Major Nelson has revealed on his blog that Halo 3 has regained the top spot from Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox Live charts. GTA IV had it’s turn in first position but was quickly overtaken again by Call Of Duty 4 within a few weeks. We did have a look around to find the last time Halo 3 took the top spot but couldn’t find anything. Suffice to say it was quite a long time ago. Here’s the chart in full:
1 Halo 3
2 Call of Duty 4
3 GTA IV
4 Gears of War
5 Guitar Hero III
6 Rock Band
7 Too Human Demo
8 Battlefield: Bad Company
9 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2
10 FIFA 08
The BBC have covered the launch of GTA IV on the 6 o’clock news. True, they covered the launch of Halo 3 as well but it’s pretty unusual to find any form of games coverage at all on the BBC these days. As is usual for mainstream media, the report mainly focuses on the fact it’s rated 18 and not for kids, although their is a business angle to it as well saying how much money is now involved in the industry. Of interest to most though will be where the guy shown playing the game was apparently able to buy a copy from before release date???
Following on from the problems Xbox Live has experienced in recent times during high profile games releases, Microsoft’s General Manager of LIVE Services Operations, Derek Ingalls says this time the service is going to be be ready.
In an interview with Kotaku he states “we are preparing for a spike that could be much larger than what we saw with the launches of Halo 3 and Activision’s “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.”. Xbox 360 owners will remember the significant problems the service experienced over the Christmas period where it struggled for around 2 weeks before beginning to get back to normal. Derek says “Last holiday we weren’t properly prepared… So we are going the extra mile with Grand Theft Auto IV”. Check out the full interview over at Kotaku.
Bungie have released a detailed video walk-through of the new maps found in the forthcoming Legendary map pack. The map pack is due to be released for download on April 15th for 800 points. Check out the video below:
The Daily Mail has advised that this weeks Byron report said that ”allowing children to play on computers unsupervised is as dangerous as letting them play outside on their own”. This is going to be bad news for today’s release of Crayola Treasure Adventures on the Nintendo DS which is being targeted at kids but is said to depict graphic images of a colour crystal thief. Players of the game are tasked with completing a series of puzzles that eventually lead to the capture of the thief and so restoring colour to the world. ButtonBandits.com has learnt that shockingly, hundreds of titles a year are released which are blatantly marketed at encouraging kids to play on them. The majority of these carry no warning about this requirement of parental supervision.
One such title called Noddy and The Magic Book was released back in October 2006 on the Playstation 2 and is amazingly still available to buy today from leading on-line retailers. The game features two naughty goblins, Sly and Gobbo who have stolen Big Ears’ magic book and are using it to play tricks on people in Toyland. One parents review of this “game” on Amazon is chilling in it’s encouragement of allowing young children to play it, saying “This is a great game for young children. My 4 year old really enjoys it.”. If this wasn’t bad enough the parent goes on to say “Let me stress though that on most of the games the average child will not need much help”, blatantly ignoring all warnings about the harm this product could cause their child if they are left unsupervised with it! The front cover of the games box even goes as far as to claim the product is suitable for anyone aged 3 years and up.
Fortunately it’s not all bad news as it seems some of these so called games may not be too bad an influence after all. Anne Diamond reports in the Daily Mail that a title called “Halo 3″ is violent but that there’s not really much blood or bad language in it and that her sons tell her it’s relatively non-threatening. Look out for discussion on these shocking discoveries in Sundays ButtonBandits.com podcast.
Beginning registration on April 15th, the Rockstar Social Club will be the first port of call for all GTA IV players looking to compare in game stats. The site sounds like it will be what Bungie.net is to Halo 3, compiling stats about everything imaginable on every online connected player of the game. Highlights include a virtual map of single-player criminal activity logged in Liberty City showing the most dangerous areas of town and most commonly used weapons. A leaderboard ranking players progress in the single player game along with a historical rank by who has completed it first. The first ten people to be identified on the Social Club as reaching 100% will be sent an ultra-rare commemorative ‘key to the city’ to mark their accomplishment. There will also be special competitions, leaderboards and challenges rolling out regularly in the weeks and months following the games release. Expect numerous people to have completed the game within hours of its release folowed by accusations of cheating.
Major Nelson has revealed this weeks Xbox Live activity charts which show COD4 once again on top as the most played game of the week. The old favourites still reign supreme with the only recently released titles on the list being Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and EA’s Army Of Two. . It will be interesting to see where GTA IV enters the chart at the end of next month and how long it can hold it’s position given that it’s probably one of the most hyped game of all time. Full charts below:
Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on UU’s) 1 Call of Duty 4
2 Halo 3
3 Guitar Hero III
4 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2
5 Gears of War
6 Rock Band
7 Army of Two
8 Forza Motorsport 2
9 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
10 FIFA 08
Blackout is to be the third map in the forthcoming Legendary map pack for Halo 3. Set on a UNSC Antarctic weather station and a reworking of Sidewinder, as seen in Halo: Combat Evolved. Allen Murray, producer for all Halo 3 DLC had this to say “we wanted to keep things as close as possible to what was built in Halo 2. That means that the biggest changes come from actually game play as the way weapons and equipment interact on the map make a game on Blackout so much more different than a Halo 2 game on Lockout.”. The map is said to be similar in play style to that of Guardian that came included on the game cd. Blackout will be combined with Avalanche and Ghost Town to make up the 800 points download available from the 15th of April onwards. check out the full details on Bungie.net
Now here this! The ButtonBandits.com podcast has made it to it’s 2nd episode. Featuring summary and discussion of the weeks news in gaming such as the new Halo 3 and COD4 maps, playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl on import, first details of a new sonic game and a Dreamcast logo sighting during Sunday’s Grand prix! Packed into a listener friendly 22 minutes as opposed to the 1 hour + that the last one came in at.
Bungie have announced in their weekly update that the Halo 3 Heroic map pack will be made available for free download as of the 25th of March. Previously the maps had been priced at 800 points. On making the maps free Bungie says ”Remember, as of the April playlist update, the Free Heroic Maps will be required in Ranked Big Team, Social Big Team, Team Slayer and Rocket Race playlists. We’re requiring these maps in the following playlists to give players more options with the map rotations and by including a high population playlist like Team Slayer, we hope that the maps will permeate through the Community, resulting in more games played on these maps in Matchmaking.”Click continue reading for more.
