Firefight Tips Round 2

Time for some more awesome Firefight tips. Read these and take them to heart, or get berated by me in-game. Remember that Firefight is designed to be resource scarce, so if you're a jackhole with the resources, you are directly affecting your teammates.

Understanding supply drops. When you hear the announcer say "Five enemies remaining," that means your team is about to finish a round. There are three rounds per set, and five waves per round. At the end of every round, every player's health and stamina is automatically restored, weapon lockers are filled up, detached turrets are restored, and health packs are replenished. Additionally, all the alien weapons dropped around the map are cleared out for the new round. THIS IS IMPORTANT. When you hear the announcement that there are only five enemies remaining, DO NOT KILL THEM RIGHT AWAY. Fill up on ammo and grab any weapons lying around that you're going to need. When in doubt, check your HUD for the Wave indicator. All five bars need to be filled up to finish a round.

Use health packs sparingly. Each level should start with four health packs. Those health packs have to last all five waves of a round. Remember that your stamina recharges if you stop taking fire, so when your screen turns red, just go hide for a while. It is absolutely inexcusable to use a health pack to restore stamina. Your health (represented by the long horizontal bar below your compass) does not recharge, and it will start to deteriorate if you use up all your stamina and keep taking damage. However, aside from a somewhat annoying beeping, you are in no danger of dying if your health is low, but you let your stamina recharge. In general, it's also a bad idea to use a health pack just to stop the beeping. When should you use a health pack?

1. To keep a streak alive. You get more points the longer kill streak you have. If you're on a long streak and your health is really low, it's not a bad idea to use a health pack.
2. When black eye is on. With the black eye skull on (usually in wave 3), you can only recharge your stamina by melee'ing opponents. This is often a difficult risk-reward proposition, especially when facing drones. If the black eye skull is on, it may be OK to use a health pack. Also, you're halfway through the round at this point, so more health is coming soon.
3. When you're the last man standing. If you're the last one alive, you have to make it to the next wave to bring your teammates back in. In this situation, you should do whatever it takes to stay alive.

Remember: The health packs only respawn after five full waves in each round.

Use ammo wisely. Refer to the previous post with tips about how to take out enemies efficiently. If you empty a rocket launcher on a Brute Chieftain and don't kill him because you could have just hit him on the back of the head without using any ammo, you are hurting your team when you need those rockets for a Wraith or Hunter later on. The tips in that previous post all still apply. Here are some new ones:

• Engineers: One overcharged plasma pistol shot will kill them. You won't see them die instantly, but they will float up and explode within a few moments. Watch out for exploding debris. When the Mythic skull is on, it may take two shots. Engineers should be your #1 priority when you see them because they make all other enemies much harder to kill. Drone leaders, Hunters, and even Brutes become effectively impossible to kill with bullet-based weapons.
• Brute Chieftains: To add on the previous post...Chieftains may carry hammers OR fuel rod cannons. Both variants of Chieftains are immune to the n00b combo (overcharged plasma + head shot) and can sustain MASSIVE damage before dying. Both variants will charge at you in close quarters, however, which allows you to sidestep and hit them on the back of the head for a one-punch, no-ammo kill. There is quite literally no reason to use any ammo AT ALL on Chieftains. Get in close, be quick with your stick, and bop them.
• Banshees: Banshees make an appearance on Windward. The best way to kill them is with a MOUNTED missile pod. There's really no good reason to detach these missile pods on Windward, leaving them attached gives you unlimited ammo so that you can just unload on the Banshees. The Banshees are not required kills to finish a wave, but are a nuisance that should be dealt with.

Learn the spawns. If you understand where the enemies are coming from, you can often wipe them out extremely efficiently. It's typically pretty obvious because enemies will generally come out of "monster doors" or drop down from Phantoms. In both cases, they're start in a tight cluster and can be quickly dispatched with grenade spamming, fuel rods, rockets, or hammers for huge points and medals. As an example, on Windward the Phantoms will often drop off big groups on the landing pads downstairs. Because there's nowhere for the enemies to go but up a very narrow walkway, it only takes one player at the doorway to take out the entire wave. Hello, Killionaire!

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. H3 ODST.

We got a bunch of votes to go into H3 Big Team matchmaking with the big party, so that's what we'll focus on this week. I'll save the achievement whoring for another time unless I get requests for it.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. ODST

We'll be playing ODST tonight. Leave a comment here if you have an opinion about what to play within that general category. Your options are:

1. Clan-only matchmaking (like last week): This is the Halo 3 engine but with the new maps. Party chat enabled for parties of 8 or less. Makes boosting for achievements much easier.
2. Open matchmaking: Uses the Halo 3 engine, means we can go into 8v8 Big Team Battle.
3. Small co-op teams: Break out into groups of 3 or 4 for Firefight or Campaign. Lots of achievements available here as well.

Votes here will greatly influence what we play tonight.

ODST Update

For those that haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, buy.com just dropped their price on Halo 3: ODST to $53.99 with free shipping.

A tip for all your working your way through the Campaign: The campaign missions do not have linear memory. What I mean by that is that if you go back and replay a mission somewhere in the beginning or middle of the game, you will LOSE ALL OF YOUR PROGRESS when you return to the mission you left off on. There are six sub-story lines to check off in your objectives. If you go back to replay a mission earlier than your current progress, it will clear your progress on all of those sub-story lines and you will have to do them over again. The final mission will not be available until all six are checked off at the same time.

Solo and co-op campaign progress is tracked separately, so you can replay solo missions without clearing your co-op progress.

ODST Firefight Tips

36 hours after launch, I now have a better feel for Firefight and can provide some tips and tricks. First and foremost is how the mode is structured. The game sends enemies in groups: 5 waves per round, 3 rounds per set, and as many sets as you can survive. The picture on the left shows how the HUD displays your progress. Note that the game will go on forever until you spend all your lives...which is a LONG time on Easy. For some reason, we had a game on Crater end after 3 sets, but that may been a network glitch.

• There are achievements on each level for reaching 200,000 points, so that may be motivation to keep playing that far
• The bonus round after each set lasts 60 seconds, consists only of grunts with all skulls on, deaths do not count against your score, and lives are awarded every 2000 points. One death by anybody ends the round early.
• Some enemies do not have to be killed to finish a round. So far, snipers and Wraiths fall into this category. It's a good idea to take care of them anyway because they're really annoying, but not required to make progress.
  
• Brute Chieftains (gold with hammer): Bait them into charging you in close quarters, sidestep the charge, and hit them on the back of the head.
• All other Brutes: Hit them with an overcharged plasma blast, followed by a headshot. If you don't have a plasma pistol, you need to get their armor off to expose their head to kill them efficiently.
• Hunters: Hit them with bullets in the orange fleshy area on their back. Punching is ineffective.
• Grunts: All can be killed with single headshots. Most can be killed with a single melee unless the harder skulls are on.
• Jackals: Shoot through the notch in their shield to stun them, and then finish with a single headshot.
• Drones: A mounted chaingun that is protected in the back by teammates is the most cost effective way to deal with drones. Otherwise they suck up all your ammo for poor return in points and health.
• Wraith: Beware the Brute in the turret. One way to kill a Wraith is with an overcharged plasma shot and then boarding to kill with a grenade. An alternative is to hit the weak spot on the very back of the tank.

