Gaming Today |
- Starcraft II First-Month Sales Numbers Are Out
- GH: Warriors of Rock Transformation Art and Videos
- Holy Crap Shadow Broker Mass Effect 2 DLC Trailer Wow!
- StarCraft 2 Pro Tips – Exclusive Q&A With 2 Champs
- Halo: Reach Hands-On Preview
- Valve Has Three Big Surprises Coming in the Next 12 Months
- The Final Halo Interview – Creative Director Marcus Lehto Says Goodbye
| Starcraft II First-Month Sales Numbers Are Out Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:38 PM PDT In its first two days on store shelves, Starcraft II was purchased 1.5 million times. Now, more than a month has gone by, and we now know how many copies of the game were sold in that first month. I’m taking guesses now. Let’s see. It sold 1 million on day one, and half a million on day two. If you assume it continues losing half its business every day, the total for the month comes in around 1.9 million copies sold. If you assume it’ll sell 1.5 million every two days, then it comes in at 23.25 million copies sold. Well, neither of those extrapolations are correct, because, according to Blizzard, the game sold 3 million copies in one month. That’s like forty billion smackaroos. Note that I didn’t not name a currency there. I’m sure 3 million copies sold equates to 40 billion something. I’m very clever. I’d just like to remind everyone that Starcraft II is only on the PC. And it’s a real-time strategy game. And it just sold 3 million copies in its first month out. And it’s 2010, not 2000. Mind=blown.
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| GH: Warriors of Rock Transformation Art and Videos Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:17 PM PDT Check out eight new Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock character transformation screen-shots and trailers of our beloved heroes/warriors as they take on an epic rock journey to save rock n’ roll jamming songs from Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Megadeth and larger-than-life band anthems from Queen, Muse and KISS. Pandora
Download Pandora’s transformation video here Lars Umlaut
Download Lars’ transformation video here Judy Nails
Download Judy’s transformation video here Johnny Napalm
Download Johnny’s transformation video here Echo Tesla
Download Echo’s transformation video here Casey Lynch
Download Casey’s transformation video here Axel Steel
Download Axel’s transformation video here Austin Tejas
Download Austin’s transformation video here
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| Holy Crap Shadow Broker Mass Effect 2 DLC Trailer Wow! Posted: 01 Sep 2010 02:08 PM PDT BioWare just kinda throws new Mass Effect 2 DLC out there, don’t they? We’ve known about the Lair of the Shadow Broker for a while now, but they never really hinted at when the thing would come out. But now we have a trailer, and at the end of that trailer is a release date. Which is Tuesday. Like, six days from now. But that trailer, man. I mean, man. How cool is that? And what’s up with the reaper voice at the beginning? Oh wait, I haven’t shown you the trailer yet. Here you go: Holy s**t, am I right? I’m right. That’s coming Tuesday on both 360 and PC, and it’ll probably be 560 MS points, because that’s what the other story DLC packs have cost. I’m no longer excited about PAX, because I just want to get to Tuesday immediately.
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| StarCraft 2 Pro Tips – Exclusive Q&A With 2 Champs Posted: 01 Sep 2010 10:38 AM PDT Starcraft II has been out a month, and it’s already sold 3 million copies. If you’re the owner of one of these, you may be looking to pick up some tips. We were too, and so we interviewed a couple of experts. We wanted to see what tips they would offer, how they play, and even what they thought of the singleplayer campaign. Don’t forget to click through to the second page of the story to see the second interview. Name: Kevin Van Der Koo FF: How good does someone need to be to consider becoming a professional gamer? FF: How did you come to work with Razer, and how have they supported you? When I joined Serious Gaming, they teamed up with Razer which meant they would supply us with whatever we desire, which was great as its obviously important to play with gear you feel absolutely comfortable with. And that's how I feel about Razer's equipment. The support has been simply great. FF: What can you tell our readers about the new Starcraft II peripherals that are launching soon? Effective APM is very important for a pro-gamer as it tells you how fast you are carrying out your activities in-game. Of course button mashing can increase your APM but that's not effective in an RTS. The best gamers can hit a high number while being productive in game. The lighting system helps to tell you how high your APM is with color cues. That would help guide a lot of people who are looking to increase their APM while keeping their actions production as well. FF: Which faction do you prefer in multiplayer, or are you comfortable with all of them? FF: Is there a certain faction for each type of player, or can any player play any faction well? FF: Do you have any general tips for victory? FF: We've all seen videos of professional Starcraft players who do 500 actions per minute or whatever. How on earth do you train yourself to play that fast? FF: In any game of StarCraft II, what should be your very first priority right when the match starts? FF: How do you group your units? Does each unit type have a group? Or do you have big crowds of unit combinations? FF: How aggressive should a player be? Is it best to get attacks out early, or to hold back, defend, and build up your forces? On a high level, the most important thing is to mix up your gameplay, be aggressive one game, be defensive the other, surprise your enemy! FF: What's the one thing that every good Starcraft II player knows that most average players don't know? FF: Off the topic of multiplayer, have you played the single player out at all? If so, what do you think of it? FF: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. Is there anything else that you think our readers should know about playing Starcraft II professionally? Of course I want to thank my team Serious Gaming for believing in me and giving me the chance to improve in SC II and Razer for supporting us. Other than that, I want to make a big shout out to Bernardo and Ruslan, my 2 best friends from gaming!
