Armor sets inspired by warriors of ages past are coming to Halo 3 and Halo: Reach in Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s next season, and they are unlike anything ever before seen in Halo.
Revealed in a new Canon Fodder blog post on Halo Waypoint, the new sets draw inspiration from the armor worn by the Spartan warriors of ancient Greece, the knights of medieval Europe, and the Viking warriors of Scandinavia. The sets will be available as part of Halo: MCC Season 8, titled Mythic, along with new nameplates and weapon and vehicle skins.
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Halo publishing team art director Horia Dociu dove into some of the thinking that went into the new skins in the blog post, saying the new season served as a cool way to bring themes present throughout the Halo series to life in a visual way.
“Mjolnir and a few other mythological Norse names in our canon inspired an Asgard warrior concept, which came along with the horned helmets and all the other Viking associations history and pop culture have highlighted,” Dociu says. “While monikers like Wraith, Banshee, and Ghost felt like a stoic, dark-gothic lens through which to approach a classical knight armor take on our Spartans. Halo is all about the mythical warriors of the future, so what better way to reinforce the fantasy than to imbue the armors with the legendary visuals that have echoed for centuries in our own history of legendary warriors?”
The sets are similar in spirit to the “Fractures” that will be seen in Halo Infinite, which are non-canon skins with more unconventional themes, like the Yoroi Samurai Spartan armor that has been seen in various images and screenshots promoting the game. That’s something future issues of Canon Fodder will dive into “further down the road.”
Halo franchise and narrative writer Jeff Easterling writes in the blog post he personally loves it when a franchise can be viewed through a new lens, as will be the case for MCC’s new season.
“Whether it’s a samurai take on Star Wars or a steampunk take on Batman, seeing familiar elements given a wild and far-out twist can simultaneously give you a fun new thing to enjoy while also helping you appreciate the core reasons of why you love the original thing in the first place,” Easterling writes.
Easterling teases that these new armor sets will also set the stage “for more fun experimental themes to come in the future in this and other venues.”
Halo: MCC’s next season will also see the addition of a new Halo 3 map in the form of Icebox, a reimagining of the Halo 2 map Turf.
EA Motive Studios held a Dead Space remake developer livestream on August 31 that showcased some in-progress gameplay, including a look at what appeared to be a muscular Isaac Clarke in a set of updated armor.
The one-hour presentation went over several features of the Dead Space remake. Motive Studios illustrated the enhanced lighting and smoke effects that look to bolster the game’s claustrophobic atmosphere, and it also highlighted tidbits of the new dismemberment system which lets you peel off the flesh of your enemies for even more gruesome Necromorph kills.
Peppered throughout the livestream were glimpses of Isaac and his updated armor. The game is dark, so it’s hard to get a discerning look, but it appears as if Isaac’s armor is glossier or shinier. It’s also more detailed, with the backpack and shoulder pads looking more industrial than the 2008 original.
Isaac, my boy, have you been working out?
And curiously, it seems Isaac has been hitting the gym, as his shoulders and biceps/triceps look noticeably larger than in the original Dead Space game.
We’ve reached out to EA for comment and will update if we hear back.
Motive Studios also revealed that Isaac will be voiced in the remake. Gunner Wright, who played Isaac in Dead Space 2 and 3, will return to voice the character. However, he won’t be a motormouth; Issac talks under certain situations.
Microsoft’s biggest franchise is Halo, a series created by Bungie and now developed internally at 343 Industries. The sci-fi series primarily about an ongoing battle between humanity and the alien Covenant has a long and storied past, and the franchise has seen numerous popular and beloved entries over the years.
With Halo Infinite set for release in December, we’re looking back at the Halo series overall and ranking the mainline FPS franchise. This list covers only the main FPS games, not offshoots like Spartan Strike or the arcade game Fireteam Raven. We’re also not including the Halo Wars series, though it’s great for those who want more story context on Infinite. And while Halo: The Master Chief Collection is absolutely the best way to play Halo in 2021, it’s also not featured on this list because it is a compilation package instead of one game. You can also sign up for Game Pass Ultimate to play every mainline Halo game as well as numerous spin-offs.
