Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced the next generation of its Xbox gaming platform. The Xbox One is a powerful PC-like box that taps into the company’s cloud infrastructure to help run its games. Microsoft claims the cloud will make the system better over time as it moves more of the processing load to remote servers, but it may also cause a headache for gaming historians.

That cloud functionality may eventually cause nearly every game on Xbox One to stop working correctly if (or when) Microsoft shuts down its servers. This jeopardizes the preservation of every game on the new hardware, according to University of Michigan video game archivist David Carter.

“While we don’t have many details yet, what I’ve read so far gives me cause for concern as to how we’ll be able to work with the new system in the Computer & Video Game Archive,” Carter wrote in a blog. “As far as offloading gameplay to the cloud and requiring an Internet connection to function, this offers a challenge that is in many ways similar to dealing with massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft.”

Archivists like Carter have long struggled to replicate the online aspects of games like WOW and even Microsoft first-person-shooter Halo 2.

“There is a history of manufacturers not supporting their old gaming platforms,” said Carter. “[Like] in 2010, when Microsoft stopped supporting the original Xbox on Xbox Live. If you want to play Halo 2 online multiplayer on your Xbox — sorry, you can’t. And that’s for a game that’s less than 10 years old.”

Carter points out that gamers can grab any system from 30 years ago and plug them into a compatible television and start playing without issue.

“[That's true] even for companies that are long defunct,” said Carter. “Will the same be true in even 10 years for games for Xbox One?”

The archivist also expressed concern regarding Microsoft’s plans for digital-rights management. Xbox One may have the capability to restrict used-game sales, but the company isn’t providing details at this time.

“We’ve been dealing with this sort of thing with PC-based games for several years now, and I’m sure we’ll deal with it,” said Carter. “But it doesn’t fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings.”

Carter wrote that he’ll wait to get more information from Microsoft before deciding how to handle Xbox One games. As of now, it seems clear that Xbox One will make his job a lot more difficult than when he was just responsible for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I met Pete Parsons before Halo came out, as he was going around the country evangelizing the first-person shooter on the Xbox game console that Microsoft was about to launch way back in the fall of 2001. I recall his enthusiasm as marketing director at Microsoft, always promoting the idea of doing a pioneering shooting experience on consoles that, frankly, were inferior to the PC. Now, Parsons is still doing the same thing, only he is promoting Destiny, the next shooter from developer Bungie.

As chief operating officer at Bungie, Parsons must help lead the 350-person team do the enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work in bringing the persistent world of the always-connected Destiny to life. Activision Blizzard is planning on publishing a series of Destiny titles over the next decade, and Parsons will play a big role in making that happen.

Parsons left his job at Microsoft to become the COO at Bungie after Halo launched. In 2007, he left Microsoft to start Meteor Solutions, a viral-marketing startup, and worked double duty for a time. As Bungie prepared to leave the Microsoft fold and move on to a new franchise, Parsons came back. He returned to the studio in 2010. Parsons is now fully focused on getting Destiny out the door and managing the culture and talent inside Bungie’s 80,000-square-foot headquarters in Bellevue, Wash.

After a few years of secrecy, Bungie finally revealed concept art from its new game universe while announcing that Destiny would debut on the PlayStation 4 (and likely other platforms). We visited Parsons at Bungie HQ last week, and here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.

GamesBeat: You must feel good right now.

Pete Parsons: [Laughs] Well, I think it feels good to be Bungie right now. We’re always about doing great things and ambitious things. That’s because we have such a great team, because we can do that. It’s a great time to be at Bungie. It’s an energy that many people haven’t felt since some of the earliest days of Halo. That’s exciting. We still have a lot of the old guard around, but we’ve been able to bring on a massive amount of new talent.

GamesBeat: Did somebody in particular sell you on the idea of Destiny? I think you came in after it started, right?

Parsons: No, we’ve all been working from the very beginning. Well, it depends on how you look at it. Destiny has been an idea bouncing around since even before the technology to make it existed.

Destiny is very much a product of everybody at Bungie, but its inception comes from Jason [Jones, co-founder of Bungie]. This is very much a vision that Jason has. Then, he gathers a small group of really talented people who have been here a long time, and they begin hammering on it. It’s had multiple incarnations until it finally landed into what it is today. That’s fun to watch. Not just on technology, but art and story.

GamesBeat: It sounds like you did have options, though. Was there a point where you bought into Destiny and said, “I want to do this too?” For 10 years or whatever it will be.

Parsons: As naïve as this may sound, if Jason believes in something and he’s ready to go for it, I’m in. No joke, I still walk in the door every day and think, “Who gets to do this? This is awesome, to be a part of this thing.” Even when I’m having a shitty day, I feel that way. There are so many other things I could do that, for me, wouldn’t be as satisfying or as interesting. They might be enriching. They might satisfy some level of my curiosity. They might be exciting. But there’s something about these people and this place.

GamesBeat: Did you feel any tug when Halo went off in another direction, with Microsoft’s 343 Industries, and then Bungie went its separate way with Destiny?

Parsons: Personally, I did not. I love the Halo universe. I think it’s great. It inspires me. It inspires my children. They’ve never played, but they know the universe. One, though, I’ve spent a lot of time with Halo. Two, the mythic science fiction of Destiny immediately attracted me. It was that first image … It’s a simple image, but it took weeks of back-and-forth to put together. There were a few images already, maybe three or four, but they didn’t speak to what it was. The moment that image was done, it was like, “That’s it.” That’s the game. That’s the idea. That’s a place that I want to be.

