Category Archives: Halo 4

Information about the game, strategies, achievements, etc.

Halo 4 Map pack release dates revealed?

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Somehow the release dates were leaked onto the German dashboard of XBOX and someone snapped up this pic of it. Now, take this with a grain of salt as it hasn’t been officially stated by XBOX or 343. Here is the pic:

What’s funny is, IIRC, I’ve already heard this info somewhere. Not the exact days, but certainly the months. Oh yeah that’s right….it was right here on my site more than a month ago, LOL: Halo 4 Map Packs: Details, Release Dates 

Well, it’s good to know I was on the mark there. The original source was from IGN.

Now we have the days they are going to be released.
Crimson: December 12 (a nice Christmas present for the Halo fan in your life)
Majestic: February 25
Castle: April 1 (hmm, April Fool’s day? so I wonder if this is a joke or what…)

One thing I do like is the name for the map packs. Each is derived from a Spartan Fireteam from Spartan Ops. There are three others mentioned in the episodes, so I wonder if we may be lucky enough to get though later? We can only hope.

-Sal

Halo 4 War Games weekly challenges: 11-26/12-2-12

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Campaign ones are good this week. Anyone else notice that each week we’ve been getting in order or missions the levels of the campaign? Great way to go for the Legendary Solo achievement without stressing over getting it quickly, AND getting credits for it. This is how I’ve been playing it. Yeah, it’ll take me two months from launch date to complete Legendary Solo, but I’m in no rush.

Spartan Ops challenges are EASY! Whew. And I LOVE Spartan Ops!!!

War Games challenges are SUPER easy too. Swat for the first for sure. More Swat or regular gameplay for the second one.

All told for the weekly challenges you can get yourself 20,000 XP. Not to shabby at all!

-Sal

Halo 4 War Games daily challenges: 11-23-12

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A little late with this one today. (Feeling sick)

First one no problem. Swat would be great for that.
Second one…9 KOTH wins? Again, I get that they want us to play different playlists, but 9 wins? Play 9 games in that playlist should be enough….

Again though, half the challenges in Halo 4  are harder than Reach ever were. So I guess the norm is one easy, one hard.

Mega Bloks Forward Unto Dawn set. Part 2 Aft body section and base.

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Okay, finally have another update on this project. This part see another 4 hours into the build.

I have to say this section of the ship is likely going to be the most FUN part of the four main sections to build. Reason? Because it contains the bridge of the ship as well as Master Chief’s cryo tube and Cortana on her plinth. SO….you may want to elect to rearrange what sections you build first if you want to finish on a more fun note. Not that the rest won’t be fun, just not as much as this part.

Okay, enough talking…I know you’re here for the purty pikchers…LOL

Thus begins the build. Here is the start of the aft section. It’s pretty solid.

The floor built over that.

Start of the walls.

More walls. Believe it or not, up to this point it took 1 1/2 hours to get this much done.

Here are the really cool detailed bridge components and some of the cryo bay greeblies.

Here they are inserted into their correct positions. They REALLY help to flesh out the interior play area of the model.

The front three panels.

The back three.

Sorry for the fuzzy shot here. Anyway, you can see how the panels fit batter here.

Looking into the interior from the front.

This little flip hatch is there to display Master Chief on the broken portion of the ship if you choose, or as shown, flip it up to close the door, so to speak. (I’ll be displaying mine as a whole ship, likely…er maybe…er oh okay I haven’t decided yet.

What’s really cool up to this point is you can just tell there are many details about the ship. Not just in the computer panels as shown already but in the “broken” portion shown above. With just a few pieces this area looks like it’s been broken apart.

Now for the underside.

More of the underside. Nice reverse sloping pieces here add to the contour of the ship. I especially like the longer slopes.

Here we see the three “bridging” areas that form the top part of the connecting sections to the “roof” of the ship (to be built later). Also note the ship is raised off the tabel by two large black stands. They are easy to remove should you wish to display the model hanging from the ceiling.

Here they are closer up, front, middle, and rear.

These engine nacelles are awesome! LARGE pieces with translucent blue turbines you put into them. REALLY cool. I may just work some lighting into these to make them glow. (That will be another project for this model done the line though.)

