VaderRx presents:

From Gaming Illustrated:

“Cortana, faithful AI companion to Spartan 117 A.K.A. Master Chief, has sparked a lively debate amongst Halo fans in the months since Halo 4′s release. Will she be coming back or won’t she? It seems that Cortana, scantily-clad and full of sass, managed to charm her artificial way into the hearts of gamers everywhere. Now that she’s gone, the five stages of grief are nowhere more apparent than on a Cortana thread of a Halo fan forum.

Denial, Cortana can’t be dead She’s a critical part of the Halo storyline. Master Chief is going to find a way to bring her back. Anger, 343 Studios made a big mistake killing off Cortana. No one is going to want to play future Halo titles without her. Bargaining, Cortana can make fragments of herself, there has to be one hidden around somewhere and if there isn’t, there has to be a way to make another Cortana. Depression, the game won’t be the same without Cortana. Who could ever replace her? Acceptance, it was fun while it lasted. Maybe the developer could give Master Chief a younger, hotter sidekick? While many fans still mourn Cortana’s loss, others are beginning to contemplate a Halo future without Cortana and for 3 good reasons…”

Click HERE to read the three reasons.

From Verizon Wireless:

“Halo fans and new Spartans will soon be able to download “Halo: Spartan Assault” on their Windows Phone 8 smartphone, and Verizon Wireless customers will be the first ones able to do so in the U.S.

“Halo: Spartan Assault” lets players complete missions through the eyes of Commander Sarah Palmer or Spartan Davis as they battle a relentless alien foe in never-before-played missions in the Halo universe. Xbox 360 owners who play Halo 4 can also earn additional experience points for their Spartan Career by playing through “Halo: Spartan Assault” and acquiring certain weekly achievements.”

Click HERE to read the full article. The game will cost $6.99. I’m still irritated that it is for Windows 8 phones only.

Here’s a quick summary of some of the interesting info discussed in this week’s Halo Bulletin:

– The Halo 4 Global Championships kicked off at RTX in Austin, TX, and the scoring and rules are detailed…

–

The Champions Bundle contains three DLC packs, as well as bonus content, including:
Bullseye Pack (Includes Ricochet, a new game type)
Steel Skin Pack
Infinity Armor Pack
Bonus content, including new stances, armor and weapon skins, and a new armor mod

– Vertigo is an original map, while Pitfall is a remake of the popular Halo 3 map, The Pit…

– Ricochet is a sports-like game with a ball and two goals…

– The new armor sets are Mark V, ODST, and Forerunner…

– The new armor mods that will be included are Survivor (ejects you out of a vehicle if it’s about to explode), Recharge (decreases the time it takes for your shields to recharge), and a sneak peek of Resistor (retain full mobility despite taking fire for a few moments)…

– The new playlist Legendary Slayer is detailed, which features no armor abilities or ordinances, but retains sprint…

Click HERE to read the bulletin in its entirety.

From VG247:

“At the Rooster Teeth Expo in Texas this weekend 343 announced new downloadable content for Halo 4, which consists of a few different items that you can buy individually or in what is called the Champions Bundle. This content will hit August 20.

There are three packages in the Champions Bundle: the Infinity Armour Pack, which contains three armor skins; the Steel Skins pack, which converts various weapons into steampunk-esque contraptions; and the Bullseye pack, which includes two new multiplayer maps and a new spin on Gravball called Ricochet which allows you to throw the ball into the goal for points as well as carrying it in. One of the new maps, dubbed Pitfall, is a remake of the Halo 3 map The Pit, updated for a new day. The other, Vertigo, features some player-triggered environmental hazards like floors that can be electricized.

Ricochet will only be a part of the bundle for the first two weeks it’s out, and then after that it will be free for everyone. The bundle, by the way, will costs 800 Microsoft points, and separately the maps are 480 points while the cosmetic packs are 240 points each. If you wanna see this stuff in action, you can watch a whole bunch of gameplay on Twitch.”

At long last, we get a solid Halo 3 map remake! That will be worth the price of the bundle alone. Not to mention some of the classic armor returning.

From Kotaku:

“We’re nearing the end of this console generation—which makes it easy to reminisce about where this generation has taken us. In the graphical department, it’s hard to deny how far we’ve come. Look no further than the Halo franchise, which has had multiple iterations this generation, to see evidence of a visual leap in the last 8 years.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Here are a few of the Halo games this gen—missing are Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. That, and we’ll be relying on community screenshots to properly showcase what these games look like. No bullshots or company-created shots here! They are all from theater mode though.”

Click HERE to see a gallery of images from the Halo games on the XBox 360 and compare.

From Joystiq:

“Halo 4 is the “best-selling Microsoft Studios title ever in the U.S. market,*” performing better than Halo 3 did during its fiscal launch year, according to ol’ Microsoft. That all-important asterisk denotes that claim as being “according to Microsoft retail sales sell-through data for each respective fiscal year.”

