Halo-Wars posts (Subscribe to this feed)

Just as expected, today marks the release of two new Games on Demand titles: Dead Rising and Halo Wars. Major Nelson reports each is currently available for download on your Xbox 360, with Capcom's virtual mall full of zombies setting gamers back a paltry $20, while Ensemble Studios' final game is a bit more costly at $30. Each will take up six gigglebytes of room on your HDD upon download.

Shortcut: Halo Wars on Games on Demand [Xbox.com]
Shortcut: Dead Rising on Games on Demand [Xbox.com]

Xbox.com has listed several new games as Platinum Hits, including Fable II (aka Game of the Year Edition), Halo Wars, Left 4 Dead, The Orange Box, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Ninja Gaiden II, Kung-Fu Panda, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, Sonic The Hedgehog, and Sonic Unleashed.

A Microsoft PR agent couldn't confirm the full list of new Platinum Hits (are we missing any above?), but said that if a game is listed as such on Xbox.com, it's a Platinum Hits title. The changes seem to have taken effect on major retailer sites, as GameStop and Amazon now reflect the discounted Platinum prices (if not always the the Platinum Hits branding), which range from $20–30.

With Orange Box requiring only one Jackson ($20), it's now literally a crime to not own it. Conversely, if you're dead-set on committing a crime, buy someone Sonic The Hedgehog or Sonic Unleashed at $20 each.

[Thanks, Stephen]

Halo Wars
Yeah, that's right, Halo Wars. I've already caught enough flak for putting this on my best-of list for 2009 (it's hard to even remember that it came out way back in February), but it deserves to be recognized ... so pay attention once your laughter has died down. Ensemble Studios (RIP) proved that you could bring a real-time strategy game to a console, and still make it enjoyable. Sure, you'll never have 1:1 parity mapping everything a full-sized keyboard offers onto a controller, but this game came close. It's a pity Ensemble closed, since we'll never see any expansion packs or a sequel. The good news is that, since it wasn't received with blaring trumpets and the sounds of cash registers ringing, you can pick this up for under 20 bucks for some good fun.

We always figured that the Scarab was a pretty hefty Halo Wars unit -- it is the very end of the Covenant tech tree, after all -- but apparently it needed a little extra juice. A new title update now available for the game grants Scarabs with 25 percent more health and 25 percent more damage. If you weren't terrified of them before, you might want to reconsider.

Other changes include Gremlins requiring two reactors to build, Grunts doing more damage to air units and more. The update also fixes some bugs including the cryo/reactor glitch, which sounds like it was pretty awful. See the full list of changes and fixes -- politely cribbed from HaloWars.com -- after the break.

[Thanks, Ben]

Bonfire Studios, the development house that emerged in the wake of the Ensemble Studios closure, has picked up another ex-colleague: Dave Pottinger, lead designer of Halo Wars. He rejoins his peers as the director of technology, assuming the same responsibilities he held before Ensemble was shut down. Bonfire Studios is currently working on several unannounced projects for 2010.

Pottinger has been with the company since its formative days back in 1996, and contributed to the development of Ensemble's key real-time strategy titles, from Age of Empires all the way up to the former studio's last game, Halo Wars.

"Bonfire is a team full of old friends that I am looking forward to working with again," Pottinger said. "I think we're going to blow people away once they see what we're doing."

With the Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update preview kicking off today, Microsoft dropped some more details on Halo Waypoint, the Dashboard playpen for the Master Chief enthusiasts among you. The preview video – found after the break – walks you through some of the destination's functionality, notably the "career system" which will track "in-game accomplishments across multiple Halo games." Unsurprisingly, that career will be limited to the Xbox 360-released Halo games: Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST, and "all Game Add-on content for those titles." Oh, you beat Halo 2 in under 30 minutes? We'll just have to take your word for it.

Halo Waypoint is being developed collaboratively by Microsoft's internal Halo studio, 343 Industries, and Certain Affinity, the Austin-based developer (with some former Bungie staffers) behind Age of Booty. Waypoint will be available November 5 for both Xbox Live Gold and Silver members; however, come November 26 those Silver members will have to pony up for Live if they want to keep their Waypoint access. That's a solid three weeks to determine if the exclusive Waypoint offerings – like the Nov. 7. preview of the "Halo Legends" anime anthology – are worth it. We imagine it will be for the hardcore Halo fan ... but we'd assume they've already got a Gold account.

Aside from releasing an RTS title in Halo Wars this year, concept art found on ex-Ensemble Studios artist Dylan Cole's website reveals yet another game that the studio was working on in the Halo universe. No name is given for the shots, though Cole calls the above image "Halo Universe City," which could mean a city from the world of Halo or a game named "Halo Universe."

He also mentions that the "concept paintings" were for "a project that was canceled," so you can bet we won't be seeing these beautiful vistas in game form anytime soon. We do know that the studio was at one time working on a Halo MMO that never saw the light of day -- maybe these shots have something to do with that? We've asked Dylan Cole for more information, but for now, check out the full gallery of concept art right here.

