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On September 22nd, Microsoft India hosted a launch party for the latest and much anticipated addition to the Halo saga, Halo 3: ODST, formerly Halo 3: Recon, was set up to be different from the previous installments, with a new concept, a different look and even a new protagonist. Many excited gamers assembled at the PVR Select Citywalk theater to view the unveiling of the latest Microsoft/Bungie masterpiece, and boy, as always they did not disappoint us . Even Bollywood celebrities could not keep themselves away, as Dino Morea and Aftab Shivdasani made an appearance and checked out the scene; however, the Bollywood glam wore off when one of the actors casually asked one of the gamers, “How much does an Xbox go for these days…?” Yes, I was speechless. But putting that aside, I was fortunate enough to receive a copy and review the game.
Microsoft India does know how to throw a party. They set the ball rolling with the launch of Halo 3, following up with Gears of War, Mass Effect and then Gears of War II. With the Halo 3: ODST all set to hit the Indian shelves, Microsoft India went all out with launch party for this hotly anticipated game.
Held at PVR Cinemas, Saket, New Delhi, this event had it all; right from big-screen gaming to booth babes and free Halo 3: ODST T-shirts. A strong crowd turnout and lot of excitement followed. TAPians Vijay and Ren were right there to catch the moments on their camera. Inexplicably, video cameras were not allowed. But then, pictures speak a thousand words. Hit the jump to see a couple million!
And the fight is finished! We’ve thought about this long and hard and we’ve finally decided upon the winners of our Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack contest, which entitles two lucky blokes to download the upcoming Mythic Map Pack for Halo 3 (costing 800 Microsoft Points) for the awesome price of free! We received well over fifty entries for just two codes, and we selected these two images because, well, they were just so damn artistic, something that we feel wouldn’t be out of place even on the back of the Halo 3 box! Without further ado, I give you your winners, Brett Sams (GT: A pIastic bag) and Paul Hoang (GT: jEEborz). Take it away, guys!
Who wants some?
After having finished playing The Lost and Damned and working to get a review out, there I was, thinking about what our next contest should be post-Killzone 2 and our upcoming Street Fighter IV announcement. Rummaging through HBO, we decided that we’d hit up our contacts at Microsoft India to see if we could do a Halo Wars contest, with us giving out a couple of copies of Halo Wars and codes for the Halo 3 Mythic Pack, which you’d have gotten if you swiped your charge card pfhor the Halo Wars Collector’s Edition.
So imagine my surprise when I get an email late afternoon with two codes pfhor the Mythic map pack to give away to our readers. After the initial shock and spending 20 minutes fighting a sudden selfish desire to keep one of them pfhor myself, we now have two codes to give away to our “dear” readers. (Gah!) Quite obviously, we’ve never had the habit of just throwing our prizes away, so yeah, you’ll have to work your fat ass pfhor your codes, typical TAP style. That’s right, no soap-box / toothpaste commercial inspired contests, no “figure out the uber-secret message in bold in our earlier reviews” and most definitely, none of those “be the first to email us and tell us you want to have our babies.” Nuh-uh!
Whoo boy, it’s raining bikers by the dozen this week on Xbox LIVE! First up, we get all new biker outfits so that we can doll up our avatars as angry biker dudes and chicks, just to proclaim our love for all things GTA IV. And as of today, the most anticipated expansion for which Microsoft paid Rockstar $10 million is out now for all of us to enjoy. The Lost and the Damned, featuring Johnny Klebitz as he takes his Hell’s Angels party across the dark underbelly of Liberty City, is now available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 1600 Microsoft Points a pop, which kinda works out to around a thousand bucks.
And the best part of all? Not only do you get to blitz around Liberty City, but if you’re one of the first 800 lucky guys to download it in the country, you’re going to net yourself a cool 1000 Microsoft Points! For free! Available across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and India, this promotion lasts until the 28th of this month, so there’s really no reason why should deny yourself some GTA lovin’ and some free points on the side. More information on the promotion is available here.
With just a couple of days more for us to enjoy Ensemble’s swan song, Halo Wars, Microsoft has released the next dev diary, or ViDoc as Bungie christened them, to get the hype train rolling for the next game set in the Haloverse. After introducing us to the Spartans last time around, the new diary focuses on how the team focused on developing a strategy game that was exclusive to the consoles, including working with the vast amounts of material available in the Halo universe, getting the controls just right for “consolification” and meeting all the expectations of the fans and (former) skeptics such as myself.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! And if that fails, an inexpensive GPS, Google Maps and front-row tickets could probably do wonders. But how do you get to Jaspreet Bindra, the man holding all the strings to Microsoft India’s Entertainment & Devices Division? Well, after trying for over four months through the usual PR channels, we finally decided to use my Xbox MVP status to try and spend some quality time with the newly appointed Country Manager and ask some really hard hitting questions that were just burning to be answered. So, last Wednesday, with a lot of help from the absolutely adorable Abhishek Kant – Community Program Manager for Microsoft India – we managed to burn up the telephone wires for the better part of an hour with the warm and very approachable Jaspreet and the Assistant Product Manager for the Xbox 360 – Sanjoy John, getting down to brass tacks about the Xbox 360 and the Games for Windows platforms in India.
We were originally supposed to schedule a video interview with him sometime next week, but with Vijay and Reggie rowing the slave galleon pretty hard next week (not to mention how every spare moment in Vijay’s life is now spent playing Gollum And Its Precious with his Leader Class Bulkhead action figure), we decided we’ll just roll with what we have for now and do the video interview when the stars are aligned just right. One note about the following interview, when you see text marked out in italics like this, that’s just me inserting my thoughts on what’s being said or just being the kooky klass klown. Consider yourself warned.
It has been a while since The ANGRY Pixel has compiled a Thursday Top Ten list. Well, we have a Thursday on hand here so what better way to make use of it then come up with a brand new list, which happens to be a list of the ten most stupid, weird decisions that the videogame giants have taken in the recent years. So while they plowed forward, brimming in confidence that their way is the right way, all we could do is watch them slack-jawed in disbelief as they happily shot themselves in the foot.
Hit the jump to have a look at what The ANGRY Pixel believes are the top ten worst decisions of this generation.
With the game having gone gold and set to take players back to the Halo universe come February 27th, Halo: Wars is all set to start building the hype all over again, this time with the demo coming up on 05/02/2007, featuring two tutorials, the first two campaign missions and a multiplayer map. And if that don’t whet your appetite, here’s three ultra-high-resolution screenshots of the game featuring lone Warthogs and massive battles between the UNSC and the We ♥ Purple Covenant forces. Click on the thumbnails below for the full-resolution images. Don’t say we didn’t warn you though – they’re huge.
While Microsoft has managed to wow one and all with the all new NXE update, one of its features is still wallowing in the good old days of LIVE on the original Xbox: the 100 friend limit. While everything on Xbox LIVE has jumped on the current-gen bandwagon, we are still stuck with a friend list limit that has us constantly juggling around friend requests.
Thankfully, Xbox director, Aaron Greenberg has confirmed to Joystiq that they are definitely looking into it and hopefully, we will soon see an increase in the friend list limit. While refusing to commit any dates, he goes on to explain that how the friend list limit was designed for the older Xbox games but now, by being integrated with Xbox LIVE, it will be easier to implement changes.
For now, we will have to be content with micro-managing our friend list.