Halo 3 Stats

Bungie finally loosed some stats from their all powerful game servers. It's been almost two months (right?).

• Campaign Complete: Normal: 43.28%
  
• Campaign Complete: Legendary: 15.14% done!
  
• Graduate: Graduated from basic training: 66.92% done!
  
• UNSC Spartan: Promoted to Sergeant: 52.07%
  
• The most found metagame skull? Black Eye skull with 34.26% done!
  
• The least found metagame skull? Tilt at 22.98% (Go find it, jerks! It’s one of the best skulls in the game!) done!
  
• At 6.21%, Steppin’ Razor is the hardest multiplayer Achievement to earn, with Two for One right behind it at 6.77% and Overkill nipping at its heels (6.75%)
  
• 8.68% of players have unlocked the Marathon Man Achievement done!
  
• 1000/1000 Gamerscore: 2.07%

Personally, I think shooting the guy off the roof as he jumps across the street to be the most fun skull. Tilt was just plain hard to do, jumping on all those small ledges.

I haven't played Halo 3 since Otis got Crackdown and Mario Galaxy came out of the Wii. I'm 4 orbs away from getting all 500 in Crackdown, and Mario is turning out to be quite a fun platformer.

Tomorrow Mass Effect hits the shelves. Halo 3 has less of a chance of getting back in my 360 every day.

But seeing that I'm 50 points away from getting all 1000 Gamerscore is pretty tempting to make me want to go back and play online. I could be one of those 2.07 percent!

Blame Halo 3 / Halloween!

Not that this...umm...applies to me or anything.

Blame Halo 3 - Watch more free videos

I have been playing a lot of games lately. Not that is anything new to most people who know me. But this fall and upcoming winter there are just a barrage of good games coming out. I even got Nicole hooked on Puzzle Quest. It's almost worth the price of a Nintendo DS itself.

We gearing up for Halloween, but in such lame fashion. Nicole is slammed at work with the Senior Manager's course and the Journal and I'm in such a rut at work, the only thing I want to do when I get home is nothing. But game.

So for the first time since I've known Nicole, I won't be alone during Halloween giving out candy to kids while the Cheat watches from his window perch. So we're going to have a horror movie night with a few friends and some good food. I was going to get a projector and watch movies outside, but the recent chill has scrapped those plans.

I might still get the projector though. The thought of 100" of Xbox 360 or Wii on a wall somewhere is pretty tempting. I'm also really looking forward to the Halloween make-over that Halo 3 is supposed to be getting Wednesday. Pumpkin armor? Headless Master Chief on a horse?

What are you doing for Halloween?

Internet Ads = Crap

I don't understand how click-through ads make money in the first place, because I never use them. But I also don't watch late night infomercials or buy stuff out of those as-seen-on-tv catalogs.

But I love how search engines on the internet turn everything you look for into an ad. My example:


Don't get me wrong, I'd love to own a suit of Mjolnir armor, but a Halo "brand" of it? There really needs to be a better formula for these ads other than, "Buy your *insert search request here* for cheap!"

And trust me when I say, no one, absolutely no one sells items for your '07 Warthog that is sitting your imaginary driveway.

Flickr Photo Mode Success

I might be calling it early, but if things keep going the way they are now, our Video Game Photo Mode on Flickr is really going to be a nice place to check out some crazy in-game photos. I've been pimping it on every website forum I can think of (just a few really) and it's got over 70 photos already.

Some really good examples are OOOHHHHmyDamn's Tourist Trophy blooper photos and Falce_2001's photos of Halo 3's non-player characters (or story actors). I absolutely love this one. I've never thought about watching the NPC's when your supposed to be out doing things. The programmers could have put in all kinds of actions for the characters to do that 95% of people never even see.

Here's the link again for the Flickr group.

Finished: Halo 3

Well, I guess I can't say that I thought it would take longer that two days to beat it, but I am quite disappointed with myself. Here I am, with a game that we've been waiting years to come out, and I go and beat it in two days.

But, oh, what a good two days they've been.

Staying up well past midnight, going to work the next day with just a few hours sleep, eating bits of junk food, wearing sweatpants and t-shirts...this is gaming nirvana. Totally relaxed. Completely involved. No distractions. This is possible with any game, but very seldom does it happen with no complaints. Besides those from my wife.

I've given up writing Finished articles with in-game details because most of the high points of games can be found at just about any avenue you come across out here.

Finished: Halo 3

Well, I guess I can't say that I thought it would take longer that two days to beat it, but I am quite disappointed with myself. Here I am, with a game that we've been waiting years to come out, and I go and beat it in two days.

But, oh, what a good two days they've been.

Staying up well past midnight, going to work the next day with just a few hours sleep, eating bits of junk food, wearing sweatpants and t-shirts...this is gaming nirvana. Totally relaxed. Completely involved. No distractions. This is possible with any game. But very seldom does it happen with no complaints. Besides my wife.

