Joystiq is reporting that the Halo 3 themed Xbox 360 will be arriving on store shelves come Sunday. The unit will cost $400 and come with headset, controller, and play & charge kit.
Author - Jerry Paxton
Brass Tacks: The game plays alot like an MMO version of Sid Meier’s Pirates! would. Graphics and sounds are very nice however the melee combat portion of the game is somewhat clunky.
Full Preview: Pirates of the Burning sea is an MMO developed by Flying Lab Software (Rails Across America) that transports you back to the age of buccaneers and swashbucklers.
You start off by creating your character. The character creation system is fairly generic for an MMO, giving you a set number of types of each avatar object (hair, face, tattoo, etc) but does it’s job. You select which Country/Affiliation you want to ally with and your profession in that affiliation. If you ally yourself with Britain you can sail as a Naval Officer or Privateer, for instance.
After that you go through a standard tutorial mission where you learn the basics of ship to ship and melee combat. The ship to ship combat plays almost exactly like Sid Meier’s Pirates! and that is not a bad thing. In fact, they have taken that gameplay and expanded it by offering ship upgrades, various types of repair kits, as well as player skills that are learned by training. The melee combat in PotBS is not nearly as fun or polished as of yet, with movement and fighting feeling very clunky.
From the tutorial mission you arrive at your first town, where you can accept missions, buy/sell, etc. Missions are given by NPCs and undertaken by visiting an NPC on the town dock. Upon selecting him/her you will be presented with a list of missions you have accepted and once selected be magically transported to the mission area. I was hoping for more open-missions with travel time and whatnot but the system does work. Once a mission is completed you return to town and collect your reward.
Experience is gained by ship to ship as well as melee combat and a player can level them independently of one another. There are various skills for each branch of combat and they all seem useful.
The graphics are very good, with excellent ship detailing as well as water reflections/refractions. Sounds is good too, with plenty of ‘Yars!’ and other ship sounds. Combat details are good with correct ship pieces buckling, exploding, and falling off depending on the type of damage done to them.
The game seems relatively stable at this point in the beta and, with few exceptions, will be ready later this year.
Overall Anticipation Factor: 8.0 out of 10
Engadget has a nice page up about Programmer’s Day, which happens to be today. So, find your nearest programmer and wish them a good one!
eBay has in it’s many auctions, a full Spartan suit of armor from the Halo universe. This is one nicely crafted suit, not just a vacuum formed knock-off.
If someone would like to donate this to the GamingShogun, he would be your best friend. Really.
Mitch Gitelman at the official Shadowrun forums has announced the official closing of FASA Studios, the fine folks that brought us the Mechwarrior, Crimson Skies, and Shadowrun titles.
Joystiq has managed to snag the next in a series of commercials designed for Halo 3’s Believe marketing campaign.
*Looks like it has already been pulled down from Microsoft! Shoot!
Brandweek has a great article detailing the five phase marketing plan set up by Microsoft/Bungie for Halo 3. Here is the brief rundown:
Phase 1: Starry Night campaign.
Phase 2: The Halo 3 beta.
Phase 3: Iris, the alternate reality game in the same vein as ‘I Love Bees’.
Phase 4: Merchandising tie-ins with various food establishments such as Burger-King.
Phase 5: Believe campaign starting off with the earlier reported on video.
Joystiq is reporting that the Conan action title (similar in vein to God of War) will be arriving on store shelved September 28th, as opposed to the Age of Conan MMO which is set for a March 2008 release.
Yahoo Video has the recently released Halo 3 commercial up. It is a pretty emotional scene reminiscent of World War II vets discussing the battles they fought.
This is far different than what I would imagine for a video game commercial in tone.
Looks like a new commercial will be released on 9/14/07, maybe a continuation of this current one?
Telegraph UK has a report on the successful test of Russia’s new ‘Vacuum Bomb’, which generates tremendous explosive power without any fallout. According to Russian officials, the bomb is four times as powerful as the United State’s MOAB device.