09.30.07

Videogames Blamed for Deadly Car Crash

Posted in Xbox 360 News at 6:22 am by UNSCleric

With that headline, you would think the people in the cars were playing a videogame inside the car, or that they were racing somewhere because of a game, etc. right?  Actually, that’s not the case at all, here’s the story.

Computer games and cavalier attitudes are being seen as the reason youths are dying on the roads.

Three Auckland teenagers were killed when the vehicle they were in crashed off the Northwestern Motorway in Auckland during a high-speed police pursuit on Christmas Eve.

National’s transport spokesman Maurice Williamson says today’s young people think they are bullet-proof. He blames Playstations and X-boxes for making teens think they can drive stupidly and just push the reset button if anything goes wrong.

Mr Williamson believes 15 is far too young to be behind the wheel of a car.

 Using this mind-set, videogames can be to blame for every single evil in the world.  I suppose Maurice Williamson would say the Iraq war is because of videogames, since there were games about war before 2003.  I suppose that every violent crime and every reckless driver is somehow being influenced by games, and are making them have a “cavalier” attitude right?

Since we’re never going to blame the actual people that are the problem and actually have some personal responsibility, let’s look at some other possibilities as to why these kids may have driven the way they did.  Maybe it’s because the media (and thus sadly a large portion of the country) worships celebrities who are seen weekly slamming their car into a wall (or another car) and/or being pulled over drunk ten times in a year and not getting a day in jail? 

I suppose the new Madden game is to blame for Michael Vick organizing dog fighting as well?  We’re already being told that the Internet is training new terrorists every day, so how long will it be until we start hearing that videogames are training terrorists and thus are an even bigger threat to society than they already supposedly are?  Since I run a site promoting gaming, does that mean I somehow contributed to this car crash? 

Even though the article above is ridiculous, it is nice to see that the mainstream idiots are now aware of the Xbox, and don’t just refer to every game as, “a PlayStation”.

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09.28.07

Bungie Responds to 720p Issue, Owns Internet.

Posted in Xbox 360 News, Halo at 6:04 pm by UNSCleric

I feel embarrassed even posting a story about this, because it’s so entirely pointless and lame, but Bungie’s response is too much ownage to ignore.  Starting yesterday, someone with way too much time on his hands “figured out” that Halo 3 is supposedly not running at 720p resolution.  This caused a bunch of other people who thought they knew what they were talking about to start whining as well.  Most of the people reading this probably don’t care, or even know what I’m talking about, but I’m posting this for all those who were about to post about this crap in my comments and try and flame on Halo 3 because of it.

One item making the interwebs rounds this week was the scandalous revelation that Halo 3 runs at “640p” which isn’t even technically a resolution. However, the interweb detectives did notice that Halo 3’s vertical resolution, when captured from a frame buffer, is indeed 640 pixels. So what gives? Did we short change you 80 pixels?

Naturally it’s more complicated than that. In fact, you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution, since Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers – both of which render at 1152×640 pixels. The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see – lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible – so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image.

This ability to display a full range of HDR, combined with our advanced lighting, material and postprocessing engine, gives our scenes, large and small, a compelling, convincing and ultimately “real” feeling, and at a steady and smooth frame rate, which in the end was far more important to us than the ability to display a few extra pixels. Making this decision simpler still is the fact that the 360 scales the “almost-720p” image effortlessly all the way up to 1080p if you so desire.

In fact, if you do a comparison shot between the native 1152×640 image and the scaled 1280×720, it’s practically impossible to discern the difference. We would ignore it entirely were it not for the internet’s propensity for drama where none exists. In fact the reason we haven’t mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings.

So as you see, Bungie did it to preserve the amazing lighting effects that you will find in Halo 3.  As most people have noticed, the lightning in Halo 3 (as in the past two Halo games) is breathtaking.

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09.27.07

Halo 3 Sets New Entertainment Record: $170 million in 24 hours in USA

Posted in Xbox 360 News, Halo at 5:06 am by UNSCleric

Nothing has ever broke Halo 2’s one-day record of $125 million (in USA alone) after all these years, so it’s only fitting that Halo 3 take the record and make it even higher.