GamesBeat: Is that published now? Which image is that?

Parsons: I don’t know if it’s ever been published. It was just this very striking image that had that feeling of — this is not purely a science fiction universe. It’s not just about two big military-industrial complexes smashing into each other. It’s a place with myths and lore. There’s a guy with sci-fi armor on, and yet he’s got a rifle that looks like it’s from an ancient desert somewhere. It was super cool. That certainly spoke to me. I didn’t look back.

At the time, we were working on both Halo: ODST and Halo:Reach. I still love the Halo universe. It’s an interesting place. But I think what we’ve been able to do is create an incredibly deep fiction and a place that you’re going to want to be in.

GamesBeat: You had a leak. You had some interesting reactions. What was it like, looking at the reaction from the inside?

Parsons: You’re never really excited when you first learn that a leak happens. Then you get to see the reaction. We had this really quick thing. We said, “There’s a leak happening. We can either say nothing, or we can say, ‘Yeah.’” Instead of looking at images that we didn’t want you to see, let’s give you one that we want you to see. So, we released the picture of the Fallen. When our community, who we love, reacts so positively to an image — “Oh my God. That’s so great. That’s a place I want to be in. I can’t wait to learn more about that” — we go from, “Oh, man” to “Sweet!” Within less than half an hour, we were like, “This is the course of action. Let’s go.”

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A lucky screen grab indicates the first three Halo games and hit perspective-platformer Fez might make the jump from Xbox to Steam. If true, it would mark the first appearance of Microsoft’s billion-dollar Halo franchise on Valve’s billion-dollar game-streaming service … and its first official appearance on a non-Microsoft platform.

The Escapist reports that listings for Fez, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 appeared in Steam’s content database — a first step before any game goes live on the service — and were discovered by two programmers, “Pavel” and Martin Benjamins using the CDR tool. Hackers used CDR to view Steam’s complete game content database. All four listings have since been removed.

This would also mark the first PC ports for both Fez and Halo 3. It also leaves an open question around Halo 2; Its multiplayer servers are scheduled to shut down next week.

While none of this constitutes a confirmation that Microsoft’s premiere franchise is indeed heading to Steam, all four did appear in a screen-grabbed list that included games already confirmed for release on Steam;

• La-Mulana
• The Splatters
• Octodad: Dadliest Catch Beta
• Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition (Duke Nukem 3D+)
• Super House of Dead Ninjas
• Fez
• LucasArts Test App
• Fast and Furious 6
• Lococycle
• Yogventures!
• Hardware
• Hardware (Demo)
• Dyad
• Cut the Rope
• Shadow Warrior Complete
• Hardware (VIP)
• Hardware (Internal)
• THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII
• Retro/Grade
• Resident Evil: Revelations
• THE KING OF FIGHTERS 2002 UNLIMITED MATCH
• THE KING OF FIGHTERS ’98 ULTIMATE MATCH
• Quantum Conundrum 2
• Halo 3
• Halo 2
• Halo: Combat Evolved
• The Witness
• Angry Birds Space
• Angry Birds Seasons
• Second Life

Benjamins also discovered a Halo 3 game hub. Steam game hubs are official groups people use to share user-generated content, mods, screenshots, and the like.

We’ve reached out to both Microsoft and Valve for comment.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Gears of War is bombarding the childrens’ toy market this month. French toy manufacturer Meccano has created a range of construction sets based on the violent, Mature-rated third-person-shooter gaming franchise, and it is marketing them heavily at boys 8 and over. The sets are on sale at toy stores in the U.S. and the United Kingdom (one place you can find them is at Toys ‘R’ Us). Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Cartoon Network have also been running advertising spots for the toys on U.K. television  in the lead up to Christmas despite a target demographic that should never have played the games.

Wandering around Toys ‘R’ Us with my two children last week, this marketing strategy and the in-store placement of the new Meccano range struck an odd chord. Nestled snugly alongside pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog and brightly colored constructable cars, Gears of War protagonist Marcus Fenix’s face staring out from its Meccano box looked strangely out-of-place. It made me wonder why such a range is being aimed at young children.

Aspiring gamers

I contacted Meccano (U.K.) to ask why it’s targeting such a young audience, and whether it’s concerned about cross-promoting Mature-rated games to that demographic. “The Gears of War range is targeted at 8+,” said a spokesperson for Meccano. “Our focus is on vehicles from the game as well as characters and weapons, which is not dissimilar to Mega Bloks’ Halo models. The ambition of the range is to broaden Meccano’s appeal to younger modelers as well as to older modelers who are also gamers and who will be familiar with the 18+ game.”

The Halo Mega Bloks range is a similar concept to Gears of War Meccano line. First released in 2009, Halo Mega Bloks — based on Microsoft’s series of first-person-shooter games — are found prominently displayed in most major toy stores. It’s easy to forget that Halo, too, is a gaming franchise aimed at a mature audience.

“It would seem a tenuous proposition to aim [Gears of War] toys at 8 year olds based on a license they ‘shouldn’t’ know,” said Sean McGowan, a toy industry expert and senior analyst at Needham & Company, via email. “But aspirational marketing is nothing new, is it?”

