Earlier this month I ended the blog I posted wishing everyone reading a great summer and I gotta say things have been pretty cool for me. I have actually spent much less time gaming this summer than in previous ones but none the less I've had great fun with what I have played. My main focus has really been on Team Fortress 2 for the PC and The Sims 2, although watching my friend building houses on my version of The Sims 2 last night I must say even with two expansion packs my version of the game still seems a little light on content to me. I may pick up another expansion pack for The Sims 2 or another small game next time I'm in close proximity of one of my local video game retailers but my real priority is pre-ordering Halo 3: ODST as soon as possible.
Speaking of Halo the 7th month of the year has definitely brought a good share of news and celebrations based around the popular sci-fi shooter. The 7th day of the 7th month this year marked Bungie Day, a day when Bungie and their loyal fans celebrate Halo, the Bungie community, Bungie's ongoing obsession with the number seven and their break-off from parent company Microsoft 2 years ago. The day was celebrated with a special playlist called Bungie vs. World in which players were invited to go 7 v. 7 on a variety of map variants created by the Halo community and hand-picked by Bungie. Teams of Bungie were also online 24 hours randomly dropping into player games and rewarding any teams that could beat them (or set a major record on the playlist)with the much fabled Recon armour. Sadly I didn't get the chance to play off against the Halo creators but I still enjoyed a Halo marathon like I'd never experienced before, managing to stay up 24 hours and play 75 matches despite taking out a 7+ hour break to eat andsocialize in the real world. It was also a nice surprise to see Bungie release new pictures and information on their next map pack which looks to be shaping up really well.
21st of July also celebrated the day 10 years ago that Bungie first showed the worldHalo: Combat Evolved at Macworld 1999 and it's amazing to look back and see the journey Halo's taken since then.
The news of Halo Legends has also recently hit and looks like possibly the most unusual branch-out from the Halo franchise yet. Halo Legends is going to be a 7-part anime based around the Halo franchise, the project is being financed by a new companyunder theownershipMircosoft called 343 Industries and created by five well-reputed Japanese anime studios. I must say that I'm rather sceptical of this new project, I'm no anime expert but I am well aware of the fact that translations of original fiction into anime don't have a great track record. I am further worried by the idea of six of the episodes involving the banding together of4 different studios which I'm sure must take some kind of miracle in communication to pull off. However I am somewhat comforted by the fact that although I'm sure he doesn't have a great level of involvement in the actual making of anime,Frank O' Connor, former Bungie content manager seems to be playing a large part in 343 Industries. I'm also somewhat reassured by the fact that the companies chosen to make these animes do have a very impressive portfolio of previous work, although it's beyond me why Toei, creators of such famous work as Dragonball are the ones producing the seventh anime, a Halo parody, in fact the whole idea of an anime Halo parody worries me a little. The real worry for me though is that from the brief flashes of what we've seen of the upcoming anime they are working with rather main elements of existing source material with one scene showing a brief shot of the Master Chief and The Arbiter clashing energy swords. If there's one thing I don't want to see from Halo Legends it would be a poor re-telling of the great story Bungie created for the games. When Halo has been put in the hands of companies like Mircosoft and Ensemble they did well because they stayed as close to Bungie's vision of Halo as they could without infringing on existing storylines but I'm worried that this may not be what we see with Halo Legends. All we can do is wait and watch.
That just about concludes my end-of-July blog. I hope you enjoyed reading and this week I'll leave you with Bungie's tribute video to 10 great years of Halo. May there be many more to come.
-Gamer_152