the Hushed Casket

I was playing COD4 tonight and spawned in Ambush. As I ran forward I noticed an Arabic sign in front of me, but it didn't look right. Upon closer inspection I realized that the characters were written from left to right like western characters. Arabic is written from right to left. I thought that peculiar so I started imagining a mirror image of the text and verbalizing what it said, just in case it contained a word I recognized. Well, it did.

In-fii-na-ya-ti-ya Wa-r-d

Looks like some blogs have covered the COD4 Arabic mishaps before, but this was news to me. Interesting easter egg (or screw-up), Infinity Ward.

Source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/884/884154p1.html

Gears of War 2 Multiplayer Hands-On

Like a Fenix from the flames, Marcus raises the meatflag as we blow the lid off GOW2's multiplayer.

by Andrew Stanton, IGN UK

UK, June 25, 2008 - "This is where the magic happens." For some reason this truism rattled unshakably around my head like beans in a tin can over the entire day spent at Epic Games. We'd been flown to the US to be the first journalists in the world to get hands on with Gears of War 2 multiplayer. My strange mantra was often a reminding prompt – there's absolutely nothing cool whatsoever about Epic's HQ.

Based in the beautiful, but nothingy backwoods of Cary, North Carolina (Wiki it: there's lashings of green, wide roads and naff all else), it's a bland, beige building nestling amongst similarly uninspiring science park real estate. But the mantra also came back as a whooping endorsement when we finally picked up a controller and the fragging began.

Some flavour: Epic truly is indistinguishable from just about every other developer we've visited. Two storey, science park monochrome blahchitecture. A reception bristling with heavy, crystal blob game of the year awards and life-size character figure detritus. The desks of the developer staff are strewn with comic book, anime and geek movie vinyl figures. There's a kitchen creaking at the seams with free sugar and caffeine-rich snacks – the ADHD-inspiring engine room. A rank of arcade machines line up next to the most pristine gym I've ever seen in my life (make of that what you will) and positively cathedral-like, gargantuan loos, with magazine racks of game mag serving as "inspirational" reading. It's tidier than most, but that's no great endorsement. And they knew we were coming, so nagging had probably ensued.

Gears 2 promises to be "bigger, better and more badass", plus now it also includes flamethrowers.

Bungie previewed an unreleased Halo 3 map in San Diego this weekend at an MLG event. It's named Cold Storage and is a remake of Chill Out from Halo 3.

This will certainly get the attention of old school Halo fanboys who have long been crying out for smaller slayer maps. Chill Out is certainly a good pick.

What other classic Halo maps would you like to see in Halo 3?

MLG is hosting an image gallery of the map: http://www.mlgpro.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=152

Some YouTube shakey cam footage of gameplay on Cold Storage:

Rock Band has received some great DLC recently. You can see all Rock Band DLC printed in order of release here.

First is the Disturbed pack. Perfect Insanity and Indestructible are particularly good:

Indestructible:

Perfect Insanity:

Click "read more" for videos of all my recommended recent DLC.

LINK

Through Xbox 360 Fanboy and the Bungie weekly update I recently found the above linked blog, Ascendant Justice. The author has painstakingly and thoughtfully compiled the story of the Forerunners from all the information gleaned from the Halo 3 terminals as well as tidbits from other Halo campaigns and lore. The story is not only a great addition to the Halo universe, but is extremely well-written. The author is careful to not turn speculation into fact and notes every part of the story that remains canonically uncertain. If you are a fan of Halo fiction, you need to read this blog.

Grand Theft Auto IV has sold $500M worth of games in its first week of release. For comparison, GTA IV sold more copies in one day (3,600,000) than HALO 3 sold in its first week (3,300,000). That figures to a $500M first week for GTA IV compared to HALO 3's $300M.

The numbers are staggering for the dual platform GTA IV which was released in a PS3 and XBOX 360 format.

We know 6,000,000 copies of GTA IV were sold in the first week. VG Charts estimates that the XBOX 360 version sold 3.3M units versus 2.6M copies for the PS3 version. Those are pretty close figures considering that the XBOX 360 has sold 6M more consoles than the PS3. Evidentially and not surprisingly, PS3 owners are loyal to the GTA series.

And is Microsoft regretting not expanding the HALO universe to other platforms?

Perhaps the development costs of making a version of HALO 3 for the PS3 wasn't feasible. Okay.

But what about say Halo 2 on the PS2? There are an estimated 50M PS2 consoles out there right now compared to just 17M original XBOX consoles.

Obviously, there was a massive install base. After they see GTA's numbers, is Microsoft regretting making HALO exclusive to the XBOX family?

Move over Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3.  Grand Theft Auto IV is now the #1 game on XBOX Live (thanks Major Nelson).  For the first time, Halo moves to #3 (the lowest a Halo title has ever been).

CoD4 and Halo 3 have been and will remain at the top of the XBOX Live leaderboards for some time to come because they offer a proven multiplayer experience with high replay value.  Halo 2 is still the #1 original XBOX title on XBOX Live.  I don't recall it at anytime being #2 on that list.

Multiplayer modes in GTA IV is new to the series.  Will gamers find replay value in GTA IV?  Will it play much like the way Bioshock did?  Amazing story.  But not much replay value.

I'm guessing that in 4-8 weeks after the newness of GTA IV has worn off, CoD4 and Halo 3 will be ahead of GTA IV in the number of unique users on XBOX Live.

Or have I totally under estimated the GTA IV following?  A huge hit on the PlayStation consoles, does GTA have some kind of a massive cult following that's going to keep playing this game until the end of the year?