The corpse of E3 clawed its way out of the ground this week and paraded about the streets of San Francisco, handing out asset discs and giving live presentations to press members who placed RSVP’s under their pillows at night. Something like that, I suppose. Its been a week full of events and embargoes and all that other good stuff that makes me realize how excited I am for this year in games.
At this point, there isn’t anything jumping out and screaming for the game of the year attention (in my wacky opinion, of course), but there are a lot of things I can’t wait to experience.
In my pursuit to make the blogging a regular bit, allow me to share with you some of those wonderful things.
Continue reading ‘Games To-Do List 2008′
There should be a film made about my playing Halo 3 again. It would be called, “How Jared Got His Fierce Back.” And while they’re at it, they could make a documentary about why I don’t blog when I totally should, like last week when I put my new feature up about Xbox 360 achievements and how they need fixing.
I was actually inspired by an article by Nadia Oxford over at 1UP on how we, the gamers, are completing our games less and less these days. In my case, I already knew she was right, but I checked out my Gamercard anyway and found that for all these games that I love, my lack of achievements said otherwise. This sent me into a brief frenzy of achievement hunting, which would explain why you may have seen me playing The Simpsons Game and Project Gotham Racing 4.
Kongregate, which has an achievements system all its own, also played into all this as I rediscovered it thanks to our indie gaming week over at GameTap. It’s amazing how Microsoft’s system has changed the way we play games and appreciate games, as there’s nothing more rewarding than earning a few ego boosting points simply by burning the rope. Unfortunately, developers still have plenty to learn about making them so.
I loved Race mode in Halo: Combat Evolved. Many a nights were spent in Blood Gulch, chasing down friends and ramming them off the ledges of the infamous canyon. So you can only imagine how bummed I was to find out that not only was it removed from Halo 2, but it didn’t return in Halo 3, either. And while the latter came with the Forge creation tool, I never felt particularly inspired to create my own race track, though plenty of others did.
I wasn’t inspired, that is, until I got my pre-release code for the Legendary Map Pack and with it, Avalanche. With little to no experience under my belt, I dove into Forge and through plenty of experimentation, came my first creation: Overdriftacular.
Map: Overdrift 1.1 (04.15.08)
Gametype: Overdriftacular (04.15.08)
“Everyone on Installation 04 drifted. It was impossible to drive straight.”
Continue reading ‘Halo 3, Avalanche: Overdriftacular’