“The success of the Halo toys tells us two things,” said McGowan. “Firstly, that kids like what their older siblings  – or even parents — are doing, and a watered down toy version lets them participate. Secondly, that collectors who are ‘of age’ like to have toys depicting their favorite properties.

“I can tell you that the median age of buyers of Halo blocks from Mega is much older than the average for their blocks, so maybe it won’t actually be little kids buying Gears of War toys. But, still, you have to wonder how it could be a responsible idea.”

Epic Games: We don’t market Gears of War to children

I approached Microsoft to discuss the Gears of War and Halo toys and the implications of involving young children in the world of Mature-rated games. “Generally speaking, video game figures and collectibles are not necessarily created with a younger market in mind, so we would not look to comment on Halo-branded items,” said a Microsoft spokesman. It also declined to comment on Gears of War Meccano, leaving that to Gears developer and intellectual property [IP] owner Epic Games.

“It’s always been the stance of Epic Games that we don’t market the Gears of War series to children under the age of 18,” the studio said in a statement. “We do not condone the actions of Meccano, and we will do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

When asked for more details on the license negotiation, the studio issued an additional statement: “Epic Games owns the Gears of War IP and we advise our licensees on high-level branding for the franchise. We vigorously support the ESRB/PEGI ratings system. If a licensee comes in conflict with that, we make every effort to correct the situation.”

That is a strongly worded response, showing that Epic Games is not at all happy with Meccano’s use of its license. What it means for the future of Gears of War Meccano toys, though, is not totally clear.

A case for the ESRB?

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) provides video game age ratings for the benefit of consumers, helping keep unsuitable games away from minors. But its jurisdiction doesn’t extend to related products, meaning the sale and marketing of these toys do not contravene ESRB regulations.

“ESRB enforces guidelines that prohibit inappropriate target marketing of Mature-rated games to children,” Eliot Mizrachi, the ESRB’s director of communications, said in a statement. “These restrictions pertain to ads placed in media [in the U.S. or Canadian markets] whose audience is known to be composed of a certain proportion of children but do not apply to ancillary products that may be associated with or related to a Mature-rated game.”

The European equivalent of ESRB ratings is the PEGI system, overseen by the Video Standards Council. When asked about the Gears of War toys, the VSC was unconcerned . “There does not appear to be any attempt to directly use the toys as a means of selling the game which, in any case, is legally restricted to 18-year-olds and above,” VSC Communications Officer Gianni Zamo said.

Mega Call of Duty?

With no guidance from the ESRB or VSC on the sale of such toys, responsibility seems to fall on the shoulders of individual companies. Where there is a clear market, though, it will inevitably be targeted. Mega Bloks’ success with Halo has set an example for other mature gaming franchises to follow, and Needham and Company analyst Sean McGowan said he would “not be surprised to see MegaBrands do toys tied to Call of Duty, too, considering their link to Activision through Skylanders.”

For the time being, Gears of War seems set to continue its infiltration of the toy store, with blind-bagged figures joining the fray. Soon being traded in a schoolyard near you.

You can see the initial TV advertisement for Meccano Gears of War below. Meccano/Erector (U.S.) director Robert Grey told me there is no plan to run such television spots in any North American market.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It turns out that real soldiers don’t regenerate and machine guns don’t have unlimited ammo. Who knew?

It’s no secret that first-person shooters — in all their Hollywood-inspired clamor and spectacle — don’t simulate the realities of war very well. From basic rules of engagement, to gun safety (such as “don’t flag your buddies”), and the dynamics of combat, first-person shooters are more akin to interactive action flicks than a proper re-creation of armed conflict.

Of course, no one wants to play a hyper-realistic military simulator, as this hilarious Onion sketch illustrates.

No one wants to fill out endless paperwork, take mandatory sexual harassment training, write NCOERs (noncommissioned officer evaluation reports), sit through Powerpoint presentations with the potency of 10 Valiums, or stand 12-hour watches. No one wants to experience “hurry up and wait.”

Because that would be boring. Too realistic.

People want an escape from the mundane. But surely we can find a happy medium between silly action flicks and boring reality.

With the recent release of what will probably be the best-selling video game of the year, Call of Duty Black Ops II (for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC), I thought it instructive to get the low-down from a real soldier, a veteran who deployed in support of the Global War on Terror. Sergeant Dave Mull deployed to Iraq in support of the Global War on Terror three separate times: ’04-’05, early ’07-late ’07, and ’08. His Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is Cavalry Scount (19D), which essentially means that his job is enemy, area, and route reconnaissance. Altogether, he served 12 years.

Our conversation yielded some fascinating insights, and some of it may surprise you.

GamesBeat: What are some of the most basic details that your average military shooter gets wrong?

The author firing the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). The barrels get really hot and have a tendency to overheat.

GamesBeat: What inaccuracies seem the most jarring? Is there anything that would prevent you from playing such a game?

Dave Mull: Hmm … they seem to be trying far too hard to make everything “epic” in campaign mode. It can sometimes be a chore trying to figure out which enemies actually count and which ones are the infinitely respawning cannon-fodder bots.

It won’t stop me from playing it, but you’d think they could remember that sometimes nothing happening can be just as, if not much more, suspenseful.

GamesBeat: It does seem like the goal of many shooters — Call of Duty especially — is bigger setpieces, bigger explosions, and bigger bodycounts. Which naturally makes them more like a Michael Bay movie than anything resembling reality.

Dave Mull: Remember in the Metal Gear Solid games, it’s intended that you don’t kill anyone. Of course, you can, but it’s not the way [series creator Hideo] Kojima envisioned it.

