What's this?

What's this? Your guess is as good as mine...

It was this

What might this Layout Map be of?

Halo Reach's First Campaign Level? Pete the Duck has been hard at work.... Click picture to enlarge.

Old Joke's Home. Have you ever seen a duck walk backwards? How about a shag then?

Proof Buck is in Reach?

There's a toy convention going on some where in America and the line of Halo products is being showcased for sale... Toy Fair 2010 has a whole heap of Halo figurine pictures which give away the not so secret yet not confirmed plot point that Buck from ODST will be Reach...

Well, it looks like Buck any way, its that classic pose of his...
This guy is a character from Halo Wars called Sargeant Forge. Forge. Hmmm where did that name come from? Hey, it ryhmes with Jorge...!

The pictures also showed a lot of Brutes... of course they could just be Halo figures and not Halo Reach figures but there's also a lot of boxes with the characters in them......sadly I didn't spy a Buck-in-a-Box!

My Chris Butcher Airport Interview!

1 April 2010


Wow. Just wow.


I was at Wellington Airport this week for work when I ran into Chris Butcher. He's New Zealand's gift to the Halo Universe. A genius at networking code or some thing, Chris was back in NZ for a quick holiday with his family before the final Halo Reach crunch began.

I approached him in my work suit, said hello and he thought I was I some kind of airport official. Confusion resolved, I asked him for an autograph and a lil surprised, he obliged.

I asked him about how Reach was going and he told me a few things which are a bit of a news scoop to be honest!

• If you get all the Reach Game Achievement Points, instead of a Katana sword, you get a flaming head like Bungie employees had in Halo 3 matchmaking.
• Recon will be available from the get go if you unlocked it in Halo 3.
• Campaign wise, there will be a level which has a Flood incident that needs containment. This really surprised me as hereto, there has been no mention of the Flood being on Reach.

I wondered if Chris was pulling my leg a bit so I asked him if Mr Chief 117 would be in the game and he said, there are actually 7 members of Team Noble....

Then he found a cabbie with his name on a placard and left me with a piece of paper signed, See Ya Round, Sucker!

Halo Waypoint to be released on Windows 7 Mobile Phones

Ohhhh this is our 404th post. Don't say Halo Reach Game News doesn't deliver cause we are like the Mailman and always deliver! Keep reading and if the ending of the Reach game sux, I might just go postal!

Ne ways word on the streets of Germany is that Microsoft announced that a whole lot of games are going to be release on sell phones that have the Windows 7 platform.

Included in that list of games was a Halo game. Queue fan boys opening new savings accounts.... well that's what some shite websites reported. Maurico who runs an awesome tech blog, Geekzone has the list of Windows 7 games - and the Halo game? It's actually Halo Waypoint!

This totally makes sense as part of the hype with Windows 7 being on phone devices is that the games you buy will be connected to Xbox Live and your own XBL account - thus you can rack up gamer points on your commute.

Still, I'm not gonna ditch my iphone for anything!! I can't wait to download Taylor Swift's Speak Now to it! ;)

Destiny News Wrap Up

I believe it was my beautiful Grandmother that taught me that good things come to those who wait. Well hands up who is sick of waiting for Bungie to announce their new IP. But things are slowly leaking out of the bucket which are giving us some clues.

Last year their was news of Bungie Aerospace being trade marked. This came out and we had to ask out selves what a Grognok was.

Then a disgruntled Bungie contractor grunted that Bungie's MMO was named Destiny and the internet pretty much went ape shit over that and Bungie basically was forced to say NO COMMMENT. Then news came that Bungie had trade marked the word Crimson - possibly for some kind of software that could be downloaded to a hand held device.

So then Bungie did something with Penny Arcade and before you could say GNOP! Bungie staffer Jonty Barnes was spied wearing this T-shirt:

Jonty B with Destiny Logo on T-shirt

Now, is that the famous Sage behind Jonty but sans famous beard?
This opened a few eyes which lead to this piece of detective work happening and as it's totally copy and paste worthy: Hitmonchan writes at HBO:

Tracing the paper trails of Bungie employees, I discovered Podophobia Entertainment*, a company formed by Harold Ryan and Martin O'Donnell. And wouldn't you know it, a quick company trademark search revealed a listing for "Destiny."

Does that name sound familiar? It's the title an ex-Bungie contractor leaked to Kotaku after he was fired. He also said the game blends together first-person shooter, MMO and sci-fi elements.

The trademark describes the game as "[c]omputer game software downloadable from a global computer network."

NeoGAF member Willeth noticed strange symbols on a Bungie employee's shirt in a recent video from Penny Arcade. The small symbol on his left shoulder matches the logo in the listing.

According to Trademarkia, the trademark was filed July 20, 2009, and it was granted a second extension on March 7.

Podophobia Entertainment goes back to May 8, 2006, according to the Delaware Division of Corporations. It is now listed as inactive.

The company has a second trademark filed, "Be Brave," which was also granted a second extension on Feb. 24. The description for the trademark is nearly identical to the one for "Destiny.


But wait! Here's the logo which is possibly for the Seven Seraphs:

Destiny?

