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'Halo: Combat Evolved' remaster for PC enters public testing in January
Now that Halo: Reach has kicked off the launch of Master Chief Collection for PC, what's next? A return to basics, apparently. The team at 343 Industries now expects to start public testing for the anniversary PC version of the original game, Halo: Combat Evolved, in January. It should incorporate "many" of the same upgrades that came to Reach, including visual touch-ups, support for modern displays (such as different aspect ratios) and player customization. This won't just be a straightforward Xbox conversion.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection jumps to Xbox One on November 11, 2014
Like a Forerunner machine rising from the sand, the rumored Halo: The Master Chief Collection has been given an official, dramatic unveiling by Microsoft. As you might have guessed from the collection's name, The Master Chief Collection will chronicle the adventures of UNSC SPARTAN John-117, aka Master Chief. That means updated versions of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo 4. It also means the inclusion of every multiplayer map from each of the aforementioned games. Following the example of 2011's Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, 343 Industries will be remaking Halo 2 with new textures, models and sound, though players will be able to switch back and enjoy the game's original Xbox visuals at any time. Speaking of visuals, Blur Studio will develop new cutscenes to re-tell Chief's story. All games in the collection will run at 60 frames per second.
Report: Halo 2 Anniversary coming this year, says Master Chief voice actor [update]
Update: Downes is now distancing himself from his earlier statement and denying that he has insider knowledge of an imminent re-release of Halo 2. "What I said was: 'I think you're ahead of yourself on H5. I have read some things online that you can look forward to a H2 anniversary edition maybe this year, but I have no official information one way or the other,'" Downes told IGN. "I was just mentioning some of the things I had read online about Halo 2. I have no idea if there will be an anniversary edition and didn't mean to leave that impression." Original: A high-definition re-release of Halo 2 may appear later this year, if an interview with long-time Master Chief voice actor Steven Downes is to be believed.
Report: 'Threshold' updates to unify Windows, Xbox One platforms
Microsoft is planning to make strides toward one ecosystem for all its platforms with "Threshold," the codename for a series of individual platform updates that will more closely unite Windows Phone, Windows PC and Xbox One. According to a report on ZDNet, "Threshold" will include updates to all three platforms that will "advance them in a way to share even more common elements," with the goal being for all platforms to ultimately share one storefront. Microsoft is also working to bring parity to developer tools across all three platforms, in the hopes of attracting more multi-platform applications. The codename "Threshold," while likely chosen due to the initiative's goal of removing the boundaries between Microsoft platforms, also has a coincidental link to the Halo universe. It's the name of the planet you'll see in the distance beyond the original ring-world in Halo: Combat Evolved.
Mad Genius motion controller takes cover in Halo Anniversary
After redefining archery in Skyrim, the folks behind the Mad Genius prototype motion controller system have produced the above demo highlighting motion controls in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Of particular note is how natural getting into cover looks with Mad Genius around the 4:22 mark – simply step to the side to safety. Mad Genius is a split controller system capable of measuring movement as minute as 1/100th of an inch. The folks behind the tech plan on starting up a Kickstarter campaign soon, presumably to fund mass production of this motion controller or finally start work on that moon base – hey, you never know!
Microsoft patent: Remakes running concurrent engines for old, new visuals
Microsoft has filed an interesting patent for a video game "having a plurality of game engines" running concurrently. The patent was filed in December of 2011, right after the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary – a game allowing players to switch between the updated visuals and the original Xbox game's graphics on the fly. The Halo Anniversary example seems to be the best illustration of what this patent is aiming for. Further down, the patent specifically calls out "remakes" of games, where the original graphics are described as "leveraging" player emotions tied to the original experience. "However, this may be lost as modern graphics may cause the gamers to lose that feeling of nostalgia," the patent reads. So having that ability to switch between an original experience and enhanced visuals seems like a good middle ground this patent is trying to lock up. A trio of 343 Industries employees, including executive producer Daniel Ayoub, are listed in the patent filing.
10-year anniversary Xbox 360 bundle found on Amazon France
"But wait," you might be thinking. "The original Xbox launched on November 15, 2001. The tenth anniversary was last year, why come out with a 10-year anniversary bundle now? What's the deal? Oh my God, can you hear this? Quit listening to my thoughts! Get out of my head!!"Whoa, chill dude! The American launch was in 2001, but the console's European debut didn't happen until three months later in 2002, hence the 10-year anniversary bundle showing up on Amazon France in 2012. The €280.00 ($375.50) package comes with a 250-gb Xbox 360, two wireless controllers, a boxed copy of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, digital versions of Halo: Reach, Gears of War 2 and Fable 3, as well as a 3-month Xbox Live Gold membership card.The bundle is set to ship on March 9, and while we appreciate the sentiment and everything, we can't help but feel like a 360 reproduction of this might have been a more touching tribute. Make it happen, Microsoft. We'll give you money.
