Tag Archives: Master Chief Collection

Gamenight, Twitch, and Today’s Updates

Posted on by
Reply

Game nights are fun, and sometimes necessary. They help get friends together, to settle differences, and to remind us what gaming once was, and how it continues to keep us together, even if we’re miles, or countries away.

Game night is usually quite the event at my place. Usually involving 4 large flat screen TV’s, 4 Xbox’s (360 and now the One), and two handfuls of people. Quite the epic Friday night filled with Pepsi and drinks.

We typically dabble in Halo, as it’s the easiest game to organize a large group of people, over multiple boxes and TVs, into one online lobby. Alternatively we’ll play some arcade style games. This past Friday saw us playing in The Master Chief Collection, Riptide GP2, #IDARB, and Rayman Legends.

Lately I’ve also been playing around with my streaming capabilities, and Twitch.Tv. This started when I first got the Xbox One when it was released. Streaming through the Xbox is great, especially since it has the Kinect functionality with the camera and microphone. Less great is when you want to switch games, or stream from another console entirely. This problem was apparent to me around the time of the Extra Life charity marathon last October. I was going to be playing a full play-through of Half-Life 2 through the Xbox 360 Orange Box. I had my Xbox 360 plugged into the One, but Twitch only supports XBone games.

My fix was to pick up a capture card. The Elgato Game Capture HD, and a couple webcams. This allowed me to record and broadcast through my TV, game, audio, and the surrounding room, through the webcams.

Ready to Broadcast

Ready to Broadcast

I use Open Broadcast Software to record and stream. It supports multiple inputs, and allows for text overlays. So with my 24 Hour stream, I had the game, the name of the game, 2 webcams, a tinyURL to my charity page, my webpage, and a 24 hr countdown clock.

Lately I’ve been streaming my game nights, or just the random nightly session. I’m not pro yet, mind you. But one day I might start doing game-play videos. We’ll see.

Moving on to some newsworthy stuff….

GTA V – Online Heists

New info started coming out today about the GTA V Online Heists content patch, for those lucky few that started seeing it already, patch is reportedly sitting around 4.8GB in size, on the Xbox One. I have the re-mastered XOne version. However, as I’m writing this, none of my friends do, so I don’t have anyone local to test out these heists with. We’ll have to wait and see, or maybe try on the 360.

Halo Master Chief Xbox One Bundle

Microsoft is launching a Master Chief Collection XBox One bundle to help boost their numbers. The no-frills bundle is available without a Kinect, and a digital copy of the Master Chief Collection. No custom box, no custom controller, standard 500Gb HDD. Kind of a letdown.

Borderlands Aplenty

At Pax East this weekend, Gearbox announced both, the next installment to the Tales From The Borderlands, and the next DLC for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

Tales From the Borderlands, Telltale’s game, will have episode 2 released March 17th, 2015. I’ve been sitting on the TellTale Collection for the XOne for some time now, and I haven’t gotten the chance to start these games. But will soon.

Also announced was the next DLC to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel – Claptastic Voyage. The DLC takes place inside Claptrap’s head, and is supposed to help bridge the gap between the Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2. Release March 24th, 2015.

Also released that week is the Handsome Jack Collection, which I’ll be picking up. I was uneasy about the idea of the Pre-Sequel being released on the Xbox 360 and figured that it might be re-released on the One, and lo, here we are. Combo of the Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2 re-mastered. The Pre-Sequel also includes the Season pass for DLC.

“”I wonder if i plant you in the ground, if you will grow taller?” -Psycho”

Destiny News

A new interesting tidbit from Destiny this week is the Inferno game-play mode in the Crucible:

From the Grimoire:

“A modified variant of multiple Crucible match types, Inferno tests your Light against the darkest of conditions.

Darkness prevails, leaving Guardians to rely on their weaponry and combat skills alone. The enemy can only be found by sight and sound alone. Rely on your teammates and keen tracking to stalk your enemies and shut them down without the trust in your most powerful abilities.

True skill put to the ultimate test. No trackers. No Supers. No bonuses. Only kills earn points.“

I’ve been meaning to do a follow-up to December’s review, as I did continue to play, and made it through the DLC, completed the Raid, and made it to level 30. I also quit cold turkey one day, and haven’t really looked back.

Maybe I’ll do a quick play through of the first DLC and write up a follow up/2nd opinion piece. Title it “Change of Heart”, as its both applicable, and the name of an achievement from the game.

Change of Heart (Reverse a decision you made in the upgrade grid) – 20G.

So witty.

Out!

EA Access and the News!

Posted on by
Reply

I have EA Access. I’ve had it since it’s inception. Personally, I think its a good deal. $30/ year gets you access to the EA games vault, which currently has 9 games, 10% off games and DLC, and some new releases you’ll get early access, or free game trials.