GamesBeat: Indeed. And a reader on Bitmob, GamesBeat’s sister site, pointed out that MGS4 is one of the few games to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. In many ways, it’s a more realistic depiction of war than any first-person shooter.

Dave Mull: Very much so — specifically toward the end with Adam’s adoption of Liquid Snake’s personality and with the four gals of the Beauty and the Beast unit.

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Welcome back to Extra Hearts, GamesBeat’s dating site for our favorite game characters. We’ve already seen a few romantically hopeful guys and gals from the digital realm create their own profiles, but today we’re looking at Master Chief’s page. Yup, the green-tinted Spartan from Xbox’s popular first-person-shooter series is looking for a little love. I guess he’s really just a sweetheart under all that armor and emotional turmoil.

Let’s see how John-117 does in his mission to find a soul mate. Just don’t expect him to put any rings on any fingers.

Likes: Shooting, driving, and sleeping in.

Dislikes: Onion rings, hula hoops, donuts, bagels, bracelets, wheels, and Cheerios.

Why I’m here: I’ve been going at it solo for a while, but everyone tells me I’m more fun in multiplayer.

Our first night: I can go all night as long as you give me time to regenerate.

Politics: Green party. SEE, CORTANA?! I DO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR!

Faith: I believe in believing. Believe.

My best feature: Probably my face.

Comments:

More Profiles:

• Peach
• Chell
• Kratos
• Samus
• Aerith
• Mega Man
• Luigi
• Kerrigan
• Nathan Drake

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The following review contains mild spoilers only.

In one of her increasingly rare moments of lucidity, Cortana — the sassy artificial intelligence who’s guided us through three iconic Halo games that have generated more than $3 billion in revenue for Microsoft — asks a favor: “If we get out of this, promise me you’ll figure out which one of us is the machine.”

Cortana is dying, an 8-year-old with a 7-year life expectancy. Her longtime partner, the Master Chief, makes her a different guarantee: We’ll fix you. Those aren’t empty words, either, coming from a man physically augmented and mentally conditioned from childhood to be humanity’s perfect soldier … possibly at the cost of his own humanity. Saving his last, best friend just represents the latest objective assigned to him. At first.

Unbreakable promises and questions about our very nature provide a strong foundation for Halo 4 (releasing November 6 for Xbox 360), the first in a new trilogy from largely untested developer 343 Industries. They also present an interesting metaphor. Expectations run high when you bring Halo into the conversation, and many people asked whether 343 could keep the magic alive without Bungie, the studio that created the Master Chief and made his war into Microsoft’s signature video-game franchise. Would the Chief survive the transfer from one creative team to another intact?

He did. Halo 4 keeps every promise it makes. The real question is whether you think it promised enough.

What you’ll like

Things change
A moment comes in Halo 4 when the Master Chief does something we’ve never, ever seen him do … something I never even thought he could do. The entire universe pivots in that instant.

We haven’t exactly gone without Halo anytime in the last decade, but it’s been five years since we last played as the Chief. It’s good to be home again. Even better, our pulpy space opera hangs on to the dramatic weight it found in Halo: Reach’s doomed last stand and makes the crisis personal. It hurts to see Cortana, one of the strongest women in gaming, so vulnerable and unsure, and her uncharacteristic glitches soon deteriorate into full-bore schizophrenic breaks. I actually hesitated a few times when the game prompted me to insert Cortana’s chip into, say, a weapons terminal.

But it’s entirely gratifying (and a little telling) to watch the Chief circle the wagons around her, back her to the hilt, and defend her against all comers even past the point where he probably should. This is new ground, and the choices they make push both characters in new, unexpected directions. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I got.

And we get to shoot things. The Master Chief’s tenuous plan to save his friend hits a snag when they’re pulled inside Requiem — a majestic, artificial world built by the ancient Forerunner race — along with a fanatical Covenant splinter group searching for a new god to worship. Turns out those zealots came to the right place. What the Chief and Cortana discover on Requiem puts mankind in the crosshairs of the Didact, an overwhelmingly powerful enemy with an eons-old grudge against our species. If you ever wanted to see the Master Chief completely helpless, the Didact will oblige you.

He also provides our new targets, and they are no joke. Prometheans come in three sizes (pack-animal Crawlers, hovering support unit Watchers, and heavily armed, heavily shielded Knights), but they operate as one interconnected unit. Forget jumping into a pack of them and shooting your way out. Prometheans defend, repair, and even spawn each other, so it’s crucial to apply some strategy in order to shut them down fast. I found popping Watchers from a distance usually made a reliable Step 1, but priorities change according to who’s killing you at the moment. Individually or in a squad, Prometheans make pleasingly dangerous adversaries.

Knights in particular are tough, tricky — they can teleport out of harm’s way if you start scoring on them — and imposing in ways Covenant forces just aren’t anymore, so it’s especially satisfying when you assassinate one. Game-wide, it’s roughly a 50-50 split between Prometheans and Covenant encounters, though it gets especially tense when both come at you at once.

So show up for the violence, stay for the story. Big things happen in this game. We see evidence of a resurgent humanity represented by the UNSC Infinity, a massive, fully-loaded dreadnaught also drawn inside Requiem. Hints drop about our race’s destined role as we march out among the stars. And watch the Master Chief’s body language closely. Something’s happening behind that expressionless visor.

