Seriously? In a video game?
Okay, I could understand if you’re making a simulation and you want to train me or teach me what to do in an actual fire fight where a weapon jam might occur. However, I bristle when ever weapon jams are brought up as a possible mechanic when making a shooter (this happens more than you’d expect). Game developers of the future… please stop making my virtual weapons jam!
As you may know, I’m into geocaching quite a bit. I’ve found some really cool caches, and some not so cools caches. I always appreciate a well made cache much more than most cache you find out in the wild. Some caches are pure awesome. You can tell the person hiding the cache put a lot of effort either in creating the puzzle to find the cache, the sneaky hiding place they put the cache, the neat container they made, or the art on the cache itself.
So, my plan is to hide four Halo 3 themed ammo can geocaches in Washington somewhere. Since there’s four difficulty levels in Halo 3, each hide will be harder than the next. The Legendary hide will be extremely challenging and will possibly include a tough puzzle coupled with a tricky and physically exerting hide.
I created some stencils for each difficulty level in Halo 3 that will be spray painted on each ammo can. Once I made the stencils though, I realized that other fans of the series might want them for other reasons… so I’m posting them here! They’re in an Illustrator (.ai) file, so you can change the color and scale as you wish. I’m displaying them as green and yellow since the ammo cans are green and yellow looks good on green, but I may change my mind later.
Anyway, here’s the source file for the stencils… enjoy!
Disclaimer: Although I work at Microsoft, the following has nothing to do with work or is meant to promote any games I’m working on. Remember… these are Halo 3 themed and I have never and currently do not work for Bungie! I’m doing this solely in my spare time and as something I like to do as a hobby. Nothing from my work was used in the creation of anything described in this post.
Not sure if this is actually due to Nazi Zombies or not, but the resemblance is uncanny so I thought I’d link it anyway. Shabs, a guy I used to work with at Treyarch send me a link to this game called SAS Zombie Assault, which is a top-down flash version of Nazi Zombies.
Also, someone started a site / blog dedicated to Nazi Zombies over at the aptly named nazizombies.com. Why didn’t Activision buy that webspace? Oh well, kudos for getting the best URL ever!
Hopefully by now every has seen the trailer for Dead Snow (Or Dod Sno) which is a Norweigen horror film that features- you guessed it… Nazi zombies. Okay, so Nazi Zombies the game and Dead Snow the movie have nothing to do with each other, but the trailer is still awesome and worth checking out! I think the movie is out now, so I’ll be watching it in the near future hopefully…
So there you have it, a few more references to Zombies, Nazis, and combinations thereof.
So, as you may or may not know I worked on a little something called Nazi Zombies. Seems like those nasty Nazi Zombies are getting more traction than I thought. A few links people have sent me the past few days have brought a smile to my face.
The first Nazi Zombie reference, by someone over at The Minus World is the Call of Duty Activity Book For Kids which does some much appreciated Call of Duty satire. Included are plenty of Nazi Zombie jokes, such as an exercise in creating the next version of Nazi Zombies!
Then today, everyone on my instant messenger list sent me a link to this little gem, where some Nazi Zombie fan in Austin, Texas hacked a road sign to warn of an impending Nazi Zombie attack. Okay, so while I don’t condone vandalism, I thought the story was pretty awesome. There are less dangerous (and more legal) ways to show your appreciation for Nazi Zombies, but it was all in good fun and no one was hurt. But next time, bake a giant Nazi Zombie themed cake and give it to a homeless shelter or something if you want to get on the news! I’m waiting for the impending “blame video games” story to follow…
Anyway, I love seeing stories like this, keep ’em coming!
Yes, that’s right. The first Halo. I recently finished played though it again (on normal, which was difficult enough) since I had never done a proper play through back in the day. I played sections of it at friends houses, played some multiplayer here and there, but I never played it from beginning to end. Shhh, don’t tell anyone – I never owned an original Xbox.
So how does Halo hold up over all these years? It’s interesting. Some parts of the game hold up really well, while others make you wonder why it got above a 90%. I guess combat has evolved over the past few years.
What stands out the most is how solid the game is in general. Even today, there aren’t many shooters that have such varied and interesting weapons. There’s enough different types of enemies and vehicles to keep game play interesting and the story and presentation are very well done. Another suprising thing is that you don’t come across many bugs or unpolished features.
Video Games Live was awesome. If you haven’t heard of VGL, a live choir and orchestra plays live music from tons of video games, old and new. Up behind the orchestra is a huge screen where videos and images are projected throughout the performance.
A little history. VGL started in LA with the first performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005, played to a crowd of 11,000. However, the guys running the show had some problems and were canceled. The second show was to go on and was to be played in Seattle. The Seattle show in 2005 rocked and proved VGL could be successful at smaller venues. VGL bounced back and every year since they’ve put on more and more shows. The guys running VGL have a special place in their heart for Seattle and it shows.
VGL took place in the Paramount theater, which was packed. We ended up getting really good seats near the front were totally worth it at about $65 a pop. The show started out with a costume judging contest (the WoW guy should have won, not the half baked Final Fantasy costume, but whatever) then went into a little musical game history. The orchestra played Pong, which transitioned into Asteroids, which transitioned into Space Invaders, and so on. As the games being showed on the screen behind the orchestra progressed, the music changed along with it. Eventually it got up in the 8-bit era and beyond It was really inspiring to see how far games have come after all this time.