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| Posted: 01 Sep 2010 07:00 AM PDT After we interviewed Halo: Reach Creative Director Marcus Lehto, we were really excited to get our hand on Halo: Reach. Luckily, our wait was not long. On the 24th floor of a building in Beverly Hills, CA, I got a chance to sit in a room and play through the entire Halo: Reach single-player campaign last week. Our full review will go up September 11, 2010, when the embargo officially lifts. For now, I have signed a piece of paper that says I can only tell you about 2 specific missions in the 11-mission long campaign. So here’s a guided tour of the fourth and fifth Halo: Reach missions, titled Nightfall and Tip of the Spear respectively. NightfallI can see why Bungie wanted us to highlight this mission. It’s a bit of a departure for the Halo series. It’s a nighttime mission, in which you and fellow Noble “Jun” have to sneak around in the dark through several Covenant outposts, assessing their combat capabilities. It’s stealthy and different, and speaks to Reach’s darker, grittier feel. You’re armed with the SRS99 Sniper Rifle, a truly wonderful weapon. In the first few seconds of the mission, you’re introduced to the idea of “Assassination Moves.” There’s an elite Covenant looking out over a cliffside. Sneak up to him and push “B,” and you’ll trigger an extended, fairly brutal stealth-kill animation. You can trigger these whenever you sneak up on enemies in Halo: Reach. You eventually come to a heavily guarded Covenant Outpost, and have to storm in and take it all down. FYI, don’t miss the weapons cache to the left of the encampment. You’ll be able to swap the Magnum for the Assault Rifle. The area is populated with a combination of Grunts, Jackals and Elites. We elected to slowly circle and take them all down one by one. The Sniper Rifle is a godsend in this kind of situation, especially against the absurdly powerful Elites. Their shields are super tough in Reach. Take note of the big piece of machinery in the center of the outpost. It is explodable(!) Wait until a few Covenant are near the device, and then blow it up to watch the fireworks. After you’ve cleared the area, you move on down the path and come to a second encampment. It’s similarly stocked with resistance. Once you’ve cleared out all of the Covenant, head upstairs in the south west building and grab the Plasma Cannon turret. Rip it off its hinges and take it with you. You’ll need it. In the next area is a large, open field and is actually a beautiful place on Reach. But then you’ll encounter one of Reach’s indigenous species, the Gueta. They are huge, lumbering, kind of ape-like and very mean. This is why it was a good idea to grab the Plasma Cannon. Make short work of them. Move on through the very nicely designed system of caves. Halo: Reach is big on scenery, that’s for sure. When you emerge from the caves, you’ll come upon a group of militia at a base under attack. You’ll need to intervene, and protect the militia against the Covenent. Dropships packed to the gills and lousy with Covenant will appear and apply more pressure. Again, the Sniper Rifle is really your best friend here. If you move in too close, you will get overwhelmed and outgunned. Don’t miss the Armor Ability powerup in this area. In Halo: Reach, Armor Abilities are reusable, defensive powerups that can really turn the tables in combat. They are scattered around Reach, and come in the following flavors: Active Camo, Armor Lock (you’re frozen, and temporarily invincible), Drop Shield (bubble shield), Evade, Hologram (you make a double of yourself, Total Recall-style), Jet Pack (yes!) and Sprint. You’ll have a couple of choices, but we went with “Drop Shield”–trigger it and you’ll throw up a Bubble Shield, which you can use over and over after it recharges. You can also take a knee in the Bubble Shield to heal yourself, even when you’re down in the red. A Phantom eventually ruins the fun and drops off a couple of Hunters, making things a lot more difficult. If you’re interested, you can float up to the top of the outlook tower, and grab a Plasma Cannon to try and even the odds. If not, at least use the shotgun and try and go for their backs. When you move on to the next area, you’ll face a large number of Covenant forces embedded in a hillside. You’ll need to snake your way up the hills, and take out the huge turrets along the way if you’re going to stand a chance. When you clear out the hills, the mission is over. Tip of the SpearThis one begins with a pretty riveting cutscene. The Spartans are mobilized and fully pissed at this point, and they’ve moving in force, hauling ass in warthogs through the desert. They’re going after the Covenant’s main base, which was discovered in the last mission. Your first task will be to clear a landing path for the rest of