Twice a year, Halo creator Bungie holds internal competitions called pentathlons where teams play Bungie video game titles, as well as offline game classics like Pictionary and Hacky Sack. Bungie calls it a "celebration of gaming" for Bungie employees.
On Wednesday, Bungie wrote a blog post discussing this year's Winter Pentathlon. Included with all the other titles participants will play, the company included the latest installment in the Halo franchise Halo Reach, which is scheduled to hit store shelves later in the year.
Typically, a mention of an upcoming release in a Bungie pentathlon wouldn't matter. But in that blog post, Bungie wrote that those in attendance will be able to play a new "Super Secret Game Mode."
"Some number of players will square off against some number of other players in what will undoubtedly be a rousing and highly competitive game of something we're not talking about yet," Bungie wrote on the site. "Points [will be] awarded for doing all kinds of untold stuff!"
Although details are few and far between on Halo Reach, talk of a new secret game mode is awfully interesting. Will it be a large-scale-battle mode? Will it have something to do with a Firefight mode? At this point, Bungie isn't talking.
A Bungie representative wrote in an e-mail that the pentathlon is an internal competition and that the company doesn't have any information to share.
So let's ramp up our own hopes and predictions. What would you like to see in Halo Reach? What do you think the Super Secret Game Mode will be? Let us know in the comments below.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
N.O.V.A. for iPhone looks and plays like a certain console classic.
(Credit: Gameloft)Will we ever see Halo for iPhone? Let me be the first to say: who cares? We've got N.O.V.A.
Short for Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance (as if that matters), Gameloft's first-person shooter borrows heavily from the Halo playbook.
You're the sometimes solo, sometimes squad-based hero out to save mankind from the alien threat du jour. The game's 13 single-player missions span five environments (from bunker to jungle to spacecraft), each one dripping in console-quality graphic goodness.
An excellent tutorial acclimates you to the controls, which are always a challenge for any iPhone/iPod Touch shooter, but here are some of the best I've seen. Dip into the settings and you can choose from three control schemes or manually arrange the onscreen d-pad, fire button, and other controls exactly how you like them. Nice.
If you like kicking alien butt, you'll love N.O.V.A.
(Credit: Gameloft)Once you've exhausted the single-player campaign, you can engage in two- to four-player deathmatches--either locally or online. (One small gripe: online play requires a Wi-Fi connection, so you can't get your frag on just anywhere.)
I could say more about the game, but I really don't want to spoil the fun of discovering it on your own. N.O.V.A. really is something special (and that's saying something in a year chock full of special games). Don't take my word alone: the Download Blog's Jason Parker named N.O.V.A. one of the 17 best iPhone games of 2009.
How would you rank N.O.V.A. among first-person shooters for the iPhone? Is it better than Modern Combat: Sandstorm? Better than Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies? Share your FPS faves in the comments!
The success of the Halo franchise has been incredible. So much so, it was only a matter of time before we'd see a movie. Microsoft plans on releasing a seven-part series spanning from its origins to the game's third installment, titled Halo Legends.
The announcement was made at the 2009 Comic-Con in San Diego. The series will be available for download via Xbox Live this fall. According to Blu-ray.com we can expect to see this on Blu-ray sometime in 2010, so there will finally be a disc labeled Halo that will play on the PS3 for all the Halo fans.
However, since the Xbox 360 doesn't support Blu-ray, it makes you wonder if Blu-ray is in the 360's future? Or maybe the next-gen Xbox? Regardless, you kind of have to to hand it to Microsoft for wanting the fans of the Halo franchise to truly experience this mini series on the best media that's out today.
Simon Scarle has just made modeling a range of processes such as electrical excitations in the heart as accessible as Halo 3.
(Credit: University of Warwick)Simon Scarle's giddy enthusiasm (see photo, at right) could be the result of getting to play with Xboxes on the job. More likely though, it's because his recent discovery about the console's graphical processing unit could save thousands of lives.
Scarle, a researcher at the University of Warwick, wanted to model how electrical excitations in the heart navigate around damaged cells to better understand and even predict cardiac arrhythmias.
