About Achievements

While dual-wielding across the campaign or inside a multiplayer match on Windows Vista, Halo players will soon earn achievements for the first time in the game’s history. And while there are a lot of exciting new features in “Halo 2” for Windows Vista, the achievements are one of the most compelling, especially for the gamerscore addict in your family.

Designing Achievements for “Halo 2” for Windows Vista
The Xbox version of “Halo 2” obviously predated the era of the Gamerscore, so this represents one of several compelling reasons to give “Halo 2” another spin. For the team, designing fun and significant rewards in a game that is already well-established was a bit challenging. This was accomplished with the help of the talented staff at Bungie Studios and Hired Gun, with a watchful eye on the latest trends in the gaming community. The achievements were designed with some fundamental goals in mind – keep the game fun, encourage beginners to join our “Halo 2” community, and provide a new challenge with a few tough or interesting achievements for our most dedicated fans.

Achievement Development Process

Designing anything for an existing and best-selling game can be arduous and risky, as options are weighed heavily against already-popular and well-trod game aspects. We started by brainstorming every possible achievement that trickled out of our caffeine-addled minds, and then whittled our list to a beefy 40+ achievements. It was a process we performed in lockstep with Bungie Studios and their designers and producers, through the course of many design meetings and reviews. What we ended up with was a set of achievements that beginners and skilled “Halo 2” players alike will immediately tackle with different results, but we were sure to include several that any veteran will only get to after some serious work.

So easy your n00b buddy could unlock it

Remember the first time you applied sticky grenade to Elite ass, and the ensuing cries of doomed anguish? Yeah, that’s a moment to cherish, and it’s not bad being able to point to a specific record of it. Or how about the first time you finally wielded the sword and started dominating for like 10 seconds? We want to encourage our expanded audience of PC players to enjoy these first moments in “Halo 2” for Windows Vista with a few easy achievements in the game. For pro-style Halo enthusiasts, you’ll see the familiar achievement indicator going off like you won a prize or something. Fear not, though: perfection will be a tall order.
For the more committed “Halo 2” warrior, try and imagine what it might mean to become a Violent Cartographer. *Pssst*! It involves maps and bloodletting.

Campaigning with Achievements

“Halo 2” for Windows Vista offers achievements for all aspects of the game. For campaigners, we have an achievement for finishing each playable level of the campaign, at Normal, Heroic, or Legendary, while you are on Games for Windows – LIVE. It’s like the Achievement system was designed for the very purpose of being able to demonstrate to the world your mettle and grit against Bungie’s awesome A.I. on Legendary. Prepare to throw down.
In fact, turning out all the lights on all the levels in Legendary will give you the title of “Legend.” You may have thought, “Killing a Legend in head-to-head LIVE combat is, therefore, an action worthy of an achievement.” We thought so too, so be on the lookout.

It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t create a single-player achievement for insane people. If you think you can complete an entire campaign level without dying, or know somebody with that much moxie and twitch (and a heap of time on their hands), you’ll be testing yourself to gain the Demon achievement. Sounds cool, and it’s oh-so-apropos.

Earning Achievements (Silver & Gold)

It’s an exciting new era for “Halo 2” players, as a new frontier opens on Windows Vista. We are adding a lot to the game to make it a much richer experience, especially if you have a Games for Windows – LIVE service account. Silver accounts on LIVE can earn achievements on the single-player campaign, and play in multiplayer games. Gold accounts on LIVE have the added benefit of being able to earn achievements in both single-player campaign and multiplayer matches.

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So it looks like they are going to allow Silver Members to play MP games on Live Anywhere, but just hold out on rewarding them with achievements. So far I don't see the point in subscribing to the Gold for the Windows users, but that could change. I hope I will get selected for the Beta so then I can truly give my final comments on it.

