Category Archives: Halo 4

Information about the game, strategies, achievements, etc.

Halo 4 Exclusive Soundtrack T-shirt and Special Edition Bundle!

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This is being sold on Amazon (not sure if elsewhere though).

Here’s the text blurb describing what comes with the bundle:

HALO 4 – LIMITED EDITION BOXSET and T-SHIRT. The Special Edition box is available in a limited quantity, each exclusively numbered and contains the following:
• original Soundtrack CD includes 15 Tracks
• a bonus remix CD with remixes by: DJ Skee & THX, Gui Boratto, Sander Van Doorn & Julian Jordan, Apocalyptica, Caspa and more
• 180 Gram, 12″ Master Chief picture disk vinyl of remixes
• a making of Halo 4 Music DVD and Book features behind the scenes photos and; footage from the Abbey Road sessions
• Neil Davidge’s production and composition notes
• a 12″X12″ Halo 4 Art Print
• an exclusive Art print of Master Chief signed by Neil Davidge!
• PLUS for the first 5000 special edition box sales only, a Halo 4 Avatar download code!

The T-shirt is an exclusive design and only available through this set.

HFFL: I’d love to get this. I already have the music, but all that other stuff sounds great! It’s a decent bundle. If you haven’t yet bought the music, then this is absolutely the way to go! Get yourself some additional cool Halo swag! For $34.99, it’s worth it, IMO.

You can buy it HERE!

-Sal

Squad DLC in Halo 4 = AWESOME!

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Last night I played a bunch of Squad DLC games with several friends of mine. It was a blast! Not only did we enjoy playing on those DLC maps that we paid for and seem to not come up much in regular matchmaking, but we played some good game types as well.

I highly suggest if you have the DLC maps to make use of this playlist while it’s still up. You’ve got about 10 days left remaining for it. While I hope it would stick around as a permanent playlist, unless we can get more people playing in it, it’s not likely to happen.

So I implore you if you do, PLEASE again, go play some games in it! Believe me, you’ll have fun too!

-Sal

Halo 4 new temporary game type: Medal Madness

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This game type just went live yesterday. If you haven’t had a chance to play it yet, I definitely recommend it.

2-25_medalmadness_1920x749I played a couple matches of this last night and had fun.

The first game I went +13. The second game only +3. Still, it was fun both games.

If you haven’t heard about the game and what it entails, then let me be of assistance.

There are 1 minute rounds. You don’t know what the next round is going to be as it’s random. Rounds are ongoing with no stoppage in between, unlike say Grifball. Each round gives you a different medal to get. The team that scores the most of that medal in that given round gets a point. Game ends when a team reaches seven points first.

In the first game, rounds switched between Rockets/Fuel Rod kills, to Supercombine kills with the Needler, to Double Kills (using a BR with no radar, to Melees, to Hail Marys and so on. It can be quite fast paced and a bit frenetic. That’s actually part of the fun of it. It’s kind of a mix of Fiesta with different weapons, and objective where you have to get certain medals. If you’re NOT one for this type of gameplay, I’d still say give it a shot. The rest of you, jump in before the gametype leaves the rotational playlist in two weeks from now.

I hope that Medal Madness returns to the playlists as a game type within Action Sack. It’s PERFECT for that playlist!

-Sal

 

VwS Cryptic wins the Gamers for Giving 2014 Halo 4 charity tournament!

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A BIG congrats to VwS Cryptic on their win.

Cryptic-Sargoth GFG14 WIN

I’m happy for them and in particular Casey “SARGOTH” Current. He’s a member of the team, as well as the fellow who won my Halo 4 FFA tournament at my LAN last year. And, I’m happy to call him a friend.

Need proof of that you say? Sure ’nuff. Here’s my LAN recap.

And a couple of pics from it (Plenty more pics at the link above):

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Yeah, that’s me the big fella, wearing the blue UNSC t-shirt, next to SARGOTH. And yes, that’s Eric “Gho57ayame” Hewitt, new 343 employee, sitting next to him.

-Sal

 

New Flood game type? CAVEAT (It’s a modded game type)

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My friend Addicted Cha0s tweeted the link to the following video regarding a new modded Flood game type called “Plague”.

This looks to be a lot of fun. As Flood you can choose to be any of three different kinds of flood. Small and fast, normal, or big and slow but powerful.

