Halo 3

TheFeed loves two things: Statistics and Halo 3, and when you combine our dual loves...wow. Bungie, you owe us a fresh pair of pants. The creators of Halo released the stats for Halo 3's achievements last week, including the fact that only 2.07% of Halo 3 players have scored a full 1000 points, and only 43.28% of players have completed the game on "Normal."

My favorite stat: The second most difficult achievement in the game is Two for One (killing two dudes with the Spartan Laser in a ranked playlist.) I love that achievement because I have actually achieved it, making me 'leet, for once in my miserable life.

Click the cut for the full list.

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Halo 3 still kicking ass, having outsold every other game, across platform, for the month of October.

Here's the chart, from market researchers at the NPD Group.

01. Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - 433,800
02. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/ guitar (Xbox 360) - 383,200
03. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/ guitar (Wii) - 286,300
04. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/ guitar (PS2) - 271,100
05. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS) - 262,800
06. Wii Play (Wii) - 239,700
07. The Orange Box (Xbox 360) - 238,400
08. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2) -231,700
09. FIFA Soccer 08 (PS2) - 129,700
10. Brain Age 2: More Training In Minutes A Day (DS) - 116,900

Sumthing Else Music Works and Microsoft Game Studios have partnered to present the Halo 3 Original Soundtrack, which will be released on November 20th through Nile Rodgers’ Sumthing Else Music Works label and via digital download at Sumthing Digital.

The soundtrack comes in a 2-CD set featuring the game’s original music score and features new symphonic compositions by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, the award-winning composers behind the best-selling Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 Volume One and Halo 2 Volume Two soundtracks. In addition, the soundtrack also includes new arrangements of the game’s musical themes that Bungie’s audio director and composer Martin O’Donnell recorded with a full live orchestra and chorus. The 2-CD set amounts to two hours of original music from Halo 3.

Hey, check out this interview G4 did with Nile Rogers around Halo 2.

If you've played Halo 3, we hope you've also checked out Bungie.net.

The collection of detailed stats on just about every Halo 3 game ever played will spin your head. And it just got better. Along with some cosmetic upgrade, there are two awesome new features:

• Global Heatmaps: These shows you where most people got murdered on each map, worldwide.
• Local Heatmaps: The same info, except about you!
• Bungie's Favorites: A much needed video filter where the best videos are spotlighted and the worst ignored.

Sign on to Bungie.net and check them out. Very impressive stuff.

A respected analyst says that it's entirely possible that Call of Duty 4 will outsell Halo 3 as a result of COD4 being available on more platforms. Also, it's a widely-hailed game that has a ton of pre-orders and is already sold out at most retailers. Now, since Halo 3 broke all sales records when it came out, that's a pretty bold prediction.

Still, Call of Duty 4 is one of those games that, it seems, almost everyone can get behind. The advance reviews were excellent, and players seem to really like it. Does that mean that it will be the highest-selling game of all time? We don't know, but it almost certainly means there will be a Call of Duty 5.

The Escapist: Analyst Predicts Call of Duty 4 To Outsell Halo 3

I asked my wife to marry me on the Eiffel Tower. Big mistake. Not the proposal, but the location. Flying to Europe was costly, and surrounding ourselves with culture and Europeans for a week was a hassle and it smelled funny.

I should have done what Halo 3 player Moviesign did. He asked his girl (Furtive penguin) to enter into the bonds of holy matrimony using the Halo 3 Forge:

Awww... Nice! Moviesign invited penquin to the spot with the lure of an energy sword, but instead of the annoying weapon, she found the proposal. As you can see, the would-be groom got down on one knee, and for once, wasn't teabaggin.

She said yes.

They haven't set a wedding date yet. Because, as furtive penguin said, "We're waiting to see what the release date is for the next Halo game. We don't want any conflicts."

Xbox.com: A Halo 3 Marriage Proposal

If we owned Bungie Studios, the creators of Halo, we'd be taking it easy about now, paying naked chicks to light our cigars with 15-dollar bills and driving around in solid platinum golf carts. That's why we'll never own a major game studio. The real owners of Bungie are hard at work this very second, making new Halo-centric games and non-Halo games for you to enjoy.

"We have Halo DLC on the way, and a new IP prototype that we are very excited about. Then we have other Halo games that are cranking along also. So the end result so far has been exactly as it should have been – we’re happy, excited, and doing our best work on a path that lets us grow."

"We want to be seen as different from the other developers that publish with Microsoft. As far as we believe it, we make better games and they are better quality in user experience across the board. Ultimately you want to be proud of anything you put the Bungie name on. We want people to know that, as soon as they put the game on and our name rolls up, the game will be awesome."

TheFeed will make you a bet that Halo 4 comes out at some point in the future.

Develop: Bungie "actively engaged" in creating new IP and Halo titles

The new Halo 3 collectible action figure from Todd MacFarlane is super-dope. 

The Steel Close Quarter Battle (CQB) Spartan will feature 18 points of articulation, making it the most playable action figure McFarlane Toys has ever produced.

It features removable CQB armor new to the Halo universe – chest and shoulder plates and helmet are removable and will be interchangeable with other McFarlane Spartan figures.

This figure is scheduled to be available through GameStop in March 2008.

The figure is $12.99, and starting today, it can be pre-ordered here. So get yours, set it up in your cubicle and dream of space marines all day long!

Bigger pictures are under the cut.

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A Halo-loving juvenile delinquent is in trouble in Florida for smacking his mother, then fighting with police officers.

