• The Creed assassinates sales and rental charts: Sells with the speed of a ninja
• Ubisoft delays Haze and Splinter Cell: Conviction, announces Rainbow Six Vegas 2
• Sony launches PlayStation Store for PC
• Get ready to Black Friday: A list of this week’s best videogame deals
• Imbeciles want to subject the Wii to harsher ESRB ratings

Happening at Kotaku:

• The Orange Box Gets An Xbox 360 Demo Today
• Hitman A Miss With Movie Critics
• Rock Band Guitar Controllers Failing
• Activision “Looking Into” GH Wii Mono Issues
• GHIII Still Driving Music Sales

The word at Joystiq:

• Joystiq Holidaze: the guitar compatibility guide
• The Romantics sue over ‘virtually indistinguishable’ cover in Guitar Hero ’80s
• Reminder: Win a $5K gaming PC from Falcon Northwest
• Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3 has gone gold, likely due mid-December
• Amazon.com’s great Black Friday deals — including Wii supply

• Custom Samus Figure Is Finished, Awesome
• Halo Novel Is A Best-Seller
• Uncharted Devs Wish They Hadn’t Shown It So Early
• Halo 3 Big With The Casual Set
• Not Enough Rock Band To Go Around?

The word at Joystiq:

• Atari expecting layoffs and IP sales
• Watch the one woman Rock Band
• Turok rewards you for team killing with acheviement
• Nega-Review: Rock Band
• Original Nights into Dreams coming to PS2

Over at Destructoid:

• Halo 3 getting 3 new maps December 11
• Myst creators bringing Hex Isle to the 360
• Final Fantasy XIII possibly delayed until 2009
• Does Manhunt 2 make the mentally ill look bad?
• The invisible political commentary of Blacksite: Area 51

It’s been one week since the people at Bungie/Microsoft dropped a little gem known to the world as Halo 3 on the gaming public. In that time, token and myself have spent somewhere in the realm of 30+ hours in the universe of Master Chief and friends, and that doesn’t even include all of the extra/special features the game comes bundled with.

For me part of the whole reason that Halo 3 has been so much fun since it released was all of the crazy insane hype that went along with it, and just allowing myself to get swept away. I remember thinking when I finished the second game that I couldn’t wait until the 360 came out because I was sure that Microsoft would be saving this trump card until their new console dropped. I was a little disappointed when it didn’t arrive as a launch title, but all was forgiven on 9-25-07 at 12:01 A.M. Many people wonder if Halo 3 can even begin to live up to all of the hype that has preceded it and in my opinion the answer is yes. While I do have a few minor complaints; like I prefer the previous character models of Miranda Keyes and Cortana, or I wish I didn’t lose Exp Points when my internet connection hiccups, these things are just insignificant in the grand scheme that is Halo 3.

Another gripe is that the campaign is seems to be shorter this time out than I remember in the first two games. However this can be solved by cranking up the difficulty to Legendary. While token and I completed the game on normal in about 6 to 8 hours, once you switch to Legendary you can see that this is how the campaign was meant to be played.

Where this game really shines though is in the multiplayer aspect. Make no mistake about it, THIS IS HOW GAMES ARE MEANT TO BE PLAYED ONLINE. The online part of this game is absoluetly wonderful. This is where you’ll be spending most of your time. If by some chance you don’t have high speed internet, then this is the game to make you invest in the upgrade. There’s nothing quite like the fun that comes from trash talking your oppenents while you’re filling them full of anything from shotgun rounds to a hearty serving of an elbow to the head as you melee the shit out of them. And don’t get me started on sticking someone with a plasma grenade right before you die so you can enjoy seeing that you “got them from the grave“. There will be plenty of people to just right this off as another first person shooter, and then there are the pc eliteists who think that if you’re not controlling a fps with a mouse/keyboard, then it’s not true gaming. To all those people I say this: meet us online, and we’ll show you what a Spartan is all about.

9.25.07 Remember this date because years from now I see this day being very important. Some will remember the joy, others the spectacle.

For me I think the thing that I’ll remember the most is the look on Sony face when in one day, one game could potentially out sell everything that they have tried to do with their grill shaped console. Now I realize that this may come back to haunt me, but given the fact that the second game in this trilogy made just about as much money as Spiderman 3* did in it’s opening weekend I think I’m pretty safe.

Anyways just be sure to remember this date as I can tell you now my son and I will be knee deep in some Master Chief goodness for quite some time after the release.

Hit the link to be taken over to Destructoid to read the whole story

Halo 3 to be Released on 9-25-07

*according to Wikipedia Halo 2 made $125 million in it’s first 24 hours

Gears of War

I’m sure by now that if you haven’t heard of this game, you are either;

• Blind
• Deaf
• Dumb
• Completely cut off from the rest of the world or
• Sony

Anyways, my son and I finished this game this past weekend and I have to say that this was one the most fun gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. Back when the 360 first came out, it just didn’t seem to have that killer app that could really get me to justify buying another console, (not that that has stopped me before.) What I’m trying to say is that up until this game came out, Microsoft really didn’t have the one game that people could go up to and say, “Damn I just got to play that!” Now some would say that Oblivion was the first game on the 360 to justify “that rent payment going to a console” to gamers, but there’s no denying that Gears of War is by far the flagship title for the Xbox right now. I can honestly say that this is the first game that I have seen and played that made me say “the hell with Halo, there’s no turning back for me”

Course let’s see how I feel when Halo 3 comes out….

Anyways, with Gears, the bar has been set for all subsequent blockbuster titles on the 360 or any console for that matter. Say what you will about action shooters, but right now the boys of Delta Squad are riding high. And anyone who says otherwise is catching a chainsaw bayonet to the face.