As Spartans you can heal each other from infection.

Wow, this just sounds amazing!

The only issue is that it’s modded. So PLEASE be aware of that should you download the maps/gametype. XBOX policy says no modding. This could leave yourselves vulnerable to banning. While I’d love to hear an official “okay” from 343 on this, they really can’t. Yes, I know Frank O’Conner stated ok on modded gametypes. That however was an impromptu saying as a convention and he even said he needed to be careful about this.

Now if this made it into the official Flood playlist in Halo 4, you bet I’d be playing it.

-Sal

Heavies playlists is LIVE and it’s FUN!!!

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Okay, yes, I know it went live yesterday. Point is, I was having a lot of fun playing it, I didn’t stop to write up an article about it.

So there are two main gametypes within Heavies. Team Heavies, which is what it sounds like and Kill of the Hill. Honestly, if there are others, I didn’t notice as those two were all people were voting for.

I played on Ragnarok, Vortex, Wreckage, and Shatter. Now for one, I’ve got to say, I’m happy that enough people have the DLC that I could play on those maps in matchmaking, instead of custom games.

Heavies was/is definitely needed and a VERY welcome return to Halo, in my opinion. I wish it were a permanent playlist or integrated with BTB!

Back in my Halo 3 days I used to rush the Scorpion. It was BEAST back then and could take one hell of a beating. In Halo 4 though, while it’s shots are powerful, it’s armor isn’t quite so. Instead of getting into vehicles, much of the time I was going about the map destroying vehicles by any means necessary. This included sniping, Spartan laser, sticky detonator, over-charged plasma pistol then sticking it with a nade or boarding it to melee it to death.

It was EXTREMELY FUN! This isn’t a playlist for the uber hardcore competitive players. Well, it can be, but don’t expect it to be. It definitely caters more to the casual and casually competitive crowd. Callouts help, but when you’ve got all sorts of vehicle mayhem going on, it almost isn’t needed. That said, a good Banshee pilot can be VERY pesky, which happened on a couple of occasions.

I went into the playlist with the thought that I was going to focus on killing Scorpions as I’m trying to finish that commendation. However, while that didn’t go out the window, I found that I was just enjoying the WHOLE game of carnage.

So folks, do yourselves a favor for the next two weeks and play some Heavies!

-Sal

Slow day for Halo, NOT…Matchmaking discussion on twitter! (Synopsis)

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Today was pretty slow for Halo stuff, until Carl from Virgin gaming asked what farming techniques might be applied in Halo.

As well, BS Angel asked what our favorite and least favorite gametypes were in Halo 4.

I had plenty of tweets back and forth with both of them.

While tweeting with Carl, I mentioned my ideas for tiered weapons drops. This would be based on number of kills and you would get ver specific weapons in those drops. None of the randomness as it is now.

For example:
• Tier 1 – Awarded at 5 kills. You get your choice of Shotgun or Needler.
• Tier 2 – Awarded at 10 kills. You get your choice of DMR, Carbine or Concussion Rifle.
• Tier 3 – Awarded at 15 kills. You get your choice of Rocket Launcher or Fuel Rod.
• Tier 4 – Awarded at 20 kills. You get your choice of Sniper or Incineration Cannon.

Along the way, someone (I think it was Cyren from Beyond) added that there should be a death penalty placed upon this.  Basically you die, you either lose ALL of the meter towards those weapons drops or at least SOME of it. I definitely agree with that.

If this were instituted, skilled players would be rewarded for skill and those not so skilled wouldn’t. Yes, that might deter some from playing, however, it also takes out much of the awful randomness that Infinity drops put in the game currently. At present you can’t rely on what power weapons are on the map. With the ideas above, it still would be hard, but you’d know that later into the game, more powerful weapons are going to pop up. Also, you and/or your teammates can call-out in game when they are making a drop so your whole team knows when that weapons in coming into the game.

That adds tactics, which also equate to a portion of skill.

The tweets between BS Angel and myself talked about playlists. I mentioned I liked Team Objective the most. While I dont’ really have a least favorite, I mentioned CTF. Now, don’t get all “WHAT THE HELL” on me. I LOVE CTF. However, when 343 took out Team Objective and put just CTF in it’s place, WE the players LOST our ability to choose. This is PARAMONT to continued success of the game. Also, consider there are commendations to get in the likes of Oddball and King of the Hill for examples. Making those gametypes only available in the rotational playlists or in the rarely voted on option in BTB makes it difficult to work on those commendations.