7. Halo 5: Guardians
2015’s Halo 5 is the latest entry in the main series
The latest Halo mainline game is Halo 5: Guardians, which was released in 2015 for Xbox One. Ahead of the game’s release, Microsoft kicked off an elaborate marketing campaign in which fans were led to believe that Master Chief might in fact be the bad guy. In the story, Chief is being hunted by a new Spartan named Agent Jameson Locke, and the campaign actually shifts away from Chief and lets you play as Locke in the majority of the missions. However, many felt the marketing overhyped the storyline, which did not pay off in the way that some fans might have wanted. Still, the campaign was an enthralling one, with its story weaving many threads and taking players to new places. The campaign levels were designed to be more open-ended, as well, with players more free to choose their own paths through the environment. Unfortunately, Halo 5 did not support split-screen, with Microsoft citing data that most people simply don’t play that way. That said, the feedback came swiftly, and although Halo 5 never added split-screen, this did prompt the studio to promise that future Halo games–like Halo Infinite–will indeed support split-screen.
For multiplayer, the big new addition to the mix was Warzone, a large-scale MOBA-style mode that mixed PvE and PvP. The mode was generally well-received, though some portion of the audience complained about its use of Req packs, which let players spend real money to unlock items in the mode. Another innovation for Halo 5 multiplayer was its clambering system, which allows players to move more freely through maps by vaulting over ledges and climbing walls. It introduces a new level of speed and verticality to Halo, and it’s something that is being brought forward with Halo Infinite.
ODST began as a small project and scaled up to a full game
2009’s Halo 3: ODST was originally conceived as a type of bridge game between Halo 3 and Halo Reach, but it turned into a full product that remains a favorite for many Halo fans. The story follows members of the Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) group, who are voiced in the game by Nolan North, Alan Tudyk, Nathan Fillion, Tricia Helfer, and Adam Baldwin. You play as the Rookie, and after a landing gone wrong, it’s up to you to piece together the clues about what happened as you attempt to reunite with your squadmates in New Mombasa. In a big shift for the series, your character is not some cybernetically enhanced supersoldier but instead a regular ran-and-file fighter–albeit an elite-level one–thus necessitating a more strategic style of play. Halo 3: ODST is also known for its film noir-like visual qualities and darker color palettes overall.
On the multiplayer side, Halo 3: ODST’s big and memorable innovation was the Firefight mode. In his Horde-style mode, Spartans fight to stay alive for as long as possible as waves of increasingly difficult enemies. Players can use Skulls to make the experience more difficult and/or unique, and the mode supports couch co-op and online multiplayer.
With Halo 3: ODST, what began as a small-scale project became a bonafide game that is visually and tonally distinct from the rest of the series, and one that is if nothing else, memorable.
One of the more fan-favorite Halo games to date is the last one that Bungie made before leaving Halo behind, 2010’s Halo: Reach is a prequel to the original Halo game. It puts players in the boots not of Master Chief but of Noble Six, an anonymous member of the Noble Team. This is part of what made Reach so exciting, refreshing, and memorable. The story, too, struck a more somber tone. Anyone who read the original Halo novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach, knew how it would end, but. it’s a big shift away from the “Chief saves the day” approach to the other games, and its story felt more personal. Also on the campaign side, Reach introduced space dogfights, a new and exciting mechanic that literally elevated the action from previous games in the franchise. The multiplayer in Halo: Reach was as good as ever, and it mixed things up with a brand-new mode called Invasion where one team of Elites tries to break into a Spartan stronghold. Halo: Reach isn’t the best Halo game, but it’s consistently one of the games that people point to as a signature moment for the series when it comes to its unique story and that it was the final game made by Bungie.
With Halo 4, development shifted to Microsoft’s 343 Industries
Halo 4 marked a major shift for the Halo series, as it was thefirst entry in the main series developed by 343 Industries after it assumed control of the franchise, with Bungie going off to make Destiny. A lot of pressure was put on 343 to deliver something exciting and put its own stamp on the franchise beloved by so many, but the game did not succeed in every category. While the story mode was generally well-received for its engrossing narrative involving the new Prometheans, the multiplayer mode–seen by many to be the bread and butter of the franchise–wasn’t as successful. It was criticized in some circles for borrowing mechanics from other popular shooters–with loadouts and (gasp) sprinting–instead of carving out its own path. Still, Halo 4 was an enormous commercial success and helped show that 343 wasn’t simply mimicking Bungie.