12 Days of Joyswag: Halo Reach-themed Xbox 360, Halo Anniversary, and Turtle Beach PX5 headset
Another year, another 12 days of holiday giveaways! Between now and Christmas Day, we're doing the one thing that makes us feel truly alive: giving. Specifically, we're giving you fine folks some of the swag we've managed to collect in our cluttered home offices. And the good will and merriment doesn't stop here! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for even more chances to win! With just a few days left before Christmas, it's time to break out the big, Spartan-sized guns. We've got a 250GB Halo Reach-themed Xbox 360 S but since Halo Reach is sooo 2010, we're complementing it with a copy of this year's Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. And if you want to take Anniversary online so you can relive the magic of the Magnum pistol, we're including Turtle Beach's top-of-the-line PX5 wireless headset. To give you a better chance of getting in on this haul, we're leaving entry open for three days; head past the break to learn how to enter.%Gallery-98038%
Verizon FiOS kicking off Xbox 360 streaming TV with 26 channels for subscribers
Are you ready to watch a limited selection of channels (26) from Verizon FiOS via your Xbox 360? Verizon and Microsoft sure hope so, this morning announcing plans to offer cable access to Xbox Live Gold members who also pay for Verizon's FiOS TV and internet service plans. That's right: if you pay for a subscription to Xbox Live, and pay for a cable TV subscription, and pay for a cable internet connection, then you can watch 26 of your Verizon FiOS channels on an Xbox 360. Hot ... dog? Additionally, Kinect "voice and gesture commands" functionality will come with the service, enabling you to shout, "Why am I paying so much to view something I can already watch on my television?" for instance. New FiOS customers can take advantage of an initial promo lasting until January 21 that discounts Verizon's "Triple Play" internet/TV/phone to $89.99 a month (at least for the first two years), and includes both a free 12-month XBL Gold membership and a copy of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Comcast and HBO are also signed on for as yet unspecified streaming deals with Microsoft. A Bloomberg report from earlier this year indicated that even more content providers had signed on, though Microsoft has only confirmed a handful of said providers thus far.
Tough Economy: Even Master Chief has to buy Halo
With engagement ring in pocket, Geekadelphia founder (and friend of the site!) Eric Smith was dumped. While most people would be immediately thrown into a deep depression, Smith opted instead to sell the ring and buy a suit of Master Chief armor. He wrote about the ordeal last week in an essay called "Master Grief" on Bygone Bureau, which was promptly picked up by every website in existence. Which brings us to the above video. What does someone with a full suit of Master Chief's MJOLNIR armor do when a new Halo game – specifically Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary – comes out? If you answered, "pre-order it on Amazon" well ... you're probably right. But if you're Eric Smith, you drag your ass through Center City Philadelphia and film it. You'd think Chief would be on some kind of VIP list.
Halo Living Monument is live
The Halo Living Monument is active -- whether it's actually functional for you is an entirely different matter. To celebrate the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the website allows the Halo faithful to upload an image and be part of this grand marketing opportunity. The monument is a rotating Master Chief with interactive limbs displaying hexagonal portraits of those who have taken the opportunity to upload a photo onto the internet. That seems about it. We guess you could always have a moment of silence, and pray to the monument that next year's Halo 4 ends up succeeding without Bungie at the helm.
Joystiq tours Halo Anniversary's Kinect features
Did you know that Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has more than just fancy schmancy high resmolution graphics? Well, it also has some nifty (ish) Kinect features. See them yourself in this Joystiq video tour.