the team. You’ll face a good number of grunts, Jackals and a couple of Elites. Thankfully, you’re equipped with the M319 Grenade Launcher, which makes things a whole lot more fun. The Grenade Launcher functions as you would suspect, with one special attribute: hold RT, and you can cook the grenade, and detonate whenever you wish by releasing RT. This adds a layer of finesse to using the Grenade Launcher, and using it is a joyous affair. When you’re ready to move on, you’ll hop into a Warthog with a fellow Spartan, and sally forth. It turns into a kind of classic Halo-driving-mission. You next objective: neutralize a couple of big, bad Covenant AA guns–conveniently surrounded by a circular speedway, which makes the Warthog just plain good luck, really. Not to mention that this is a new kind of Warthog, and it has rocket launchers on the back of it. Why didn’t they always have rocket launchers? When you’ve circled and killed off all the resistance, you’ll need to cause a whole lot of damage to the AA gun’s core in order to destroy it. It explodes very satisfyingly. Once you do, move to the next area. You’ll go up against a Wraith. If you just keep circling it, you’re Rocket Launcher-ready Warthog will do the rest. Move on ahead, and you’ll come to a similar area with the second AA gun. This area has a Wraith, but you are Warthog-less. You’ll have to take it down on foot. Circle the area and try to pick up a sticky grenade or two from a fallen Grunt. We elected to approach it from the side, jump on and manually plant the sticky grenade. There are two Hunters guarding the next AA gun. And you’re not very well armed at this point. Try and get hold of a Ghost, and use it to ram and pester the Hunter. It’s kind of a tough fight. When the second AA gun is down, you’ll jump into a Falcon and proceed to your “Primary Objective”–infiltrate “The Spire” and take it down. You’ll be given the pleasure of manning the Falcon’s Grenade Launcher and tasked with eliminating various ground troops in your warpath down below. Have fun strategically cooking the grenades and watching the damage on the hillside. When the Falcon passes into The Spire’s force field, it loses all power and crash lands. When you get back on your feet, you’ll have a Jet Pack Armor Ability sitting right in front of you. Grab it and get ready for some fun. Move ahead around the corner and grab the Focus Rifle, a new weapon in Halo: Reach. The Focus Rifle fires a continuous, cutting beam of energy, and works kind of like a Sniper Rifle. It’s very powerful, and great at long range. You’ll finally be face to face with The Spire, an extremely tall Covenant control tower. It’s your job to find a way to the very top, and to destroy the shields. Walk into the energy beam in the center of The Spire, and you’ll ride it all the way to the top of the structure. You’re not very welcome in The Spire, it turns out. The Covenant will make you very aware of this fact. In the main control room, you’ll encounter a Zealot Elite–an extremely powerful, well shielded, Energy Sword-wielding Covenant. These guys make the game a heck of a lot more challenging. Throw a couple of grenades, and spam him with the Focus Rifle continuously and that might still not be enough. After you disable The Spire’s shields, you’ve effectively rendered the structure defenseless. UNSC forces fly in and finish the job, destroying The Spire in a huge explosion. So, how is it so far? It’s a tough question, since I’ve beaten the game and could review it right now. I will say this: if you consume these two missions in a vacuum, Halo: Reach is great fun. The sense of place created in Reach is one of a dark, beautiful, foggy planet. The new features and weapons add additional layers of strategy to the tried and true Halo formula. That’s all for now. Halo: Reach will hit shelves September 14, 2010, exclusively for the Xbox 360. Until then, you can check out our exclusive interview with Reach Creative Director Marcus Lehtoand get all the latest news on our Halo: Reach game page. Our full review will go up on September 11, 2010.
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| Valve Has Three Big Surprises Coming in the Next 12 Months Posted: 01 Sep 2010 06:54 AM PDT Everyone remembers the surprise that Valve teased us with for E3. Of course, everyone thought it was going to be Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Of course, it wasn’t. Now Valve is stirring the pot again. In an interview with PC Gamer, Gabe Newell said,
Crank up the internet rumor mill. We know that Episode 3 will be on the top of the rumor list again, and we might as well throw in Defense of the Ancients, since Valve applied for that trademark already. I wonder what the third surprise will be. Maybe it’ll be that fairy RPG that everyone’s been talking about. Now that would be a surprise.