Halo 3 was released in September 2007 after a memorable marketing campaign that asked fans to “Believe.” Fans actually got their first crack at Halo 3 through… Crackdown. Yes, Microsoft included beta access to Halo 3 with its new IP, Crackdown. The game officially released in September 2007 to great success, bringing in $170 million in revenue on its first day and $300 million over its first week. It went on to become one of the best-selling games of 2007, which was a notable achievement given other marquee games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Rock Band released that year as well. Reviewers generally enjoyed Halo 3, with many praising its Forge system that would go on to become one of the franchise’s most defining elements. In Forge, players can create their own maps and modes, extending the lifecycle and appeal of the game, and this type of user-generated content was ahead of its time. Burnie Burns of Rooster Teeth used Forge to create the fan-favorite Grifball mode, for example, which would go on to be an official mode in subsequent Halo games.
Bungie followed up Combat Evolved with Halo 2 in 2004, and it was another major success. One of the most defining elements of Halo 2 was its online multiplayer through Xbox Live, which was a brand-new service at the time. While the game made strides in the area of multiplayer and introduced fans with a new way to play and test their skills against the world, the campaign mode remains a sore spot for many. Due to various issues, including time constraints, Bungie was unable to fulfill its complete vision. And with a deadline approaching, the team decided to end things on a cliffhanger, setting up the forthcoming Halo 3 a few years later–though that did lead to a very memorable final quote. Halo 2 is also notable because it was the last game to come to PC natively, with the franchise moving toward a console-only release strategy for many years into the future (but not forever; more on that later). The game also introduced dual-wielding of weapons to the Halo universe, which have since come and gone over the years.
The game that started it all. Halo: Combat Evolved was released in November 2001 as a launch title for the original Xbox. While FPS games on console are now popular, this was not always the case, and Bungie’s Halo was a trailblazer. Microsoft is reported to have lost billions of dollars on the OG Xbox, but Halo was a standout, breakthrough title that would go on to become one of the most recognizable and iconic in all of gaming. Halo: Combat Evolved is in the Gaming Hall of Fame, as it should be, and in addition to having a memorable campaign that introduced the world to Master Chief, Halo: Combat Evolved featured split-screen multiplayer. This was before the launch of Xbox Live, so playing together meant physically being together, and many still fondly remember those times, including us.
In Fortnite Season 7, Week 13, you’ll need to open a mission kit, then place a jammer outside IO base in a single match. This quest will go live in-game on Wednesday, September 1 at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET. As the details stipulate, you’ll have to redo both parts of the quest if you fail to complete them in the same round, but don’t worry. With this guide, it’ll be easy to earn your XP fast. Here’s where to find the mission kit and jammer in Fortnite.
Fortnite Mission Kit And Jammer Locations
Both the mission kit and jammer can be found at Corny Complex in this week’s challenge. You’ll notice a lot of activity in that region these days because it’s where Doctor Slone will make her final stand against the alien threat. Placing the jammer is one of the latest steps in her grand scheme following last week’s activation of the mysterious countermeasure device.
When you drop into Corny Complex, you’ll find the mission kit just northwest of the biggest red barn in the area–it’s the one next to the lone silver grain silo. Interact with it, then quickly hurry over to the main residence in Corny Complex. Right next to the house’s western exterior wall is the jammer prompt. Use that one to finish the quest and score an easy 45,000 XP.
Just remember, you must not only do it in the same match, but also in that specific order. In the map below, we’ve labeled the mission kit with the blue icon, and the jammer with the red icon.
Visit the blue icon first, then the red icon.
This will kick off the penultimate week of Season 7 Legendary Quests, as the season looks primed to end after Week 14 around September 12, according to in-game details. Can Slone prevail over the aliens? Does everybody even want her to? What happened to Farmer Steel? There are many lingering questions, and soon we may just get some answers.
For as long as there have been successful movies, there have been copies, imitations, and rip-offs. Hollywood studios are hugely risk-averse–the sheer cost of making movies and the vulnerability of many studio executive jobs means that most would rather churn out something resembling a big hit than take the chance on an original concept.
