Xmas!

You know, I´m not the kind of guy who goes around shouting "Merry Christmas!" and actually believing in it. But I do believe in sympathy, kindness and lots of nice and delicious food. Besides, this is Internet, a world were you can be whoever you want to be. For a moment, I´ll be the "Merry Christmas" type, so allow me to wish you all a Merry Christmas, a hell of a lot of happiness and a nice start for this 2010.

I might or might not update before next year. But we´ll be having another nice "Halo LAN Party" for New Year´s Eve, so I´ll definitely update after that magical event ^-^

Now, the card

It wasn´t made by me, thanks to Bungie. All of you be good Santas and treat the grunts nicely!

Sadie Story

Hi there, so here I am again. Not as regular as Id like, but it could be worse. Couldn´t it?

////The Meta-Game
Anyway I completed the meta-game Sadie´s Story in ODST. And that´s what made me come here today. Its great. The "game" itself is not much. You´ll basically come across signals from The Superintendent while playing in Mombasa Streets as The Rookie. The signals vary from police car´s sirens and digital ads suddenly turning into arrows pointing a direction to ticket machines venting cash non-stop.

Sadie Endesha, the main character

Finding the clues using these signals its great and intuitive, you feel like you´re being directed by the city itself (Thanks, Vergil ^-^). Once found, a clue would be only a bit of audio with some images. I told ya, that´s not much. But those bits of audio tell the story of Sadie, a young girl from New Mombasa, and they do so from her in-universe perspective. For Halo fanatics like me having audio bits of Mombasa´s daily life and the Covenant´s assault from the civilian´s perspective is very interesting. Add that the story is well told, well connected and displayed as one of those old-school radio novels and its just too sweet for me to not go after each little clue as a hungry hound.

There were 30, and boy, one or two of them were really hidden. Were not for lil´s Superintendent help I would have never found them. The last one was specially diferent, and especially dramatic.

////It was a G-R-E-A-T Idea
Including optional information about the game universe in any game is something Dev´s should do more often. Bungie tried it a bit with Halo 3´s Terminals. Its a great way to expand the game universe while not anoying players with endless cinematics or tons of text they can´t skip. Of course if you like the game and the story, you´ll want to see what those bits have to offer. But if you´re the kind of (idiot) player who only wants to shoot at stuff with his laz00r you won´t search for them, and you wont spam the dev´s mail with tons of "your game rulz but to much cutzcenes!!!!" so, this way, everybody is happy. The story-loving fans and the gameplay-only dudes

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Sierra K-042 out!!

Updating, again!

I haven´t stepped into darkness and seclusion yet, so here I am again to offer you some not-so-fresh but juicy news.

ODST Legnd
First, I completed Halo ODST on Legendary. Man, what a night. Some points where I tought "this is gonna be hell" were easy as pie. But others that looked easy were... hell. But I must admit it wasn´t so hard, compared to what I feared (Noob Combo FTW). So finally I can play as Dare!!

Not only that I like seeing chicks killing dozens of Covies, but also I love her Recon Armor.

The Fall of Reach:
A trailer of the upcoming Halo: Reach bungie title has been on the net for quite a few days now. So if you haven´t seen it, now its your time to do so.



Seems nice, huh? Well, maybe it isn´t as epic as the ones we were used to regarding Halo (although you have to admit that the Covenant Cruiser looks pretty epic and... scary) we just see a Spartan squad with presumably MJOLNIR Mark IV armor and a new addition to the squad. A lone survivor of "Pegasi" which, we pressume, its also a Spartan.

First, the speculation!
This is my blog, and I love to speculate regarding the Halo Universe. And about Reach and the trailer, there´s plenty to think about. We have a Spartan team, nicknamed "Noble". We´ll, the main Spartan force was commanded by Frederick, the Blue Leader. And descended on a Pelican to protect the MAC Stations generators, which were on the surface of the planet and also were very vulnerable to Covenant ground units. (Read Halo: The Fall of Reach and Halo: First Strike to know more) So what´s with this team? Are they even Spartan-II? I guess so, but I can only guess.