Yes, the universe changes in Halo 4, and I’m eager to see where we go from here.

Looks good, feels better
Stepping up to your first vista of Requiem evokes a genuine sense of wonder and awe, not unlike the first time we walked out onto the surface of a Halo, aided in no small measure by the all-new graphics. Halo 4′s stunning visuals represent a quantum leap for the series and a serious bump on nearly any other game franchise you’d care to name. This game is endlessly beautiful.

That’s only the tip of the overhaul. 343 Industries took major cues from Call of Duty — current holder of Halo’s old first-person-shooter crown — to add a slightly more tactical edge to the familiar run-and-gun game, and everything feeds into that philosophy. It’s in the Prometheans’ rock-paper-scissors approach, the new grenade-warning indicator, the new armor abilities, and in how the best weapons in the Master Chief’s revised arsenal tend to be more precision-focused. The Chief even moves noticeably slower than before, balanced by a permanent sprint function. Man, does it feel different. But once you dial in, Halo 4 takes off.

For better and worse, I never dug into the short-burst Thruster Pack or enemy-scoping Promethean Vision (the range on both didn’t impress me). But a handy, deployable sentry turret and a mobile, hard-light shield became invaluable. I also clung to my scope-equipped Battle Rifle and the improved Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR) like never before. Seriously, I passed over energy swords to hang on to my iron. That’s unheard of in previous Halos.

But whatever you’re shooting, the audio design takes everything up a notch. No more mistaking assault rifles fired in the distance for misaligned typewriters. You bring thunder to a gunfight, and alien weapons truly sound alien.

343 retooled absolutely everything in the never-ending quest for balance. The Warthog jeep feels far less floaty; I actually enjoyed driving it. A lot of old favorites — Ghosts, energy swords, shotguns, jetpacks — feel slightly (and rightly) scaled back from their always-win status. New favorites abound. I grabbed any Sticky Grenade Launcher offered to me for the pure comedic value of remote-detonating my enemies. The Promethean Lightrifle (a super-cool Battle Rifle analogy) and sniperish, one-hit-kill Binary Rifle are definite keepers, though the SMG-style Suppressor seems too inaccurate. And I’d take a very scary squirt-gun over the Boltshot pistol any day.

On the other hand, picking up the ridiculously overpowered SAW, a BFG heavy rifle, pretty much puts you on par with God. That suited me fine in the campaign; less so in multiplayer.

Also overpowered is the heavily publicized Mantis combat mech. It comes in handy when a few squadrons of Banshees strafe you, but it doesn’t distinguish itself from any other recent gun-heavy mobile suits (Mass Effect 3, Gears of War 3, etc.). You hop in and fire barrages of missiles at one teeny little Grunt. Because you can. I actually preferred  getting behind the stick of a Pelican for the first time in the series’ history. That’s some long-deferred wish fulfillment … even if that sequence feels more like a reward for my patience than an actual challenge. I like rewards.

You get a lot of them in Halo 4. The rhythms differ, and the sexy looks are a surprise, but the gameplay feels at all times tight, precise, and joyous.

Particularly once you fire up the multiplayer.

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Burke steps through the darkness, his flashlight clenched between his teeth, and carefully pulls back his hunting bow as he looks around every corner. He’s closing in on the trail of two men that have taken everything away from him, and it was time to return the favor. As the tension escalates, a phone — my phone — suddenly rings. The radio chatter coming from the other side informs me that another character, who’s not onscreen, is ready to make a pivotal journey of his own.

Burke (pictured above) is just one of the main characters in Flare, Fourth Wall Studio’s postapocalyptic video series for its proprietary “transmedia” platform, Rides.tv. On this website, viewers use a special video player to watch a show, which will send out optional pieces of content to your mobile device to flesh out the narrative. The first episode of Flare, “The Hunt,” is available now for free on Rides.tv.

“Having developed this world for nearly three years, it’s so exciting to finally be able to share a part of it with our audience,” said Jim Stewartson, the CEO of Fourth Wall Studios, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “It was such a privilege to be able to work with our director, Dan Brown, and this incredible cast. And as we release more content, we will have created something like an open-sourced story world. I hope that audiences everywhere find this glimpse of the world of ‘Flare’ intriguing enough to want to create their own stories set in this universe.”

Instead of being a sit-back-and-watch kind of experience, Fourth Wall wants you to become more involved with the show (only if you let them access your information) by sending phone calls, emails, and even text messages while you watch the main action unfold on your computer screen. In addition to the phone call, I received a simple but poignant email, with the subject header “My Comic,” containing a colored picture of a witch drawn by Burke’s young daughter, Anna.

It feels little more than a gimmick at first, but hearing the characters speak so close to your ear, or “spying” on their text messages through your phone, reinforces the illusion that you’re the one inhabiting their world, and not the other way around. It’s the same reason alternate reality games  – which can also reach out to you via phone calls and messages to give you clues about solving puzzles — tend to attract a loyal following because the genre playfully obfuscates the distinction between what’s real and what’s just fantasy.

The Culver City, Calif.-based company raised $15 million in early 2011 from Patrick Soon-Shiong’s California Capital Equity. Fourth Wall’s founders — Elan Lee (chief creative officer), Jim Stewartson (CEO), and Sean Stewart (head writer) — have extensive experience creating alternate reality games and media, as their previous company, 42 Entertainment, was responsible for the clever 2004 “I Love Bees” ARG that tied back into the story of Microsoft’s Halo 2.