In many cases, this means a sequel or reboot–but that’s only an option if you are the studio that owns the rights to the original film. For the others, it’s a matter of making movies that try to recapture whatever made the first one so popular, whether it’s the storyline, tone, visual style, or chemistry between the stars.
In the past decade, this has extended beyond imitating single movies to entire franchises. With movie series based on popular books such as Harry Potter and the Hunger Games proving so successful, studios have looked at whatever similarly themed novels could be adapted, in the hopes that they can find similar success.
Of course, it often doesn’t work. In trying to slavishly copy the formula of a hit movie, writers and directors often hugely underestimate audiences and fail to give their films any spark of originality. Harry Potter is not popular simply because it’s about a kid who learns magic. It’s the casting, the chemistry between the leads, and of course, the way in which JK Rowling’s world was so well translated to the screen–something that cannot simply be xeroxed (something even Rowling herself has attempted and failed to do with the Fantastic Beasts spin-offs).
So here are some of the most blatant attempts to imitate a popular or influential movie. Not all are terrible films and some were even financial successes. But all suffer from a misguided belief that simply copying another is to make something as beloved as the movies that are attempting to emulate.
Konami has announced that the online servers for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will be shutting down at the end of May 2022. The process for winding down the servers has started today with the termination of the game’s purchase system.
The game also features the third iteration of the franchise’s popular online component, Metal Gear Online. Any related DLC to this multiplayer mode will no longer be available for purchase starting on November 30 this year. This mode focused on a class system where players can choose different roles with unique strengths and weaknesses such as the stealthy Infiltrator, balanced Scout, and heavily equipped Enforcer. There were also a variety of game modes, including the deathmatch classic Bounty Hunter, king-of-the-hill style Comm Control, and the capture-the-flag inspired Cloak and Dagger.
Additionally, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will be delisted from digital PS3 and Xbox 360 storefronts on March 1, 2022. The final step in the process will end with the official retirement of the game’s PS3 and Xbox 360 servers on May 31, 2022.
Konami notes that while the online servers will be shut down, the game will still be playable offline. No refunds will be offered for in-game item purchases, and the current timeline could change without prior notice. Fortunately, it looks like that the PS4 and Xbox One servers for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will remain functional.
Cheating in Call of Duty: Warzone has been an ongoing issue, and Activision has now rolled out another anti-cheating PSA to discourage bad behavior. A video posted to the Call of Duty account shows off what is claimed to be the real reaction of a player who received a hardware and profile ban, which locked him out of the game on all available platforms for cheating.
The video is meant to demonstrate that Activision has no tolerance for cheating in Warzone and will move swiftly and emphatically to ban players, as it continues to do–just recently, the company banned another 100,000 accounts.
“We know what you’re doing,” Activision said. “We’re coming for you.”
In the video, the banned player shows off how all their accounts, across platforms–even those they never played on–were banned. It’s meant to showcase the reality of what can happen if you cheat in the game and get caught.
“Congratulations to Activision. Biiiiig congratulations. You guys finally got your sh** together and you finally have banned accounts. So I appreciate you doing that. I’m actually happy right now. You guys took matters into your own hands and fixed it so now content creators are coming back to the game,” the banned player says in the video.
Activision’s efforts to stamp out cheaters is ongoing. When the new Warzone map launches later this year, it will include a new anti-cheat system to help weed out the bad actors. Activision hasn’t announced specifics on the system, and that’s likely by design so would-be cheaters can’t get ahead of the game.
Similar to Far Cry 5’s Fangs for Hire, Far Cry 6’s companion system allows players to team up with a roster of Amigos to fight by their side. The game’s Supremo backpacks are the series’ newest super-weapon type, adding a whole new way to bring destruction to foes.
Far Cry 6 takes it’s Latin revolution story seriously, while still maintaining a healthy dose of silly moments for longtime fans of the franchise. During our recent five-hour hands-on demo, we experienced the game’s new systems like Amigos and Supremos. We also spent time trying the Resolver weapons and the gun modification system borrowed from Far Cry New Dawn.
In this video, we highlight exciting moments Amigos like Juan Cortez’s alligator Guapo and the punk rock rooster Chicharrón. We also preview Far Cry’s new weapon type, Supremos, super powered backpacks that can cause explosions and fires as well as push enemies away and heal allies.
