G-News

The recent blowout on news regarding Resistance 2 resulted in quite a few naysayers – how does one game have a complete single-player, 8-player co-op, and adversial mode? That’s not to mention the ability to play with up to 60 players in a multiplayer match. Ted Price explained to MTV Multiplayer that this isn’t an attempt to one-up Halo 3; Insomniac simply wanted “to push multiplayer content.”

The lack of online co-op in the first Resistance is what prompted its inclusion in Resistance 2. Price revealed that the co-op experience will be a separate experience from the single-player campaign, with its own story that plays parallel to the campaign.

As for 60 players, Price says the challenges with that are not technical in nature – it’s simply a challenge design-wise. “We’ve got to make sure that when you’re in a 60-player game it doesn’t feel like unmitigated chaos,” he explained.

Can the 60 characters all be on the TV screen at the same time? Or do you have to wall it off and make sure they don’t all show up on the screen.

We always test that. In fact, with “Resistance 1? we had all 40 players in the room firing rockets. We do that to make sure we’re optimized, just in case people try to do things…

And they will.

They will. We’ll be fine with that.

Have you done 60-person stress tests yet?

I think the testers have, but I don’t think we’ve done the rocket test. That tends to come later when we optimize. But so far in the games I’ve been playing, it’s pretty lag free.

Sounds pretty incredible. I know Battlefield has been doing 64 players for many years, but the trio of having a single-player campaign, co-op campaign and a 60-player online multiplayer is an insane amount of content to be packed into a single game.

And if you’re still skeptical and think it’s too much for one game, Ted Price has this to say: “It’s flattering. We certainly don’t think we’re over-reaching. We know we can do it. If people are skeptical, we look forward to proving them wrong.”

There’s a scan from the upcoming issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly that seems to be making a few waves in some sequestered areas of the internet. The page scan in question clearly shows an article describing Bungie’s next project, titled “Lego Halo.” The game depicted is pretty much what you’d expect with the Halo trilogy given the same blocky treatment as the Star Wars saga. It’s a terrible interesting idea, but I’m not sure many people are getting one thing straight: it’s fake. As proof, I’m not pointing to the fact that the whole article in general has a “too ridiculous to be true” nature to it. No, I’m simply pointing to the fact that it’s EGM’s April issue, where they’ve always been known to throw in an April Fool’s joke or two. Over the years, they’ve managed to convince to people to try out fake cheat codes to unlock made up characters in games (like Sheng Long in Street Fighter II) and that games such as “Mushroom Kingdom Hearts” (pretty much Kingdom Hearts with Nintendo characters) were in the works. They’re always amusing, but again, fake. Although, in this case, I don’t think I’d welcome the idea of a Lego-fied Halo with open arms.

Some of you may remember the awesome video the DuoGroup released a while back which was a re-make of the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer. They’re back and with a really awesome Halo 3 video. Halo is such a great story and these guys did an awesome job capturing the emotion behind the action. At one point, you will see an awesome sniping moment that really implies that Halo 3 is all about watching your friend’s backs. Check out their new video below. Some of these game companies really need to hire the DuoGroup to make their commercials. So far, everything I have seen from them is better than what the actual companies release.

Starting off this week’s Bungie update are assurances that Bungie & Co. are busy grinding away, polishing the next round of DLC maps for Halo 3. As somewhat hinted in the update, the maps are entering the late stages of development where map names are given a final dubbing. Purple Reign, Moonbase Alpha and OK Corral were three particular names given, implying as to the current focus of work.

Moving on, we are assaulted with yet another Q&A episode Bungie aptly titles FAQ ATTACK! These are a collection of selective or random questions and answers between Bungie and the community that often times results in a tongue-in-cheek type response from Bungie themselves. Here’s one such culprit of hilarity:

OMG DoubleKill asks: How should I tell the smelly guy that works with me to wear deodorant without being too rude?

BUNGIE: That depends on whether or not you think his Dad can beat up your Dad. However, there are two methods. One, anonymously gift wrap and place a stick of deodorant on his desk after hours. Two, show up in a gasmask and throw the shocker every time he asks you what’s going on.

And what would a Bungie update be without showing off some fresh off the line McFarlane series II Halo figures?

The most important thing at Gaming Today is our loyal readers. While it’s impossible to thank all of you, we thought it would be neat to start doing a reader spotlight from time to time. Our comments section have become a community of sorts, and it would be nice to get to know the people that keep our site going.

The first gamer we interviewed was Shane “somewhat” Donnelly. I’m not sure how great some of our articles would be without his witty comments. In addition to being a regular gamer, Shane often play tests games for Ubisoft Montreal. We had the chance to shoot some questions his way last night. The Q and A’s follow:

GT: First off, we’d like to thank you for being one of our most active regular readers on Gaming Today. We’d like to know a little more about you as a gamer. For starters, what’s your favorite game and why? Of course, from your comments, we can only assume Halo 3 is your main game.

