Tag Archive

More On Cancelled Halo MMO

Written by Jim Rossignol on November 17, 2008.

Shacknews have posted up an extract from an interview with Ensemble’s Dave Pottinger in which he talks about the cancelled Halo MMO. It turns out the model was very much “World Of Halocraft”, as people had suggested.

Shack: So you didn’t have plans to go for a more FPS-style game.

Dave Pottinger: It was definitely more of a classic MMO, but it still had that very action feel. Definitely more actiony than WoW.

Go read.

Games For Windows Live Gold - Now Free

Written by John Walker on July 23, 2008.

Well here’s a spot of news. Games For Windows Live Gold accounts are now to be free. According to a 1Up report, Microsoft announced today that PC users will no longer have to pay for a Live Gold account to be able to access the cross-platform shenanigans of their multiplayer gaming. Which can only be delightful news to the 360’s paying suckers.

1Up go on to say that MS are planning a GFW Marketplace, aping the Xbox Live Marketplace, also offering various downloadable bits and pieces from demos to extra gaming content. Which sounds awfully similar to, er, the rest of the internet.

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Halo MMO: The Clues

Written by Jim Rossignol on July 17, 2008.

The existence of a Halo MMO is an ongoing rumour, but how likely is it?

It’s a safe bet that if anyone was going to be able to pull off a successful MMOFPS, it would be Bungie and Microsoft with a version of Halo. Of course it might just be on 360, but why wouldn’t MS try to tap into the Blizzard millions with a cross-platform version? This is more than wishful thinking: the clues are out there. No, they really are.
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RPS-ish at-ish E3: Day 1, Part 1 - MS

Written by Mathew Kumar on July 14, 2008.

Dear RPS Readers,

As not one of the quintessential quartet that makes up the Rock Paper Shotgun team were able to make it out to Los Angeles, they sent me instead. Well, they say they “weren’t able to make it out” – they probably all remembered that going to E3 as a journalist lumps you in with a large group of hobbyist “journalists” who whoop and pump their fist in the air when executives come out on stage during press conferences.
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Popfly: DIY Casual, MS-style

Written by Alec Meer on May 5, 2008.

The race to establish the Youtube of gaming continues. Kongregate - which we really should visit more often - is by far the most likely bet at the moment, with its 4000+ free games, but predictably Bigger Boys are trying to snatch a piece of pie. Enter Microsoft with its Popfly project, which combines a gallery of user-made games with simple tools to create and share your own.

It’s mainly show-offery for Silverlight, Microsoft’s proprietary Flash rival, and doesn’t seem yet capable of going much beyond basic casual games and retro remakes. Its main requirement, though, is simple patience, allegedly not any sort of coding experience, so a suitably inventive mind could churn out some gems. I’ve not had time to try devising my own game yet, but it took me mere minutes to modify a pre-generated Missile Command clone into spawning such a bewildering deluge of giant-size rocket ’splodes that my quad-core processor wept (not a good sign of Popfly’s worth , quite frankly). I am so creative.

It’s all very interesting, though yet to demonstrate greatness - if, however, anyone here fancies delving deeper and establishing what this thing’s actually capable of, please do link to your creations below. We won’t laugh, promise.

Winwoes

Written by Alec Meer on April 7, 2008.

This wibble is only loosely related to gaming, but as it concerns what our PCs will be like in a couple of years’ time, hopefully it’s of some interest to those who haven’t yet heard about Windows 7. If not, sorry. I’ll put my fun-hat back on tomorrow, promise.

Upgraded to Vista yet? Well, of course you have. All those wonderful platform-exclusive games, those high-end graphical effects not possible on XP, all that added stability, security and speed… Irresistible, non?
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Boycott Games For Windows Live

Written by Alec Meer on March 3, 2008.

I can’t help but feel a successful campaign will need something a little stronger than a single page of dense text - an entirely ineffectual online petition and detailed instructions on exactly where to post jiffy bags full of dog poo, perhaps - but hell, it’s a start. I’m generally a little too resigned to Microsoft despotism to get terribly upset about their damn-fool misfires, but Games For Windows Live is one thing that really does make me want to take the hose to Redmond executives.
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Here Come The Heroes

Written by Alec Meer on February 12, 2008.

PC games: still not dead since 1997. Still, sales are down 6% year on year according to increasingly ubiquitous market researchers NPD. How can the decline, this unspecific apocalypse we’ve been told to fear for so long now, be halted? Inventive, diverse games? Greater support for indie development?

Nah, that’d be far too sensible. Instead, how about a humongous and slightly sinister alliance between the industry’s biggest monopoly-men? Dean Takahashi reveals that Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and Microsoft (amongst others) are forming a fellowship aimed at saving PC gaming. Read the rest of this entry »

Wrecked Mechs

Written by Kieron Gillen on September 13, 2007.

Fans of large metal things stepping on smaller things will be disappointed to hear that FASA Studios have shut their doors. Reportedly half of the team are being moved into the rest of Microsoft Studios. The other half move to the pub, nursing pints and considering what they plan to do next. We wish them luck with whatever it is. FASA, even in their modern post-MS buyout form of Studios, rather than their older Interactive, made some pretty neat games.

While best known for the Mechwarrior games, their swansong was the future-trivia-answer Shadowrun (the question being: Which was the first game which allowed the PC to play against XBox 360 owners?” Tricky people will phrase the question “console owners” instead, where the answer will shift to Quake 3 on the Dreamcast and you’ll lose). I reviewed it for Eurogamer on release and gave it 6/10. It’s also one of my favourite multiplayer games of the year so far. There’s no contradiction there. As appealing as it often was, the mark reflects the ridiculous price attached to the game. If you see it cheap, and fancy raising a digital glass to the folk of FASA, you won’t regret it.