HALO

I've noticed they've stolen the cool "visor" HUD from the metroid Prime Series. Can't really blame them, it's one of the best HUD ideas out there.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/49146

Epic Confirms No Unreal Tournament 3 PC-to-PS3 Online; Other UT3 Details Shared

Playtesting must have revealed that console players had no chance.

Tryed to join that game last night.

Finished the game on normal, liked the ending.

NO. FUCKING. WAY.

Edit - Jumped the gun.

Went to my friends to play it a bit today... graphics aren't really much to write home about. Characters look like they are made of plastic, not metal. In fact, most of the stuff looks like its made of either faux-chrome colorful plastic, or just regular plastic. Decent looking but a lot worse than I expected.

Then I saw the campaign. Characters & their faces look horrible. Textures generally seem to be low res and crappy. Load times are horrendous.

Seems like a pretty much multiplayer game but the graphics are really disappointing.

Think you were playing Halo 2.

No. Player & Alien Characters look good but still too shiny. Multiplayer levels arent bad. Single player NPCs look crappy. Single player textures for backgrounds are crappy. Looks a great deal worse than Half-Life 2 in terms of environment. I played the 4th mission I believe.

I prefer the non-legendary ending honestly...it ended the game on a perfect circle with the opening of the first Halo.

Did you read all the terminals on legendary yet?

Same i only just read the text on the bungie forums.

need to do it on legendary just can't anyone to play with and my 48 hour time card will run out soon(ish)

It's about £30 i think and only have one controller atm.

might go out and get one at some point.

I got one for use when friends visit and now I never use the wireless controller except for that. I got some decent rechargable batteries (much cheaper than the play 'n' charge kit) but it's still so much better not having to worry about it (and my sofa's only 2.5 metres from the TV, which helps).

So you're saying the charge kit from MS isn't very good?

I have two wireless controllers, two of the rechargable batteries and one plug. Been using these for a month or so and haven't experienced any problems whatsoever.

No, I'm saying a regular AA battery charger and the 2700 milliamp AA NiMH batteries I got from an EBay store are cheaper, is all.

The only advantage of the play 'n' charge kit is that you can keep using the controller while the batteries charge up, but it means having a wire to the XBox in which case why not simply have a wired controller?

A single charge cycle of my batteries will give enough juice to last for an entire evening's gameplay, easy, and I can charge up four at once, so if the first two do crap out, it's not an issue.

I charge my controller once every week, and I play from about 5pm to 10pm on weeknights- so about 5 hours in a session, and the battery pack will outlast that time. I usually don't need to charge it, but I do every once in a while. I'm also within range of my TV to use the cord while playing, so having it plugged in isn't an issue, I just prefer the freedom of a completely wireless controller.

Edit: When I say the battery pack will outlast that, I mean a weeks worth of those sessions. 5hrs/night 5 days a week, with between 5-15 hours playtime on weekends= only needing to charge once in a 30-45 hours period. I've been told if it is 24 hours of consecutive play the battery will go deader than a doornail.

We always just plugged ours in whenever not playing... never had an issue.

I didn't think they charged if the system was shut down.

Dunno, my roommate was a compulsive demo/video downloader on xbox live though, so that could've given it all the charge time it needed. I just know I never experienced an "out of battery" situation.

So, anyone else notice the three Firefly and one BSG actors in the credits?

Certainly did. I find it amusing that Nathan Fillion is once again playing a Sergeant .

If there's one gripe I agree with, it's the short nature of the campaign. Given that up to four players can now co-op it, it could potentially be beaten in an evening. Legendary mode campaign on the original Halo took me a week. Halo 2, a little less. This one could potentially only take me a couple of days. The increasingly short nature of the campaign makes me figure Bungie are constrained by how much they can fit on a single X360 disk, which suggests Microsoft needs to look into either Blu-ray or HD-DVD as a matter of priority. Halo 3-level graphics, cutscenes and gameplay combined with a longer storyline would make me a very happy man. Unlike Foil, the storyline of Halo has always been the most interesting part of the game to me. With a bit of padding room, Bungie could have fit a lot more of the interesting stuff from the Halo EU into the games - I'd love to see missions based on the events of the Halo: First Strike novel and the Ghosts of Onyx graphic novel. The EU stuff really adds to the understanding of the Covenant's motivations and the background of the Forerunners.

Edit: Given that Halo 3 is an X360 game, Bungie should really consider looking into XBL content, and not just for maps - being able to replay the original Halo and Halo 2 campaigns with the updated Halo 3 engine could be a big seller in terms of Marketplace points.

The issue with that is that, while it would be awesome, they literally would be, essentially, making a whole new game. Compared to the game assets like maps, audio, textures, etc., the actual engine is pretty small. Considering that Halo 1 and 2 are longer than 3, it would take up more space, so that would mean either a game spread across two discs (which doesn't bother me that much, what with the hard drive availability on modern consoles), or, in the case of your suggestion, a massive XBL download on the magnitude of over 8 gigabytes. Ouch.