Shane: That would have to be the game I play the most, and at the moment, that would be Halo 3. Not for the reasons most fanboys would think though, it’s not perfect. But I’ve been playing on Live for three years now, and have developed a few friendships over the service, and Halo 3 is the best social multiplayer game that we all own. We play for the social aspect, that’s why we play a ton of big team battle and on the social lists. My rank says it all (just a Master Sergeant), but with a ton of experience. If you don’t play as a team, you’ll probably lose. I have a win ratio of over 80 percent at the moment. So the little hater kids can keep their comments to themselves. The ranks don’t mean all that much to us, if only to use them in smack talk at the end of a game to remind those ‘higher’ ranks who just spanked them.

GT: How long have you been a gamer? And what got you into gaming in the first place?

Shane: I’ve been gaming since 1975 or 1976, when my father brought a Telstar home. It had Pong and a few of it’s variations like tennis and hockey. It also had a replica of a .357 Magnum (my father was a shooting instructor in the armed forces) with a wire coming out of the grip connecting it to the console. You could play target or skeet, and the score went to 15. All on a black and white wood grained cabinet TV. Woot ! Way before remote controls. Yes, I’m that old.

GT: 2007 was perhaps one of the most eventful years in gaming history. Do you like the direction gaming seems to be headed in?

Shane: I love the direction that gaming is going. Story is becoming a much more important part of the game, as is fun-factor. I can’t wait to see the games my son and I will be playing 30 years from now.

GT: If you could change anything about Xbox Live, what would it be?

Shane: While being able to automatically mute the entire other team is a step in the right direction, it makes finding new friends a little harder. I wish there was some way to better control the age restrictions on the games that are played by a younger audience. I know it’s impossible to keep the kids out of the mature rated games, as the consoles are in peoples homes, but that is probably my biggest thing that I’d like to see changed. And maybe an army of five thousand employees that check up on every complaint filed, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, separating the the false complaints from the justified ones, and then banning people from playing by using their Social Insurance number as an identifier, or some other Gestapo tactic, keeping them from ever ruining Live for the rest of us ever again. A certain Basket Ball Star incident comes to mind, as to how even some of the adults just don’t get it.

GT: Finally, what’s your life like outside of Halo 3?

Shane: Good assumption. You’ve done your journalistic research I see. I’m 36 and married with two children. A three year old daughter, and a four year old son. I speak three languages (English, French and German), have lived in five different countries (I’m Canadian), and presently live in Quebec, Canada. I own a riverfront house, 3 motorcycles, a four-wheeler, 3 cars (including my wife’s van and my antique 1950 Dodge) and a wave runner. I’m big into cars and just about anything with an engine. Gaming isn’t my life, but I manage to get online a few hours after my wife and kids go to bed, so it doesn’t interfere with family time. I’ve play tested a bunch of games for Ubisoft Montreal, and continue to do so about 2 or 3 times a year. I also work a fulltime job in environmental disaster response and clean-up. And contrary to what some of the children on XBox Live seem to think, you’re never too old to game.

We’d like to thank Shane for this great interview. Gaming Today has definitely become a great community where we have some very loyal readers. We hope to continue our success in 2008 and hopefully be able to bring some more loyal readers into the action. Feel free to drop your comments below. If our ‘Reader Spotlight’ is well-received, you could be the next one we interview.

And I complain about shoveling snow when I get a couple inches!

Will there ever be a Halo movie? Who really knows at this point? We know that multiple scripts have been written and deals have been made and un-made. Odds are, it probably will become a movie. At this point, it would be retarded to actually state that we really know anything beyond rumors. Guillermo Del Toro recently made some comments concerning Halo (movie):

It would have been beautiful and I must tell that’s a… of anything in my life that I look back and wish it could have happened is that project, because it is such a powerful experience. People talk about it and say “it’s ALIENS or it’s a retread of this or that,” I don’t think so. I think there are angle to that game that are far more epic and far more complex as a cosmology than that. It’s not just about grunts in space. It’s much more than that. It’s a whole epic.

The director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Blade II is right. I feel that there is certainly a ton of depth behind the Halo story. I just hope that Hollywood doesn’t wait too long. I also hope that they don’t screw it up. Hopefully, a director such as Peter Jackson would still be involved, but even Del Toro might not be a bad choice. We’ll just have to see what happens in 2008.