I will be on most, if not all, nights this week after 10pm PT to play campaign and Firefight. Be on by 10pm if you'd like to join in, otherwise you'll probably have to wait for us to reach a stopping point to join in.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. H3: ODST

FishBone10 and Beer4Porter helped me to break in H3: ODST's new Firefight mode right after the midnight launch. And it is FUN! Even though I scored over half of our team's points, I do have to recommend their generous assistance in my "Invincible" medal (kill 100 enemies without dying). Some housekeeping items:

• Insert your Campaign disc for Campaign, Firefight, and to customize your character for ODST
  
• Under Settings/Appearance, change your EMBLEM to your H3 number.
• In the same area, change your SERVICE TAG to something related to your gamertag.

If 4 or less folks show up, I'll kick off the first games in Firefight on the Campaign disc. Once we have more than 4, I'll move us into custom games on the Multiplayer disc. In >4 player multiplayer, we'll run custom games on the brand new Mythic maps (Heretic, Citadel and Longshore).

Below are the assigned emblems (carried from H3) and some recommended service tags. Your service tag is what people see above your head as you run around the map. Since we have 4 characters to work with now, you should pick something that will quickly remind people of your gamertag and who you are.

• gtdroptop: " GT ", 0
• BeerMonkeee: "BMNK", 1
• TimMAY 1023: "TIMA", 2
• CoolerSopranos2: "CULR", 3
• OmniscientDeath: "OMNI", 4
• FragginURdoodz: "DOOD", 5
• FishBone10: "FISH", 5
• Beer4Porter: "PORT", 6
• Masher24: "MASH", 7
• Spix: "SPIX", 7
• BeefierBen: "BEEF", 8
• MEAN MR MONKEY: "MR M", 8
• Mean Mrs Monkey: "MRSM", 7
• darknorpo: "NORP", 9
• Dawill0: "WILO", 5
• Octurian Poon: "POON", 7

If you're not listed and need help, let me know.

H3: ODST Midnight Tonight

ODST drops at midnight tonight at selected retailers. I will be on tonight for some Firefight and to try out the new multiplayer maps. Clan night tomorrow night will be H3: ODST.

H3: ODST ViDoc Terra Incognita

A new ViDoc has been posted showing off more details of the environment, visor mode, and the health system. An interesting watch.

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Halo 3.

Starting a little later this week. H3 doesn't take as much time to play and be done with.

Halo 3: ODST More Details

As most folks are aware, Halo 3: ODST releases in less than two weeks on September 22, 2009. This will be our next clan game and will replace Left 4 Dead in mainstream play. I will be starting the game right after the game is released at midnight, leave a comment here if you'd like to join in on the late night gaming session. Here's some more reasons why you should go out and get ODST:

• Multiplayer maps: The ODST versus experience is just an extension to the current Halo 3 matchmaking. There isn't a new system, just three new maps that ship with the game. However, ODST does include all the H3 maps previously released for a total of 24 maps. Therefore, if you didn't purchase the Mythic or Legendary map packs and have been unable to play some of the playlists in matchmaking that require them, you will be able to try them all with the launch of ODST.
• Halo Reach Beta: All copies of ODST will provide access to the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta when the beta goes live. As with the H3 multiplayer beta, I would expect this to be a highly coveted invitation.
• Firefight: Players (including myself) have been asking for a way to play a non-campaign co-op mode with their friends against the A.I. ODST delivers on this feature with Firefight, a cooperative multiplayer mode included on the campaign disc that lets up to four people jump into combat. As an ODST squad, you will face increasingly challenging waves of enemies together, striving to earn the highest scores possible, while various Skulls are progressively activated. The reviews suggest this is a more structured approach of increasing difficulty than L4D's Survival mode which just keeps increasing the number of zombies and lowering their spawn time until you die. It does seem possible to reach the end of a round in ODST where a "Bonus" round is unlocked.
  

Clan nigh tonight. 8:30pm PT. Halo 3.

Getting everybody ready for H3: ODST.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Halo 3.

The Mean Monkeys lost their 360 to the RRoD this week. Because they are the most consistent regulars on clan night, we're going to play H3 tonight instead. I want to play campaign in anticipation of H3: ODST, BeerMonkeee wants to wallow in the matchmaking pool. We're looking for a tiebreaker.

Top Ten Ways To Tell You’re an Older Gamer

Reposted from Hawty McBloggy. I didn't find this all that funny, but maybe that's just because the truth hurts.

• Not only do you insist on watching every single cutscene instead of fervently mashing all the buttons in a hurried attempt to skip them, you instantly yell at and silence anybody who has the audacity to speak during one.

• Fully completing a game requires several playing sessions since you can only log an hour or two at a time due to having to wake up early the next morning for work. Or kids. Or meetings. Or other stuff you don’t want to do.

• Your video game time is almost always scheduled days in advance with reminders penciled in on your calendar. But that’s only if you are lucky enough to acquire your significant other’s permission. And they don’t give you a guilt trip the day of.

• You purchase your favorite video game’s soundtrack and listen to it during your commute, playing through your favorite levels in your head, in order to make up for your lack of actual playing time.

• You no longer pick up video games at midnight launches because you know you will be too tired to actually play it that night. Instead you opt to get it the following morning so you can keep your eyes open long enough to get it in the disc tray.

• You belong to an adult-only gaming community because you’re sick and tired of getting repeatedly humiliated by teenagers less than half your age who only beat you because they still have their lightning fast reflexes intact.

• Half of your vacations involve going to major gaming conventions. The other half are whatever your significant other selected because that’s what you had to agree to in order to go on the other ones.

• You always read the instructions before starting a game, often times spending several minutes studying the control scheme while simultaneously muttering under your breath about how much easier it was back in the days of joysticks and solitary fire buttons. Then you carefully tuck them back in the case because you know you will need a refresher the next time you play.

• You stick to puzzle and sim games when playing in the evening because you find shooters to be too stimulating in the pm hours.

• After immediately turning off any and all music in the options menu, you create your own custom tracklist for titles like Madden that feature modern tunes. Thankfully you realize the music coming out these days is nothing short of a travesty. You hold onto hope that the video game industry will pick up on that eventually too.

No clan night this week

Outside conflict for many of us. Rest your thumbs this week.

H3: ODST in the Bay Area 8/25-26

Microsoft, Bungie and Gamestop have just announced that they will be doing a promotional tour to show off H3: ODST before the official launch date. They will be here in the Bay Area on August 25 and 26. I'm almost tempted to go, but am annoyed that the "San Jose" location is actually in Antioch, almost 80 miles from San Jose. The San Francisco location is actually close to San Jose than the "San Jose" location. wtf. Of course, the San Francisco location also isn't actually in SF. It's in Union City, which is probably the better of the two. Leave a comment here if you want to go check it out!

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

What a clan night last week with a full 4v4 versus game! Good times.

L4D DLC in September

Valve is releasing a DLC pack next month for L4D that includes new campaign content, as well as a new "Crash" multi-player mode. Though it will be free on the PC, it will be 560 points on Xbox Live (around $7 US). With H3: ODST dropping on September 22 and L4D2 coming out in November, I don't see any reason why somebody would go and buy this, but interesting tidbit nonetheless.

Thx OmniscientDeath for the tip.

Clan nighit tonight. 9pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Note that I'm scheduling for an hour later than normal this week.