To do this kind of parallel processing, researchers typically have to book expensive time on a dedicated cluster system or network of PCs; the Warwick team found that the Xbox 360 GPU was able to perform the same functions at a fraction of the time and cost. It's also far more readily available, and comes with the side benefit of being able to play Halo 3 on break.
Not surprisingly, the researcher was once a software engineer at the Warwickshire firm Rare (part of Microsoft Games Studios). Scarle says he first thought up the project while developing a "little shooter game" for Microsoft in which the player guns down enemies in a heart-shaped arena.
This is a highly effective way of carrying out high-end parallel computing on domestic hardware for cardiac simulations. Although major reworking of any previous code framework is required, the Xbox 360 is a very easy platform to develop for and this cost can easily be outweighed by the benefits in gained computational power and speed, as well as the relative ease of visualization of the system.
It turns out that the world's fastest supercomputer, Roadrunner, uses the same processor technology as Sony's Playstation 3. And while Scarle says linking more than one Xbox together is possible, it has yet to be done. "It could be done, but you would have to go over the Internet--through something like Xbox Live--rather than a standard method," he tells the BBC.
Scarle also points to folding@home, a project out of Stanford that devotes the spare processing power of thousands of PCs, Macs, Linux systems, and PlayStation 3s to understanding "protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases." The network has more than 5 petaflops of computing power, aka more than 5,000 trillion calculations per second. (Roadrunner, a $100 million system, can operate at just over 1 petaflop.)
Scarle's discovery does come with one piece of bad news. His research concludes that it is impossible to actually predict certain arrhythmias, because cardiac cell models are affected by a limitation of computational systems called the halting problem.
Episode 50 of the Digital City, where we discuss Microsoft's plans to take on Apple in both smart phones and tablet PCs; the rumor of an HD refresh of the Nintendo Wii console; and AT&T's Microcell device for improving cell phone reception in your home through a $150 gadget (that they'll be happy to sell you).
Also noteworthy, this is our very first show in our new prime timeslot of 3pm EST on Mondays, rather than the old Friday afternoon slot -- so set your Outlook calendar reminders appropriately. Plus, if you're a fan of Dan's critically ignored blend of jazzy indie rock, as the Apple commercials say, "there's an app for that."
Related links:
>>Microsoft to take on the Apple tablet?
>>Is an HD Wii in the works?
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(Credit:
GameSpot)
Halo has been the defining franchise series for Microsoft across two generations of consoles. After Halo 3 was released last year, it appeared the first-person epic had finally seen its last installment. Then developer Bungie hinted at a spinoff title, Halo 3: ODST.
While ODST takes place during the events of Halo 2 and 3, the campaign does not feature Master Chief. Instead, you'll assume the role of a rookie Orbital Drop Shock Trooper who is separated from the rest of his crew. With the help of a citywide artificial intelligence known as The Superintendent, you'll find out just what has happened to them.
We have had the final retail build of ODST for some time now, and here are our impressions:... Read More
On Sale Now: $50.00
View the latest prices for Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360)
The Jabra Halo stereo Bluetooth headset, open and folded.
(Credit: Jabra)I was quite impressed with the Jabra Halo stereo Bluetooth headset when I first saw it at CTIA 2009 in Las Vegas. It looked thin and lightweight, and promised to be the first wireless stereo headset with dual-microphone noise cancellation. Indeed, it was our cream of the crop nominee for best accessory at the show.
Now Jabra has made the Halo official, announcing that it'll be available for sale in Best Buy retail stores next week. Other features of the headset include multipoint technology, eight hours of talk or music time, Zirene Power Bass, and a 3.5mm cord option in case you can't or don't want to use Bluetooth. It also folds down to a more compact shape. The suggested retail price is $129, which may seem a bit costly, but if the HALO delivers on its promise, it would be well worth it.
Jeff's back and gives us a rundown of his minivacation to Atlantic City, N.J., and his love affair with pinball machines. A lot of other stories to talk about today, like the Zune HD, the new Chevy Volt, Spielberg taking over the Halo movie, and Hayato Shimizu's interpretation of Jeff as the superhero COMMODORE!