Joe Tung tracked down some data on the achievements that have been completed by folks whose 360s are connected to Xbox Live. Here’s some data for folks to chew on:

• Campaign Complete: Normal – Completed the Campaign on Normal Difficulty: 43.28%
• Campaign Complete: Legendary – Completed the Campaign on Legendary Difficulty: 15.14%
• Graduate: Graduated from basic training. Stick with it to earn your Spartan insignia: 66.92%
• UNSC Spartan: Promoted to Sergeant. Proven in combat, you are a Spartan: 52.07%
• The most found metagame skull? Black Eye skull with 34.26%
• The least found metagame skull? Tilt at 22.98% (Go find it, jerks! It’s one of the best skulls in the game!)
• At 6.21%, Steppin’ Razor is the hardest multiplayer Achievement to earn, with Two for One right behind it at 6.77% and Overkill nipping at its heels (6.75%)
• 8.68% of players have unlocked the Marathon Man Achievement
• 1000/1000 Gamerscore: 2.07%

This year’s unprecedented number of top notch titles has been so massive that fantastic games, that in years previous would have caught a ton of gamer attention, are falling through the cracks. Case in point, developer CD Projekt Red’s ‘The Witcher’.This super dark and mature RPG for the PC has gone almost completely unnoticed by the gaming community caught up in Halo 3 and COD4 hysteria.

Read more after the jump!

That’s a real shame, since The Witcher really is a top notch RPG title. It provides a much needed break from the “goblin and elves” RPG staple. With fantastic graphics, a sweet combat system, one of the best soundtracks this year, and perhaps the darkest, most engrossing storyline of any RPG, The Witcher deserves much better than a bottom shelf display beside craptacular titles like Jericho, TimeShift and Fury in our local gaming outlets.

Its only fault is the rather poor english voice overs, but even that cannot take away the overall quality of a game that has been reduced to an eventual bargain bin ending.

I have to admit I almost passed it by myself, but because the game is based on the works of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, my girlfriend (who is also Polish) encouraged me to give it a try. A decision she now regrets as I spend my free time assuming the role of Geralt of Rivia, the most bad ass monster slaying mercenary ever!

Heatmaps have been welcomed into the Bungie.net architecture and are now supported in Halo 3. Although we’ve turned this feature on, we’re still treating it like a beta, because we’re not entirely sure how it will affect the database and load balancing for our current server system. Additionally, we’re still trying to prioritize all actions in-game that require processing for the Web site (things like statistics, file share data) ahead accoutrements like Heatmaps in the database. If introducing Heatmaps slows things down, we’ll probably take them offline while we work out the kinks in the interest of preserving the end user experience.

What’s a Heatmap?

Heatmaps are the Doppler Radar System of Death in Halo 3. We’re tracking encounters, weapons used and their results in a given game, collecting that data and sharing it with players visually. The key here is “the darker the red, the more frequent the deaths (or kills, depending on the parameters).

We’ve taken that tracking system and adapted it to your own statistics. By visiting your Career Stats page, you’ll see a new tab labeled Heatmaps. Once you click that, you’ll be able to click each of Halo 3’s maps on the left side and see all manner of statistics, what weapons you’ve killed (and where you’ve used them) with on a given map, where you’ve died to a certain weapon on a given map all via sortable dropdown menus. These heatmaps, however, aren’t a collection of your lifetime statistics, we’re only processing roughly half of the information right now, but we’ll be turning it up to full power once the feature leaves this beta phase.

In addition to your own stats, there’s now a Global page displaying Heatmap results (it’s found under the ‘Bungie Online’ tab of the main site navigation bar). Here, you’ll be able to look through each map in (both Social and Ranked playlists) and see where shenanigans are beget. Like the Career Stats page, the Global Heatmap page uses dropdown menus to display on what the tools of destruction are on a given map. Are more folks camping the canals of Snowbound, while your Heatmaps show you atop low base with a Carbine?

The below images show the heatmaps in action. These are global heatmaps tracking the kills (top) and deaths (bottom) from the Sniper Rifle on Jub-Jub Guardian.

If you always find yourself becoming frag-fodder in Bungie’s Halo 3, then consider yourself lucky right now: a Microsoft employee posted an internal office email listing several useful tips on how to rule in Halo 3. The tips vary: how to use maps more effectively, how to lob a bomb more effectively, and even how to gain the most EXP. Some of the hints are basic, but of course, knowing is half the battle.

Here are some of the questions that were tackled in Microsoft’s internal email distribution list:

* What are the tricks to being really good in Halo 3 Multiplayer?
* What controller sensitively should I get used to? 10?
* What weapons do more damage at the head versus the body?
* What is the secret to being a good grenadier?
* How do you use the battle rifle successfully?

If you’re an avid Halo 3 fan, and if you find yourself whiling indecent amounts of time away on Multiplayer, you shouldn’t pass this article up.

Check out the article in the Read link!