Xbox Live is pushing a system-wide update to all consoles today. Among the dozens of new features, it includes the ability to purchase full Xbox 360 games on-demand through XBL, access the entire Netflix on-line library on demand (not just the movies in your Instant Queue), watch Netflix movies together in a party, and an improved party system that automatically reconnects people that get dropped.

There is a download involved, so depending on your connection speed, it may take some time to update. Give yourself at least 15 minutes for the update, so take the extra hour before clan night this week to update your Xbox.

H3: ODST Gameplay Trailer

I was playing around with the new Xbox Dashboard and watching some of the H3: ODST videos. I highly recommend checking out the gameplay trailer below. ODST is beautiful. The covies aside, it looks almost nothing like previous Halo games. The HUD is obviously different, but everything is shiny! I'm actually excited to see the game now!

Video Games | Halo 3: ODST | E3 09: Gameplay Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Guitar Hero Expert + 2 Rubiks Cubes

Takes too much free time to an impossibly higher level.

Cal State Student Arrested for Modifying Console

Most people know that you can chip your Xbox for various reasons, but mainly for playing copied games. NBC reported today that a student was arrested for his modding operation.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/Cal-State-Student-Faces-10-Year-Prison-Term-for-Playing-with-Video-Games-52386872.html

Best Strategy Game 2009

http://g4tv.com/gphoria2009/index.html?cat=76

Halo Wars wins G4TV's aware for Best Strategy game this year. w00t! I agree, because I got promoted to Major, lolz.

ODST for $50

buy.com is offering Halo 3: ODST for $49.99 with free shipping and the Sgt. Johnson pre-order bonus. That's $10 off the normal price!

http://www.buy.com/prod/halo-3-odst/q/loc/108/210790856.html

L4D on XBL

Left 4 Dead is just barely hanging in the top 10 list of XBL titles. Good thing we've got a new game to play coming out next month!

LIVE Activity for week of July 27th

Xbox 360 Top LIVE Titles (based on UU’s)

1 Halo 3
2 Call of Duty 4
3 Call of Duty: WaW
4 Gears of War 2
5 GTA IV
6 Battlefield 1943
7 Marvel vs. Capcom 2
8 1 vs 100
9 FIFA 09
10 Left 4 Dead

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

1 Marvel vs. Capcom 2
2 Battlefield 1943
3 Splosion Man
4 Castle Crashers
5 The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition
6 Worms 2: Armageddon
7 Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers
8 UNO
9 Teeage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Classic Arcade
10 Hasbro Family Game Night **

The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.
**Combined sales of all Hasbro Family Game Night titles

Original Xbox Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)

1 Halo 2
2 Star Wars: Battlfrnt 2
3 Counter-Strike
4 Fable
5 Splinter Cell Chaos
6 Conker: Live Reloaded
7 Doom 3
8 Star Wars: Battlefront
9 SW: Republic Commando
10 SW: KOTOR

Top Community Games (Full Versions purchased)

1 RC-AirSim
2 Fireworks HD
3 myFishtank
4 Kodu Game Lab
5 Gamerbots:Third-Robot Shooting
6 A Perfect Massage
7 Physics Sandbox
8 3D Magic Images
9 Cyborg Mice Arena
10 A Morons Challenge

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Last week we had just about the entire clan on at one point or another. Get on early, and plan to stick around for a couple hours. It's way hella funz when we have two good versus teams going.

10 Years of Halo

Bungie posted a pretty neat retrospective of the last 10 years of Halo, including the very first time it was shown at MacWorld.

Halo, Ten Years – WMV 720P Version [341MB]
Halo, Ten Years – WMV 360P Version [56 MB]

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

On the menu for dinner tonight: delicious brains.

Halo Legends Anime Miniseries

A renowned set of storytellers from some of the world’s leading anime studios in Japan are about to take one of the most iconic franchises in science fiction and video games to a new level. Microsoft Corp., in collaboration with some of the most acclaimed anime creators, today unveiled a new project called “Halo Legends,” which will bring the “Halo” franchise and its sweeping sci-fi saga to an entirely new medium, in the form of several original anime short films.

More details at Hawty McBloggy.

Halo 3: ODST Pre-Order Details

Now that it is only 2 months away, I can confirm that Halo 3: ODST will be our next clan game. This doesn't preclude us from playing Left 4 Dead 2 as well, but it does come out first so we'll be playing it first. The launch date is slated for September 22, 2009. Here are some of the pre-order offers from various retailers:

GameStop

• Usually offers midnight pickup at local stores
• Can order on-line and pickup in-store
  
• Invitation for Halo: Reach multiplayer beta
• Code to unlock Sgt. Johnson in Firefight mode - available with pickup if purchased in-store
• Collector pack edition available with laser-etched controller (pictured)
  

Amazon

• Free standard shipping
  
• Release-date delivery available
• Code to unlock Sgt. Johnson in Firefight mode - e-mailed 10 business days after game release
  

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

I'm thinking maybe some Survival on Drains or Boathouse.

Xbox Live Update Preview Program

Just like for the NXE that came out last year, Microsoft is offering another opportunity to beta test their next Xbox Live update. Go to the Sign Up Survey if you want a chance to participate.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

You know the drill.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

My theater is the last thing I'm packing before we move this week, just so that I can still host clan night. Show up for delicious brains.

Bungie vs The World

Tomorrow is 7/7, also known as "Bungie Day." For those of you who are still playing Halo 3, you can download the custom maps and join in on the "Bungie vs The World Playlist" tomorrow. The playlist will be active for 24 hours and gives you an opportunity to earn Recon armor. All you have to do is find a game with 4 Bungie employees with flaming helmets and beat them.

More details here:

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BWU070309

There's like 40 custom maps to download. It is also clan night. If enough people reply here and can commit to having the custom maps downloaded before 8pm, I will make H3 our game for tomorrow instead of the regular L4D.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Leave a comment here if you have a specific campaign you would like to play.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

After last week's let down with Xbox Live being broken, I'm expecting tons of folks logging on this week with fervid anticipation. As usual, first come, first served. Will try my best to accommodate everyone.

Clan night canceled

Xbox Live is still down, clan night is canceled for this week. Sorry for the inconvenience. Take this opportunity to play some campaign on your own and get intimate with the maps.

Clan night postponed to 9pm PT

Xbox Live is currently still down. Will try to start L4D again at 9pm PT. Thanks for your patience.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Clan night as usual tonight, first come, first served. As a reminder, Xbox Live is supposed to be undergoing maintenance today and I don't know when it will be back up. If it's down at 8pm PT, I'll try again once more at 9pm PT.

Xbox Live Downtime

On Tuesday, June 16th from 7:01AM UTC (12:01 AM PST) for up to 24 hours, Xbox Live will be offline for maintenance. As a result, Xbox LIVE and the ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com will be unavailable, and the Xbox forums will be in read only mode (you won’t be able to post.) This service maintenance is to prepare for some of the recently announced features that will be available later this year.

This could potentially interfere with clan night, but we won't know until then. For now, keep planning on clan night next Tuesday.

First Come, First Served

Just a gentle reminder that clan night operates on a first come, first served basis. Both the Xbox Live party and the L4D game have a party size limit of 8, so the first 8 players logged in get to play. This also means that if we are full, I can not add you into the party to discuss why you are late and what to do about it. And if we are in the middle of a campaign, I also will not stop the game to answer your messages or chat requests. Sending me a chat request every 5 minutes will not get me to respond to it either. As players drop, I will add players waiting in the order that they got in the queue. If there is more than 1 player waiting, I may pause the game to connect them in a Survivor lobby on their own, but don't count on it.

