Euro Review Event!Chris Opdahl and I are in London this week overseeing an all-too brief European review session for Halo 3. On Tuesday, Chris and I oversaw the set up of the "LAN/Multiplayer lab" this lab consisted of 16 machines linked over System Link and set into 8 on 8 pods. Each pod had headphones, a retail console, HDD equipped Xbox 360 and Halo 3. In another corner of the room was a 4 player campaign co-op area set up for four players at a time to play through the game. Additionally, each member of the European press had a Sharp HDTV in their room with a 360 and 5.1 Surround Sound headphones.
Press began to arrive at 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning, as soon as they arrived, Chris and I elected to have them start through the Campaign on Heroic and then they could take their HDD up to their room to continue playing in the comfort and privacy of their own space. As the room filled up, however, folks simply couldn't be pried away from the 360 for anything other than snacks, of which there were plenty of fancy-ish Eurosnax and bottled sodas and beer. The press wouldn't leave their stations and kept playing, the room was pretty silent throughout the day (headphones do that to a room). Opdahl and I started every player on Heroic and tracked their progress, one player started on normal and was blowing through the first four missions in the game -- however, from BLAM! to conclusion things slowed down DRASTICALLY, he finished "BLAM!" at midnight when we closed the lab.
Additionally, during the day I did a demo of Saved Films for a bunch of the reviewers, I showed them a playthrough I'd done that morning of BLAM!, mouths were agape when we examined the BLAM! explosion up close and letting the press watch the game through the eyes of the Covenant with some camera work seemed to open their eyes to the possibilities of Saved Films. I explained Screenshots and demonstrated them, and was pleased this morning to see members of the press going through their own campaign films from the day before and taking screenshots. I made sure to go around and save films from their campaign and multiplayer experience to try and make it as easy as possible for the press to check out these key features.
Earlier on Wednesday, Opdahl set up the exploding Behemoth in Forge, so I thought using a Saved film of that would be a good follow-up to a Forge demo that I did for folks in the early evening. It takes a bit for Forge to click, but I definitely saw some "honor games" being constructed in the morning. The Euroz seemed impressed with Forge, but it is so hard to explain without letting folks play themselves, it's better to simply let them tinker.
At the end of the first night, each journalist took their HDD up to their room and presumably finished the campaign, the following morning a handful of them returned at 8 a.m. During the first day we talked about skulls and scoring and got some players to test it out, but in the a.m. of Day 2, players began to mess around with it on their own. A handful of guys wanted to play 4p co-op with skulls on, so I loaded up Sierra 117 on Legendary and turned on: Mythic, BLAM!, Thunderstorm, Tough Luck, BLAM! and one other. We started making our way through Jungle. The reviewer I was playing with was loving BLAM!, but we weren't making as much progress as I liked, and I wanted them to see the AI and just how different the game feels, so I turned off BLAM! and turned on Catch. Everyone was laughing at chain grenade explosions and general carnage. The only skull I saw a player find during their first playthrough, was Mythic.
Chris and I did a bunch of Interviews with European press, many of which will likely be translated into things like "Luke said there would be campaign Forge in Halo 17" and "Chris says that the love story between Cortana and the Master Chief is a key theme in Halo 3" -- oh, wait, of those two things one of them actually was said.
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There you go, reviews from Europe are legit.
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