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Security is tight at Bungie Studios in Kirkland, Wash. The gray, slablike hub, a former True Value hardware store tucked into the leafy Seattle suburb, is unmarked, and asking around the parking lot for its exact location will earn you threatened looks from wary employees. Once inside the Microsoft-owned company’s HQ, where bleary-eyed designers in shorts and flip-flops are quietly putting the finishing touches on the third and final edition of the hit videogame Halo, beefy guards hassle for IDs. Signatures are taken, arrivals are logged, and card-keys are required to get just about anywhere.
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The Covenant control Earth. The Flood is unleashed. With the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance, Master Chief is the only one that can save the human race. The entire epic story arc has led up to this moment. Master Chief, the last of his kind, is a warrior born for combat, bred for war… and humanity’s only hope.

After stowing away on a Forerunner spacecraft, Master Chief, a genetically altered, cybernetically enhanced Spartan supersoldier, must race back to Earth to stop the Covenant once and for all and save mankind. With his artificial intelligence companion Cortana in the grip of the Flood’s intelligent embodiment, Gravemind, Master Chief and his allies are vastly outnumbered. But the stakes are too high to do anything but face them head on.

In “Halo 3,” the third installment of this legendary epic, the war has come to a climax - the Flood continue to grow in numbers and strength, the armies of Earth are scattered and decimated, and the Covenant threaten to activate the Halo, effectively destroying all life in the galaxy. Master Chief’s mission: to stop the Covenant, destroy the impending Flood threat and ultimately save mankind

These improvements are designed to give gamers an unparalleled experience and tell an even more compelling and engrossing story. Working in concert with Xbox Live on Xbox 360, “Halo 3” builds on the unique social multiplayer experience of “Halo 2” and promises to expand the innovative and evolving online gameplay and community of “Halo 2” on Xbox Live. In this third chapter of the “Halo” trilogy, Master Chief returns to finish the fight, bringing the epic conflict between the Covenant, the Flood and the entire human race to a dramatic, pulse-pounding climax.

“This is a huge milestone for us and a big cause for celebration at Bungie and Microsoft Game Studios,” said Harold Ryan, Studio Head at Bungie Studios. “This is the game we’ve always wanted to make and certainly the best game our studio has developed. We can’t wait for gamers to get their hands on it on Sept. 25.”

Features :

• “Halo 3” raises the bar on the next-generation gameplay experience with non-stop action, an incredible story, massive battles, and visually stunning worlds.
• Epic and compelling storytelling on a scale never before seen in interactive entertainment with new weapons, characters and challenges. You can experience Master Chief’s greatest battle as he transcends greatness and becomes a legend.
• Working in concert with Xbox LIVE on Xbox 360, “Halo 3” builds upon the unique social multiplayer experience of “Halo 2” and promises to enhance the innovative and evolving online gameplay of “Halo 2” on Xbox LIVE.
• Presented in stunning HD, see the well-known “Halo” universe as it’s never been seen before. State of the art HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting makes every scene look and feel like the real thing, from terrifying gloom to dazzling sunshine, adding more detail to every weapon, more texture to every character, and more realism to every battle.
• Countless foes, each with their own distinct personality, strategy and fighting style, make for better encounters and more replay value, which will culminate in larger scale combat than ever before witnessed on the “Halo” battlefield.
• Staying true to the original games, “Halo 3” will support four player split-screen and system link gameplay, letting gamers battle it out both online via Xbox LIVE or with a group of friends right in their own living rooms.
• Made famous as a key component of the renowned “Halo 2” multiplayer experience, Bungie.net will continue to innovate how gamers track their progress, as they view their rankings and stats in real-time.
• Duck as a rocket sizzles over head. Take action as the footsteps of a Covenant adversary echo in the distance. Every sound in “Halo 3” is fully positional Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, bringing the world of “Halo” to an even more vivid level of realism.

Legendary Edition:

• Remastered cinematic material from “Halo: Combat Evolved” and “Halo 2” with developer commentary
• “A day in the life at Bungie” featurette
• High definition “Making of ‘Halo 3’” documentary
• Featurettes on game design, development, and more
• Early game concepts and their evolution over the course of “Halo 3’s” development
• Audio-video calibration tool custom designed by the “Halo 3” graphics and audio team
• Exclusive content from the creative minds of Machinima artists Red vs. Blue and This Spartan Life
• Illuminating “Halo 3” storyboard art book from artist Lee Wilson

Limited Edition:

• High definition “Making of ‘Halo 3’” documentary
• < Featurettes on game design, development, and more
• Early game concepts and their evolution over the course of “Halo 3’s” development
• Audio-video calibration tool custom designed by the “Halo 3” graphics and audio team
• Elaborate and compelling “Halo” fiction and art book

One of the most high-profile games for Nokia’s new N-Gage platform is FIFA 08, which is due to be one of the launch titles later this year.

And get this: it’ll include proper multiplayer, enabling you to play footy over the network against other people with N-Gage capable handsets.

