Games Cheats and Reviews

Major Nelson’s Blog writes:

"Here is the current schedule for upcoming content coming soon to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace*

Xbox LIVE Deal of the Week:

Feb. 15: Battlefield 1943, 800 Microsoft Points

Xbox LIVE Games on Demand:

Feb. 9: Street Fighter IV

Feb. 9: Halo Wars (Europe, Australia and New Zealand)

Feb. 16: Resident Evil 5

Feb. 16: Beautiful Katamari

Feb. 16: Viva Piñata: Party Animals (Japan)

Xbox LIVE Arcade:

Feb. 10: Darwinia +, 1200 points

Feb. 17: The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, 800 points

Xbox Avatars Marketplace:

These are just a few of the collections scheduled for the Xbox LIVE Avatar Marketplace.

Feb. 11: Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Feb. 16: Resident Evil 5

Feb. 18: Metro 2033"

Today McFarlane Toys announced that a seventh batch of Halo action figures will be released in January 2010. They also provided details and photos of each item in this latest assortment, which features characters from Halo 2, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo 3.

GB writes: "2009: according to many has been a year that belongs to Sony. With scintillating games like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Infamous, Killzone 2 and Ratchet and Clank Future: Crack in Time on the Playstation 3, it was never a doubt in the mind of a neutral gamer that who is running away with the show. Microsoft has had an average year, And please don’t term me as a fan boy. The Xbox 360 is my primary console but even with some great games like Forza 3, Microsoft has had nothing this year. Some may say that Halo Wars was one of the biggest games of the year. To be honest it is not. 2009 is a year that Xbox 360 fans and Microsoft should probably forget about. After three successful years with the Xbox 360 (2005-2008), it was a bit of pain for the fans to see that the 360 had no real AAA experience this year."

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."

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.

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."

Receiving far less attention than both Halo 3 and Halo Wars have prior to and since their respective releases, Halo 3: ODST may not be the show stealing release Microsoft and developer Bungie have been hoping. Though the game will undoubtedly sell well, any chances of it being a record breaker seem decidedly slim at present, and the two companies responsible are undoubtedly aware of that.

Neocrisis.com writes: "Great Britain is the third largest video games market (behind the USA and Japan), and as revealed by the recent hardware sales the Xbox 360 has a strangehold of the market, even outselling the Wii and DS so far in 2009. Although the recent software sales chart shows that Nintendo still have some fight left in them, it seems Sonys massively popular shooter ‘Killzone 2′is being outsold by Microsofts equally massive ‘Halo 3′. The real kicker, however, is that Halo 3 is nearing it’s second birthday, whereas Killzone 2 is barely six months old. Halo Wars aswell, which launched in the same time frame as Killzone 2, is also hanging in at number 40."

Yep, The Portable Gamer pulled ouff an incredible coup a couple of days ago, and decided to share it with the Games Are Evil readers, due to it’s extreme Evil-osity. Here’s what they wrote:

“I got a chance to sit down over the phone with David Sobolov, the evil voice inside IMEvil as well as the voice of the Arbiter from Halo Wars, St. Vasquez from Call of Duty 4, and a sh*t-ton of other games and animated shows and movies (BEAST WARS FTW!!!). Listen in as we talk about how he got started in the industry, his favorite things about being “the voice of evil,” and the App itself, IMEvil, which lists Mr. Sobolov as a producer.
We’ll be announcing a contest to win a chance to write an Evil saying and have it performed in an upcoming update of IMEvil very soon, so get those evil brains a-workin.”

So, listen in right here, as Rob chats with Mr. Sobolov in a very Evil special podcast.

A Xbox LIVE technical issue wiped all Halo Wars Xbox LIVE Leaderboards earlier today. This includes all singleplayer, multiplayer and Trueskill leaderboards, as well as all matchmaking data. The Xbox LIVE team is investigating the cause, and they will provide an update to the situation as soon as possible. But is there anyone out there that’s really worried about their Halo Wars stats?

Halo Wars has one of the best story lines ever put together for a videogame. This is without a doubt, an amazing entry into the Halo franchise. While I can say that I loved every single cut scene, I can’t say that I loved the gameplay just as much. Halo Wars was lacking so much from a traditional war strategy game, yet had me hanging on to every mission simply to catch the next bit of story. So really, now that the story has been played through, does it matter that stats have been wiped? Are there any of you out there still playing Halo Wars online? I’m not so sure this is as big of a deal as others are making it.

A server problem with XBLIVE has wiped out all Halo Wars stats.