Lee, Stewart, and Stewartson all left 42 Entertainment in 2007 to form Fourth Wall Studios, where among other projects, they once again became involved with the Halo franchise, creating the “Sadie’s Story” radio drama hidden in Halo 3: ODST. Currently, the company employs around 40 people as it creates and hosts a variety of series on its Rides.tv platform, including its Emmy-award winning comedy, Dirty Work.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Once upon a time, one multiplayer deathmatch outfragged them all, and it was good. Halo 2 ruled Xbox live with a just, heavily armed hand, and gamers poured millions of man-hours into annihilating friends and strangers alike. Then a stranger from Activision came to town and shot Halo 2 in the head. While Halo remains a force to be reckoned with, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has owned online multiplayer ever since.

At a special Halo 4 preview event in downtown L.A., we got our first hands-on look at developer 343 Industries’ first crack at Halo’s signature competitive multiplayer, now dubbed War Games. Two modes. Two maps. And it’s not unfair to say we unanimously hated it … at first.

Because this is a very different Halo, and it has a very specific mission: take back the crown.

Spawning in and pushing the right stick forward for the first time — particularly coming off a recent Halo: Reach party — we felt the game was noticeably slower, more deliberate, almost plodding at times. You just don’t get the same sense of speed. Even bumping up the sensitivity didn’t bring it back to Reach’s level. You still space-jump, but as a Spartan IV super soldier, you’re a few notches down the rung from the Master Chief, and you don’t move like him. You go at the speed of a human marine crossing a bombed-out ruin … a la Call of Duty.

Sprinting moves to a dedicated, always-available feature with a quick left-stick click … like Call of Duty. Duty-ish killstreaks let you call in deployable Halo-ish rewards; energy swords, overshields, the new (and nicely overpowered) Promethian weapons. Experience points go towards unlocking armor upgrades (several of which were available for our preview event) instead of merely blinging out your kit. Forerunner vision gives you a brief hit of radar vision. Thrusters are the poor man’s jetpack. Hologram decoys (likely the baseline ability) never get old. Crouching? Over on the B button.

Sound familiar, Call of Duty fans?

But here’s the thing… Call of Duty doesn’t exactly do multiplayer wrong. The more War Games we played, the more we started to acclimatize to the pacing. Then we found the new rhythms. And then we really started to enjoy it.

Old, reliable Team Slayer became a hunt rather than a scramble. New mode Regicide tags the point leader with an always-visible waypoint marker and places an ever-increasing bounty on his head (a nicely nasty trick GamesBeat Editor in Chief Dan Hsu had to build himself in previous Halos). And once you dial into how your Spartan IV moves, what they do, what they don’t do, the noticeably thicker report of the guns, and the triumphant return of the overpowered Magnum, it’s absolutely and completely Halo … done differently.

Two new  maps — one similar to Halo 3′s Narrows, with an enclosed ring around the central bridge, the other a spiritual sequel to Halo Reach’s Countdown with a bit more meat in the middle (which I silently dubbed “the killbox”) — gave us good variety for short- and long-range combat. We would’ve stuck around a lot longer and played a lot more if the venue hadn’t made us stand the whole time to play it after a long day’s trade show. But even then, we spent a few hours diving deep into every delicious corner of that game.

So brace yourself. Give it some time. You might just hate Halo 4′s multiplayer before you love it.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Bungie Studios is in the process of severing its final ties to the Halo franchise and has shut down the multiplayer stat-tracking on Bungie.net. To commemorate the hundreds of thousands of years gamers have racked up playing various Halo titles online, Bungie has released the all-encompassing infographic seen below.

“We have followed your careers with great interest here on Bungie.net,” read a blog post on the official Bungie site. “…[Y]ou have gifted us a mountain of heroic moments to memorialize. It is with a sense of awe that we step back and admire the impact that you have had on our games and upon our studio. Thanks for sharing your stories with us.”

In less than a decade, players have logged 20 billion online multiplayer matches played across all Halo titles. If only homework, dieting, and curing diseases were all as easy as teabagging random nubs over Xbox Live….

Click on the image and then again on the next page to see the full resolution version.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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As the gaming culture matures, a handful of impressive fan films paying homage to popular titles have continued to emerge. First, the “Escape from City 17” Half-Life shorts from two years ago set a new standard with their Hollywood-lite production values, then earlier this year Modern Warfare and Portal received similar treatments. Now another Valve-published game, Left 4 Dead, has been reimagined in this live-action eight-minute film.

Check back shortly for our exclusive interview with the film’s creators from Northern Five Entertainment, the same production company responsible for The Resistance web series that was picked up by Starz Media last year.

Full disclosure: The author of this post is in a relationship with Meagan Marie, who appears as Anya Stroud in this video.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Halo: Reach

This game fits into the epic story arc, taking you right back to the beginning of the events leading up to first Halo game released in 2001. If you’re a Halo fan, you already know how this game will end without even playing it, because it is a prequel. That gives the game an overarching sense of fatalism. You can only be so happy when things turn out good for the good guys since you know they’re part of a losing cause. As much as I’m happy to play another Halo, I’m sad that it’s all coming to an end, for now. (Microsoft has a new internal team, 343 Industries, working on other Halo titles, even as Bungie moves on to something new.)