The hilarious story began when the unnamed kid's mom was like, "Stop playing Halo 3!" When sonny refused to turn off the game, his parents said they took the "air card" out of his 360 so he couldn’t play anymore. (We don't know what an air card is either, but we want one.)

He responded by laying a mêlée attack on moms, then locked himself in his room. His parents called the local constable. Entreaties to open the bedroom door were met with profanity, so the deputy boosted the door with a spare key.

Unhappy at being disturbed by the 5-0, the child attacked them, punching officer Sean Harnage in the mouth. He was promptly handcuffed and hauled off to the police station's juvenile beating room.

If convicted, the kid may go to juvenile hall for domestic abuse. We imagine he'll be very popular there.

Everyone concerned is presumably embarrassed by their 15 minutes of internet fame.

TCPalm: Halo 3 player punches mother after video game is taken away in Indian River County

More details have emerged from the Cyberathlete Professional League and X Factor Tournament on the $1,000,000 Halo 3 Xbox 360 competition, to be hosted at the Extreme Winter Championships on December 18th to 22nd at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Dallas, Texas.

The competition will use a four-player Free For All format and will be open to gamers of all ages. Players under the age of 17 need a signed parental consents…’cause this is too great for kids. Get the consent forms here: www.thecpl.com/forms/parental_release.pdf

The cash prize distribution for the $1,000,000 “Halo 3″ Xbox 360 competition is in this order: 

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Sure, Halo is best known as a series of videogames (and maybe, in the future, a movie...maybe) but the Halo novels are sitting on a shelf at your local bookstore right now, waiting for you to pick them up and read them. The four Halo best-sellers (Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: The Flood, Halo: First Strike, and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx) were joined yesterday by a fifth novel set in the Halo universe: Joseph Staten's Halo: Contact Harvest.

We know you can't stick a grenade on words, but the latest Halo novel is very, very cool and manages to capture the immediacy and excitement of Bungie's videogame saga in sentences, as well as providing a interesting subtext for the mayhem. Contact Harvest is set before the first Halo game, and tells the story of humanity's (and Avery Johnson's) first violent run-in with The Covenant.

TheFeed talked to Contact Harvest's author Joseph Staten about all things Halo, and the connection between videogames and Literature, with a capitol "L."

TheFeed: Without giving too much away, Contact Harvest details the first, bloody encounters between humans and The Covenant. We realize it wouldn't make a particularly entertaining videogame or novel, but maybe the two sides could have compromised in some way? Do you think a diplomatic solution could have been arrived at?

Joseph Staten: That's a great question, and I thought a lot about this very issue when I was writing. But unfortunately, no. At least not as far as the Covenant leadership  is concerned. When folks read the book, they'll realize just how dangerous humanity's existence is from the Prophets' point-of-view. The beef the Covenant have with us isn't something that can be solved by diplomatic discussion.

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Tonight, starting at 12:01, the undead are invading Halo 3 in the form of a new multiplayer game!

That's right, for 27 horror-filled hours, Infection will be a playable multiplayer game! Just pick The Living Dead Playlist and you're off. 

To get you ready, here are the rules: Most players start off on a Human team, with one or more players starting off as Zombies.

The odds are stacked heavily against the Zombies at first, but when a Human is killed by a Zombie (as they inevitably are), they join the Zombie team and turn on their former teammates. There are two main variants: Save One Bullet, (less ammo, meaning eventually, the zombies will get you) and Creeping Death, where the enemies are slower, but invisible... and deadly.

The Living Dead playlist will be the first to use Forge variants in Matchmaking.

Bungie.net

You can argue the relative merits of the energy sword VS the Needler all you want, but the most powerful weapon in Halo 3 is, hands down, The Banhammer.

And Bungie's about to bring that sucker down hard.

This message was posted Friday on Bungie's official site, Re: Cheating (we guess):

Harbringer of Doom:

There are those of you doing things you shouldn’t be in Halo 3. Some of you have gotten a little too famous for your own good. This ain’t a church and there is no redemption or salvation once you have been judged. Apologies are now officially too late to save you.

The storm approaches.

Love, Bungie

Smash! We'll see how it goes.

Have you run into any cheaters in Halo 3?

The Halo 3 hype is simmering down, and gamers have had several weeks to put the game through its paces...while TheFeed still find Halo 3 ridiculously fun, some players have a less rosy assessment of the title. In order to present grist for the controversy mill, TheFeed is proud to link to the following list of the Top Ten Things Bungie Screwed Up with Halo 3.

We don't agree with all these points (particularly the melée, "sword fighting" and the weapon-switch timing changes, which we think are improvements over Halo 2), but it's fun reading anyway.

We'd also like to add #11: The learning curve/difficulty level of the single player campaign is bad. It's all over the place, with no discernible pattern to "hard parts" vs. "easy parts." Got your own whinge about Halo 3? Add it below.

mygen.com:  Top 10 Things Bungie Screwed Up With Halo 3

Hey TheFeed readers, remember last week when we reported that a handful of churches across the country had begun holding Halo nights in an attempt to increase their haul of the highly-sought-after teen male soul? Well, the backlash from concerned parishioners is still going strong and makes for fantastic fodder for the morning TV “news” shows.

As reported by GamePolitics, earlier this week on That’s My Bagel! with Scooter and Ju-Ju, or some such tripe, psychologist Dr. Susan Bartell made the argument that the teenage brain is negatively affected by violent videogames. She backed up her claim by citing a study out of Indiana University, complete with a side-by-side brain scan comparison. Here’s the segment:

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