Regarding the Lone survivor of Pegasi. He may come from Pegasi Delta, a small planet were the Covenant held a colony and a refuelling station. 300 Spartan-III were sent to assault the colony in Operation TORPEDO. Only two survived: Tom B-292 and Lucy B-091. So if our lonewolf is a survivor from Pegasi, he/she must be either Tom or Lucy. Or he/she might even be another Spartan-III survivor, you know, when everything goes to hell in a military operation its hard to tell how many of your friends are dead, mortally wounded or just MIA

But of course, Pegasi might mean anything else and non-related. Thats the sad part of speculation

Onto the trailer itself:
Look at that graphics, aren´t they great for a CGI trailer? Think again, because Bungie stated they were INGAME Graphics. Wow, thats just amazing, isn´t it? I can´t wait to see the finished product. Oh, and the Elites are back......


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Sierra K-042 Out

Long time no see!!

Well, Sierra Kilo 042 seems to be back (again). I know I have promised it before, but this time I´ll try harder, just like in Legendary Campaing. Its been nearly two months since the last update. Many things have happened. My juvenile lust for Halo 3: ODST has changed to a mature, sweet and pure love shared only by the other Halo games. Of course you don´t care about my personal life and if you do care, I ain´t gonna tell you anything, so go away, you stalker.

My Halo Legendary Campaing quest has been stopped, but only because first I wanna finish ODST in the same difficulty. For two main reasons: One, I wanna play Firefight with Dare. And two, after surviving the hordes of angry Covenant troops as an ODST I think playing as a walking tank Spartan-II its gonna feel easier. Indeed, I have already tried playing Halo3 after ODST and I feel the difference.

////Waypoint??
On other news I´ve already seen Halo Waypoint and, 343 Industries, I must say I´m utterly dissapointed. Halo Waypoint don´t feels like a "place of meeting for all Halo fans" nah, it looks and surely I´m afraid it is just a place for Achievement hunters and an excuse to milk the Halo franchise. Frankie, what have you done?

Okay, I´m being a bit to harsh here. Truth is Halo Waypoint its a nice download. After that, you enter, and if you´re not Live Gold, you´re out. I used my last 48 hours Gold time to try Halo Waypoint (and to enter Matchmaking for two sweet days, of course) Your Halo achievements are evaluated and you recibe a rank an a few presents. Those are objects for your 3D avatar. Then you have interviews, and a few articles about the Halo franchise, both in-game and in-universe.
But IMHO none of them have the depth and quality of those you´ll see in other fansites (The Halopedia for example)

Halo Waypoint, right now, fails to be a place of meeting for Halo fans. Forums, fanpages and other places in the net are much more "must visit" places than Waypoint. I do hope that this is because Waypoint its still a newborn place, and as time goes on more articles of better quality and depth are added. But I might be dissapointed again, because perhaps Halo waypoint its just gonna be full of trailers, offers of merchandise and low-quality articles about the Halo universe

////You gotta love Bungie
Nah, I´m not saying it because I want them to link my site, I´m talking about pure and true love, just like with Halo. They are great developers, but the most important thing for me, is that they take good care of their own fans: the mighty Seventh Column.

In Bungie.net they feed us all with tons of contents, from the Bungie blog full of funny videos and community news to the Bungie Weekly update (once a week, each friday) and articles. The articles usually give inside looks to the studio or how they work and, the reason to write this, some technical articles about the games explained in layman terms.

Recently I read through "A certain sense of movement" which explains how animations were done for Halo 3. No, don´t expect a paper or a lot of details, that would require tons and tons of text, and surely programming knowledge from the reader

Right now, I´m gonna read "Deconstructing construct" and we´ll see what Bungie has to offer to satisfy my Grunty Thirst.

////
So that´s it for now, a pretty big update after months, and the promise to try to update this more often. Also I´ll try to change it a bit, not only for you, dear and scarce readers, but for myself, to see if changing the layout and adding things my desire to stay along increases to decent ammounts

Sierra Kilo Zero-Four- Two out