was Epic Games and People Can Fly Studio’s upcoming arcade-like shooter Bulletstorm. The game is developed by Polish game developer People Can Fly headed by Adrian Chmielarz. The game looks to follow in the footsteps of another arcade-like shooter which came out in 2009: Borderlands.
Bulletstorm takes a different approach from the more realistic shooters like Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2. The game goes the way of over-the-top action similar to past classic shooters like Duke Nuke ‘Em and Serious Sam. They marry this with the XP mechanics of an rpg which helps levels up the abilities of the player and allow them to upgrade/buy better weapons and gear.
From the demo trailer shown above the game also looks to add some very Rated-R comedic dialogue in addition to the gory action. The game definitely looks fun and looks great. Like all Epic Games published titles it looks like Bulletstorm will be using Epic’s proprietary Unreal Engine 3.
The game has a tentative release date of February 22, 2011 for the platforms Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC.
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.
That trailer is the debut of what looks to be another — as the trailer captions even flashed across the screen — “epic masterpiece” from video gaming’s rare “rock star” developer, Tagaki Tomonobu.
Devil’s Third will be the first game from Itagaki’s newly formed development studios Valhalla Game Studio. Itagaki was formerly of Tecmo’s Team Ninja studio where he had been instrumental in developing the very successful Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive franchises. Both franchises were fan-favorites (also polarizing just like it’s developer Itagaki.) and sold in the millions with each release. With the falling out between Itagaki and his publisher’s bosses at Tecmo, the mercurial and mad-genius developer left Team Ninja and went on a year sabbatical before finally starting up his own studio in Valhalla. Other top designers and developers from Team Ninja would soon leave Tecmo and join Itagaki at Valhalla. With Valhalla Game Studio now established and publishing agreement made with THQ, it looks like Itagaki is back to doing what he’s best known for: making over-the-top games for the console systems.
Devil’s Third will be Itagaki’s first foray into the shooter-genre. His previous franchises were either in the fighting game (Dead or Alive) and/or the action (Ninja Gaiden) genres. This upcoming title for THQ and Valhalla looks to take the shooter genre into the very same over-the-top aesthetics as Itagaki’s previous titles. From the trailer it looks to be as violent and bloody as his previous titles, but now with guns in addition to the usual melee and bladed action.
Even though the game is still at least two years away from a release date the trailer looks to show Itagaki’s plans at adding some fresh new lifeblood at a genre which has become staid and bereft of anything new and innovative. Devil’s Third looks to be Itagaki’s chance to show that his success while at Team Ninja wasn’t just a fluke and that he could branch out to other genres even one as crowded with very good games as the shooter genre.
Despite the game being still two years away from being completed and released I have a feeling this trailer, once it makes it appearance at this year’s E3, will become one of the most anticipated games for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3.
Gamers of the past 5 years pretty much have seen gaming publishers go all-out to advertise their AAA titles to the public whether one was a gamer or not. The first to do so was Microsoft and Bungie Studios to help market the third game in their very popular and blockbuster-selling first-person shooter franchise, Halo. It was in marketing Halo 3 where we see live-action short films that helps build the hype and buzz for the game. Halo 3 was going to sell millions whether these short films turned commercials were made or not, but the fact that they were and the gaming community love them shows that the gaming industry was starting to think of itself as akin to the film industry. These were literally live-action trailers for games.
Three of the Halo 3 live-action trailers were directed by a young South African bloke who calls himself Neill Blomkamp. Halo 3: ODST came out with a couple of live-action trailers with one lasting a whopping 2.5 minutes long. This particular trailer had a Saving Private Ryan vibe to it and was actually critically-acclaimed in the advertising and marketing industry. Now, we have the final Halo title from Bungie Studios and the first live-action trailer has popped up. This is not even the trailer for the full-game out later this fall, but a trailer for the multiplayer beta which will begin in May 2010. This live-action trailer is titled “Birth of a Spartan” and shows a glimpse at how the Spartans (super-soldiers in the Halo universe are created).
The trailer looks great. It has a very futuristic clean look to it and even brings to mind military sci-fi influences. With the game still months from seeing it’s initial release I hope they continue to make these live-action trailers. These really are some of the best game trailers out there. Below are some of the previous live-action trailers that had been made for the other titles in the franchise.
May 3, 2010 marks the day of Bungie’s Halo Reach multiplayer beta. This game marks the final Halo title from the guys at Bungie for the forseeable future. It looks like they plan to go out with quite the bang. The game reaches back to the time before the first game when Spartans were not down to one.
The multiplayer trailer shows the tried-and-true Halo multiplayer action fans of the series have come to know and love, but it also seem to have had some changes to it. There now seems to be more players allowed to play against each other with vehicles and large-scale fights looking to become a huge aspect of multiplayer. I particularly liked the one labeled INVASION.
With Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 dominating console multiplayer FPS action this upcoming release from Bungie may just be something to take back the FPS multiplayer crown back to the Halo camp. If the multiplayer comes out in final release relatively bug and glitch-free then I wouldn’t be surprised if it does become the top multiplayer game on Xbox LIVE once again.
Through the Shattered Lens 