Xbox 360 Exclusive “Halo 3” Registers Biggest Day in US Entertainment History with $170 Million in Sales

Microsoft today announced that the Xbox 360 exclusive game “Halo 3” has officially become the biggest entertainment launch in history, garnering an estimated $170 million in sales in the United States alone in the first 24 hours. The Xbox 360 title beat previous records set by blockbuster theatrical releases like “Spider-man 3” and novels such as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

“Halo 3” is the conclusion to the epic trilogy and picks up where “Halo 2” left off, answering questions around the fates of the beloved protagonist Master Chief and his artificial intelligence sidekick Cortana as they struggle to save humankind from destruction at the hands of the alien coalition known as the Covenant. In addition to the rich storyline, “Halo 3” continues the franchise’s grand tradition of delivering innovative online multiplayer experiences via Xbox LIVE, the world’s largest social network on TV.

“Halo 3 has become a pop-culture phenomenon,” said Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. “Not only is “Halo 3” setting sales records, it’s also redefining entertainment. 

Within the first 20 hours alone, we’ve seen more than a million Xbox LIVE members come online to play Halo 3 – that makes September 25 the most active Xbox LIVE gaming day in history.”

Retailers have also expressed their excitement about the launch of “Halo 3.” 

Bob McKenzie, Senior Vice President of Merchandising for GameStop Corp commented that, “With consumer demand for Halo 3 and related products, we expect it to be the biggest video game title generator in GameStop’s history.”

“The initial demand we’ve seen for ‘Halo 3’ has been astounding, and the game is on track to become the number one gaming title of all time.  ‘Halo 3’ is a genuine entertainment phenomenon and our customers have responded very enthusiastically to the release,” said Jill Hamburger, vice president of movies and games at Best Buy.

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09.25.07

Halo 3 Service Record

Posted in Halo at 7:20 pm by UNSCleric

My Bungie.net Service Record will not contain any campaign screenshots or film clips, but obviously you will end up seeing all the campaign level names if you look through my stats/career history.

Taken moments ago while owning on Snowbound.

My Service Record
My File Share

I’ll be on every day and I’ll always be on the look-out for the next awesome screenshot ot video clip I came come up with so make sure to check back regularly!  Let everybody know in the comments if you have a sweet video clip in your File Share that we should all set our Xbox 360’s to download!

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Finished The Fight

Posted in Halo at 9:41 am by UNSCleric

Nearly two hours ago I finished Halo 3.  It took me seven hours straight to beat it on Normal, and I loved nearly every second of it.  There will be no spoilers posted on this site any time soon, but when there is there will be advance warning.  I just messed around with the Saved Films for about 45 minutes and I have my entire 7-hour run through Halo 3 saved forever on my HDD and can fly around the levels watching the battles I had take place from any vantage point I want, it’s amazing.  I could always tell before the game came out, but now I can say that without a doubt, this is the most effort that has ever gone into any game (or movie I would bet). 

There are so many little things that show the polish that was given to this game, and features like Saved Films and Forge are almost too much to handle when you already have the best single-player experience you can find in a game, the best multiplayer experience you can find anywhere, along with online co-op play through the campaign.  Anything you do in any of those modes is always recorded and you can watch it back any way and any time you want and take screenshots at any time and they’ll be uploaded to Bungie.net for high-res download on your PC in seconds.  Then there’s the stats and medals system on Xbox Live and on Bungie.net, and you once again have something that will addict you to the game for years.

It’s just absolutely incredible, and I’m sure by the time you all read this you will have seen it for yourselves, you don’t need me to sell you on this game.  We finally have what will most likely be the best game to come out in decades, I personally can say that the time between 1:17am to 8am this morning was the greatest seven hours of gaming I’ve ever experienced, and it’s only going to get better from here.

Also, when I got home last night and began playing at 1:17am, I had 23 friends online and every single one was playing Halo 3.  Currently, I have 30+ friends online, and once again, every single one is playing Halo 3.  That is just another awesome thing about Halo 3 and Halo in general on Xbox Live, it’s a game that everybody is going to have, and will bring people together.

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09.24.07

Halo 3: Finishing The Fight

Posted in Xbox 360 News, Halo, Site News at 8:18 pm by UNSCleric

(Scroll to bottom for the update that occurred at 1am)

Here we go, there’s not much else to say other than tonight’s the night.  We’ve all talked about, thought about it, dreamed about it, waited about it, for years, and tonight/tomorrow is what it was all for.  With Halo 3’s release, the anticipation and pre-launch hype for Halo 3 will end, but the constant flow of fun and excitement due to Saved Films and the in-depth stats system Bungie has built into the game will guarantee that Halo 3 will not be getting old any time soon.  There’s also the fact that Halo 3 will be getting downloadable content more regularly than Halo 2 ever did, and I would expect some by the end of the year most definitely.