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| The Final Halo Interview – Creative Director Marcus Lehto Says Goodbye Posted: 01 Sep 2010 05:30 AM PDT We recently got the chance to sit down with Halo: Reach Creative Director Marcus Lehto and talk to him a little bit about the upcoming game. We also got to ask him about the feelings he has about Reach being Bungie’s last Halo game. Read on to get a little glimpse at how he feels about the series, Reach and more. How did the genesis of Halo take place?I was there on day 1. We had just finished up Myth: The Fallen Lords. Jason [Jones] and I began work on this sci-fi skinned RTS game. It was the genesis of what would become Halo. It was just a few of us working on it at the time. That was the fall of ’97. We spent about 2 years poking in the dark in different areas with the franchise to come up with something that interested us. It ultimately became a game that we wnted to play that we couldn’t find on the storeshelves. We started creating this universe that we really fell in love with. We were like “Wow, this is really fun.” That started to garner some interest from local media, and some grassroots. In early memories of it, we were building our version of Star Wars for video games. That kind of thing. We just couldn’t find that kind of universe in a video game. As we continued to build it, it started to take on a life of its own. Star Wars? How so?A universe that not only has a believability to it, that has things that people can connect to–the vehicles, the weapons, and even the characters. In some games, those things are just so wildly out there. They’re crazy in a way that they’re hard to really connect with and have some sort of relationship with. It was really important for us right off the bat, to have that element of familiarity within not only the things you play with, but the environments you explore, combined with a sense of wonder. And then, the charaters themselves were a big part. We put a ton of effort into making sure we had characters that players could relate to, that they could fall in love with these cast of characters. We wanted people to believe that in some way they exist in their own mind, in their fictional universe. that’s the kind of that you’d seen in some great stories like the Star Wars series. What did you think of the “Noble 12″ Halo 2 players, those guys who did the video game equivalent of chaining themselves to a tree?That was a great story. I love those guys. I mean, we look at that kind of thing and we’re like “We can’t believe our fans love to play what we created so much.” We couldn’t believe Halo 2 was still being played that long, after it has been released. That final testament of the fans’ commitment to want to stick it out of the very end–hats off to them. We love those guys. That’s the reason we’re still around, because of fans like that. Without them, we wouldn’t be in existence anymore. What is it about Halo that makes it “Halo”?There are a couple of components to it. At the core, it has a rock solid game. That “game of chess.” That thing that people loves to be experts at. It’s for the MLG fans, those guys. That’s that hardcore component to this game that keeps it really moving like a locomotive. The other part to it is the heart and soul. It’s got character. It’s got something deeper than just that surface game, something that’s just more than just pixels moving on the screen. We didn’t create all that. We built the foundation for all of that. Then, our fans began to pick up on that, and they began to build more of this universe, and fictionalize it, and keep expanding it and expanding it. Until, it became this thing all by itself. And it started to permeate the pop culture in a way that we never anticipated. It’s amazing to see how that grows. It’s amazing to see what people are doing with it. Novels are being written, comics are being created. Machinima is being created. All kinds of really interesting things are being developed based on this intellectual property that we created 13 years ago. Speaking of fan-creations, what are some of your favorite fan-created Halo things?One of the most hilarious ones–and it still sticks in my mind because it was one of the first–I can’t remember the guys name, he lives right in Seattle–he created the warthog jump movie from Halo 1. We build a sandbox game. We build a game that is not scripted, it’s not something where we intend to run the player on a rail. So, as a sandbox environment, we’re not fully sure what’s going to happen in the game. It can be different every time. What we didn’t anticipate is what people were going to do with the game in ways that we had just never designed it. With people piling grenades under a vehicle and launching it all the way across a map. Those are hilarious things that shocked us. From that point forward that kind of set this bar, for people to see like “Ok, what can I do to top that?” What can I do that takes advantage of this engine and does fun things with it? Randall Glass. That’s the guys name. One of my favorites on YouTube, was this guy had arranged rubble and shrapnel in the shape of a face on the sand.
That’s a great thing, like where we developed Forge for Halo 3. We intended that to be a map editor for people to create their own custom map games. But we never intended or thought that people would create “Forge art.” Just sculptures, for the sake of building sculptures. It had no gameplay repurcussions whatsoever. That became a massive hobbie for folks to spend hours and hours creating creating crazy art.