Far Cry 6 releases October 7th on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.
Deathloop, the latest new IP from Dishonored and Prey developer Arkane, is just around the corner, promising some high-octane antics within its time-loop premise. It’s launching exclusively on PS5 on consoles, which also means it’s taking advantage of many of the features the DualSense has to offer.
In the latest trailer for the shooter, Arkane does a pretty great job of getting across what you can expect to feel from your DualSense while playing. The first is with the controller’s triggers, which will feature different resistances depending on which weapons you’re using to give each a distinct feeling. The triggers will also jam when your gun jams in-game, giving you a tactile response to the event before you must watch Colt, the game’s protagonist, trying to fix it without dying.
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Now Playing: Deathloop – Official Next Gen Gameplay Immersion Trailer
Haptic feedback is also being tuned to make all your actions in-game feel realistic as you make them. The trailer shows how the vibration will change when walking through crunchy snow or how it will mimic the heart rate of an enemy you’re about to take down stealthily. The controller’s speaker is also used to make walkie-talkie chatter a bit more immersive.
All these options can be tweaked and turned off if you like or need, so you won’t be forced into it. But it does show how versatile the DualSense is when used creatively, and how all these features wouldn’t be possible on the Xbox Series controller by contrast. Xbox’s Phil Spencer has praised the DualSense in the past, and not ruled out a revision to the current Xbox controller during this generation.
Deathloop launches on PC and PS5 on September 14. A release date for Xbox Series X|S has not been announced, although it has been confirmed that the exclusivity deal lasts for at least one year.
Tap-strafing, a player-created, high-skill level movement strategy in Apex Legends, will be removed from Respawn’s battle royale. On Twitter, Respawn revealed that tap-strafing will be removed in Patch 10.1.
Tap-strafing is a move that allows players to turn on a dime, and can only be done on mouse and keyboard. The move involves a few steps, and includes binding forward movement to up or down mouse scroll.
After doing a slide jump, players must hold down a strafe key for whichever direction they want to go.
Players then must scroll the mouse wheel up or down while holding the strafe key but without moving the mouse, which will cause the player to be pulled diagonally in the direction the player is strafing.
Finally, players need to move the mouse in the direction they are strafing while scrolling the mouse wheel and holding the strafe button to be propelled forward.
The mechanic is not an intended feature, but is a skill players learned to do on their own from playing the game. Numerous competitive games, whether it’s Rocket League or Call of Duty, often times see players using mechanics that the developers may not have planned for or even knew existed, but become adopted by the community and integral gameplay components at certain skill-levels. Tap-strafing has all kinds of advantages for players who have learned how to do it consistently, and since it’s only doable on keyboard and mouse, has been a source of complaints for those playing on consoles with cross-play enabled.
But the mechanic will soon be removed, with Respawn saying the movement quirk is “inaccessible, lacks readability/counterplay, and is exacerbated by movement abilities.”
After much consideration and debate, we’ve decided to remove tap-strafing from @playapex in patch 10.1. Our reasoning: It’s inaccessible, lacks readability/counterplay, and is exacerbated by movement abilities. The next patch notes will include a more detailed note about this.
As outlined above, the actual steps to pulling off a tap-strafe are a little complicated, and is typically only used at high-skill levels, bringing in to question why, exactly, Respawn feels the need to remove it entirely after the move has become a key part of the game among top players. More details on what exactly the removal of the mechanic means for Apex Legends will be coming with the arrival of the game’s next set of patch notes. Judging from Twitter reactions to Respawn’s announcements, fans have a lot to say about the subject, with many calling on Respawn to keep the feature in the game.
It’s not the first time Respawn has removed unintended mechanics from Apex Legends. Way back in the game’s first season, Respawn removed the ability to bunny hop heal, which saw players essentially bypassing the slowdown effect that administering a healing item usually gives. In Season 5, Respawn removed the ability for players to zipline jump, adding a cooldown for how quickly players were able to reattach to ziplines. Both moves were used by higher-skill level players to get a leg up on the competition in ways the developers didn’t initially consider.
Apex Legends Season 10: Emergence, is now live, adding new character Seer, map changes to World’s Edge, weapon and character balance updates, and more. The game’s upcoming 10.1 update will be the first major patch of the season.
