(Posted By: Alex Deckard)

Halo: Reach has finally arrived, and Bungies last hurrah for the series does not disappoint.  I’ll be focusing on the aspect of Forge.  Firstly, it’s a whole different ballgame then it was in Halo 3.  Seriously.  There is a ridiculous amount of customizability inherent in the level creator.  Making a decent (or even, *gasp*, GOOD) map in Forge is easy.  You can take platforms and jam them in to walls.  This sounds stupid, but think about it.  Big-ass Cliffside with a bunch of platforms and rooms sticking out of it?  Cool.  That, but with jetpacks?  Awesome as hell. 

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(Posted By: Ryan Clark)

There are few things more satisfying than a story well told, and to end the Story that began with Halo, we have its temporal predecessor Halo reach. Reach's story is ended before the game begins. We know that reach falls. We know that the pillar of autumn escapes. But even with this foreknowledge, we are drawn into this world once again. And here we have our hero, Noble 6. He joins the rest of Noble team, and they endeavor to survive on a planet doomed to annihilation.

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(Posted By: Eric Rees)

With the launch of Playstation Move this week, the only other system yet to adopt a motion control system is Microsoft’s darling, the Xbox 360. Microsoft’s “Kinect” is planned to release this November but the question that is on everyone’s minds is will it do well or be banished by bad pricing issues to that graveyard that includes the Virtual Boy and the Power Glove?

Talking with another person who is in the video game business we were discussing the viability of Kinect, what it will do and what it won’t; more importantly what it promised to do and won’t be able to do. While all those are enough to constitute another editorial, the fact remains that Kinect stands on shaky ground with consumers at this point and the way that Microsoft has been backing off of previously stated promises isn’t helping the cause any.  


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(Posted By: Eric Rees)

The mobile world is in turmoil right now. Apple and Google are fighting it out in the ring and leaving everyone else to watch. Blackberry (RIM) is hemorrhaging so much business that they are having to launch new add campaigns to try and acquire new markets of users and with those three major players, how can you find room for one more? By the end of this year the Windows Phone 7 will try and show up to the fight and all I have to say is they better have their gloves tied on tight.

The Windows Phone 7 (WP7) has two big sales pitches that Microsoft is trying to push at this point. One is the intergration with Word, Powerpoint and Excel which will I have no doubt will sell a few devices but isn’t enough to live on since RIM still owns most of the business crowd that Android and Apple don’t control. The second, and probably shakiest point is their Xbox Live intergration.

Microsoft is hoping to cash in on the mobile gaming crowd, see Nintendo DS, and the Xbox Live community at the same time with this announcement. News pundits touted a “strong” list of upwards of 30 titles that Microsoft has come out and said will be on the phone. Lots of games though doesn’t mean “strong” in this instance. Microsoft threw the word “Halo” in there and people freaked out but any gamer knows that “Halo: Waypoint” isn’t exactly the FPS that everyone knows and loves. So this is where Microsoft has their problem. 

These seem like gimmicks to me at least. Being on the Android side of this war I can speak from experience that there is a quite fleshed out app that allows users to see all their friends on Live and message them and compare gamer scores. Is a new phone, new carrier, new plan and the promise of “cool games” enough to get people to switch their phones? One thing that Microsoft needs to learn, and learn quick, is that the mobile phone market isn’t like the console market. You can’t entice people out of expensive contracts just with the promise of goodies, especially when they don’t have the best track record of late, rest in peace Kin. 

This launch is going to be rough for Microsoft, any little mistakes are going to be blown up out of proportion and people will say “Oh well, another flop, back to Android/iPhone.” Only if WP7 gets every single duck in line and their phone is flawless do I see this working out in the long run for them. Oh, did I mention that WP7 doesn’t run windows and isn’t in anyway associated with Windows 7?