Blog Archives
Halo 4: Promethean Weapons Trailer
343 Industries and Microsoft just released yet another Halo 4 trailer which features some pretty neat looking Promethean weapons, oh and dub-step, because it’s a FPS. Read the rest of this entry
Halo 4: Forerunner Race Details Released
343 Industries just released a new 10 minute long documentary exploring Halo 4′s new enemy race the Prometheans. According to the entry on Halo Nation the Prometheans were/are the highest and most respected group of Warrior-Servants in the Forerunner Ecumene/Empire.
This new video gives us some pretty awesome insights into not just the Promethean soldiers you can expect to come up against in Halo 4, but also looks at a lot of the weapons as well as the design process which went on behind the scenes. Read the rest of this entry
Halo 4 Weapons: Update
A little while back I did a little post detailing the weapons that 343 Industries had listed for inclusion in Halo 4, this list was updated yesterday over at 343′s blog and included a pretty sweet looking video that showed the weapons in action.
A number of 343 staff members including Frank O’Connor, David Ellis, and Chris King (along with many others) share some of their thoughts on the weapons in the post but, as s with most updates from 343 there is a lot of information to digest in this recent update so I’m going to attempt to summarise the important points and at the same time talk about what was on show in the trailer. Read the rest of this entry
Halo 4 Update
There was some good news from Halo Waypoint this week with word coming out that 343 Industries have officially entered ‘super crunch time’ for Halo 4. What’s super crunch time you ask? Well it basically means that the game is now almost fully playable and that the developers are entering the final stages of polishing and bug crushing. This is good news as it more or less rules out the chance of the game’s launch being delayed.
In other news from Waypoint, the production team shooting the live action series Forward Unto Dawn has apparently wrapped up their shooting schedule and are now moving into the post production/editing phase. The series will consist of five 15 minute episodes telling the story of a UNSC soldier who eventually becomes the commander of the UNSC Infinity. Oh and Master Chief will almost definitely be making an appearance too (see the pic above).
The web series will begin airing on July 2nd on Machinima’s new channel Machinima Prime which you can subscribe to via the latest episode of IG Daily (there is a link toward the end of the video). The series will also be aired on Halo Waypoint which can be accessed from your PC here or from the app on the Xbox 360 and probably your phone if you have a Windows device.
The last bit of info that came out this week was about one the ten multi-player maps that will be shipping with the game, Longbow. Here is the official short description from Halo Waypoint and a couple of screen shots:
NAME: LONGBOW
LOCATION: Northern regions of the planet Concord.
DESCRIPTION: Located in the northern polar region of the planet Concord, the frigid climate and unique gravitational conditions provide an optimal perch for Longbow Station’s channel-based mass drivers. Before the Covenant War, the UEG launched deep space monitoring relays from here in an effort to study far-flung star systems.
The Map was designed to showcase an as yet unannounced game mode but from the screen shots it certainly looks to be more of an outdoor type map with plenty of room for vehicle combat. We have also seen game play footage from the map as well during E3 (skip to 18 seconds in for the Longbow footage) which shows off one area of the map which can be seen in the screen shots above.
Anyway that’s probably enough Halo news for now but be sure to check back here next week when I will be sharing my thoughts on the first episode of Forward unto Dawn and any other news that comes my way.
E3: Halo 4 War Games & Spartan Ops
After the reveal of the campaign mode at Microsoft’s press conference on Monday, 343 Industries has not wasted any time in getting even more videos and media out there to further excite Halo fans. The first video showcases the War Games mode, Halo 4′s competitive multiplayer game and I think it looks and sounds pretty damn good.
First off the gameplay looks very fast paced with the guns looking and sounding great especially the Forerunner Scattershot which we see towards the end literally disintegrating a few unfortunate Spartans. The movement looks quick and the Spartan IV’s definitely appear to be very athletic evidenced by some impressive jumps and really brutal looking assassination take downs, with the rugby tackle followed by a knife to the throat looking particularly spectacular!
There were also a few new weapons shown off including what looked like some sort of proximity mine where a player shot a mine off which then blew as another Spartan approached it (though it could also have been set off manually, it’s not all that clear). Other weapons included the BR, DMR and some form of automatic energy weapon which looked like it could be either Forerunner of Covenant. Frag and Plasma grenades also made an appearance, with one of the players shown having two of each on their HUD indicating that the four grenade load seen in the campaign trailer will be exclusive to the campaign.
There was no sign of a traditional kill counter however with a score being kept of points instead including, for example, +10 for an assassination and +10 for a double kill. We also saw an ordnance drop which seemed to be requested by a player, maybe this is some sort of kill streak reward?
The next video focused on the new multiplayer coop mode Spartan Ops which will be replacing Firefight. the new mode is story driven with new episodes being released each week for free. The missions will be playable either alone or with a team of up to four players.
This new mode sounds and looks pretty interesting, I really enjoy firefight but the idea of replacing it with a more objective based mode sounds pretty appealing. As with the multiplayer the gameplay itself looks like fun , the sound design also impressed me with the sound of the Spartans steps really creating a sense of weight and power.
There were a few armor abilities on show during the video including an energy shield, forerunner vision and perhaps most interesting of all what could be some sort of teleportation power. This shows up at the 1.06 mark where we see what looks like a fire work, the video then cuts to another angle and a Spartan comes into frame with Sparks at his back looking like he is performing some sort of combat roll, could be nothing but it could also be something, we will have to wait and see!