Along the way, Cruellegacy (former Waypoint moderator) chimed in and mentioned how working on commendations changes gameplay. I do agree with that. However, changing playlists in a way that takes out CHOICE for we gamers changes what GAME those players are going to play. By that I mean, MANY people bolted for other games rather than sticking with Halo. Why? Well, certainly in part because classic playlists like Team Objective were gone. Team Objective was VERY popular in Halo 3 and Reach. Why 343 decided to take it out still confounds me to know end.

I’ll admit, I prefer objective over slayer matches any day of the week. I like the idea of working toward something OTHER than just killing an opponent. It adds more of a reason as to why you’re playing. Well, it does for me anyway.

So, if you want to see what all the hub-bub was about, I invite you to check out my twitter feed at: https://twitter.com/HaloFanForLife or @HaloFanForLife. And please, if you do, give me a follow if you haven’t already! THANKS!

-Sal

I LOVE Halo Paintball!

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So I played several games of Paintball yesterday and had a blast. I played a couple on my own, then a few with my friend, Brent. After a few games I brought in another friend, Erickyboo and then a surprise… Petetheduck himself! Yep, Pete’s a friend of mine. So when he popped on, I sent him a game invite and he joined in for several games. It was quite fun playing with the fella who created the map itself. BTW, Pete did pretty darn good in those games… Pete joined another party of friends while Brent, Eric and I partied up with a bunch of other friends.

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If you haven’t played Paintball yet in Action Sack, let me give you the lo-down on the settings.

• 1 life per round
• 5 rounds per game
• Mobility perk only
• NO jumping
• No grenades
• Unlimited Plasma Pistol ammo

Scoring is a bit weird in this, but honestly, I didn’t care about scoring at all. I was out to have fun and get those Plasma Pistol kills!

When the game starts, you’re right next to the wall where there is a soft kill boundary. Take a few steps forward and you’re out of it easily, so no worries.

The game is pretty fast paced with nearly everyone spamming plasma shots from the get-go. I got kills from across the map this way (and was also killed that way too….). Rounds tend to last no more than 20-30 seconds or at least it seems like that. Of course the time for each round is longer, but I honestly can’t say how long as we never even got close to a round going the distance.

For those worried about K/D, consider that since you only have ONE life per round in a five round game, the WORST you can do is go 0-5.That’s EASY to come back from, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I had some really good games and some not so good. However, the key to this is that I was having FUN as well as working on my Plasma Pistol commendation. I knocked out more than 70 plasma pistol kills yesterday. That’s more than the 14 MONTHS preceding it playing Halo 4 nearly everyday. So yeah, this is GREAT for working on your Plasma Pistol kills!

I’m sure you can tell by this article that I HIGHLY support Paintball. I’ve been campaigning for it to be in Matchmaking for many months. I have no clue if any of my campaigning for it helped get it into matchmaking. Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me, I’m just happy Paintball is IN. I’ll be playing this hardcore every night at least until I get my Plasma Pistol commendation done. So if you want to work on yours as well AND have some fun, send me a game invite over XBOX LIVE to my gamertag: HaloFanForLife1. I’m trying to be on at roughly 7pm EST each night and play for at least 2 hours.

-Sal

Team DLC and Paintball are in matchmaking!

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Today is first day back for Team DLC. This playlist will only be available for two weeks folks. So, if you bought the DLC, jump into the playlist and get your monies worth!

Also, the fun new Paintball gametype has been added to the Action Sack playlist. I’m personally going to be looking to play this one a lot for the next couple of weeks. I want to finish the commendation for Plasma Pistol kills!

If you want to game with me in either playlist over the next couple of weeks, send me a game invite to my gamertag: HaloFanForLife1

-Sal

343 Artist Shae Shatz posts a new piece of cool Concept art!

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The above in Shae’s words:

The concept above was done for HALO 4. It was some work for a portion of a level that was ultimately scaled down so the team could execute it within time limits. Along the course of this experience, one would encounter a series of banshees in water that was knee deep while fighting a variety of other foes. 

So now I’m curious which level this was to be? There are a few places I can think of that this could have been added.

-Sal