Ever wonder just why grunts look the way they do? Or if the inspiration behind the Forerunner architecture came from Frank Lloyd Wright? Or if the Warthog always looked like a jacked up Jeep 4X4?

Just in time for the 10th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved, Titan Books along with Bungie have released The Great Journey: Halo: The Art of Building Worlds. Inside is close to two hundred pages of original concept art from Halo: Combat Evolved all the way to the most recent Halo: Reach and everything in between.

Halo: The Art of Building Worlds takes players through the journey of Bungie as they created not just Halo: Combat Evolved but the universe that surrounds it. Some of the artwork are full two page spreads, beautifully painted works, that show the lush environments of the Halo universe. Other pages include series of sketches of everything from variations of Elite and Spartan Armor to the unused fauna concepts that never made it into certain games.

These pieces are some of the most interesting as you get insight into the Halo that never was, including the original concept for Master Chief and the completely un-iconic name he was almost graced with back when Halo was still an RTS game. Much like looking at classic Star Wars concept art, this book is a literal nerdgasm of “what if”.

In his foreword, 343’s Frank O’Connor explains how Halo has become this generation’s Star Wars. Looking at the artwork and stories that have come from them in this book, we have to agree with him.

Earlier this week, we brought you some of our favorite and best video games of the year. We’ve got a bit more to get to, including Glitch of the Year, Most Addictive, and even the penultimate Game of the year. Here we go!

Glitch of the Year – Fallout: New Vegas – The Spinning Head

Games will have glitches. It is expected. With millions upon millions of lines of code, it is impossible to hammer out every minute detail. Thankfully with internet connectivity, these can often be fixed even the first day of a game’s release with a patch. One of the most surprising glitches to make it to retail however is the spinning head from Fallout: New Vegas. What makes this glitch most shocking is how early in the game it takes place. It is a sad mistake on the part of the normally expert team of Obsidian Entertainment who normally puts forth such high quality games. While some glitches add some humor to a title, this one is just plain weird and completely unnecessary.

Last year, we took a more traditional approach with our Best Video Games of 2009 article with categories such as Best Music Game or Best Action Platformer. This year we are going to depart from the traditional and give what we think are categories that truly deserve to be rewarded their due.

Best Use of Zombies / Best Downloadable Content – Red Dead Redemption “Undead Nightmare”

The ultimate “What If” scenario brought forth to one of the best games of 2010, “What if the undead invaded the old west?” And the answer doesn’t just involve a lot of people dying. There are horses of the apocalypse, big foot, some hard choices to be made and people turning on or abandoning their fellow man left and right.

This awesome story told over the revamped look of Red Dead Redemption using characters players have already grown to know, love or despise makes Undead Nightmare not only the best zombie game of 2010 but also the best exmple of DLC for the entire year as well.

This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt are back and ready to talk about a whole bunch of new and sorta new topics. Yes, they sometimes repeat themselves. But with 70 shows in the can, it’s bound to happen sometimes.

This week sees the boys talking about some of the new TV premieres this week including HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, Hawaii Five-O, season four of Chuck, The Event and more. They also discuss the merit of Disney movies, the return of other shows including The Big Bang Theory, Ryan Reynolds next projects, Jon Hamm as Superman, the awesomeness and success of Halo Reach and more.

Chris and Matt also made some picks this week including Matt’s pick of the awesome Veronica Mars and and Chris’ pick of the upcoming David Fincher film The Social Network.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS

How do you make a Halo game without Master Chief? Somehow Halo 3: ODST, a converted expansion turned full retail release, was able to do it. But ODST wasn’t about the Spartans. It was about a group of ground level grunts just trying to survive impossible odds. Halo: Reach focuses on a group of Spartans called Noble Squad and the six members as they fight through the final days of the planet Reach. The game is a prequel to the original Halo: Combat Evolved and there are lots of little references and Easter Eggs to the events to come in Halo. But still, is it really Halo without Spartan John-117, Master Chief? After just a short time with the game you will agree it is.