To date, there have never been 8 players all on right at 8pm. So if you want to play, it is in your best interest to show up on time.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Wishing a very happy birthday to MEAN MR MONKEY tonight. Hopefully he gets some delicious brains to go with his Kindle and birthday cake. Word.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Who will win tonight? The Zombies? Or the food?

Left 4 Dead 2 : November 17, 2009

L4D2 has been announced with a slated released date of November 17. It comes with new melee options like the chainsaw, frying pan, axe, baseball bat, and additional blunt-force objects. Valve has also detailed the new AI Director 2.0, which will not only affect how many of the undead you'll be tackling at any given time, but will also dictate weather effects, world objects, and pathways provided to the players.

Facebook and Twitter Coming to XBL

Submitted by OmniscientDeath:

Facebook and Twitter will be coming to the Xbox Live service. Microsoft's press event included short demonstrations of what are effectively Facebook and Twitter clients for the gaming console, aesthetically adapted to the Xbox Live interface. Facebook Connect standard--which was rolled out first to Web developers, and then to iPhone developers--is coming to the Xbox this fall. This means that players will be able to log in with their Facebook accounts and broadcast their gaming activities on their social-network profiles.

H3 ODST: September 22, 2009

Just announced at E3 - Halo 3: ODST will be released to the public on September 22, 2009. Mark your calendars now! Additionally, buying H3 ODST will invite you into the just announced Halo Reach, which sounds like the next big title in the Halo franchise.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Braaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns.

Plants vs Zombies

In somewhat of a departure from our usual programming, I wanted to point out a cool PC game that's out now. A friend of mine works at PopCap as a developer and hooked me up as a Beta tester for the latest game he's been working on. It's a fairly straightforward idea where you buy plants to kill zombies (of course, right?) but the game is ridiculously deep. The single player campaign is probably worth 40 hours of gameplay, but then there's a ton more game modes to keep the fun going. It's surprisingly addicting, and easily my favorite activity during boring conference calls at work. Totally pwns Minesweeper. You can buy it at GameStop or download the free trial directly.

Good Times

Thanks to everyone who logged in for clan night tonight. Was an awesome reminder of just how fun Left 4 Dead can be. There's a lot of play left in the game with the new Survival Mode and the two new Multi-Player maps that are still new to most everyone. Please keep me honest in balancing teams, as it can become unbalanced pretty quickly. If you're feeling picked on, speak up and I'll try my best to equalize things.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

The first clan night blog post with e-mail push enabled. Nobody should have a technological reason not to show up.

Halo Wars Title Update

The Halo Wars title update should be out in the wild in the next day or two.   Here is what's coming:

General

• Flaming Warthog and Honor Guard Wraith skins now available in multiplayer to players who have those skulls.
• The option to show Unit Hit Point bars above units is now available.

Balance

• The number of points to reach all ranks has been reduced. General now requires 2.4 million, down from 3.2 million, and other ranks have been reduced accordingly.
• The max number of points you can get in a single match has been capped.
• The Prophet of Regret’s land speed is now reduced to match other leaders.
• Vampire Tech Upgrades now increase damage done by 15% in addition to their other effects.
• Anders Cryo Bomb Upgrades now cost 50% more supplies.
• Anders Hawk Upgrade now costs 50% more supplies.

Bug Fixes

• Multiplayer Matchmaking and Connection improvements have been put in. Players should find that their 2v2 and 3v3 teams no longer split up.
• 'Ready for the Sequel' Achievement should now be rewarded properly.
• Units on Exile and Crevice should find it easier to traverse the map.

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

The new maps and Survival mode are super duper fun. Get your butts on-line! OmniscientDeath will be hosting games this week, look for his party on-line. If he's not in your friends list, you can either add him manually, or find him in my friends list.

Xbox Live Activity

With last week's XBL activity update, Halo Wars has now dropped out of the top 10 list. This is the final nail in the coffin for Halo Wars, officially removing it from clan night consideration. OmniscientDeath, BeerMonkeee and I are still playing it pretty regularly, but I definitely could not tell anybody to go out and spend $60 on this game when you could just borrow it from us later. Left 4 Dead continues to be strong in the #7 spot and will continue to our primary clan game for the near future. Survival Mode has been a lot of fun on the weeks with only a few players, and Versus mode should be tons of fun on the new maps. Halo 3 and Halo 2 continue to reign at #1 on top of the overall and orignal Xbox lists. If folks are interested in trying either one for a clan night or two, I am happy to consider it, just leave a comment here.

Braaaaaiiiinnnsssss

There's not going to be clan night on Tuesday due to a Cinqo de Mayo poker conflict locally. But I'll probably be on XBL tonight starting around 8pm PT if folks would like to play some zombies. Leave a comment below if you're interested.

XBL Activity

DLC really drives Xbox Live activity. The Mythic Map pack DLC pushed Halo 3 back on top of the lists, above the two Call of Duty games. And the Survival pack DLC bumped Left 4 Dead all the way up into the #5 spot last week. Halo Wars clings to the top 10 in the #10 spot.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Be sure that you have downloaded the free Survival DLC pack before you play tonight (preferably before 8pm). It's relatively small at 101MB, so shouldn't take that long. And because I've linked it here, you have no excuse for not having it ready, since you can send it to your Xbox remotely.

Also, I'll have to drop at 10pm, which typically means clan night ends. So get on early so that you can get your games in.

Left 4 Love

This wallpaper hit the interwebz today. Original posted here.

1337 DMV

This dude is even more dedicated than I am.

Halo War Updates

Details on two upcoming downloads have been released by Ensemble Studios.

The first, a free title update, was previously posted about on this blog. They've also announced some tweaks to the air units:

• The Covenant Vampire is getting a boost, with its attack damage being increased by 15% with every upgrade.
• The Anders' Hawk, is being made more expensive, going from 900 to 1350 supplies. In addition, her Cryo Bomb upgrades are also going up by 50% at every level.

A DLC pack has also been announced. It includes new achievements, so I would assume that it will not be free. It adds three new multi-player game modes:

• Keepaway Mode: This is the Halo Wars adaptation of "Capture the Flag." Teams battle it out to capture a free-roaming Forerunner Sentinel to score points before the other team. Capture three to five sentinels to claim victory.
• Tug of War Mode: This mode is all about having a stronger army than your opponent. Defeating enemies is essential, but success is determined by a combination of the army, buildings, and resources left standing in the end.
• Reinforcement Mode: All active battle units are provided in successive waves. Adapt to their tactics and use the ever-changing set of units to outwit and outlast the enemy.

Strategic Options also adds four new Achievements worth a total of 100 points:

• One and Done: Score the winning point in a game of Keepaway against Legendary A.I.'s
• Pull Hard, Pull Deep: Win and never trail in a Tug of War game
• Freak on a Streak: Gain at least 15 population from a single wave in a Reinforcement game
• Living Loving Bug: Obtain a Scarab during a Reinforcement game

Left 4 Dead Survival Pack

Now available free for download on Xbox Live marketplace. Click here for direct download link.

No clan night tonight

There's a poker conflict tonight, so we won't have a formal clan night. I would expect some folks logging on between 9-11pm if you're looking for games though. The Left 4 Dead title update should be out today with support for the new multi-player maps and Survival game mode. If you don't get prompted for an automatic update when you launch the game, click here to look for an XBL Marketplace download.