Presumably, this means that Halo 4 has also outperformed other Microsoft Studios launches, such as Fable 3 or Forza Motorsport 4. It’s no wonder, then, that Microsoft has decided to expand the Halo series’ current “Reclaimer” trilogy into a “saga,” a term that translates to “as many games as we feel like” or “why on Earth would we ever stop,” depending on the dictionary you’re using.”

On a side note, I’d like to point out that Halo 3 was the most played game on XBox 360 for three years in a row after its launch. It fended off multiple Call of Duty games on the charts. Halo 4, while it has been a big money maker for Microsoft, hasn’t been able to even stay in the top 5 on the XBox Live charts just months after release. I hope in the future they make another Halo game with staying power.

From Joystiq:

“The Halo series’ current Reclaimer Trilogy is now a “saga,” a Microsoft representative confirmed with GameSpot during E3.

“While we originally said trilogy, we’ve actually expanded this to more of a saga, so we don’t want to limit the Reclaimer story within a trilogy,” the representative explained. The Reclaimer Trilogy was originally set to span from 2012′s Halo 4 through the eventual Halo 6.

Xbox head Don Mattrick recently referred to the franchise’s E3 showing as “Halo 5.” Speaking with GameSpot, Microsoft Game Studios corporate VP Phil Spencer declined to say whether the next Halo game will be a fully fledged sequel or a spinoff in the vein of Halo: Reach.

“It is the next Halo game that we are working on,” Spencer told GameSpot. “We will talk more about actually the story arc in the game and how it plays out; we’ve got more time to talk about that.” Whether the next game is Halo 5 or something else, Spencer did note that it will be “a legitimate version of Halo.” ”

Much to-do is being made about this info at various places online, but is it really that unexpected? Halo clearly wasn’t going to end after “Halo 6,” so whatever they decide to call the games doesn’t really matter. Halo is Microsoft’s most important franchise, so it’s never going away.

From WhatCulture:

“Not only did [the Halo series] provide a provocative, exhilarating campaign, but one of the most memorable video game soundtracks since Perfect Dark or Super Mario Bros. As the series expanded and became a multi-selling, platinum-defining hit, the need to carry on its musical legacy continued, and with each game released there was always something audibly appealing to hear. The first Halo built the base, while Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, Halo Wars, Reach, and Halo 4 created the monstrous foundation for which it stands on today. And come 2014, when Halo 5 is released, that foundation will only increase in size and complexion.

This newly inspired list contains 25 of the most memorable, captivating, invigorating musical tracks from the Halo universe from the minds of those who brought their imaginations together to form a strong stimulating audio package that stands among the giants of the industry.”

Click HERE to check out the top 25 countdown.

Sergeant Johnson came in at #8 on the list of 10 Gaming Characters Who Never Deserved To Die by WhatCulture:

“Sergeant Major Johnson is on this list not just because he didn’t deserve to die, but because the method in which he died was not that befitting of a B.A.M.F. like he was.

This man had fought tirelessly to kick massive amounts of alien ass throughout the games, and how did he die, do you ask? Did he go out guns blazing, exhausting all of his ammunition reserves until he finally couldn’t defend himself, collapsing from the sheer number of bullets and plasma rounds that blasted his armor and assaulted him into submission? Nope. Did he go out like a martyr, killing the top baddie in the Covenant in a selfless act that saw him killed, for the sake of the cause? Nope.

Sergeant Major Avery Johnson was killed by 343 Guilty Spark, a small Monitor of Forerunner origin, kills Sgt. Major Johnson in order to prevent the heroes from destroying the massive system of Halo weapons that will exterminate all intelligent life. Although the small A.I. unit is destroyed soon after… this begs the question: how messed up is it that someone can kick that much ass, just to get bumped off by a laser to the back by something that looks like a futuristic lamp? Bungie… what the hell?”

Read more, along with the rest of the top 10 list by clicking HERE.

The next game in the Halo series was shown today via a teaser trailer at the Microsoft event at E3. A few quick notes:

– The game will have dedicated servers
– It will be the first Halo game to run at a full 60FPS
– The release date is sometime in 2014 so it won’t be available at launch
– So far there isn’t an official title (it didn’t say “Halo 5″)

Check out the trailer by clicking HERE!

From The Sixth Axis:

“E3 is now only 9 days away and it’s there we should get answers for what exactly the next generation of consoles will have for us. Microsoft will be there in force to show off the Xbox One and the games that will launch with it.
In fact, according to recent statements, their whole conference will be about the games. They mentioned in the Xbox One reveal that there would be a number of exclusives. Forza 5 was one of them and now it appears Halo: Spartan Assault could be another.
Domains of that title have been spotted by Fusible including HaloSpartanAssault.com. What we don’t know is what exactly the title refers to but there are three major possibilities as to what Spartan Assault could be.”

Click HERE to read more!