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The Halo Effect

So I got to sit in and have some face time with the Bungie and BioWare guys today at Microsoft‘s X’07 Canada event. Arguably two of the biggest titles for the Xbox this holiday season, here’s my quick rundown.

Halo 3So after playing some head-to-head a little while back, (I suck btw), seeing the actual game demo was pretty nice. Steven Scott, head pyrotechnician for Bungie, gave us a tour. He died a few times, though he warned us that he was more artiste, than pw0ner. Impressions of note in no particular order:

  • The orchestral music is awesome. Would love the soundtrack bgm.
  • Riping the gun off a plasma turret is very, very, cool
  • water effects are really really nice
  • great lighting transitions between dark/light zones
  • 4 player coop! (I still think that cool, so I mention it again!)
  • So in summary, the game looks good, but FPS’s aren’t my thing. Not after near-hurling from the endless red brick walls of Wolfenstein 3D.

    Mass EffectI try to stay away from the hype machine that this is rolling out on, but you can’t be totally free of it. But you know what? The hype isn’t far off. With ultra customizable builds a la KOTOR, and fantastic modeling on the characters, it was a promising start.

  • Roughly 25-70 hours
  • lots of replayability for the completionist
  • multiple story threads for each gender
  • Great lighting and animation, only a bit of stiffness on the mouth when speaking detracts from it. Hope they fix that before release, but ..
  • Seth Green, Keith David, Mirina Sirtis… SETH GREEN. <3
  • The weapon and dark matter control interface looks well thought out
  • Remember Saren
  • Mid Novemeber is their target release, with date confirmation next week
  • Honestly, the real-time battle puts it into the FPS category, but like Metroid Prime, it somehow was able to mix in enough of the adventure play to not give me those Wolfenstein flash-backs. I’m jazzed about getting my hands on this one for a full spin and now am on the hype bandwagon.

    I also played Beautiful Katamari, (squee!), and almost played Rock Band. I say almost, because I was willing, but didn’t know the songs. Maybe they’ll have some Xtina on the final… But Rick rocked out on Bass!

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