Sloppy Potatoes

Halo fans are going to be very happy with ODST

An unapologetic fan to the end, I love me the Haloz – every one, and even though I was disappointed with the end, I liked Halo 2 – and can’t be more excited for ODST or Halo: Reach.

Halo 3 was supposed to be the end of the trilogy, and with Bungie’s separation from Microsoft, one could assume the worst and that Microsoft would whore out the franchise and turn it into a yearly release. After reading Luke’s post two Fridays ago — if you like Halo and are not reading Bungie’s weekly update, you’re missing some very entertaining and informative writing — I was anxious to see Bungie’s next project, Halo or not.

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Send the family away, order some pizza, Halo 3′s Mythic Map Pack available for all on April 9

Yes, I am a Halo fanboy. But the greatest first person shooter on the planet is getting another map pack and it’ll be here on April 9.

Few games drew as much fanfare as Halo 3 did, and few have as many loyal followers as the epic masterpiece. Those fellows over at www.bungie.net are nice enough to keep a running log of players and matches played.

Now, remember, this game released on Sept. 25, 2007 — yes, going on two years ago — and there are still 34,000 people playing online right now, and it’s noon on a Tuesday. Bungie numbers show 696,898 unique players logged 1,430,596 matches in the last 24 hours. That’s a year-and-a-half later folks. Oh, and the UNSC campaign kill count — baddies killed by Xbox Live-enabled Halo 3 players in the single player game — is 9,777,665,269. Yep, 9.7 billion.

So, I’m not the only one rocking the Halo Underoos, and I won’t be the only one downloading these maps for 800 Microsoft Points ($10) either. The pack includes new killing venues Orbital, Assembly and Sandbox, along with skulls to collect and achievements to gain.

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Updating Ninjas, Halo Wars and Hi-Def

It’s been too long since I last posted and tons of things have happened since then.

First off, I’ve been posting like mad at www.chinstrapninas.com, in particular I’ve dumped a bunch of 2009 fantasy baseball team previews and have nearly completed my 2009 rankings.

If you haven’t been checking them out regularly, why not go check them out now. You can click the links above, or click here to go to the fantasy baseball navigation page at Chinstrap Ninjas.

As for posting here, I’ve got some Halo Wars for you. Yes, it’s completely Halo, and completely awesome. I also purchased MLB2K9, which rocks, and finally plugged in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

I also pulled DiRT out of the I’ve-really-gotta-play-that pile and basked in the glow of mud, dirt and fast metal on my new flat screen TV. It’s not your 50-inch 1080p plasma, it’s not quite that hi-def, but it’s hi-def enough to make 360 games look amazing, and that’s without an HDMI cable.

DVDs look amazing, too.

Maybe I’ll throw in a little Gamerscore Update. I haven’t done one of those in a while, so that could be interesting.

Oh, and that whole line of posts on media — in particular the newspaper world, which I love, and how it’s going to survive this economic apocalypse.

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10 of 2008′s most playworthy games [Xbox360]

Yes, we’re a full month-and-a-half into 2009, so this list is a little late. Luckily, there hasn’t been any game of any worth released yet this year, so you’ll have time to catch these games, and I recommend you do.

I’m no professional game reviewer, companies do not shower me with free games, nor do I complete every game purchased or rented. However, I can guarantee without a doubt, that you will find games you will love on this list. As soon as I spend my money on an overpriced PS3 or an overhyped Wii, I’ll post lists on them. For now, I stick to the less-than-reliable, but Halo-3-giving Xbox 360.

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Evolution (of media) is not supposed to be easy

Another post in a series about the impact of Electronic Gaming Monthly’s closing and the fate of the newspaper and magazine business in general. The first post was about EGM’s closing.

If evolution was an easy process, we’d all have mutant powers by now, or some other creature would have kicked us off the top of the food chain. Fact is, it takes a long time and several small steps to evolve. Members of the media should take note.

Here we are in the middle of a financial crisis and the print media industry is getting hit particularly hard. It’s more difficult now to do what we do, but these are those difficult times. We are taking those small steps that proceed our great evolution. I’m certain of it.

What we used to do as journalists will make us extinct. Nobody has figured out what we need to do to survive. But we will survive, and we will be able to remember the good old days, just like the employees at Electronic Gaming Monthly remembered their days recently.

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Still contemplating EGM’s closing

This is part of a series of posts about the closing of Electronic Gaming Monthly, the state of magazines, newspapers and the recession.

For a couple weeks, I’ve been sitting her contemplating just how to write this post.

As I’m sure many of my readers have heard, Electronic Gaming Monthly — as close to a video game Bible as they come — is done. I’ve read the magazine for as long as I can remember, and been a subscriber for years. I’ve purchased other mags at the newsstand, but EGM is the only one I subscribed to.

I eagerly awaited the arrival of each month’s magazine in my mailbox. I used to be a ravenous videogamer. I purchased and rented all kinds of games — except RPGS, but that’s a different post for a different time — and based a lot of my decisions based on what the experts over at EGM had to say. I purchased and rented less in the last couple of years as my free time has slowly dwindled into nothing.(www.sloppypotatoes.com and www.chinstrapninjas.com and life in general have something to do with it) But, I still loved reading the mag, and I still read just about every article, even the ones about RPGs. (I really need to write a post about my RPG complaints). I loved the in-jokes, movie references, the words that were at times poetic, at others snarky, but in every case entertaining.

I had seen the rumors on the Internet — EGM owner struggling, mag may close — but never believed any of it. Here was this iconic piece of the videogame universe, beloved by hundreds of thousands around the world. It was thee game news source for so long, there was no way it was closing.

Sure, Next-Gen shut down several years ago. GMR didn’t make it either. I subscribed to both of those mags back in the day, and really enjoyed them. The entire print media industry, from magazines to newspapers, is trying to evolve into something the general public will devote just a small bit of their Internetin’, TVin’ time to. And while this recession will likely shutter the small newspaper I work for and countless others, like it already has, I never believed EGM would be gone.

As a newspaper guy, one of my favorite parts of the magazine was the editor’s column in the front. I loved reading what Dan “Shoe” Hsu and, over the last several months, James Mielke had to say every month. At times they talked about the business — a business I contemplated joining at some point — at times they talked about the magazine design and at times they just opined. It was always the first thing I read. Every month.

I’ll probably miss that most. I’ll also miss the editor’s bios in the Review Crew section. The editor’s used this space to tell what they were playing and included a quick creative paragraph that talked about something going on in the office, or in their personal lives. There was something I could almost feel oozing through the words in those two small parts of the magazine. That environment, those people had what we had at our small paper a year ago. Things have changed for us, too.

I’d like to put a tease here telling you what the next post will be about, but I just sat down and this one poured out. That’s probably what I’ll do next time, so check back in a day or two, or monitor my Twitter feed. I’ll post a tease to it there.

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