Deja Review: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
We're of the firm opinion that your time is too precious, too valuable to be spent reading a full review for a game that was already reviewed many, many years ago. What's the point of applying a score to a game that's old enough to be enrolled in the sixth grade? That's why we invented Deja Review: A quick look at the new features and relative agelessness of remade, revived and re-released games. You never forget your first. Way back in 2001, halfway through my first year of college, my parents unexpectedly bought me an Xbox for Christmas. My first game was Dead or Alive 3, but the one I'll always remember was something called Halo: Combat Evolved. I'd never heard of it before, but the editors of my gaming magazine of choice -- EGM, as I recall -- gave it not one or two or three, but four 10 out of 10s. I picked up a copy and the rest, as they say, is history. I played through the campaign alone, and again with friends, and again with my brother, and again with my then future in-laws. I played multiplayer at the only LAN party I've ever attended and I got slaughtered, falling countless times to the effortless pistol precision of friends-of-friends who were actually geekier than I was. But it didn't matter, because Halo was a blast. Ten years later, it still is. %Gallery-139261%
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary gets double disc soundtrack release
What if $40 just isn't enough to show your love to your favorite FPS? You're in luck then: Sumthing Else Music Works is release the Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary soundtrack, which features re-orchestrated Halo tunes, as a two-disc album. The package is $14.9 and gets you two CDs of music, originally created by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori and remade for 2011. There's also a limited edition green vinyl record for $24.99, which has fewer tracks but gets you an MP3 album of the music to download as well. If you really want to show you're the "Lord of the Rings," maybe buy both?
Battle of the Brick is a Halo-inspired stop-motion epic
Alex Kobbs really likes Halo. He's also pretty good with Legos, as you've likely seen in the past. Today, it appears he can add "accomplished stop-motion film creator" to his resume. His 27 minute stop-motion opus, Battle of the Brick, is well worth the your time.
Halo Anniversary maps coming to Reach as DLC next week
Hey listen, Halo, we like you and all -- you've always been there for us over the years. But when you come out with a $40 anniversary edition, it's like, that game was fun the first five times we played it. We've got nothing against you, per se, but with Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim out now, it's just; we can't really commit that much money, you know? It's not you, it's us! Wait, what's that? You're also releasing the Anniversary Edition maps as DLC for Halo Reach? Oh! For 1200 points (about $15), we'll get six multiplayer maps that are revamps of levels from previous Halo games with new features and areas, and a Firefight map called "Installation 04"? That's much more our speed, Halo! The maps (and playlists for them) will be live on November 14, so we'll see you there, Halo. And no hard feelings, right? We love you, you know. Just not all the way. %Gallery-136694% %Gallery-133740%
Rumor: Microsoft launching 'Halo Living Monument' for Combat Evolved Anniversary
Remember when Halo: Reach launched -- all the way way back in 2010 -- and Microsoft asked us to visit a special website and contribute to a "living monument?" You may better recall the marketing that went along with it, but it would seem Microsoft is prepping a similar campaign for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Fusible claims to have stumbled upon Halo Living Monument, a site Microsoft seemingly set up and registered only weeks ago, and took the above screen cap. And, sure enough, a month ago, Fusible caught the registration. A quick who.is search shows the domain in question is registered to Microsoft. With Combat Evolved Anniversary only a few weeks out, we anticipate we'll be seeing the site launch soon. Like, now. Now? How about now?
Halo Anniversary promo trailer not for the uninitiated
If you have, in some Mr. Magoo like fashion, managed to stumble around the last ten years without playing the original Halo, this launch trailer for Halo Anniversary will spoil just about every major plot point. Everyone else: Enjoy.
343 goes behind the scenes of Halo: Anniversary's campaign
This latest trailer from Microsoft's 343 Industries goes behind the scenes on Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary's campaign mode, which the team tells us has been carefully updated graphically and with extra features like online co-op mode, skull modifiers, 3D, and even that Kinect functionality we learned about last weekend. And there's a lot of thought going into these features: Master Chief's retro armor, for example, was iterated on for a good six to seven months (including cues from fan feedback after its first appearance at E3) before the team arrived at the final version. As Franchise Development Director Frank O'Connor himself says, the updated game certainly seems like quite a smörgåsbord for the Halo fan, all for just $40. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is due out on November 15.
Halo Waypoint adding 'Atlas,' a multiplayer GPS tracker
If the Kinect reveal for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary wasn't enough, 343 Industries also targeted fans with some new Halo Waypoint functionality at this weekend's Comic Con. The downloadable app is getting real-time GPS tracking of multiplayer games via a new service called "Atlas." Yes, seriously -- while you're playing a multiplayer game of Halo: Reach, you can use Waypoint's GPS feature via Windows Phone 7 or the web (and other "mobiles," we're told) to watch troop movements from above. The updated version of Waypoint also adds the ability to send challenges to friends, similar to the weekly ones set originally via Bungie and now via 343 Industries within Reach multiplayer. 343 reps explained that you'll earn in-game credits for completing these challenges based on the difficulty of said tasks, but didn't dive too deeply into how it will all work exactly. We'll find out soon enough, as the update to Waypoint launches alongside Halo Anniversary on November 15. Update: We've added two Waypoint vids from Microsoft showcasing the update, one above and one after the break.