While this game won't be winning any prizes, I found it to be so much more appealing then the GTA clone I had originally wrote it off as. I managed to finish the game today by killing Wang of the Shen Gi gang. The ending gave me a good laugh and let me know that they are planning a sequel. I did feel a true sense of accomplishment but not from beating down all the gangs. It was from actually being able to climb the Agency tower and getting that all important 4th Agility star. Now I can just about fly across rooftops in Pacific City. I've collected about 300 of the 500 Agility orbs and I plan on getting enough to max out my character to get that all important last achievement. But once the last gang member is gone, there is no one left for you to kill. It kinda makes the sandbox mode afterwards really boring.

Overall though I find it was a good game, then you can beat in a weekend rental. I'll probably be keeping it around until the Halo 3 beta is released, or if there are too many good games out there that I need to rent from GameFly. Good game, but not worth $60. $40 I would consider though.

There are a handful of you reading this blog, so post a comment and let me know what you thought of the game.

Ok now I really enjoy the show Heroes. While it doesn't give quite as much water cooler talk as the show Lost does, at least it's not disappointing me this season like Lost is. I think its a cool idea to use a popular show to help sell a video game, but try not to make it so blatantly obvious. Show the actors from behind playing the game and let it take up almost all the screen, but don't remove us from the world the actors are in. That ruins the show IMHO.

by Daemon Hatfield

March 5, 2007 - The Nielsen Company, the folks who provide television ratings data, have released a new report that reveals videogames now penetrate 41 percent of U.S. homes. Titled "The State of the Console," the article also shows that game penetration has risen by 18.5 percent since 2004. Over the same two year period, the amount of homes with televisions has risen by 1.6 percent.

In the fourth quarter of 2006 there were 45.7 million homes with videogame consoles. The number of homes with consoles connected to the internet (not counting the Wii or PlayStation 3) has grown to more than 4.4 million.

More fun facts: Between September 18, 2006 and December 31, 2006, 93.8 million people played a console at least once for a minute or more. Also, at any given time, about 1.6 million people in the U.S. are playing a videogame console.

Nielsen says this is the first of several reports that will be examining trends in the game industry. Later this year Nielsen will launch GamePlay Metrics, which will meter game play by title, genre, and platform.

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Only 10% of homes have their console on the net? Seems low, but it looks to be what Nintendo is looking at.

Worms will be the next Xbox Live arcade game. I can't tell you how much time my brother and I wasted on this game growing up. I plan on wasting a lot more time on it in the near future. At least through the lull of 360 titles right now, we're getting some good Live Arcade games.

While I haven't liked the series since GTA2, I know plenty of people are anticipating this game. Well no new screen shots, but Rockstar North today told us the date we can expect this on the 360 and PS3.

It's October 16th, 1007

I may give this a try, as I didn't think I'd like Crackdown, and I'm actually enjoying the game a lot. Maybe this latest iteration of the series will reinvent itself enough to hold my interest.

Posted Feb 28th 2007 10:27AM by Andrew Yoon
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3
One of our biggest gripes with the PS3 has been how poorly the system downloads files: you can't resume broken downloads, nor can you do anything whilst your system is downloading a file. No games. No movies. No music. Nada.

This was all supposed to be fixed in Sony's upcoming 1.6 firmware update. But, is it already broken before its release? Apparently so. The Inner Bits has "obtained" info about the upcoming firmware revision, and it's not looking good. The background downloads are limited to while you are in the XMB. If you launch a game, the system will pause your download because "the PS3 needs extra system resources (primarily memory) to do background downloading."

If this is indeed true, it certainly can't be due to the system's inability to play a game and download a file. Although Sony's system has the hardware to deliver the goods, it seems Sony is just not creating user-friendly software to take advantage of the system's "potential." Will we have to wait for yet another firmware revision for Sony to get this right?

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If this is totally true, that is such a blow to the PS3. The 360 didn't have background downloading when it first launched and it was added about 4 months later. Not to mention when it launched it worked! We may not have been able to queue up downloads from the start, but we could play games and do other stuff fine, not limited because it took too much memory away from the system. How much memory does it need to download a file? The 360 just uses the part that is allocated for its Guide features and it works fine.