Saturday, November 06, 2004
Out with the old, in with the massively new
SO. You might have noticed some big changes around here. If not, you're not on our new site. Please bookmark accordingly. There's not a whole ton of new content (though there will be once the columns go up), but it looks about a million times better doesn't it? Now if we only had some readers...
In arguably larger news, Tom and I got to play a good ten minutes of Halo 2 each at Bungie's four-city I Love Bees event this past Thursday. Yes, I realize that it's not such a big deal since hundreds (thousands?) of people have been playing the leaked version for weeks now, but doing it with Bungie's blessing in a theater full of cheering geeks was definitely the right way to be introduced to the game. It's kind of pointless discussing the actual game after such a short playtime (though we did see a good two hours of other people play it) but suffice to say it will meet everybody's expectations. If you think it will be the best multiplayer game ever, well, it will be, and if you think it's just a solid upgrade of the first Halo, well, it's that too. More important than the actual game itself is the fact that every damn gamer in the country is going to be playing together online every night for the next year. We also walked away with some cool swag:
The DVD on the left is basically a collection of the whole audio part of ILB. If you were into it at any level it's really badass, if not it's a confusing relic that you can make a quick $20 with by selling online. And the lanyard on the right is just a piece of neat memorabilia.
To jump around a bit more, has everyone seen what Bungie is doing with the Halo 2 stat-tracking? It's kind of insane. Not only can you keep track of every single detail of your performance after every game online, but you can view where on the map you were every time you were killed/killed someone and with what weapon, from several angles. Observe:
This is at least nineteen times as awesome as anything that's been done with an online game before, and will make jackin' hogs and nadin' cores all the more sweet. Oh, and everyone needs to check out this ridiculous Halo fan video; it's horribly terrible, but so sincerely made that it's compelling nonetheless. Man, that needler alone is priceless...
I imagine we won't be talking about much else for the next week or so. I estimate that I'm about four-fifths of the way through the main missions of San Andreas, and I'm hoping to get a bit closer to the end tomorrow. It's as amazing as when I posted a week ago, no doubt, and arguably the greatest game ever (that is, someone could make a good argument for it). It's just hard not to be sucked into the Halo hype, and write/think about it constantly. But anyhow, take a look around the new site, and I'll most likely bee (*bites knuckle*) back at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning with a full report.
In arguably larger news, Tom and I got to play a good ten minutes of Halo 2 each at Bungie's four-city I Love Bees event this past Thursday. Yes, I realize that it's not such a big deal since hundreds (thousands?) of people have been playing the leaked version for weeks now, but doing it with Bungie's blessing in a theater full of cheering geeks was definitely the right way to be introduced to the game. It's kind of pointless discussing the actual game after such a short playtime (though we did see a good two hours of other people play it) but suffice to say it will meet everybody's expectations. If you think it will be the best multiplayer game ever, well, it will be, and if you think it's just a solid upgrade of the first Halo, well, it's that too. More important than the actual game itself is the fact that every damn gamer in the country is going to be playing together online every night for the next year. We also walked away with some cool swag:
The DVD on the left is basically a collection of the whole audio part of ILB. If you were into it at any level it's really badass, if not it's a confusing relic that you can make a quick $20 with by selling online. And the lanyard on the right is just a piece of neat memorabilia.
To jump around a bit more, has everyone seen what Bungie is doing with the Halo 2 stat-tracking? It's kind of insane. Not only can you keep track of every single detail of your performance after every game online, but you can view where on the map you were every time you were killed/killed someone and with what weapon, from several angles. Observe:
This is at least nineteen times as awesome as anything that's been done with an online game before, and will make jackin' hogs and nadin' cores all the more sweet. Oh, and everyone needs to check out this ridiculous Halo fan video; it's horribly terrible, but so sincerely made that it's compelling nonetheless. Man, that needler alone is priceless...
I imagine we won't be talking about much else for the next week or so. I estimate that I'm about four-fifths of the way through the main missions of San Andreas, and I'm hoping to get a bit closer to the end tomorrow. It's as amazing as when I posted a week ago, no doubt, and arguably the greatest game ever (that is, someone could make a good argument for it). It's just hard not to be sucked into the Halo hype, and write/think about it constantly. But anyhow, take a look around the new site, and I'll most likely bee (*bites knuckle*) back at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning with a full report.
// posted by Nick @ 9:35 PM 
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