The game’s story is based on the novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach, the first in a series of books set in the Halo universe. But even if you know the ending will be tragic, you still want to follow the  journey. It is a tale worth telling, full of heroism, much like how Homer’s Iliad begins in the midst of the Trojan war and ends before the fall of Troy. As on the plains of Troy, Halo: Reach is the scene of individual acts of heroism in the context of a larger war. The death of each hero is a tragedy unto itself, amid a battlefield of unnumbered tears. It makes you feel like, even though you as the player have a bit role on a vast stage, you are at the critical point in a great war.

The book chronicles the creation of the Spartan III warriors, an elite group of fighters who are humanity’s best hope against the Covenant, the collection of alien races who are bent on wiping out humankind. To the aliens, the planet Reach is just another place to be “glassed,” or laid waste via wholesale destruction. It is the last stopping point on the way to Earth and home to the military command of the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC, which holds the human galaxy together. The planet is beautiful, full of natural landscapes and big cities, and in sweeping scenes Bungie reminds us now and then that it has created an entire planet. The new game takes place on Reach, but it does not follow the story of the book, which explains the slight difference in the titles between the game and the novel.

Halo’s critics say there isn’t enough new material in each new Halo game. But to me, Halo games are always fresh because they’re mash-ups of my favorite things. The Halo games consistently please with their combination of game play, intensity, story, music, sound, graphics, and excellent voice acting. I don’t see too much reason to mess with that formula in the name of providing something different. Halo games are memorable for their unique and unmistakable experiences, and this one is no different. I give it a rating of 95 out 100 — near perfect, but with a few small flaws.

The cultural phenomenon of Halo

The Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 games starred Master Chief and his artificial intelligence companion, Cortana. This game does not. But that doesn’t seem to bother fans, who bought more than 3 million units of the game in its first 24 hours as it went on sale Sept. 14. The game generated more than $200 million in revenue on its first day, compared to $170 million for Halo 3. Microsoft calls it the “entertainment event of the year,” eclipsing the three-day opening box office receipts of Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3, and Alice in Wonderland.

The original Halo became such a smash hit that it established Microsoft’s place in the video game industry. It helped the Xbox cement its place among hardcore game fans, becoming part of the mass culture for a whole generation. More than 36 million units have been sold, generating revenue in excess of $2 billion. Microsoft has the No. 1 online game service in Xbox Live because of the Halo series, and that service is now generating $1 billion a year in revenue.

You don’t get to this level of business success on pure hype; you have to make your game into a cultural phenomenon. Bungie did so by making a series of good choices. Bungie, a developer of games for the Mac, envisioned the original Halo in the late 1990s. Ed Fries, former head of Microsoft Game Studios, scooped up Bungie for less than $30 million in 2000 as one of many bets on Xbox-related content. That deed earned him an angry call from Steve Jobs and a promise that Microsoft would support Mac games. The Bungie team, headed by Jason Jones, Alex Seropian and Joseph Staten, rewrote the game for the Xbox. Marty O’Donnell provided a musical score worthy of an opera. And in less than 11 months, they created a launch title that was played by 80 percent of the people who bought the first Xbox.

The first game pulled together a lot of different pieces of the video game art form. Bungie figured out how to make a first-person shooter game work on the game console, providing just enough assistance so that it was possible to hit targets with a game controller instead of a mouse and keyboard. That may not sound like a big deal, but it was huge, setting the stage for the mass migration of shooter fans from the PC to the console. Many other games tried but failed to capture the right nuances for controlling a weapon with a game controller with buttons and analog sticks.

The story of the original game was inspiring, the pace was pulse-pounding, the sound was riveting, and the music was haunting and lofty. You could jump into vehicles that had realistic physical behavior, and the setting on the ring-like planet Halo was breathtaking, from the waterfalls in its first scene to the indoor scenes of vast Covenant spaceships. All of these things explained why the first game was such a masterpiece, and the continued care and feeding of the franchise has created fans who will buy anything made by Bungie. That’s why Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is working on a Halo movie.

It’s hard to believe Bungie is walking away from all that in the hopes of building something better. I savored this game, playing it over the course of a week, rather than powering through it in a couple of nights as I did with Halo 3. I knew this game would be the last of its kind. I played the new game on the Heroic setting, which is one step above Normal and is the most appropriate setting for gamers who have played Halo before. It took me about a week of one- and two-hour game sessions to finish the single-player campaign. The salve for me is that I can play the multiplayer version for weeks or months.

The nuts and bolts of Halo: Reach

The main job of this prequel is to set the stage for Master Chief and his story. The action is intense, and it’s almost always preceded by long cinematic segments (mini films, really) that convey the latest twists in the story. You find that, besides defending Reach, you have to keep the enemy from getting its hands on the vital secrets of the Office of Naval Intelligence and the research of Catherine Halsey, the creator of the Spartans.

While there are nine major levels in the single-player campaign, each section is divided into its own set of chapters with pithy titles like “And the horse you rode in on.” With each new level, the game introduces you to a new feature or ability. In the very first level, the new feature is companions. You are introduced as Noble 6 (either male or female, depending on your own choice), the new replacement for a team of five Spartans. Each of the characters has a different specialty. You learn what those abilities are in the initial firefights where you learn the Covenant have invaded Reach. You could think of Noble Team as The Six Samurai (modeled after Akira Kurosawa’s classic film, the Seven Samurai).