The vault currently includes: Battlefield 4, FIFA 14, MADDEN NFL 25, Peggle 2, NFS Rivals, Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare, EA UFC, and the 2 recent additions being NBA Live 15 and Madden NFL 15, which surprisingly added, only a few weeks apart. Typically a new game is added every 1-2 months. Sometimes they release little gifts too, like free DLC packs.

I guess it’s suitable for those who like sports games, or the First-Person Shooters by Dice. For me, its provided the ability to play games I wouldn’t typically pick up, unless they were cheap. Games like UFC, or Basketball or Football. I play Shooters, and NFS games generally already, and I pick up NHL annually.

I’ve pre-ordered Battlefield Hardline, which will grant me 1 week early access, so keep an eye out for first impressions of that, starting March 12th, 2015.

The Game Developer Conference is currently underway in San Fransisco, March 2-6, so on that note, lets move on to some news:

GDC

Phil Spencer and Halo Master Chief Collection:

Game Informer had the chance to speak to Xbox Head Phil Spencer at the GDC conference about the Halo Master Chief Collection launch, and continuing troubles, and what the teams have learned going forward with the Halo 5 release.

Spencer discussed, at length, the steps they’re taking to ensure that the Collection package is becoming more and more stable, and ensured that the teams are still hard at work to ensure that it happens as quickly as possible.

He also discussed how the Halo 5 team is handling the launch, with earlier, dedicated beta testing, not for promotion, but for stress and bugs.

I’m not a big online gamer, as I typically play games for the single player and co-op aspects. But in the case of Halo, even the co-op functionality was affected. Game crashes, controller latency on the client side. And it continued to plague the game for months.

I have yet to complete Halo 1 or 2 with my friend, and haven’t even started on 3 or 4. Now that the recent “big content patch” is out I will try again and give it a shot.

343 have apologized and gifted 1 month free Xbox Live Gold, and the Halo Reach campaign to those who suffered at launch. It’s a nice thought, and appreciated. I’m just hoping that Halo 5 works, as this collection’s launch was not a stumble, but more like accidentally walking off the cliff backwards.

Phil Harrison Leaving Microsoft?

At GDC, rumours have started to circulate that Corporate VP Phil Harrison is expected to leave Microsoft after only a few years. Microsoft and Xbox Head Phil Spencer have declined to comment at this time.

SimCity Developer, Maxis Emeryville, Closed By EA

Maxis’ headquarters in Emeryville, CA are closing up, as announced by a former employee on Twitter, and since confirmed by EA. Current development is being consolidated to the other Maxis offices.

Maxis was the creator and developer of the SimCity titles and The Sims. The original SimCity being 26 years old now, and 2013’s reboot of the series was poorly received and also suffered from a lot of launch issues.

Personally, I’ve always been a fan of the simulation type games, and had no qualms with the SimCity 2013 reboot. I would agree that some parts of the design were poorly conceived, as it required an online connection to play, for the “online market and resource module” to function. Also the area of creation and lack of land modification tools made it less fun.

I did appreciate the level of detail for the traffic and simulation aspects, but there were a lot of complaints that it wasn’t actually as deep or accurate as we were lead to believe.

Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year

This year at the Game Developer Conference Choice Awards, Monolith’s action title Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor picked up the Game of the Year award. Earlier in the year, at the DICE awards, Shadow of Mordor picked up eight awards, but not the coveted GOTY. Unfortunately this game is still on my shelf, waiting to be played :'(.

The full winners list is as follows:

Best Debut – Stoic Studio (The Banner Saga)
Innovation Award – Monument Valley (ustwo)
Best Technology – Destiny (Bungie/Activision)
Best Audio – Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly/Sega)
Ambassador Award – Brenda Romero
Best Visual Art – Monument Valley (ustwo)
Best Narrative – Kentucky Route Zero: Act III (Cardboard Computer)
Pioneer Award – David Braben
Best Design – Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (Blizzard)
Best Handheld/Mobile Game – Monument Valley (ustwo)
Audience Award – Elite: Dangerous (Frontier Developments)
Lifetime Achievement Award – Hironobu Sakaguchi
Game of the Year – Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)

Wireless Adapter for Xbox One Controller on the PC

Exciting news for me, as this is really the only way I can play PC titles that require any sort of moving and looking at the same time.

I was trained on the d-pad with the Nintendo and S-NES, and then single thumb-stick on the N64. Since then, the dual thumb-stick has been permanently engrained. I can’t WASD and mouse with the same accuracy I can with the controller.

I currently use the Xbox One Controller on the PC within Steam, but wired, so this announcement, and guaranteed future purchase, will allow me to play PC games in bed. Good, or Bad? … Who knows?

That’ll be the news of today/ last night.
-iRogan