Halo Wars Rock, Paper, Scissors in More Detail

Tim "Timotron" Deen, Lead Technical Designer on Halo Wars, gives more insight on the "Rock, Paper Scissors" aspect of the Halo Wars combat system.

Coming into any RTS (and Halo Wars is no exception) can be a daunting task for new players as they learn the relationships of the game units, especially game units that are not direct counter or game units that are just soft counters. As such this article will attempt to delve into a more detailed look at the Halo Wars counter system and dissect it for the players into a set of discrete rules and show how the rules apply to the game. Finally before we start a term used often in this article is “RPS” which is shorthand in a RTS for “rock paper scissors” and is used to describe the rule sets that govern which units win fights.

Now then a detailed look at the Halo Wars RPS reveals that it is a layered system of 3 RPS systems with a specific order of priority in application. Also each RPS system provides a different flavor to the game and serves to provide a specific combat flow purpose. Additionally the RPS relationships are split into the two separate buckets of “soft kill” and “hard kill”, “soft kill” relationships are where the units have a medium advantage in combat and “hard kill” is where units have a very strong advantage in combat.

• Highest priority RPS
  • Counter unit RPS
    • Counter units hard kill their countered unit type
    • Counter units are soft killed by mainlines that they do not counter

• Mid level RPS’s
  • Scout unit RPS
    • Hard kill counter infantry
    • Soft kill air
    • Soft killed by mainline infantry
    • Hard killed by mainline vehicles
  • Spartan RPS
    • Limited hard kill normal vehicles and air
• Lowest priority RPS
  • Basic unit RPS
    • Infantry beat Air
    • Air beats Vehicles
    • Vehicles beat Infantry
    • Mainlines are better than counters against buildings*

Note: * the cobra and wolverine has a minor siege counter role as a special bonus for UNSC.

The counter unit RPS provides hard counters to punish players who attempt to run a single unit army and is the highest priority counter system. Next the scout unit RPS provides balance in the early game against counter infantry and air before their main counters come online, while the Spartan RPS provides a specific counter to vehicles in tech level 1. Finally the basic unit RPS provides a low level bias to the combat so that the units not directly involved in a higher level counter system will still have a rule that applies to them.

The final item to cover in this article is to go over just what categories units fall into in halo wars for defining what they are. First all units have a role category assigned to them such as mainline or counter, and second they have a unit type assigned to them such as infantry or vehicle. The combination of those two items defines the unit’s base combat relationships to other units.

Unit Categories

• Role
  • Mainline unit
  • Counter unit
  • Scout unit
  • Special unit

• Type
  • Infantry
  • Vehicle
  • Aircraft

One caveat before concluding is that results will vary in actual game play due to players employing micro management of units and in situations where the opponent has superior upgrades or numbers. Now with that caveat said hopefully this article will give everyone an idea of how RPS design is expressed in Halo wars and why many of the units have the combat advantages that they do.

p.s. Here's a partial chart of Hard and Soft Counters below. Click for huge:

Surviving the L4D Survival Pack

From the developers this week:

Survival Mode pits your team against never ending waves of infected. Sounds simple. Just trap the survivors in a small part of a map, unleash the hordes, and record the longest time. Survival Mode, which will be released next week, is actually a bit more than that.

Our goals for Survival Mode are to deliver a mode of play distinct from Campaign or Versus, have games that regularly last under ten minutes, and emphasize competition with team play through leaderboards.

Survival Mode draws on the planning and communication aspects of a successful Finale or Crescendo event, while taking it to another level. It rapidly hits a fever pitch that only a well coordinated team will be able to successfully survive. Everything from simply covering a reviving teammate, to making every shot count to minimize reloads becomes crucial in Survival Mode.

Given the importance of pacing in Survival Mode, we need to define as precisely as possible how the difficulty ramps up during the course of a round. We have numerous variables to work with: mob spawn frequency, special infected spawn frequency, number of each type of special infected, total number of special infected, tank spawn frequency, total number of tanks, and so on. We need all of these variables to work together to create a fairly smooth difficulty curve.

If the curve ramps up too sharply, we find that teams of all skill levels tend to hit a wall at the same time. There isn't enough variation in the times to separate great teams from average ones. If the curve is too flat, then average teams will have a good experience, but really good teams can grind on long enough to cross the line from having fun to just getting worn out.

It might seem that just gradually increasing spawn rates and numbers of infected will create a nice smooth curve, but it turns out to be much trickier than that. Each type of infected has its own spawn schedule, so even though the individual spawn curves may be designed to be fairly easy at a particular point in time, sometimes they overlap in just such a way that the players find themselves in a really bad situation far earlier than we intend.

For example, a tank will be much harder to fight if a mob of common infected spawns at the same time - and nearly impossible if three hunters also show up right at that moment. A similar situation can happen due to variables outside our control - a team may not dispatch a tank or mob quickly enough, causing subsequent waves to start arriving and piling on to an already difficult battle. It's also hard to anticipate when teams will need to make an ammo run or heal up, both of which can be extremely difficult only a few minutes into the round. In order to help visualize these overlap points and the collapse of each spawn curve, we graphed out the wave behavior of infected over the course of a survival round.


The last variable we added was the "lull" - a short interval of time during which nothing new will spawn. Each lull gets slightly longer as the round progresses, but that's no guarantee the team will actually see the lull - it just prevents new infected from spawning. It doesn't help with infected that are already in the arena. Killing mobs and tanks as quickly as possible is the best way to ensure that a team can take advantage of a lull to heal, resupply ammo, or just move to a better location with more supplies.

Given the extreme pace of Survival Mode, the number of zombies killed in a single round often outnumbers an entire campaign. Even optimizing towards using pistols to eliminate common hordes, ammunition usually becomes an issue at some point. As ammo piles provide a unique infinite resupply for players, they tend to be in relatively less defensible positions in the Survival arenas. This means making an all important ammo run is rarely a safe proposition and requires good teamwork and planning. Timing your resources correctly to be able to make a run when necessary can make or break a team. The perfect pipebomb or well placed molotov can mean the difference between a cakewalk and catastrophe.

The Hospital Elevator, for example, might seem like an easy Crescendo Event to conquer. Hit the elevator button and holdout until the doors open for a quick escape. In Survival Mode, however, the area begins locked down. Areas open as the hordes come in, breaking down the doors to reach the survivors. In each room there are additional caches of vital pills, pipes, and Molotovs. By moving from location to location, using up the plentiful supplies as needed, a team can maximize their time in a game where the elevator never arrives to offer escape. In other maps, items may be less plentiful and require careful planning on their usage. Managing one's inventory and resources works hand-in-hand with teamwork in Survival Mode.

Xbox 360 Warranty extended for E74

From Major Nelson yesterday:

Hey guys, there have been a stories recently about the E74 error message that I wanted to address. The team is aware that a very small percentage of our Xbox 360 customers have reported receiving an error that displays E74 on their screen and after investigating the issue, we have determined that the E74 error message can indicate the general hardware failure that is associated with three flashing red lights error on the console. As such, we will be covering any repairs due to the E74 error message under the three year warranty we announced related to the three flashing lights error, as well as reimbursing any customers that have already paid for an E74 related repair. This applies to new consoles for the original retail purchaser, whether purchased before or after this change. You can read additional information on the warranty extension on the Xbox.com support site. Today’s announcement reaffirms our commitment to customers that we stand behind our products and deliver a great Xbox experience.