I quickly found that I needed those companions just to stay alive. I had to play some sections of the game at least 10 times before I could proceed to the next section. It seems a lot tougher than past Halo games, in part because of the addition of new enemies that are tougher to kill than usual. The fighting is gritty. You have to fire at enemies a lot of times before they die, first knocking out their shields and then taking them out. In the meantime, other enemies surround you. You have to toss grenades at the tougher ones and switch weapons as needed. Inevitably, the fighting gets so close that you have to butt them with your gun in a desperate melee. That is business as usual for Halo.

The second level, dubbed Nightfall, introduces more breadth of play as you have to be a sniper, quietly taking out Covenant sentinels. It is here where you first use the hologram. When you tap your left bumper, the hologram sends out a decoy version of a Spartan that draws the fire of enemies. It turns out to be most effective later in the game when you are fighting the tank-like Hunters, which can only be taken out from behind.

In quick succession, you get to experience new levels in Warthogs (which are dune buggy style vehicles with big guns mounted on the back), helicopter gunships, tanks, and the final frontier — space combat. The space scenes are some of the best I’ve played in a sci-fi game. You shoot off into space in a rocket in a very dramatic liftoff scene. Then you have to fight other spacecraft that are attacking a human space station. While other games have failed to get the mechanics of flight simulation right, Bungie has made it easy and natural in Halo: Reach. Just as it made the controller work in shooting targets, it has also made the controller work really well as a flying instrument. You spend most of your time aiming, steering and shooting. You don’t have to worry as much about accelerating or decelerating.

The space combat scene is followed by a firefight in zero gravity. There is no sound in this battle,  and the physics of zero gravity change the way you fight. You can jump and fly forever, or toss a grenade that goes for a great distance. It’s one more element that makes you feel like you’re playing a brand new game, not the sixth game in a series.

The game isn’t perfect

The characters of Noble team get more airtime than the usual video game side kicks. But I miss the personality of the wise-cracking and emotional Cortana, who constantly accompanied Master Chief. In Halo: Reach, when the Spartans take off their masks, they reveal their own unique character traits. The problem is they are all of the tough-as-nails Marine variety. You get to know these characters a little, but the common trait they share is the courage to sacrifice themselves for other members of the team or the larger mission. If there is a flaw in the game, it is that you don’t get to know them nearly as well as you get to know the characters in games such as BioWare’s Mass Effect 2, which is another of the great games of the year.

The characters come and go. And you don’t learn much about your own character at all. In other words, there is too much action, and not enough back story to each of the samurai. I guess that means that Bungie should have added more cinematics to the story. As with the long cut scenes in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (the best game of 2009), the movie part of the Halo: Reach game could have conveyed more character depth and thus more emotional attachment. Thanks to its flaws, it’s no surprise that Halo: Reach is coming in slightly below the review scores for the first three Halo games and below games such as Mass Effect 2 or Red Dead Redemption.

As far as game play goes, Bungie took away what it gave in Halo 2 with dual-wielding, or the ability to hold a weapon in each hand. That turned out to be far too powerful in the hands of veterans playing multiplayer games. And it made the single-player campaigns much too easy as well. In this game, you can tap new options such as load-outs with different weapons. You can use different enhancements for your armor, such as lock-down mode, which makes you invincible for a few seconds. You can also fly around with a jet pack for a limited time, or sprint at double speed for a burst of time. By and large, this is a good trade. But players may feel frustrated they can’t dominate the Covenant as they once did.

Multiplayer promises to offer billions of hours of fun

I am looking forward to playing a lot more multiplayer. You can play different versions such as Capture the Flag or classic Slayer (where you kill everybody). The new features such as jet packs will get a lot of use in the multiplayer combat. Multiplayer is always a joy because you get rewards and rankings based on your performance. With the new Forge mode, you can create your own maps for multiplayer combat. And with Theater, you can watch your own achievements and tell the world about them. When it comes to sharing, Bungie is on top of social media.

I started my first multiplayer game with the expectation that I would be slaughtered over and over. I actually managed to come in second place, mainly because I got my hands on a sword that gave me the ability to slay the enemy with a single stroke. The multiplayer gaming is what justifies the game price of $60 or more. Gamers have spent billions of hours playing Halo games online, and this one is likely going to be very similar. Overall, this multiplayer interface is much more streamlined. It matches you with other players quickly and it loads fast. That’s pretty impressive, considering that millions of players are going to be playing it all at once.

An opening for another sequel

Is the ending worthy of the Halo reputation? I won’t spoil it. But it is familiar in that everything comes to a spectacular head where much is at stake and the hero has to save everything, at great sacrifice. In that way, the story is very similar to that of Red Dead Redemption, which is also one of the best games of the year.

Not all ends in disaster for all of the characters in the Halo: Reach game. A couple of characters separate from the group in what seems to be a path for a sequel to Halo: Reach. If Microsoft continues with the Halo: Reach story, it could pursue the path taken by those characters. Given that there are seven novels now, Microsoft’s internal studio, 343 Industries, could take many different story paths. Bungie created an entire universe and Microsoft could publish a game every year and still not run out of material for games.

Halo: Reach is one more example of how the Halo universe could stay with us for many years to come. Whatever Bungie is working on for its new universe, it better be good. Because they’re walking away from a game franchise that has won loyal fans like no other series. I’m glad that Bungie has delivered a great game for its Halo swan song. But I’m still hungry for more adventures and frenetic game play. That’s the mark of an outstanding game. Bungie is quitting the Halo universe while it’s still in top form.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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