Halo Wars 2 Controller Skin!

There has been no official controller or skin that I’ve seen for Halo Wars 2. So, I took it upon myself to make one. Halo Wars 2 XB1 Skin just sticker

Here’s what it looks like on the controller itself:Halo Wars 2 XB1 Skin w-cntrlr

You can get this via GameStopskinit.com

You will have to upload the graphic, which I’m including here:
Halo Wars 2 XB1 Skin FULL

That’s the full graphic. When you upload it, it will automatically pop into place.

You can even personalize it with your own gamertag if you want, via the ordering process:
Halo Wars 2 XB1 Skin FULL Personalized

If you use this, let me know. I’d LOVE to see pics of it on your controller!!

I am going to make 2 other Halo Wars 2 controller skins. One will be Concept Art, the other various other Halo Wars 2 graphics.

Please, if you post this on another site, include a linkback to this article and give me “Sal Salerno of HaloFanForLife.com” credit for creating the skin. (I get NO profit from this folks. Done for you fans by a fellow fan.

Blitzing the Night Away

This is a reblog from Halo Wayoint: 

By Sk37ch
Welcome back, friends! We’ve still got Blitz on the brain so this week’s update has some pro-tips and insights to hopefully help elevate your game and win percentage as we go into the final weekend of the Halo Wars 2 Beta. We’ve also got quite a bit of Halo 5 news on deck including info on tomorrow’s “Warlords” playlist, new helmets, an ask for feedback and more. Beyond that we’ve also got another 343 Team Spotlight from deep within the Halo Wars 2 team and Uny’s serving up another helping of the Community Spotlight and a Play of the Week.

I know I solicited your feedback and quetions on Twitter this week and while quite a bit is covered below, I know I couldn’t get to everything. I also owe some updates on Forge creations so I’ll revisit those questions and topics next week when we come up for air from the Blitz Beta.

We’ve got a fully loaded deck of legendary updates this week so without further ado…3..2..1..Blitz!hw2-blitz-mp-beta-blogbanner-1120-x-334-3cd197c27ad9447cab6c814f377e8896 Continue reading

Prima Games: Prepare for Blitz!

This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

The Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta is underway and if our own experience is any indication, you may be finding yourself on the losing end of matches far more than emerging victorious. Thankfully our friends over at Prima Games have put together some of their insider tips and knowledge to help us all improve our Blitz skills for the final stretch of the beta!

PREPARE FOR BLITZ!

BY PRIMA GAMES

HW2 screen of battle

Halo Wars 2 Blitz Mode does away with the base-building, research, and unit-training found in other game modes. Instead, this card-based game mode features simplified resource management and greatly accelerated army growth. Continue reading

Welcome to the Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta

This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:hw2-blitz-mp-beta-blogbanner-1120-x-334-3cd197c27ad9447cab6c814f377e8896

The Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta is officially underway! From Jan. 20 through Jan. 30 players on Windows 10 PC and Xbox One can jump in and get PVP hands-on with Halo Wars 2’s brand new mode, Blitz.

The Halo Wars 2 development team needs your assistance to play Blitz on both platforms to help with critical datamining for various behind-the-scenes systems and services in addition to providing valuable feedback on the leaders, units and your overall Blitz gameplay experience. Continue reading

The Month of Master Chief January 2017 (1/17) Feature 8: NASCAR Master Chief

Master Chief has bee the inspiration for many things. As we celebrate the month of Master Chief 1/17, we look at various ways and things that have been made into Chief or in honor of him.

Today’s article focuses on NASCAR.

Before Halo 5 Guardians came out, 343/Micorsoft partnered with NASCAR and Dale Earnhart Jr. to have XBOX and Halo cars. Below we see the Chief car. Emblazoned with Green, Chief’s Visor at the front and his helmet on the hood, this is a worthy ride of our favorite Spartan!Dale-Chief Car Continue reading

Halo Wars 2 Feature: Blitz 101

This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

By Ske7ch

hw2-blitzbeta101module

The Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta is nearly upon us which means it’s time for a special edition of the Halo Community Update to get you fully up to speed on everything you need to know to hit the ground running and emerge victorious on the battlefield! Blitz is a new way to play Halo Wars and offers a fast, card-based strategic experience that’s quite different from the standard RTS-style PVP matches of the past (don’t worry, those modes are all still included in the final game!). The Blitz Beta will be avaialble on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC but for the sake of this guide, when controls are stated they will be in reference to the console version.