EXP Required for Halo Wars ranks

I've previously posted about the Halo Wars ranks, but wanted to provide a little more detail now that we've been playing it a little more. We've logged 11-20 multi-player games each over the last month, and averaged 2,136 points per game. We are all currently Recruits and have been consistently getting matched against teams with Majors and at least one Commander. Assuming our average of 23 minutes per game, these are the approximate number of games and times it takes to make each rank:

• Recruit (1 pt): 1 game (23 minutes)
  
• Lieutenant (80,000 pts): 38 games (14.5 hours)
  
• Captain (200,000 pts): 94 games (36 hours)
  
• Major (400,000 pts): 188 games (72 hours)
  
• Commander (800,000 pts): 375 games (144 hours)
  
• Colonel (1,600,000 pts): 750 games (288 hours)
  
• Brigadier (2,400,000 pts): 1,124 games (431 hours)
  
• General (3,200,000 pts): 1,499 games (575 hours)

The Ranks are clearly totally unrelated to TrueSkill, as our TrueSkill has been increasing exponentially without a corresponding increase in Rank.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

First come, first served. Show up as close to on time as possible.

Halo Wars Title Update

A title update to be released in the near future has been released for Halo Wars. The first piece of news is that the Prophet of Regret's speed on land has been reduced to match the other leaders. This helps balance the Prophet Rush that was stymieing a lot of players. The second piece of news is that the Flaming Warthog and the Honor Guard Wraith will now be available in Multiplayer battles against other players. More to come later, I'm sure.

Mythic Map Pack Now Available

The Mythic Map Pack is now available for purchase by itself via Xbox Live Marketplace.

Click this link to download directly to your Xbox.

This is the same map pack that comes bundled with the Legendary Collector's Edition of Halo Wars, and includes Sandtrap, Assembly and Orbital. It currently costs 800 points (about $10). The Legendary Map Pack is also still for sale for 600 points, and Bungie maintains there are no plans to make either map pack free. Since we are not playing Halo 3 regularly as a clan anymore, I leave it completely up to you as to whether or not you should go out and get these. Currently, I am the only one I know who has these maps, so there is certainly not critical mass. OmniscientDeath, BeerMonkeee, MEAN MR MONKEY, and CoolerSopranos2 have all played the maps in matchmaking at my house. If you're interested in what they think, comment on this post.

Both map packs come with new achievements. Assembly is a visually stunning map that feels a lot like Midship or Gemini from Halo 2. It's a symmetrical map that's based inside of a Scarab factory. The environmental graphics are fully animated, and you occasionally see huge Scarab parts going down the conveyor belt overhead. Orbital is a very large indoor map with some interesting gaps and potential for Mongoose mayhem. Sandtrap is an enormous outdoor space with three unique playing areas. Sandtrap can be completely blanked out and is really designed for Forge. A near perfect recreation of Foundry has already been reconstructed within Sandtrap.

In Case of Zombies

Posted to the failblog this morning.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

As a reminder, players who are on-line when we start the first level of a campaign get priority into the game. We are limited to 8 players per party lobby, and I will prioritize regular clan players over irregular friends. If we have more than 8 clan players to start, I'll make a call as to how to split everyone up fairly.

Left 4 Dead Health Packs

Health packs in Left 4 Dead are one of the most powerful and mis-used items in the game. It is very important to understand how to maximize their potential. Health packs serve two purposes:

• Healing a survivor. This may seem obvious, but health packs in L4D only restore 80 percent of a survivor's available health. If you are at 50%, a health pack will give you 40 hit points to heal you to 90% (80% * 50% = 40%; 40% + 50% = 90%). If you are at 30%, a health pack will give you 56 hit points to restore you to 86% (80% * 70% = 56%; 56% + 30% = 86%). The lower your health, the more benefit you will get from a health pack. This also means you can never heal to more than 99 percent. If you're using a health pack on somebody (you or a teammate) isn't red, you are wasting health restoration points.
• Resetting the incap counter. Once a survivor has been incapped and helped back up twice, they start slowly bleeding out. Their screen turns black and white, and they will die on the next incap. The ONLY way to prevent death from three incaps is by taking a health pack. It restores their health and resets the incap counter.

That said, here are some good and bad times to use a health pack.

Bad times:

• Early in a level where you got brutalized by the horde and are at 40-99% health. You aren't moving that slow at this point, you don't need to waste the health pack. Save it for a better time.
• Right after you've taken pain pills. Pain pills temporarily restore all you health. Taking a health pack at this point wastes the pills.
• When your entire team is a similar health/damage level. If everybody on your team is at 20-30% health and moving kind of slow, taking a health pack by yourself will make you too fast. You'll tend to run ahead and get separated.
• Right before trying to mess with a witch. Even the best players in our clan can not take out the witch successfully 100% of the time. The witch's primary attack is an auto-incap and immediately zeros out the survivor's health. As long as the rest of the team is close enough to take the witch out pretty quickly after the intial attack, it often makes sense to send the weakest player in to piss her off.
  
• In Campaign mode on Expert: You should NEVER take a health pack until you've been incapped twice and your screen is black and white. Health packs NEVER appear on the level, only in safe rooms. They should only be used to reset incap counters or to heal before picking up a new pack.

Good times:

• When a survivor has been incapped twice and their screen is black and white. This should always be a priority. Having a dead survivor is almost always the worse of the alternatives. Reset their incap counter so that you have an extra gun, and an extra survivor to revive you when you get incapped.
• To pick up a new health pack. Never leave health packs unused. If you see a health pack on the level, and everybody is already holding a health pack, the player with the lowest health should heal, and then pick up the new health pack. Often times there will be health packs at the site of a big battle. It is usually better to use the health pack(s) AFTER the battle, than before.
• Once everybody is inside the safe room. On Versus, you get points for much health you have. Everybody should heal before closing the door to maximize your score. Don't stand too close to the door while survivors are healing though, because the Infected can still get you until the door closes.
• When you are the weakest link and speed matters. If you are the only survivor who has significant damage to the point where you are slowing down the party, and where the team would do well to progress quickly, then you should heal so that you can keep up. This typically means you are below 30 percent health, and you are in a wide open area. Because of how the horde spawn spots are set up, there are not too many places in L4D where speed is more important than saving health packs. So use them wisely.

Remember that the way we play L4D in Versus, both teams can hear each other the whole time. You basically have to announce that you're using a health pack so that your team mates don't run off ahead. Once you've announced it, you've basically advertised to the Infected that your team has spent one of its four precious health packs (and are now weaker for it), and that your team will be sitting in one spot for a while waiting for you to heal (and be vulnerable to easy Infected attacks).

Halo Wars Reviewed

Don't Stop Believing

A bunch of Journey songs have just been released for Rock Band 2. And yes, Don't Stop Believing can now be yours for a mere 160 XBL points. Click the link to download it directly.

Happy April Fool's Day!

If you haven't figured it out already, there is no GameStop Economic Stimulus promotion. Just a clan celebration of April 1st. w00t!

Free Games at Game Stop

Gamestop announced their Economic Stimulus promotion today, and will be giving away copies of Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty World at War, and Mythic Map pack codes for Halo 3. Each store has 100 copies of each, so the first 300 in at every store get a freebie. If you haven't picked up L4D yet, go get it and join in the clan night fun! If enough people can score the Mythic Map pack codes, I may bring Halo 3 back to clan night. Forget about Cock of Dooty though, that game sucks.