[Via HBO]

Update: This giveaway is now closed. Winners are being notified, so be sure to check your email including your junk mail.

The generous builders over at Mega Bloks were kind enough to send over a few cases of the company's recently launched Halo Wars brick collection. Seeing as we aren't the greedy types, we decided to share our Blok bounty by holding one of our famous Joyswag giveaways.

Up for grabs are five complete sets of the entire Halo Wars Mega Bloks collection. Those lucky enough to win will receive enough bricks to build a spectacular Halo display that could rival the legendary Halo 3 Believe diorama. If that level of awesome is achieved: pics or it didn't happen.

• Leave a comment telling us what your favorite vehicle is from the Halo universe.
  
• You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec)
  
• Limit 1 entry per person
  
• This entry period ends at 1:00PM ET on Thursday, August 20
  
• At that time, we'll randomly select five winners to receive a Halo Wars Mega Bloks bundle that includes: Aerial Ambush, UNSC Scorpion, UNSC Warthog, UNSC Hornet, UNSC Turret and Covenant Ghost ($129.94 ARV)
  
• For a list of complete rules, click here

There's enough fanfare in this trailer to make Michael Bay proud. Actually, make that a pre-CGI Michael Bay. Probably a film school-era Michael Bay. It has all the bombast and fanfare of a Michael Bay movie, just without all of the extremely fast intercutting and multiple explosions. We talked about Risk: Halo Wars back in January, and it's slowly but surely becoming a reality.

According to the game's website, it's due out in August 2009 -- which is right now, last time we checked the calendar. One word to the creators: give us a trailer showing some actual gameplay, and not just rotating views of the gamepieces and some concept art. Maybe you can even hire an aging celebrity to be in a commercial for the game, just like Milton Bradley did with Dark Tower back in the day.

Just a thought.

Hey guys, we've got some great news: Convincing girls in bars with bizarre priorities that you're the world's top Halo Wars player just got a heck of a lot easier. Shacknews reports that all of the game's leaderboards were wiped out by a glitch in Xbox Live and developer Robot Entertainment says that they may not ever be recovered.

To that one poor soul who actually was at the top, we can offer only this pat on the back, along with the assurance that even though it seems like this tragedy has made his hours of Halo Wars sacrifice meaningless, it's simply not so. ... No, they were meaningless way before that.

Always there with a friendly reminder, Major Nelson sends word that the Historic Battle Map Pack for Halo Wars is now available on Xbox Live Marketplace. The new content includes four new multiplayer maps: Barrens (1v1), Blood River (1v1), Memorial Basin (2v2) and Glacial Ravine (3v3). The DLC also adds four new Achievements worth a total of 100 points. If you need some new space to rock out with your tiny Spartan death squad, the Historic Battle Map Pack will run you 800 ($10). Check out some fresh images of each map in the gallery below.

Download the Historic Battle Map Pack to your Xbox 360

Gallery: Halo Wars Historic Battle Map Pack DLC

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Are your miniscule, impressionable Spartans developing powerful cases of wanderlust? Are they growing antsy and restless -- sure signs of boredom with their tired stomping (and shooting) grounds? You'll be able to whisk them off to new, yet-to-be-bloodstained areas soon enough -- on July 21, Microsoft is dropping four new maps and four new achievements for Halo Wars.

The "Historic Battles" map pack (which will cost 800) includes two 1v1 maps, a 2v2 map, a 3v3 map and four new achievements which tack 100 extra gamerpoints to the strategy title. We've got descriptions of each map and 'cheevo listed after the break for all you cautious consumers.

Robot has revealed specific details regarding the third title update for Halo Wars. Most of the changes being implemented are for the sake of balancing the game, and there are also a handful of bug and exploit fixes. It looks like the effectiveness of the Gauss Warthog will see a reduction, with the unit doing less damage to tanks and receiving more damage from grenades. The Warthog will also take three seconds longer to build (25 seconds). Anders has also seen her research speed bonus reduced from 50 percent to 25 percent.

There are a smattering of other changes, the most significant perhaps being that stockpiled units in a locked-down base will now release much faster when the base is unlocked. Very good news for anyone that has seen their stockpiled units killed one by one as they emerge from an unlocked base.

Check out all the changes after the break.

For all you negative Nancys out there who just couldn't believe it when we told you that Halo Wars itself had revealed some upcoming maps, here's some more proof for you. New achievements have popped up on the Xbox.com Halo Wars page in the UK, and they reveal -- wait for it -- new maps. The names of the maps just so happen to be the very same names we discovered back in May: Barrens, Blood River and Memorial Basin.

If you still aren't convinced that new map DLC is on the way, you'll just have to wait for the official announcement. The rest of us will just sit here and act smug for a while.

[Thanks, Richard]