Winning or losing a Blitz match ultimately comes down to a few key things:

  • Understanding the game mechanics
  • Leader & Deck composition
  • Battlefield decision-making

Luckily these are exactly the key things we’re going to dive into today. To kick things off, let’s first start with the basics and overall game mechanics. Continue reading

Halo Wars 2 goes GOLD!

A HUGE Congrats to the teams at 343 and Creative Assembly for Halo Wars 2 going GOLD!

The 343 Halo Wars 2 Team:IMG_0070

The Creative Assembly Halo Wars 2 Team:IMG_0095

Don’t forget folks, the second BETA starts TOMORROW! It lasts for 10 days and will be all about the gametype Blitz.

Blitz is a mix of RTS as well as Card Strategy. If you haven’t seen it, there is a twitterblitz game on twitter right now. Check out Isabel’s (The AI in Halo Wars 2) twitter account to play!2B3dLs7x

Canon Fodder Issue 96: The Art of War(s)

This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

BY GRIMBROTHER ONE
ISSUE 96

canonfodder-1-18-17-b6fbefdc141f4cd292d763bfde6e1746Greetings, and welcome back to the first Canon Fodder of 2017! It’s been a while since we last met like this, with understandable cause of course – with the Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta nigh upon us, and the full game launch itself barely a month away, the studio has been abuzz with activity on a myriad of fronts.

With these things in mind, we thought it prudent to kick this year off the right way – with a salvo of salivation-inducing sweetness that we hope will satisfy the many lore-leaning fans who love to linger around these parts. We’ve got awesome new Halo Wars 2 Blitz art, an in-depth look at some rad new recent additions to the Halo: Ground Command arsenal thanks to fellow 343 lore liaison Kenneth Peters, cool community contributions, and more. Shall we begin? Continue reading

Giveaways for Halo Mega Bloks Hayabusa Spartan figures!

Just last night I posted on both twitter and instagram messages for giveaways that I’m doing. There will be a giveaway for each.

Instagram:
I’m going to do a giveaway of these 3 Hayabusa Mega Bloks Spartans. To enter you must like and reply to this post and regram (repost) in your IG timeline. Tag me in that repost as well. I will select the winner Friday 8 pm EST time zone. 

I will pay up to the first $5 in shipping. If it’s more than that, the winner will be responsible for the remainder.

So go check out both my twitter and instagram accounts and enter for a chance to win the set of 3!

The Month of Master Chief January 2017 (1/17) Feature 7: McFarlane Master Chief figures

McFarlane was lucky enough to have the license to produce Halo action figures for several years. In that time they made several Master Chief figures. McFarlane is known for highly detailed sculpts and Master Chief got the full treatment of that.

Chief was made with various armor sets from the lore of Halo.  The quality of the sculpt really shows too. McFarlane did an AMAZING job!

In chronological order from lore.

Here is the armor from Halo the mini series Forward Unto Dawn. The piece you see to the bottom right was part of a Build-A-Emblem series. Once you had all the pieces you could assemble them to make the Bungie version of the UNSC emblem.anniversary2_masterchief_photo_01_dp Continue reading

Halo Toy Review: Mattel Build-A-Figure Alpha Crawler

logo-mattel

Build-A-Figure Alpha Crawler

Technical Specifications:
Articulation:
• Ball Joint Head
• Ball Joint Shoulders
• Hinged Elbows/Knees
• Swivel Torso
Cost: As this figure is made up from parts of each of the series 1 Mattel Halo figures, to get it, you either have to buy one of each figure OR you can try your luck at buying pieces through sites such as eBay. If you buy the set of figures the total cost of them is $90 for 6 figures. Each figure has one or two pieces of the Crawler, depending on which figure it is. So to nail down an actual cost to this specific figure is a little bit different. I will say it’s worth is about $15. However, the complexity by which you have to obtain the individual pieces makes this more valuable. So I put that amount at around $40.
Availability: Mass Retail

And on with the pics! (Click pics to make BIGGER)

FIrst up, you have to have all the parts. Here I’ve laid them out to show them in reference as to how they are assembled (top left). Subsequent steps at assemble show how the Crawler comes together. It’s not difficult to attach parts. However, be sure to get them put on correctly. I at first mistakingly put the rear legs on backwards….