Gameplay:

Halo: Reach takes the tried and true Halo formula of being one of the best FPS console games and continues to run with it. Fast paced combat with occasional instances of vehicular sequences, one incredibly short stealth sequence and the E3 revealed space battle encompass all that is Halo: Reach. The most fulfilling part of Reach’s gameplay is how even though it does have the “I’ve done this before” feel to it, it still has the addictive nature that made the previous Halo titles so special. It will be likely that the XBox Live top five charts over the coming weeks consist solely of Halo 3, Halo: Reach and three Call of Duty titles because of this.

Gameplay has been switched up a little bit from previous titles however. Most notable is the inclusion of armor abilities. As first seen in the Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta, the item system has been removed and replaced by these abilities that are “built-in” to the Spartan’s armor. These include Jet packs, Stealth and Sprinting. The jet pack is easily the most fun new power to use as it allows for mid-air sniping along with dropping into the heat of battle using the grav-hammer to level groups of unsuspecting grunts and brutes. Another interesting new ability is the hologram which creates a diversion as a holographic image of yourself runs forward drawing fire momentarily before the Covenant forces realize it’s not actually you.

It’s hard to talk about video games and not mention the Halo franchise. Constantly breaking records and taking names, Halo is a system selling behemoth of a property for the XBox 360. It was one of the games so popular, that it would go on to spawn multiple Machinima series, animated shorts created using assets from the respective games. These included everything from Phil to Arby ‘n’ The Chief to what may be the most famous Machinima ever, Red vs. Blue.

Smartly coinciding the release of the 8th season of Red vs. Blue entitled Revalation and the Recollection three disc set with the release of Halo: Reach, Rooster Teeth helps provide Halo fanboys with more Halo than they can handle in the biggest week of their gaming year.

The Recollection contains the second full story arc of the Red vs. Blue universe. Not a part of any official Halo canon, Red vs. Blue takes aspects of the game world never explained like the constant fighting in multiplayer of the different Spartans and tries to explain it. Taken with a grain of salt, the story even gets a little meta and makes a viewer step back and wonder how much applies to them. But for the most part, there is just lots of great comedic moments and swearing over a finely animated and even dramatic story.

When you are publishing one of the XBox’s largest exclusive franchises, it is inevitable that eventually some things will leak out to the public. To get ahead of this, Bungie has “leaked” to the information about the achievements to their upcoming blockbuster Halo: Reach. Taking control of the five man Spartan squad known as Noble Team, players experience a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved in which the military installation planet known as Reach is devastated by Covenant forces.

Halo: Reach will feature a total of 49 achievements. The way they break down will be 23 Campaign, 7 Firefight, 4 Multiplayer, 6 Training and 9 Player Experience. Bungie has noted that some of the Training goals can be met in both Campaign or Firefight modes.

So far, Bungie has revealed the names of 7 of these achievements along with the requirements for 7 of them. Below is what we know so far:

A Monument to All Your Sins – Complete each Campaign Mission on Legendary – alone.

Banshees, Fast and Low – Hijack a Banshee during the Reach Campaign.

Yes, Sensei – Earn a First Strike Medal in a Matchmaking game.

A New Challenger – Complete all of the Daily Challenges in a given day.

Make It Rain – Purchase an item from the Armory that requires the rank of Lt. Colonel.

During Monday’s Microsoft Press Conference, Microsoft Game Studios followed last year’s trend by showing actual gameplay footage from the campaign mode of their upcoming Halo title, Halo: Reach. While Halo 3: ODST got attention last year with its in game footage, it was usurped by the announcement of Halo: Reach. This year, Halo: Reach further blew gamers away. Having gotten their lips wet from the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta, fans weren’t even ready for the visuals that were brought to them on the E3 Press Conference

Seen below, the four player campaign is a drastic upgrade to the graphics and storytelling of Halo 3 and ODST. The team of four Spartans worked their way through a Covenant attack as they head to one of the UNSC bases. During this treacherous trek, you will see the drop pod Elites attacking, who now need to have a full team of Spartans to combat them. Combat strategy looks to have evolved using the game’s new weapons to clear the path of carnage.