Looking down on the cryo bay with the Cryo tube, Master Chief and Cortana in place.

Another angle of the cryo bay. The Master Chief figure that comes with this set is much more detailed and has metallic paint. It’s NOT the same as the ones that come in the Halo 4 Warthog, not the separate Cryo Tube set. If you press down on Cortana, the base lights up form underneath to make it look like she is glowing. VERY cool feature!

So that’s section 1. Again this was 4 hours worth of building time. INclude the 5 hours to sort all the pieces and I’ve got 9 hours into this already. This is NOT a set I’d recommend rushing through. Take you time and have fun building.

Part three in a couple of days! (the roof section of the aft part of the ship as well as the side of the aft portion and the wings!)

So what do you think of it so far?
-Sal

Environment Art of Halo 4

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Here is a fantastic article on the environments of Halo 4.

Lots of really good pics there. Here are some of my favorites from that article:

The now iconic “Cauldron”

The Didact’s Cryptum over Requiem:

The Didact at the final scene (SO sweet!):

Requiem vista:

Forward Unto Dawn overlook:

Infinity Starship bay:

Infinity Bridge:

Now I already have the “Art of Halo 4” book, but man, I’d love to have MORE art from the game. A book dedicated to the environments would be AWESOME! Um 343, do you hear me? More money to be made…LOL.

-Sal

Halo 4 War Games daily challenges: 11-20-12

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Okay, I think someone pulled a switcheroo here. I can see completing 9 War Games and MAYBE winning 4 Regicide, but not the other way around as we got it.

Is it me or are Halo 4’s challenges REALLY a challenge? For some they just aren’t worth the extra XP awarded. Srsly. if I win 9 Regicide matches in ONE day…how about a bonus of at least 4500XP? (500 extra for each win).

Whew, looks like I’ll just be playing normally today and not “challenging” myself to get these. It’s a bit disappointing too. When I compare these to Reach’s challenges, I almost never missed those ones and had fun trying for them. Halo 4’s challenges are a bit too tough some times and not worth the effort. I hope BS Angel takes a look at the data to see how many people are actually completing these challenges versus the number of players. That will hopefully help in relaxing the requirements to complete challenges.

Anyone else agree? Disagree?
-Sal

Spartan Ops Episode 3!

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Catherine Halsey, the creator of the original Spartan program is brought aboard the Infinity. The artifact is communicating with the Infinity, while on Requiem Elites have a “guest.”

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/intel/spartanops#episodeId=3

 

Mega Bloks Forward Unto Dawn set. Part 1: Unboxing and sorting.

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Normally when I do a review for a Mega Bloks set, it’s all in one article. However, given the size of this set and the time it’s going to take to get it built, I thought I’d go a different route for this one. For the next several days until I get the set completed, I’m going to be posting articles detailing the build process of the amazing set.

Up first is the unbloxing (yes I meant to do that, LOL) and the sorting of all the pieces.

This box is massive. Note the handle on top of it. It’s needed believe me!

A shot of what’s on the back of the box.

As you can see from above, when you first open the box you are greeted to some very nice interior artwork as well as the THICK instruction manual.

When you lift out the manual these 4 shoesized boxes are underneath waiting to be taken out.

See, I told you the instruction manual is thick!

On the back of the manual you have this fantastic compilation artwork of recent sets. It’s almost identical to the larger poster that was given away at FanFest in Toronto earlier this year.

The above three pics show three of the boxes contents. LOTS and LOTS of bloks!

And finally for this part are the sorted pieces. I had to photoshop two photos together to get these all in one shot.

As you can see I like to be a bit organized. I stack the same pieces together 10 high with leftovers in a smaller stack. Also, note the orange tabs on the parts list. I do this with very large sets like this.  What I do is catalog the parts against the parts list to make sure I have the amount is specifies. By putting a tab down on the part it lets me know it’s been cataloged. There are two more pages of parts and I did this with those as well.

Already I’ve spent 5 hours on this and that was all just in the unboxing and sorting…

I’m loving it though!

Stay tuned for follow up articles showing the build in progress!

-Sal