Xbox: Year In Review

So THAT'S where 2015 went. I thought nothing happened this year. Turns out I was too busy playing Xbox to notice.

These stats are from xbox.com's "year in review" thingy.


Also, here's something interesting these stats revealed, but they speak more about Microsoft than anything else:

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Stories And Stuff

One day, I want to create a story that makes you feel like you’re home. A place and people you get comfortable with, who you think about at the weirdest hours of the night. Characters and moments that become like old friends. Situations you daydream about, and spend days and weeks wracking your brain trying to figure out how it will end, and if it’s possible for a happy ending.

And then I want the end to approach faster than you can prepare for. I want an audience that almost doesn’t want to see it end at all, because it would mean saying goodbye to a place in their lives that shielded them from the horrors of reality. Maybe even strengthened them to it.


And then I want the end to come and be so perfect, so shattering, so right that you don’t know what to do with yourself for a while after it’s over. Nothing but to sit in silence and absorb what happened, how it will never happen again, and how grateful you were that it happened to you.


I guess what it comes down to is paying a debt. I want to write that story to repay the stories that did that for me. The stories that make life worth living.

I don’t know if I’ve done that yet, but I think I’m getting closer…

END OF LINE 

 ~A.H.

"Halo 4" Review

by Alex Hill

1/5

Halo 4 is not the worst video game. It is the worst TYPE of game. An unbearable, spineless endeavour that can't even be bothered to be obscene. A design-by-committee Frankenstein's monster of cribbed video game fads, and franchise-destroying change for its' own sake. Not even Halo: Reach struggled to reconcile what its' audience needed from the most basic controller input. This is a travesty even for the people who made Windows.


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Xbox 180

Microsoft is reversing two of the more cartoonishly evil attributes of their new console. You can now play and trade games with ease and functionality closer to that of... the consoles we have always owned. And that Always-On DRM seems to have been shot down. Granted, there's still the matter of the price and the Kreepy-Kinect, but I honestly didn't think a console developer had it in them to throw bad ideas away.

This still puts it at a distant 4th place, if I'm taking into account modern consoles(and the 3DS). But it's no longer the Hindenberg-level disaster it was last week. This isn't a great thing, but this had the potential to set a very bad precedent for the medium and I'm glad someone at Microsoft came to their senses.


Now if we could just get them to do something about Windows.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

E3 2013: Playstation 4

So, let's recap:

The Xbox One requires an always-online connection, or else after 24 hours it will brick itself and prevent you from playing games. You have to pay a fee to let a friend borrow a game, or to play a used game. The Kinect is mandatory and always listening/watching everything you do, like Orwell's Eye of Sauron. It costs $500.

The Playstation 4 doesn't pull any of that crap, and it costs a hundred dollars less.

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Xbox One: "Living Games Technology"

This is from Microsoft's page about their new console, the "Xbox One".

This is terrifying.

Forget about what this means for the problem of "Boosters", people who just leave the Xbox turned on so that they'll accumulate experience in online games while not contributing, thereby ruining every multiplayer game ever. There's an even bigger pitfall to this idea:

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Phoenix: FINALE

The last issue of my Halo webcomic is now online. Titled "Reborn", it's 104 pages long, split by an Epilogue. All in all, the entire series clocks in at 600 pages. After several years of production, it is done.

 You can read the entire thing at http://phoenix.thecomicseries.com/, or select individual pages/chapters from the Archives.


"Halo" belongs to Microsoft.

END OF LINE

 ~A.H.

Phoenix Issue 10: "Cross Your Heart"

The second-to-last issue of my webcomic "Phoenix" is online. It was originally going to be part of the finale, but after 85 pages I realized I'd have to chop this sucker in two. The last issue will premiere sometime in April or May, if all goes according to plan.

Which, considering recent life drama, is unlikely.


You can read any of the back issues from the archive, or you can start all the way at the beginning. Or you could not, because maybe you've got better shit to do, I dunno.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

2012 Blacklist

Before I announce my Fave Things of 2012 list, here now are several things that would have been my favourite of the year, if they didn't fuck up spectacularly in some way. Here are the things that I have disqualified.

Here is this year's Blacklist:

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Halo 4: Pre-Order Pandaemonium

I have never seen any product enter the free market this terribly. Halo 4 is stumbling into stores this November like a drunken ex-husband on thanksgiving, knocking things down and shouting racist slurs to Grandma.

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Halo 4 Wallpaper

So I get an e-mail from Microsoft telling me about "my piece of the Halo 4 puzzle". Forgive me if I can hardly contain my excitement. <_<

Well, if nothing else, the Halo series usually has some decent Alternate Reality Game promotions. Hell, Halo 2's "I love bees" practically put them on the map. This could be somewhere just barely not approaching the level of fun if I somehow found other people with other pieces to put this thing togeth-

Wait, what's this? If you open a new tab with the picture, it literally says something like: "h4_11"? And if I just adjust the numbers in there, I can get the entire picture?

So, they're confident enough to give you a vague puzzle to promote their upcoming software, but not confident enough that anyone would cheat? No wonder 99% of Reach players are console-modders. Well, I've got nothing better to do:


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PHOENIX: Issue 1-B

Open In New Tab/"View Image":

 <-First->  ~~~  {-PREVIOUS-}  ~~~  <-Archive->  ~~~  {-NEXT-}

"Phoenix" was created under Microsoft’s “Game Content Usage Rules” using assets from "Halo 3", © Microsoft Corporation.

Additional code provided by blogdoctor.me

PHOENIX: Issue 1-A

Open In New Tab/"View Image":

 <-First->  ~~~  {-PREVIOUS-}  ~~~  <-Archive->  ~~~  {-NEXT-}

"Phoenix" was created under Microsoft’s “Game Content Usage Rules” using assets from "Halo 3", © Microsoft Corporation.

Additional code provided by blogdoctor.me

Firebird

So it looks like I'm going to have a new webcomic soon. Sooner than I was hoping for, actually.

See, it's going to be told through Halo 3 screenshots. The character-customization and level-builder is robust enough to make little stupid fan-fiction story things out of this way. I can save up to 30 screenshots at a time, the most recent of which go online at Bungie's main website for me to download. Which I do, and then I put word balloons over them and fill those balloons with crap and nonsense.

Except... see, the screenshots were hosted on Bungie.net, a company not affiliated with the series anymore. They're passing the torch to 343 Industries and thus halo.xbox.com. While the most recent game in the series "Reach" will still be supported this way, Halo 3(the game I'm working with here), will NOT. Effective April 1st, I won't be able to take any more screenshots.

So that gives me about 40 days to get enough screengrabs to fill out 7 more "issues" of comic material. There's about 2-4 screenshots per page, usually. And while the first couple of issues are around 30 pages each, that number is going to grow.


So that's what I'm going to be busy with this month. I guess this is just the kick in the pants I need to get it done. I never did find a reliable webhost, so it's going to be on this blog. It's a pretty clunky setup I've got, but I don't have another 2 years to learn the php, html, java or whatever the fuck it is you need to make a website. So this will have to do for now.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Mi¢rosoft

It was only a matter of time until that new dashboard update for the Xbox 360 produced something legitimately stupid. It seems Microsoft hates Indie games, and doesn't want anyone to find them or play them. It's looking more and more like that they're doing it to pay more lipservice to the games that cost $60 from their major business partners. I guess they just assume they can afford to screw over people who actually have to worry about paying the rent.

Because "Modern Halofield of War 3" NEEDS that $5, you guys.

END OF LINE

~A.H.