Clan Night Waiting List

For the first time tonight, we had too many people for the L4D game and the Xbox Live party. Given the size of our clan, a popular game like Left 4 Dead would eventually run into this problem. Both the game and party can only support a maximum of 8 concurrent players. Sorry to FishBone10 and OmniscientDeath who had to sit out the first campaign. After we finished No Mercy, I asked the two non regular-clan players to drop so that our clan guys could get in. Consider this a formal policy moving forward.

On clan nights, if you are not on in time for the first round to start, you will be at risk of having to sit out an entire campaign. After the first campaign, I will make room for everybody to play. If we have more than 8 to start the night, or between campaigns, and everybody wants to play, I will split us into two parties until a merge is possible.

If you can not get into a game for some reason, leave me a message. I will generally leave you a message explaining what's going on. If you want to play at the next break, stay on-line. If you're not going to wait around, I would appreciate if you leave me a message stating as such so that we don't wait for you at the break.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

In other news, we are selling our house to buy a new house. We absolutely love this place, but have decided to try and make the best of a bad economy. MLS listing link if you know of anybody who's looking for an amazing house at a steal of price. We've studied the comps in the neighborhood in pretty fine detail, and we are priced relatively low, especially considering how mint our house is in comparison.

Halo Wars: Cutter vs Prophet of Regret Rush

From Bonfire Studios:

The most consistent problem I’ve read about in the forums is people struggling to defeat the Prophet of Regret rushing their base early in the game. Here are some step by step tips as Captain Cutter that should help you in your struggle to defeat this popular rush.

If you notice your opponent is the Prophet of Regret (use the ‘back’ button at the start of the game to see an opponent’s leader) then you can be pretty sure that he’s going to rush. Luckily as Cutter you can build defenses and a solid economy at the same time thanks to your unique unit, the Elephant. Here is a typical early game strategy for Cutter when up against the Prophet:

Immediately send your initial Warthog to scout the Prophet’s base, this is important in combating a rush. While you’re scouting with this Warthog you should be training an Elephant and have 2 Supply Pads building.

If he goes Temple first then you can assume his Prophet will be on his way to your base pretty soon. If you see a Temple first do the following:

1. Lock your Elephant down near one of your forward turret sockets and build a small army of Flamethrowers. (usually between 3-5)
2. Build a turret on the socket nearest your Elephant

The combined firepower of the Elephant, Turret, and Flamethrowers will be enough to put the Prophet in his place long enough for your superior Cutter economy to take hold and give you the upper hand in the game. If the Prophet is not putting early pressure on you then use your small Flamethrower army to capture one of the Forerunner structures (preferably a Supply Elevator or Reactor) that may be located on the map. From this point on it’s about making correct unit decisions and minimizing the effectiveness of his Prophet. Do not mindlessly waste units against the Prophet’s shield, instead aim at engaging him in a larger conflict where you can trap him and cast disruption bomb. A strong force of Marines and Flamethrowers early can quickly decimate the Prophet if focus fired properly. Continually scout your opponent to stay a step ahead of his strategy and be ready to add some Warthogs to your army if you see that your opponent is beginning to mass Jackals.


If you see the Prophet goes with a Warehouse first:

1. On a map with good forerunner structures send your initial Elephant near these and train enough Flamethrowers to take the structure (5 is usually enough for any structure).
2. Use this bonus (normally an elevator or reactor) to really push your Cutter economy to a strong advantage over the Prophet
3. Once the Prophet makes it to your base now he’ll usually be accompanied by either infantry units or Banshees, make the appropriate counters to these units and your superior economy should win the game. As Cutter training units from your Elephant as well as a Barracks in your base and some Warthogs from your Command Center can give you a very strong force in little to no time at all.

A typical Cutter build order against the Prophet will look something like this:

, Supply Pad, Supply Pad, , Supply Pad, Supply Pad, Supply Pad, Barracks, Reactor

I hope these tips help you to score a few wins against what looks to be the most popular rush at the moment.

Building a Better Apocalypse

Valve will be releasing several updates along with the April 21st DLC:

• Free new versus maps
• Free new Survival Mode
• Exploit fixes and Versus balancing
• Server issue fixes
  
• Change to the melee mechanic in Versus and the soon-to-be-released Survival Mode

The plan is to release more frequently on the PC, and then group those updates for the 360. With the upcoming release of the SDK, and the community servers already available on the PC, matchmaking is one place where the two platforms will diverge. Details to follow in the future.

In Versus, the update has flipped the order in which teams play the next round based on who was winning the round before it. This was done to better balance the game and give neither team a lasting advantage. Since making that change, the percentage of games being played to the end has increased 5%.

Microsoft unveils blue-tinted Xbox 360 dev kit

OmniscientDeath shares a super 1337 Xbox 360 dev kit unveiled at this week's Game Developers Conference and due out in the summer. In addition to its sleek black-and-blue tint finish and some stylish etchings, it also boasts 1GB of RAM, or twice what is found in the retail model. This hardware is only for those who make the games -- for now, at least.

Xbox 360 E74 Error

The interwebs are starting to buzz about E74 errors beginning to appear on Xbox 360s. I haven't seen this yet myself, but if you have, please share with the clan via comments on this post. The E74 error seems to be related to video problems. It's occasionally caused by a faulty AV cord, but more often than not, the solder on the ANA/HANA (in HDMI models) scaling chip has come loose. In fact, many have reported creating a temporary fix by wrapping pennies in electrical tape and weighing the ANA/HANA down. (For the record, we're not suggesting you do that.) Before the error, the system usually starts showing graphical problems like lines across the screen or snow. It's accompanied by one red light in the lower right-hand quadrant.

Clan night tonight. 8:30pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Moving it back 30 minutes because folks are consistently not ready to go at 8pm sharp.

In other news, we played some Halo 3 last night on the new Mythic Maps. The community in the Team Mythic playlist is still surprisingly n00bish, so much so that we were able to actually hold our own in several matches. Assembly and Orbital are beautiful maps, and Sandtrap is interesting for what you can do with it. I'm not sure that it's worth $10, but if you know somebody who has the maps, it's worth going over to their house to play a little.

Mythic Map Pack Release Date

From Major Nelson:The Halo 3 Mythic map pack, currently only available to those that purchased the Limited Edition of Halo Wars, will be available to everyone on April 9th for 800 points (about $10 US).

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Folks have been logging on later recently. Would people prefer I move clan night out to 9pm? I set it at 8pm to try and get everybody as much gaming time as possible, especially for early risers. But 8pm is fairly inconvenient for me, and it's stupid for me to rush and get online at 8pm and then sit there for 20 minutes waiting for the first person to sign-in. Leave a comment.

Sandbox Marble Madness

I don't usually post too many community videos because they tend to be pretty repetitive, but this one takes "spare time" to whole new level. One of the new Mythic Maps is Sandbox, a level designed from the ground up for Forgers. This guy has done a really good job at building a marble maze using Sandbox.

Left 4 Dead Games Tonight

There should be a few people on tonight after 10pm PT for some zombie brain eating. Hop on if you're around.