Jeff Bakalar as COMMODORE
(Credit: Hayato Shimizu)The team is back together now that Jeff is back from his trip to Atlantic City, where he reportedly spent the majority of his time playing blackjack and a series of analog video games like Batman: Dark Knight pinball, skeeball, and bubble hockey. In celebration of Jeff's return, we surprise him with the image you see above, the final superhost of The 404--COMMODORE! Defending the world from positive vibes with his giant hockey stick, Commodore also wields the might Power Glove, which, unfortunately, is incompatible with today's villains, but it still looks cool! Big thanks goes out to Hayato Shimizu for his great work with all three characters, maybe we'll even seen a picture featuring LaserJet, G-Force, and Commodore battling crime for the future of podcasting!
(Credit:
The 404)
As usual, we have a lot to talk about today, and kick it off with some rumor mongering about the latest Zune HD. CNET's own Donald Bell reports that Amazon is showing off retail pricing for the portable media player, listing the 16GB Zune HD at $219 and the 32GB at $289. The rumor mill continues to churn over Steven Spielberg taking over as producer for the Halo movie adaption, although the three of us are still skeptical about any long-form video game story adaptation, as we all remember what happened with CHUN-LI. We also look at the latest commercials for the Chevy Volt and its how viral advertising is affecting viewer participation.
Finally, Wilson G. Tang took it upon himself to create a 404 Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X users! You can download the video or the audio version and have the show play in the background while you finish "working." Best of all, this blog description populates nicely into the widget as well, making it super easy to auto-update and listen to your favorite episodes! Download them and let us know what you think!
EPISODE 401
Listen now: Download today's podcastSubscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video
... Read More
With Justin's return from his sojourn into the great outdoors, The 404 crew is complete again to bring you another awesome show, replete with "GI Joe" and "District 9" reviews, optical gaming, and a surprise appearance by Motherboard!
After getting mauled by a bear in Yosemite (where's the app for THAT?), I'm back, and much to Jeff, Wilson, and everyone else's dismay SO ARE THE GLASSES! That's right suckers, a little Krazy Glue goes a long way, but I'm not sure how long these things will last, so please continue to e-mail us submissions for the contest to choose my next frames. I'm not gonna lie, I've missed the show dearly and it's great to be back!
The first half of today's show has a lot of movie talk, starting with us talking all sorts of garbage on the new "G.I. Joe" movie. The movie won't be prescreened to critics, and we suspect it has something to do with the trailer receiving so much backlash from justifiably angry fans of the original television series. Jeff also gives us his take on the trailer for "District 9", the new science fiction movie based on the short film Alive in Joburg. Go check that out and let "G.I. Joe" go the way of the buffalo!
The second half just gets nuts, that's all I'll say. OK, well, without giving too much away, it all starts with the Get It Guy, a fake Australian accent, and a very steamy call from SadaCori in the chatroom (a must listen!), but then we get a surprise knock from Motherboard herself, who has something very special to show us...something that NOBODY HAS SEEN BEFORE, so be sure to check out the video for all the details. After that, we dredge up a claim about racism in Resident Evil 5 and it all devolves from there. Trust us, it's the last time you'll hear about it!
As always, feel free to leave us a voicemail at 1-866-404-CNET or get in touch with us on Twitter or at the404[at]cnet[dot]com!
EPISODE 397
Listen now: Download today's podcastSubscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video
... Read More
As first outlined at the E3 video game industry trade show in June, Microsoft is readying an update to the dashboard software that runs on Xbox 360 game consoles, as well as the Xbox Live online service.
While it's not as radical a change as the fall 2008 dashboard update that added avatars and Netflix streaming, there are a lot of improvements to current features, as well as a few new ones. The dashboard update will be available for 360 owners on August 11th, but we were able to download an early version for a test drive.
Included were notable features such as the Avatar Marketplace, for buying (via Microsoft Point micro-transaction) clothing and accessories for your avatar, and the Netflix Party Mode, for watching a streaming Netflix movie along with online friends.
Missing from our early download, however, were the much-anticipated Twitter and Facebook apps, as well as the Games on Demand service for Xbox 360 games. Currently only older original Xbox games are available (also not available -- any of these Five classic adventure games that need to be re-released as digital downloads).
Click through to the gallery below for our walkthrough of some of the new Xbox 360 dashboard features.
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