Is it kind of crazy looking back on everything you guys have accomplished?We’re completely blown away by how big it has become. With Halo: Reach, there’s a massive responsibility to do the right thing. This is our last Halo game. Being our last game, we want to make sure we do it right. We don’t want to leave any loose ends, and we don’t want to put half-assed features into the game. We really want to make sure that what we’re doing for this game is the culmination of over 10 years of building the Halo games. We want to take all of the best parts, and pack them into this one and make sure that it continues the cultural phenomenom. In every way we intend Halo: Reach to be this thing that it explodes even bigger than it is now. Are you sad?Yeah, I am. It’s definitely bitter sweet. I was there from day 1. I’ve spent over a decade investing every minute of my life into the Halo universe. It’s something that I’m definitely going to be sad to see go away. There’s so much left to explore with it, from my perspective. I’m like, “Oh…we could have done this, this and this!” That said, we packed more into this game than we’ve ever put into a game before. This is the largest title we’ve ever done. We’ve got more features in this game than we’ve ever put into a game. I’m super proud of what we’ve created. This is definitely a great sendoff to our fans. If you could, where would you take the Halo series from here?One of the things we invested a little of time into, was building watercraft. Like fun, sandbox watercraft. We put a little bit of time into it. But we were like, “we could spend another two years developing this, to really make this good.” That was one of those things we had to cut. But that’s the way game development goes. Did critics ever get you down over the years, or do you just channel stuff like that out?Absolutely. As the title became more and more popular, the base of “Halo haters” just continued to increase. There’s people who want to hate it because it’s popular. There’s people who hate it because they’re tired of it. There’s a lot of those folks out there. I fully expect that to be the case. We can’t make everybody happy. But what we can do, is make the best game we possibly can make. I think we’ve done that with Reach. I expect a lot of folks who have fallen off the Halo wagon to maybe hop back on with this one. If you could go back in a time machine and change anything about any of the past games, would you?I think we might have thought out a better ending to Halo 2. I think that might be one thing that we’d maybe rethink a little bit, since we were kind of rushed for time. I think we ended it as best as we could, given the circumstances. And we certainly wrapped it up with Halo 3. Yeah, we might go back and rethink that story a little more before we handed in a cliffhanger like that one. Do you have any crazy fan experiences over the years?The craziest fan experiences we ever have, and some of the most heartwarming, are the Make a Wish Foundation kids who come by our office. We have so many of them come by. This is their wish, to come by Bungie and hang out for a day, and just be carted around and treated like royalty as much as we possibly can for them. It’s so cool to be able to give back to the community in that way. It’s like, we make that kind of impact on kids that they want this to be their last wish? I’m almost speechless when they come in. Who would be your pick for playing Master Chief in a movie?Oh my god. Who should we pick? Should we resurrect Arnold Schwarzenegger out of the political ashes? I don’t know, that’s a good question. Master Chief was such a nondescript character, when it came down to it. We wanted you to embody that character’s shell, and become the Master Chief in that way. He’s a blank face. It’s hard to think about who would actually play him. Whereas in Reach we invested so much into the Sparta characters that I think are more rich and deep in character themselves, and just as iconic as Master Chief. Off topic question. Did you shoot the citizens in Modern Warfare 2?You know what, I didn’t. I resisted it. I was taunted with the idea of doing it. I don’t say it in a way that I feel good about myself that I took that path. I just thought “I don’t want to do that.” I thought that was controversial. Hats off to them for doing something totally crazy, and it got a lot of buzz for them. You’re on a desert island, and you can only bring one game. And it must be a Halo game. Go.I’d be stupid if I didn’t say it was Reach. But on the other hand, Halo 1. It started this little magical thing. I see it through rose-colored glasses, that’s absolutely true. It had all of the core elements. If you see Reach, you see that we’ve touched back on them, to look at what was really good about Halo 1 and 2 and 3, and ODST. We looked at what was good about those games, and took all of the good parts and put them into Reach. With Reach we wanted to hearken back and make that the quintessential Halo game. We want to thank Marcus for talking to us, and letting us pick his brain a bit about Bungie’s amazing thirteen year run with the Halo series. We also want to thank our readers for providing us with a mountain of great questions. Those questions will be included in the video interview, which will be released when the embargo lifts on September 11. If you’re one of those folks anxiously awaiting the release of Halo: Reach, only 13 days remain. You can look for Reach in stores on September 14. Until then, you can prepare yourself by checking out our Halo: Reach Achievements, and keeping up with all the Reach news on our Halo: Reach page.
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