Halo Wars Progress Tracker Updated

I've updated my tracking workbook in Microsoft Excel 2007 format that allows you to track your progress easier and give you a better idea of how to get your achievements as quickly as possible. I've added the full UNSC and Covenant Tech Trees with resource costs for each item. Version 3 is posted, feedback is welcome.

Halo Wars Ranking System

[Article from Bonfire Studios]

Ranks in Halo Wars are earned by accumulating score from Public Matchmaking games on Xbox LIVE.

Your Service Record shows your current Rank, Score and how many more points you need to rank up. Your Rank is also visible as an icon next to your gamertag when in a game lobby, post game screen and other areas.

There are eight ranks available in Halo Wars. You start as Unranked and then are promoted to Recruit upon completing your first Public Matchmade game.

There are two bonus modifiers that can boost your score by a percentage. To earn the bonus you must complete a Public Matchmaking game and NOT disconnect. If you win you receive an additional 40%. If you lose you get an additional 20%. If you're getting omgwtfbbqpwned, don't get mad and disconnect because you're still in line for a nice little bonus. :) And if you're knocked out of the game early and want to leave you'll still receive your 20% bonus so don't feel you need to stay until the end.

Halo 3 Back on Top

The release of the Mythic Map Pack in conjunction with Halo Wars last week pushed Halo 3 back to the top of the Xbox Live activity list. GTA IV is still holding position at #5 following its popularity boost with the Lost and the Damned expansion pack. Halo Wars debuted at #6, with the demo continuing to be popular at #8. Left 4 Dead has fallen back a little bit to #7, but I would expect that to climb back up as the noise from the other single player games falls out.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

Both the game lobby and Xbox Live parties are open to friends. You should be able to join on your own without an invite to me. If there is room in the game, you will automatically join a team. If there is not room in the game, join the XBL party so that you can chat with us. A space typically opens up pretty quickly.

Halo Wars Skulls and Black Boxes

There is a Skull and a Black Box hidden on every campaign level. The Skulls all require killing a certain number of enemies before they appear. Here are some tips that OmniscientDeath and I picked up on our playthroughs.

• Xbox Life has the best guide for Skulls and Black boxes I've found yet, including screen shots
• Xbox Life only goes up through Mission 12 however, so for the last three, Xbox 360 Achievements does an adequate job
• Unlike Supply Crates, Skulls and Black boxes can be claimed with any unit, including air units. In fact, some are only accessible with air units.
  
• Mission 1 Look Daddy! skull: The tricky thing here is having enough Grunts available to kill. You want to be sure the Spirit dropships don't get killed before delivering their Grunty payload. I recommend rushing into Alpha base and taking out the Wraith before the Shortsword is called to extend the battle. Then concentrate on the Covenant units around the edge of the base, ignoring the ones that get dropped in until the end. Be sure to leave a unit right next to where the Skull spawns (see Xbox Life screenshots) because you have very little time after the 100th grunt is killed to grab it. It's easier to just switch to that unit with Down on the D-pad, then to try and race a Warthog back.
• Mission 5 Fog skull: I recommend not jacking Wraiths until you've killed all 5, otherwise you may run out of Wraiths that spawn.

Halo Wars Campaign Special Achievements

There are special achievements associated with each campaign level. Here are some things OmniscientDeath and I picked up on our playthroughs.

• Xbox 360 Achievements has a decent achievement guide posted
• Mission 1 Everything's Better with Bacon: This is hard because your Warthog gunner tends to kill grunts before you can splatter them. I recommend using the queue movement command. If you press and hold "X", your unit will go there after it's done with its current action. Send in one Warthog at a time and click "Y" on the Grunt as soon as its visible so the gunner stops shooting. Immediately (before your hog gets to the Grunt), queue up a Warthog move to retreat back out of range so that your Warthog automatically turns to come back as soon as possible and doesn't gun down any remaining Grunts. Do the same thing at Alpha Base, but be careful to position Forge and your Marines well out firing range. It took my 81 Grunts to get 50 splatters. Take your time.
• Mission 3 Coveneant "Hot Drop": You don't have to get all 5 kills at one time. If you don't get all 5 the first time, just turn the bridge back on and try again.
• Mission 4 The Real Winner: See the screengrab from Xbox Life. Open the console next to the black box and Adam should come running out.
• Mission 7 Micro Manager: You can get this by just hitting the Scarab with the MAC cannon, and not moving any of your units. The only caveat is that the Scarab will likely burn through the ruins and start hitting your base before you can get enough MAC blasts in. Spend your time building up resources. The Scarab will take out the closest turret and closest building before starting on your command center. Once those are gone, just keep building Supply Pads in the empty space, the Scarab will hit that one first before going back to your command center. It costs 100 resources every time and they go quick, so be sure to keep an eye on your MAC recharge time.
• Mission 10 The Procrastinator: Recommend building Scorpions and Wolverines to escort the Gremlins.
  
• Mission 12 Battened Down the Hatches: As soon as it starts, use all your resources to build Cyclops until you max your headcount. Don't forget about the two airlocks furthest from the power core. Be efficient, it takes almost exactly 4 minutes on easy if you are perfect
• Mission 15 Thinkin' About My Doorbell: Be careful, when you open a door, the glass panels fall away. Any ground units you have parked on them will die. Also, the doors will only if you have cleared all the aliens away from the control panel.
  

Halo Wars Tips and Tricks

OmniscientDeath and I have played through the entire campaign, collecting all the skulls, black boxes and special campaign achievements. Here's some general tips:

• Playing campaign on co-op is more fun than playing by yourself.
  
• The game can get laggy though, so recommend a fast connection.
• Budget about 7 hours to get through on Easy if you're working co-op on skulls and black boxes.

Amazon.com trade-ins

Amazon.com has just announced that they will be accepting trade-ins on used video games. They appear to have slightly higher values than Gamestop, and offer free shipping back to Amazon. You get your value in an Amazon gift card, similar to how Gamestop offers the most value as store credit.

Halo Wars Community Site

Ensemble Studios has put together a community site for Halo Wars not unlike bungie.net. Looks like they will be offering a good variety of stats, though it does look largely skewed towards multi-player. The only campaign offerings they have now are medal chests for skulls and black boxes.

On the front page of the site, they have posted the entire Halo Wars tech tree. Very useful until you memorize everything.

Halo Wars Progress Tracker

There are 50 achievements in Halo Wars that span 15 campaign levels, 14 skirmish levels, 6 leaders, skulls, black boxes, local play and Xbox Live play. I've created a tracking workbook in Microsoft Excel 2007 format that allows you to track your progress easier and give you a better idea of how to get your achievements as quickly as possible.

Version 1 is posted here. Feedback is welcome.

[Update March 10, 2009] Version 2 is posted with bug fixes and improved progress tracking.
[Update March 12, 2009] Version 3 is posted with bug fixes and full tech tree with resource costs.

Prima Games Halo Wars Convenant Unit Overview Part 2

Covers Wraiths, Locusts, Banshees, Vampires, Scarabs.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead.

In other news, the RTS game Halo Wars hits stores today. I pre-ordered it, so am available to play if anybody wants. I'm not going to make it a clan game unless the entire clan clamors for it, but am happy to play after clan night or on other nights. I'll have the Legendary Collectors Edition, so can play Halo 3 Mythic Maps as well as campaign co-op or any of the multi-player modes.

Prima Games Halo Wars Covenant Unit Overview Part 1

Includes Ghosts, Grunts, Jackals and Hunters.