I've given up writing Finished articles with in-game details because most of the high points of games can be found at just about any avenue you come across out here.

What might be more important to me is the feeling of finishing a game and how I felt about it. And in Halo 3's case, I feel pretty good. It wasn't a long, drawn out game. The areas weren't repetitive like the first Halo, but highly detailed and imaginative. The dialog is top notch, some of the best. The online co-op is very well accepted (Thank you Bungie!). The overall polish of the game is just so solid.

I'm going to enjoy the next few months playing the story campaign again and going online to play/destroy strangers from around the world. There is even a little world view map with all the players lit up like city lights from space. Right now there are 276,000 people playing. But with Halo 3 smashing sales records, I'm sure it will increase as the year goes on.

Wow, looking at Bungie.net, it's really interesting to see the statistics that Bungie is known for tracking in their games online. Besides just the world map, Bungie tracks absolutely everything. Every kill. Who killed who. Who killed who where and with what weapon. They store every game you've played as a diagrammed map.

Here is my service record. If you click around enough, you can find a game I played and all the stats they track. Like this page, if you roll the mouse over the blue weapon icons, it shows you which weapons were used and how often. Even pictures in photo mode that the other players saved from that game. Absolutely freakin' brilliant!

Midnight Release in Harrisonburg / Micro Review: Halo 3

I decided that with nothing better to do, I would go to the midnight release of Halo 3 last night at Gamestop in Harrisonburg Crossing.

I got there a half-hour before the store closed at 9pm when they were going to give out tickets. I was the 3rd person in line. I pulled up a chair from Cold Stone Creamery and pulled out the cellphone. Across the street, they were setting up a lasertag course in the parking lot. It was free for anyone who wanted to play while they waited. I was wearing motorcycle boots and declined. My tennis ankles are precious.

I just sat and listened to the different people talking about games, playing online, reading books. Which is strange when you consider "gamers" encapsulates hard core geeks to frat jocks. Everyone was very admirable and friendly. I think the only person that got made fun of was trying to ask about reserving a Legendary edition of the game 20 minutes before it went on sale. He was wearing a Halo 3 shirt, which normally would indicate that he pre-ordered it months ago. Dumbass!

When they opened the doors for to hand out receipts and numbers for midnight, there were probably 100 people in line, stretched down the sidewalk. Cold Stone had come out and offered a few small, small cups of ice cream and some woman was selling the disgusting Halo 3 Mountain Dew in cans for $2, saying that it wasn't available around here (accept for every 7-11 and/or Sheetz). I saw a bunch of empty cans on the sidewalk later that night. She probably made a killing.

Once we got our tickets people started playing lasertag and I left to get some food. When I came back the parking lot was littered with drooling gamers for Halo 3. Around 11:30 people started congregating back at the store, waiting for the line to be formed. A police car made a round or two. Luckily, as far I as knew being one of the first people in line and out the door, there weren't any problems.

I also didn't sign up for the local tournaments that were going to be held via email. It was an interesting proposition that I was glad to see get a push around here. As far as I know, there aren't any local gaming clubs or teams in Harrisonburg. JMU maybe, but those are just glorified dorm suites.

I played Halo 3 with a friend until about 2:30am. The graphics aren't top notch, but there's too much going on in the game to be pretty and powerful. The voice acting is fantastic and all the non-player computer characters are back chiming in with "You kicked his ass!" type quotes and other such funny nonsense.

The online coop works great and sets up just like an online deathmatch in a hosted room. And it's so much nicer not having to restart if one of your teammates dies. Switching to a scored coop instead of the old checkpoint system was a great move on Bungie's part.

The difficulty of the game is about right too. We're playing on Heroic, the second hardest mode. Even the pawn-like Grunts have tactics in their A.I., though now it just seems to be "IF Brute leader dies, run like hell. Flail arms wildly."

So with just a couple of hours in on the campaign story alone, so far so good. This game is going to make Fall go by so fast...

Halo 3 Mountain Dew...

is the most vile stuff I've ever tasted. It may be because I can't stand artificial cherry flavors. Especially when it tastes like bad cough syrup.

I'm not sure I'll be buying a second bottle for my game room collection. I tend to only buy things that are good.

Maybe I'll have better luck at 7-11, where the Halo 3 collector slurpee cups can be filled with normal, good tasting Mt. Dew slurpee.

Crackdown for Halo 3 beta?

I'm thinking yes.

I just watched one of the preview trailers for Crackdown over at IGN. I think this game is what Superman Returns should have been, minus the flying of course.

But check it out for yourself and see if you think it's worth it to get into a crowded Halo Live beta.

Right now it's a tie between Crackdown and Lost Planet: Extreme Condition.