The most startling part of the Halo: Reach footage comes from the reveal of the new gameplay mode shown at the end which transitioned flawlessly from the early part of the level with no loading screen necessary. We won’t spoil it for you, check it out yourself.

So E3 starts tomorrow officially while today is the Microsoft Press conference. As you have already seen, we have gotten some advanced notice on some of the happenings going on at the event.  A few changes will be happening with our coverage of the event compared to last year.

This year we won’t be giving a fully detailed recap of the BIG 3 Press Conferences from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo as a formal post. We will, however, be posting our thoughts and coverage on the big announcements and trailers as well as give a full indepth discussion with Matt Raub, Chris Ulrich and myself on this week’s episode of the podcast.

We have also gotten official word from various industry sources on what companies will be showing at the event. These have come from various press releases, other industry insiders and various leaks from the LA Convention Center itself regarding the event.

There has also been tremendous speculation around the event. Some of those rumors will be examined below as well. Finally, some of my own personal E3 2010 theories and predictions will be put out there too.

Continue Reading →

With blockbuster releases like Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 already dominating video game sales charts, the industry is already asking itself what will be the biggest title of the year. Because of that success, many people have been asking what the next “big step” for the industry will be.

Most experts, including this writer, agree that the world of motion controls is either going seriously stimulate the growth of the industry or hurt it over the coming year.

Michael Pachter, the top video game industry analyst from Wedbush Securities, has weighed in on both of these topics in his most recent episode of Pach-Attack!, courtesy of our friends over at Game Trailers.

In this episode, Pachter first addresses the top selling game of the upcoming year and has put in his vote for Halo: Reach. After the game’s original trailer from the Spike VGA’s and then the X10 ViDoc, we are inclined to agree with him.

Not to say it won’t have any competition with upcoming releases like the next Call of Duty title, but with this year’s COD not coming from Infinity Ward it is likely to not pull the numbers that Modern Warfare 2 did. Even titles like Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 don’t have the game industry equity to match what the next Halo title can bring to the table.

At E3 2009, the world was given a brief teaser showing a planet from space erupting in war.  With “Halo: Reach” being displayed, the hardcore fanboys knew what it meant. This was the big battle we had heard about. This was the last stand of the Spartans. At the Spike Video Game Awards,  we were treated to a peek at just what the game looked like with an in-engine cut scene. And as I talked about on this past week’s Flickcast, Halo: Reach is one of my personally most anticipated games of the year.

Now, the Halo fanbase has just gotten their fill of new information about Noble team, one of the squads on Reach, and specifically Noble 6, the Spartan players will be stepping in to the boots of in a story that takes place before the events of Master Chief and Halo: Combat Evolved. In the Halo: Reach developer vidoc “Once More Unto the Breach”, more footage and information than ever before has been revealed about what we can look forward to seeing during the fall of Reach.

Hearing, “We are rebuilding everything from the ground up,” is a staggering revelation when looking at the technological achievements of past Halo games. From totally redesigned enemies, environments and Spartans, Halo: Reach looks to be the new quintessential Halo story. With a tale meant to focus on characters, Noble team may even surpass Master Chief as the favorite characters of the franchise.

Take a peek below the fold at the massive amount of screen shots we were able to get from X10 as well as the amazing ViDoc. Keep your eyes peeled to the Flickcast as we further cover Halo: Reach.

Because today is a holiday in the United States and I like to let the writers out of their cages once in awhile to get some air and sunlight, we will have a lighter posting day today. That doesn’t mean we won’t be putting up anything for you to read and enjoy. Quite the contrary.

We’ve got some great stuff today including a bunch of info from Microsoft’s recent X10 event like new screenshots from Halo: Reach and a trailer for Dead Rising 2, previews of NBC’s new comedy/drama Parenthood and, in honor of today, the debut of a brand new feature here at the site: War Movie Mondays.

So, be sure to check back throughout the day for all these great articles, and more, right here at The Flickcast. We’ll resume our usual posting schedule tomorrow. That is, if I can get all the writer back into their cages in time.