We interviewed Nokia’s Jaakko Kaidesoja at today’s Go Play event in London (the full piece will be published here tomorrow), and here’s what he said when we asked him about the launch titles for N-Gage:

“We’ve got a good line-up of games, they look really great. It’s no matter if they aren’t particularly new. FIFA is a FIFA, but it’s a multiplayer FIFA and looks much greater than any of the other…”

What, as in multiplayer over the network? “Yes,” came the reply.

However, there are clearly mixed messages, given that the FIFA 08 page on the official N-Gage site still has it listed as a one-player game, and the Nokia representative on the FIFA stand at Go Play seemed to think the multiplayer feature was still in doubt.

Oh yes, the demo stand. FIFA 08 wasn’t on show, strangely. Instead, there was a Symbian version of FIFA 07 converted to run on an N-Gage capable phone (the just-announced N81). It played okay, but didn’t tell us much about the all-new N-Gage incarnation.

Stay tuned for more details on that, and check the N-Gage site for more screenshots in landscape format.

Gamerzines are free magazines for gamers, written by professional games journalists from the UK. The magazines are published exclusively in digital format, so all you require is Adobe Reader 8 in order to read the magazines. Each issue includes previews, interviews, reviews and features and the pages are enhanced with video and interactive media, so you can actually see the games come to life on the pages.

Gamerzines currently publish four magazines: one for Xbox 360, one for PlayStation 3, one for PC games and one for Handheld games (DS, PSP & mobile phones). They also publish an Official magazine for Pro Evolution Soccer fans.

The magazines are funded by a small amount of advertising in each issue, which enables Gamerzines to offer their magazines for free to you, the readers. You can subscribe to the Gamerzines newsletter on this page and they’ll tell you as soon as they publish a magazine issue you’re interested in.

You can also get the latest issue of any of their magazines from this page - just click on the magazine that interests you to get it instantly. Back issues are available from the Gamerzines website.

Nintendo released an updated version of the Super Mario Galaxy box art today, and thank God. Earlier this month, they released the version at left, a swimsuit magazine money shot of Mario’s ass. Apparently this was just a joke, because once everybody at Nintendo finished having a good laugh at anybody who believed this was really in consideration, they got to work on what is ostensibly the actual box art. Much better, guys.

urbine announced today that they’re offering a free 7-day trial for their successful Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. The offer is available for North America, Australia and New Zealand. The press release finally gives us some numbers for LoTRO and says there are “4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home.” That’s a pretty slick way of avoiding how many actual accounts there are, but we’ll totally believe them that it’s the “second largest MMORPG” behind the unfathomably successful World of Warcraft. In that race, second place is a perfectly respectable place to be.

LoTRO recently had their second content update which continues to drive the MMO in a good direction. The game seems to be doing well enough that it’s been mentioned as being part of Midway’s increasing fiscal fortitude. The first full expansion for LoTRO, which will cover the events in The Two Towers and its peripheral story lines, is expected to be announced early next year.

The wait is almost over. Halo® 3, the final chapter in the groundbreaking Halo trilogy and the most anticipated game release of 2007, has been released to manufacturing.

Three years in the making by renowned developer Bungie Studios, Halo 3 is now finished and will begin its journey to store shelves around the world in less than four weeks. Halo 3, which has already set new records as the fastest pre-ordered game in history, has exceeded one million presales in North America alone. The title is set to shatter day-one entertainment sales records when it is released worldwide beginning Tuesday, September 25.

“This is a huge milestone for us and a big cause for celebration at Bungie and Microsoft Game Studios,” said Harold Ryan, Studio Head at Bungie Studios. “This is the game we’ve always wanted to make and certainly the best game our studio has developed. We can’t wait for gamers to get their hands on it on September 25.”

In November 2004, the world’s view of video games changed forever with the release of Halo 2, which generated a record-setting $125 million (U.S.) in sales within the first 24 hours and changed the way people think about interactive entertainment. Three years later, it remains the most-played game on Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE® online gaming and entertainment network, with nearly 1 billion hours of online gaming logged to date.

And now, Halo 3 is at the manufacturing plant. Get ready folks, it’s on its way!

Microsoft has signed up Fox as the newest partner for its Xbox Live Video Marketplace, and the two are launching with “Family Guy,” a show aimed squarely at the service’s young male gamer demo.Video Marketplace, which allows Xbox 360 owners to download movies and TV shows via the vidgame console’s Internet connection, already has films from Warner Bros., Paramount, Lionsgate and New Line and TV shows from CBS, NBC Universal and MTV Networks. Some content is available in high-def, making it the only Internet videostore offering HD downloads.
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Studio Canal has revealed an upcoming Blu-ray boxset for the three ‘Les Bronzes’ films, making it the first Blu-ray release to come from the formerly HD DVD exclusive studio. The Studio Canal library is very extensive, as they distribute titles for many of the major studios. No release date specs have been released at this time.

Japanese videogames are so silly. This new DS game from SEGA called Heart Scan works as a sort-of lie detector and uses the microphone to detect emotion and intention in voice patterns.The game went on sale on the 16th in Japan, but will probably not release in the US.

Heart Scan uses “sensibility technology,” which was developed by Advanced Generation Interface Japan Inc. and SGI Japan. The initial use for the tech was to monitor worker moods over the phone.

TheFeed imagines a world where all lie detectors are on the Nintendo DS and wants to live in this world.