Crawler Assembly Continue reading

Night of the Mantis!

I’ve had a chance to play this new COMMUNITY-MADE minigame over the past several days. Let me say it is FANTASTIC! Honestly, I didn’t think something like this was possible in Forge. It just shows the absolute POWER of scripting in Halo 5’s Forge!

The following is a partial repost from Waypoint, with my commentary in BLUE as usual.

NIGHT OF THE MANTIS

A game mode that’s been taking the Forge world by storm, Night of the Mantis, caught our attention as well. In this minigame made by Julianoz1224, the only objective is to protect your base from waves of Mantises. While taking down Mantises, you earn points to purchase new weapons, grenades, and power ups that will in turn help fight off future waves. Julianoz recommends playing with four or fewer players, but the difficulty does scale for five to nine players, and then gets even more difficult with ten or more players.

HFFL: Folks, I can tell you for a fact, the difficulty DOES increase. I’ve played this with as few as 4 people and as many as 8. It gets a lot harder with 8, especially when you play it on harder difficulties!

MANTIS TYPES
The different types of Mantis you will face. Each type will reward your team with different points, as seen on the table below.notm-mantises-21188436d7fc44788c9e7a9fc0705ce8

HFFL: The fact that Julianoz was able to script each Mantis differently speaks not only to what you can do with Forge, but his mastery of scritping it as well! Continue reading

Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta

A few qords from Dan Ayoub, Studio Head of Strategy Games at 343 Industries
This is a repost from halo Waypoint: 

hw2-blitz-mp-beta-blogbanner-1120-x-334-3cd197c27ad9447cab6c814f377e8896

Hi everyone –

Last June we invited our fan community to jump in and get hands-on with a slice of Halo Wars 2 with our first multiplayer beta. As discussed, we received a tremendous amount of valuable feedback on both the technical and gameplay side that has helped the team continue to refine and improve the overall Halo Wars 2 experience as we march towards launch on Feb. 21, 2017. Continue reading

The Month of Master Chief January 2017 (1/17) Feature 6: My history with Master Chief in the games.

It’s hard to encompass 16 yeasrs of gaming with one franchise in one blog post. This article is in no way all encompassing, but does give you a synopsis of my history and experience with Master Chief from the video games. Novels and other media have not been included (with rare exception) so that any who just follow the games can read along and not be lost in further discussion.

Fair warning, this article is a long read and there will be no TL;DR.

Pre-Master Chief History:
I was a Nintendo then Playstation guy. I hadn’t even considered an XBOX until a friend of mine had me try out theirs one day while I was visiting. The game I played? Yep, HALO! And so starts my journey.

Halo 1 CE Cover
Halo CE/Master Chief

The ever so brief time I had playing Halo on my friend’s console was just enopugh to convince me to by it. It wasn’t really the console itself, but rather the game. I was enamored by this green armored super solider. The super hero-esque look of him was a big draw. I’m a HUGE Iron Man fan, so Master Chief was akin to him, insofar as te armor was concerned, to me. Continue reading

Halo Toy Review: Mega Construx Series Challenger Blind Pack figures

mega-construx-logo

This brand new series is a break from the normal military lettered series. (Alpha-Foxtrot) I’m not sure if we’ll see those return or if Mega is going a new direction and naming the blind pack series differently. Regardless, we have a VERY cool new wave of figures with Challenger, so let’s take a look at each!

Mega Construx Challenger Series Blind Packs

Technical Specifications:
Build Time: 2 minutes building each figure
Set Piece Count: varies by figure
Minifigures: Banished Brute, Elite Zealot, Grunt Minor, ODST, Marine, Mark IV Spartan, War Master Spartan, Helioskrill Spartan
Accessories: Bruteshot, Energy Sword, Plasma Pistol, Assault Rifle, Battle Rifle, Assalt Rifle, Hydra, Trans-green Hydra
Special Features: Removable Armor
Cost: $3-3.50 US (Mass Retail) (ONE figure per pack)

Challenger packet Continue reading