In other Halo 3 news, it has been announced that starting tonight at midnight, there will be exclusive Halo 3 content on Xbox Live Marketplace for Xbox Live Gold members over the coming days.  The content tonight will be a special Gamerpic and Theme according to Unscripted360.com.  More details can be found over there, where Deacon is also doing some Live coverage of the Halo 3 launch down in Dallas. 

Marketplace Update(s): There is now a new Theme based on the Halo: Uprising comic available.

Additional Updates:

• Also keep an eye on the UNSCleric.com Flickr page.
• Twisted Plastic has provided a slightly altered version of his Halo 3 banner to reflect launch night/day!
• Check back later tonight for footage from within GameStop as I get my copy.
• UNSCast #4, which went up earlier today, as been tweaked a bit to fix some audio timing errors.  Click here to download.
• Halo 3 shipping 4.2 million copies this week!

———————————–

HALO 3 HAS BEEN PURCHASED!

Since the files are going to take some time to upload, I won’t be able to embed the videos right now since I’m about to Fight The Fight, but here’s a link to my Flickr page, and here’s a link to my YouTube videos page.  I have about ten pics and three videos from the launch, which went incredibly perfect.  As I got there, I sat that I was going to be about 300th in line, and ended up being a group of three guys, who were absolutely hysterical.  There was no talk of spoilers anywhere in the line that I heard of, and a little Red Bull car actually pulled up right next to where I was standing, and GameStop also had tons of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Game Fuel for everybody.  I got there at 11:17pm exactly, and at midnight, the line began to fly, everyone had been pre-ringed, and I was back in my car within 12 minutes at 12:12am.

The helmet is very impressive and my serial number on the helmet is somewhere in the 300,000’s (you can check out the pic of it on my Flickr page). 

Alright, that’s it from me for now, I’ll be back once I Finish the Fight, which will probably be sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do it without sleeping in-between or not at this point.

FINISH THE FIGHT!

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Halo: Better Days + UNSCast #4

Posted in Halo at 12:05 pm by UNSCleric

1.11.07 - Halo: Better Days (walk-through of video)
YouTube page of Halo: Better Days
Download Halo: Better Days to your computer (Right-Click & Save As)

Update(s): The third live action Halo short has now been released. 

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09.23.07

The Halography: Believe

Posted in Halo, Site News at 8:17 pm by UNSCleric

The final pre-Halo 3 update to The Halography is now complete.  In the past few days, pages on Ghosts of Onyx, the Iris campaign, Halo: Uprising, and the Believe campaign were all added.

This is far from the final update, as later this year there will be another Halo novel coming out (a prequel) along with three more comics in the Halo: Uprising series.  Looking into the future, there will be updates on the (code-named) Halo Chronicles project with Peter Jackson, as well as the upcoming Halo Wars game, which is also a prequel to the main trilogy’s storyline.  The Halo movie also looms somewhere in the future.  No matter what, there’s much more for The Halography in 2008 and beyond.

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The Halography - Halo: Uprising

Posted in Halo, Site News at 12:43 am by UNSCleric

The ongoing updates to The Halography continue!  I just wrapped up the page on the new Halo comic, Halo: Uprising, and you can go read it for yourselves over at TheHalography.com’s Uprising page.  Coming later today, most likely late tonight/Monday morning, will be a page on the “Believe” campaign, which will wrap everything up from the final marketing blitz for Halo 3.

Also, a fourth Believe video is now making its way around the Internet:
(Thanks to Stolid for the tip on the new video)

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09.22.07

The Third ‘Believe’ Video

Posted in Halo at 12:07 pm by UNSCleric

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09.20.07

New Bungie Podcast

Posted in Halo at 8:24 pm by UNSCleric

While we don’t acknowledge it on the show, this Podcast is actually the year anniversary of the Bungie Podcast. To unknowingly commemorate that feat, Marty O’Donnell, Joe Staten and Web Dev Lead Chris Gossett take a turn on the mic. Chris talks extensively about the new Bungie.net and its robust featureset. Marty talks about the Halo 3 Soundtrack and Joe Staten catches us up on his book “Contact Harvest” and what he was doing in New Zealand last week.

Because it’s the last show before Halo 3 launches, we made it super long, nearly two hours of chatter this week — just think, that’s two hours closer to actually buying Halo 3.

Direct Download here (1:47:39) [123 MB]

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