Recently, with all the love being lavished upon the Wii by the likes of Ed and Robin, I considered the possibility of requesting a Wii rather than an Xbox 360 (my birthday comes four days after Christmas, so these days I tend to just ask my parents for one big gift for both Christmas and birthday).
But I’m certain the 360 is the right system for me. It helped to check out the new Halo 3 television ad. Not only does the game look fantastic, but while watching the video I got the sort of excited sensation previously reserved for something like glimpses at early footage of The Fellowship of the Ring. I’m looking forward to Halo 3 with more anticipation than any movie (with the possible exception of Hellboy: The Golden Army), which just goes to show how much the videogame industry has stolen the thunder of the film industry for fans like me.
The 360 will also have the upcoming Hellboy game and will be the exclusive home of BioWare’s Mass Effect (and possibly Alan Wake, outside the PC). More importantly, many of my friends—including my cousin and lifelong gaming buddy Mike—have 360s, so I’ll finally be able to join them over Xbox Live. I’m looking forward to going through Gears of War in co-op mode with Mike, just as we did with Contra back in the days of the NES. While the Wii has a lot going for it (and there’s a chance DG may get one from her parents for Xmas), my allegiance—for this round of consoles—belongs to the 360.
Remember – you can be a Wii60 household for the price of a PS3. Hell – Microsoft’s Peter Moore suggested people do just that – buy both!!!
I’ll be a Wii60 household at some point in ’07. Guaranteed. So make sure you save some of the co-op jones’ for me too.
Regarding the Halo trailer – agreed on it being a great teaser – although I’m not sure you can glean much from the gameplay as it was mostly a mix of CGI and FMV – no actual gameplay glimpsed.
Regarding the Halo trailer – agreed on it being a great teaser – although I’m not sure you can glean much from the gameplay as it was mostly a mix of CGI and FMV – no actual gameplay glimpsed.
True, but since both the ATV and the bubble shield appear in the ad, I suspect they’ll both be in the game, too. It would be pretty cheap of Bungie (not to mention unlike them) to throw those in the ad and then not include them in the game.
One thing that ad really underscored is…
Hollywood is flat out crazy to not want this property!!!
Damn straight. It’s funny how much better written the story is than Hollywood productions like Doom. And I can’t think of any Hollywood flick that would have dared tell part of the story from the perspective of the bad guys a la Halo 2. Though admittedly, I think it was a bit of a cop-out by Bungie to use the “rebellion” angle, rather than having a level where the player, as the Arbiter, has to kill humans.
I remember when Halo 2 dropped… reading on various message boards nothing but ire from seething fanboys who were pissed that they had to play as the Arbiter and couldn’t be Master Chief the whole way through.
But that’s just frag dolls speaking.
Personally, I thought it was a genius move and a helluva’ plot twist (plus – it helps when you have someone as supremely badass as Keith David voicing your character).
Anyway, one of the best things about that is it really fleshed out the Covenant – making them more than just evil aliens. Master Chief had essentially destroyed their Mecca (or one of many Meccas) and that revelation suddenly cast the Covies in a more sympathetic light.
I’d guess that just like the E3 trailer that came before it, this one was also done entirely in the game engine. They don’t need to do CGI anymore. I’d also think they’ll have the shield grenade and that ATV — which was cut from Halo 2 — in the game, but we’ll see. These things could also get cut, just like footage you see in a movie trailer that doesn’t make the final cut.
I signed up for the Halo 3 beta test today. We’ll see if I’m lucky enough to get in.
You’d guess wrong. Straight from Bungie:
“The commercial is a mix of CG and live action,” reads Bungie.net on the new Halo 3 trailer, aired during Monday Night Football yesterday.
“It is not supposed to represent gameplay.”
They may not need to do CGI anymore (for cutscenes) but for a big budget MNF trailer, it’s for damned sure they’re gonna’ polish this thing up. As good as the 360 is, it cannot produce feature film quality CGI.
@Jason – Here’s one little perk to the Wii that you may not be aware of. It’s fully backwards compatible for Gamecube games. There’s even a hidden compartment that when opened sports 4 GC controller ports and two GC memory card ports (the Wii is completely Bluetooth wireless and has internal memory so it has no need for such devices).
Anyway, if DG does procure a Wii make sure you look me up as you will finally be able to play Resident Evil 4 on the system the game was designed for. As it was made for the GC (and later ported to PS2) it looks infinitely better on that system (and play tests of the game on the Wii says it looks a bit sharper on the new system for some reason).
Anyway – it’s worth playing that, the Resident Evil Gamecube-only remake and to a much lesser extent – Resident Evil Zero. All are good games but RE4 is in the top pantheon of greatest games of all time. It’s really something to experience. Especially if you are going to seek out RE5 at some point as that game is a direct sequel to 4.