Mayur Gandhi over at NZGamer reports that Armageddon in Wellington, New Zealand this year featured the WETA warthog that was built for Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp’s live-action Halo shorts. Check out these detailed photos from the event.

This amusing video made with Halo 3’s Forge parodies Nintendo’s Pokemon, Mario & StarFox games. Check out this interesting mash-up entitled, ‘Gal, Guy & Villain’.

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What is Grifball? Well, if you play Halo 3 and use Xbox Live it’s is a custom game type, kinda like a hybrid of hockey & football - sort of… anyways the guys from Red vs. Blue present this nice and informative video tutorial on how to play.

Here are the rules found at the Grifball Official website:

Grifball is an extremely fast paced sport game type that’s played on an open court between two teams of four players. Each team has a goal and each player carries a gravity hammer and an energy sword. In the center of the arena is a single ball that can be picked up by anyone on the field. Each match consists of 5 rounds, with each round ending when someone slams the ball into their opponent’s goal. The team with the most goals wins.

It’s a very simple game by design, but it’s an enormous amount of non-stop action. At any point in time, you are either on defense with your 3 teammates guarding your goal or you are on offense as the ball carrier with three blockers. In a second, the game can turn and you have to be ready to seamlessly change roles.

Loading.Ready.Run shares with us a brilliant glimpse of our future courtesy of Halo. While quite similar to the most excellent EPIC (which I also recommend viewing at your earliest convenience) I consider the following to be the best video game mockumentary I have ever seen. Enjoy.

Jeep is releasing a new vehicle that is styled after a Halo Warthog while letting you be like Master Chief by helping save our planet with a unique li-ion/diesel engine that is said to get more than 110 miles per gallon.

The following is Chrysler’s press release info:

2008 Jeep® Concept
The 2008 Jeep Renegade Concept is a sporty B-segment-sized two-seater ideally suited for the all-weather delights of off-roading and dune surfing. Featuring a cut-down speedster windshield, a roll bar, openings in the door lowers and a hose-out interior, it is an “eco-friendly” vehicle with minimized use of materials - designed for those who want to enjoy the earth while taking care of its future. The propulsion system combines a 40-mile lithium-ion battery pack and a small-displacement BLUETEC diesel engine. The result: fuel economy of more than 110 miles per gallon.

Specifications
Length: 153 inches (3885 mm)
Width at H-point: 62.9 inches (1598 mm)
Height: 56.3 inches (1431 mm)
Wheelbase: 101.6 inches (2580 mm)

[source: Chrysler]

The following video features Curtis Creamer, CJ Cowan and Harold Ryan from Bungie Studios driving a warthog made for Peter Jackson’s Halo project. Very cool.

Ensemble Studios upcoming Halo Wars for the Xbox 360 is demonstrated by Graeme Devine, lead designer of Halo Wars.  Detailing the controls and other gameplay features such as vehicles, user interface and special weapons were highlighted, along with new creations.

The footage also showed off a UNSC base consisting of an airbase, vehicle depot, missile silo and several other buildings that can be created while playing Halo Wars.

After the preview watch Halo Wars official trailer.

Frankie over at Bungie.net shares this during his weekly update:

The dudes at WETA made a Warthog. I don’t mean that they made a big plastic thing that looks like a Warthog. I mean they built a fully-functioning, four-wheel steering, powerful, off-road vehicle with a machine gun on the back. At the correct scale. If you live near Wellington, New Zealand, you might even see some crazy machine-shop dude from WETA fishtailing around your base, ahem, I mean neighborhood.

What’s it for? Well, a couple of things – one of which will be one of the shorts coming from director Neill Blomkamp. We sort of blindsided you guys with the first short (Arms Race) – it had little to no context or explanation, but when you see it as it was originally intended – as part of an overall narrative, you might just pee your pants. And if you don’t, then the picture below will certainly cause some leakage.

Goddamn. It’s a Warthog.

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PSU has created a selection of montages to illustrate this ‘evolution’ of gaming. Check out the 1st generation up to the the most current generation of your favorite video game franchises.

Click the image below to see a larger version.

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As part of their month-long Halo 3 marathon, 1UP sat down with a few Bungie developers to talk up the upgrades being made to the upcoming shooter’s online matchmaking system. The central focus of their system will be parties and how to get your friends to play with you in both ranked and unranked matches.
This method differs from the current XBL king Gears of War, which does not (officially) allow friends to play ranked matches together.

Gears developer Epic has stated that the reason its title lacks a clan-friendly matchmaking system for
ranked play is Microsoft’s certification process. Bungie producer Allen Murray counters that notion in the interview, however, by explaining that Microsoft does allow parties of friends in ranked matches but does “not provide that feature as part of the core set of matchmaking services.”

In other words, it’s up to the developer to program the system, and Bungie feels it has learned enough from its Halo 2 experience to optimize the system they already have in place.

The interview talks a lot about custom rules matches and their efforts to promote the play. There aren’t a lot of specifics, and much of what is said is subject to change between now and then. If you want to get a feel for the general design philosophy Bungie has, this should satiate you.

[via joystiq & 1up]