Like the guy who found two rainbows, what does this all mean? I don't know, I haven't taken enough drugs this weekend to even get close BUT some other dudes at Daily Joypad have more speculation / rumours to share:

"It's not the first time that Bungie trademarks have been uncovered that seem to point to this IP. Early last year, trademarks for 'Seven Seraphs', 'New Monarchy', 'Osiris' and 'Dead Orbit' were found but never substantiated. The Daily Joypad, however, now has evidence to suspect that these four names are in fact factions in a persistent online world.

A prominent Bungie employee showed four different "simple and geometric" symbols to our source that would match each of these trademarks, each in a different colour, one of which was a match for the larger symbol on Barnes' chest in the Penny Arcade video and would seem to bear a close resemblance to a 'Seven Seraphs' logo. Our source, who wishes to remain anonymous and does not work for Bungie himself, says that it was intimated to him that the logos were representative of "factions of some sort", that would match each of the four names above, with each group having their own "base to reside upon." It's also alleged by our source that these 'bases' would be distinct communities to allow each faction to discuss tactics privately."

Really? A Bungie employee revealed details to a 'source'? I'm putting this in the MAYBE pile but the speculation sounds pretty good, right? Team tactics? FUCK ME - I just wanna shoot some bad guys - if this is the new War Craft and I have to make play dates with internet buddies, I'm gonna be slightly grumpy. I'm a Lone Wolf these days - I don't talk to people as I got sick of the freaking kids who's voices haven't broken talking about how fat your momma was and how she was so fat when she jumped through the first Halo she got stuck.

NE ways, there's still more things to think about Destiny wise:

Here's some website names that Neogaf think should give us something to think about:

MansDestiny.com
PlayDestiny.com
DestinyUniverse.com
DestinyGame.com
DestinytheGame.com


The WHO IS looks ups don't really provide anything useful...

*Extra for Experts: Podophobia is the fear of feet.

Why not allowing second hand games to run on the new Xbox would be plain wrong.

Why not allowing second hand games to run on the new Xbox console would be plain wrong.

Kotaku is suggesting that the new version of the Xbox will potentially not allow used or second hand games to be played on the console. While closed units and IPR rights and DRM is all the rage in some quarters, it would seem to be a shitty move by Microsoft if they are trying to stamp out trading in second hand games .

Their motive of course would be enourage the purchase of new games either off the shelf from bonafide retailers or by download through the XBL service (which also would encourage the purchase of gold XBL member accounts).

And that's fine. Microsoft is there to make money.

Publishers are there to make money too. That's why you have to pay for DLC - and if DLC is free, you can be sure that there's a marketing incentive behind it (such as goodwill to fans to keep a community active etc).

What I do not like is Microsoft's attempt to thwart something that is perfectly legal - in NZ where I live for instance, it is perfectly legal to sell second hand software. In the form of an Xbox game, it is absolutely legal to sell your copy of Halo 3 to the kid down the street.

Arguments about raising revenue aside, there should be no other reason to prevent such a transaction from occurring if it's a genuinely legal activity.

All this huffing and puffing is of course only a short term concern as it's bloody obvious we're heading to a 'download' only gaming world - it's just hard to say how long it will take us to get there? NZ is soooo far behind in the internet world we still have very low data caps so downloading full games is out of the question.

In the end, I suspect Kotaku's sources will be full of crap and if there is some kind of intiative, it will be more along the lines of tying a game to an account in some fashion. The mind boggles.

What's your view? Should Microsoft block second hand games from running on the new Xbox console?

Halo 4 Master Chief has a cod piece.

So after a bit of grumbling on the internet it would appear the Master Chief of Halo 4 does have some kind of cod piece.....

Halo 4 DLC Spartan Ops DLC hinted at?

Gameinformer has a pretty sweet article on Halo 4. The key take away for me was Frankie from 343's comments on Spartan Ops (the multiplayer element of the game).

"The Spartan Ops story will stretch out for several weeks, but not months, according to O'Connor. And beyond that? "Season one comes free with the game. If we did another season we would be building that from scratch. Maybe that will be DLC; maybe it goes in the next game. We are still tinkering with that."
Speculation from Frankie or a teaser about DLC? Either way it's important as Frankie never gives up speaks of such things loosely.

More leaked Halo 4 Images

LEB (Little English Blog ;) ) reckons that Juryben has a leaked Halo 4 Mulitplayer image. I say we've found our new Tom Morrello....

This screen shot features a Warthog, Ghost, Mongoose and what appears to be the railgun weapon.

Beta testing has started for Destiny

Sundalius asked Bungie a question about Destiny which they responded to in the mail sack:

Has Bungie started reaching out for Beta Testers already?

We most certainly have! Our User Research team has very specific curiosities in mind when they tap a Beta Tester on the shoulder. The mazes that they build into their Laboratorium are meticulously customized for the people they choose to run through them. If you have yet to be selected, sit tight - and make sure that the email address attached to your profile is one that you still check. Your time may yet come.

Makes sense if Chris Butcher is doing take home tests.