Monty Oum of Rooster Teeth has passed away

Rooster Teeth’s Monty Oum, animator for RvB and RWBY has passed away. He passed yesterday due to an allergic reaction from a medical procedure.

Below is a post on Rooster Teeth’s site that brings the bad news:

Monty_Oum_at_PAX_2013Our friend, inspiration and co-worker Monty Oum passed away yesterday afternoon at 4:34 PM surrounded by people who loved him very much. Ten days ago Monty suffered a severe allergic reaction during a simple medical procedure that left him in a coma. Although he fought bravely, his body was not able to recover. During his time in the hospital he was well cared for and never in pain at any time.  Continue reading

Are “casuals” ruining Halo? LOL Hardly, please read this…

So while checking my analytics today, I noticed that I was getting a spike in hits coming from Beyond Entertainment’s forums. I decided to see what all the hub-bub was about.

Here I come to find out, it was someone bashing me, calling me a troll, and more.

Now, before I get into this any further, let me say I have NO beef with Beyond Entertainment. In fact they locked the following thread before I even read it for the first time.

Here’s the link to the thread: http://teambeyond.net/forum/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F2727-casuals-like-this-are-ruining-halo%2F

So…what did I do? Well, I registered on the site and made an introduction post where I answered his call for me to “grow a pair.”

Here is that link: http://teambeyond.net/forum/index.php?/topic/2742-halofanforlife-here/

Now incase that gets deleted, I did take screenshots of the other person’s thread as well as my response. (Click to make bigger)

Nox Lemon threadMy introduction reply_sm
Now again, let me state for the record, this is NOT anything against Beyond Entertainment. I’m just responding to a particular individual. In fact, I hope the Beyond Entertainment and HaloFanForLife can do some sort of shared Halo project in the near future.

Let me know your thoughts on all of this. Reply below or e-mail me at [email protected]

[UPDATE] Now who’s trolling whom? LOL
Nox Lemon FR lol

Seriously guy, I wasn’t born yesterday.

-Sal

 

Custom Halo Forerunner Side Arm: Cutlass

Andrew Cook of DaFrontlineTrooper, had created another custom Halo Forerunner weapon of his own design. This one is a comparable gun to the UNSC Magnum. Take a look at it in the vid below.

Great job as always Andrew. I really like this design and it definitely has the Forerunner aesthetic to it. I’ll be posting this up on my blog and retweeting it. I’ve said before, 343 should hire you.

-Sal

Podcast on the XBOX One reversal with Podtacular!

I had the privilege to once again be on Podtacular. This time talking about the just announced reversal of the DRM policies that would have come with the XBOX One.

      Listen/Download

I for one am happy about this, though through the course of the Podcast both Dust Storm and Drax were able to educate me on some of the finer points of what DRM would have meant for us. Now only if Microsoft would have been so forthcoming about this before it became a firestorm for them…

It’s worth noting I had a couple of “old age” moments here when I completely lost my train of thought. My brain was racing with so many thoughts about this news that when I wanted to talk about a couple of things, my mind just didn’t process what specifically I wanted to say….Ugh….call me “MAG” (middle-aged gamer) And yes, I fully expect some of you to pervert that into Maggie…LOL.

Anyway, through this discussion, we all pretty much agreed that Microsoft screwed up royally with PR through both the initial reveal some weeks ago, as well as some of their presentation at E3. We also seem to agree that there could be room for a compromise where DRM can still exist. How? Well that’s up for MS to decide.

I think it should be something like a service that YOU the consumer have the choice to opt into. However, once you do that, you’re then locked into it. This way, for those who want DRM, they can have it, and those that don’t or can’t have DRM due to internet limitations dont’ have to be forced into it.

All in all I think it was a good Podcast. I did tend to talk a bit in this one as I had some pretty strong opinions. However, I did also keep an open mind and was willing to allow myself to change my position if the other fellows could explain DRM better to me.

That said have I changed my position from earlier today? Partially. As I said, I can now see some of the benefits of what DRM would have brought. But I still see the limitations it would have brought to others. So yeah, if MS can figure out a good way to bring DRM in as an optional service, then just about everyone can be happy with the XBOX One.

Enjoy the show and let me know your thoughts on it. Reply below and if you’re not registered yet, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] with what you want your user name and password to be and I’ll get you set up pronto.

-Sal

E3 Day one review and Halo 5 trailer Podcast

Finally Dust from Podtacular gets the link up for the 3 1/2 hour podcast we did covering our day 1 review of E3. In this I’m part of a panel talking about all of Microsoft’s conference. I specifically take point on the Halo 5 trailer, then after words we breifly discuss the Sony/PS4.

If you’re only interested in the Halo portion, then once you’ve heard me talk about the trailer, you can stop there. However, you’ll be missing out on some good debate, conversation and fun along the way.

      Listen/Download

-Sal

Two Podcasts coming soon. Day one E3 review and Spartan Ops season one finale.

I eluded to doing a podcast the other day. This one was for the Day 1 review of E3. In that podcast I broke down the Halo 5 trailer (as I’ve posted as such on the blog). We also reviewed the other game trailers and talked about the specs and rules for XB1’s online play, with a little comparison to Sony’s PS4.

Last night I along with Dust from Podtacular recorded another Podcast. This was done live via TwitchTv.

Last night’s Podcast was our final one regarding Spartan Ops Season One. We talked about the CG Epilogue and then went into some fun speculation and brainstorming as to what a season two of Spartan Ops might be about and when it might come about.

Dust hasn’t posted it just yet. I think he’s still editing the previous Podcast…Once he gets it up on his site, I’ll link to it here.

In the meantime, let me give a synopsis of some of the ideas I came up with for a SpOps Season 2.

With Requiem being thrown into the star of it’s solar system, we obviously can’t visit there. So this leaves us with Majestic being on the UNSC Infinity. What do they do now and where do they go? And WHY?

• There is always following up on the season ending cut scene with Halsey wanting Revenge. In doing so the Infinity could be used to chase her/Jul M’dama down.
-Chasing could be done on homeworlds of the former Covenant, finally getting to see the Grunt’s homeworld, maybe the Jackals, and Sanghelios would be something I think many would LOVE to see and visit in Spartan Ops.
– If not homeworlds, then colony worlds of the covenant. Makes sense as again, we’re chasing Jul’s Storm Faction of the Covenant and Covenant colony worlds would likely be welcoming of he and his fleet. Certainly more so than the UNSC Infinity.
– Searching former places Halsey has used as a base of operations. This would include Reach as well as Trevelyan. Since Trevelyan is a “Dyson” sphere Forerunner world there could be lots of opportunity to explore there. Also, Trevelyan was the place in which Jul M’dama was held prisoner for awhile. So he might want to exact some revenge there himself.

• Other than the Halsey story arc, we could see the Infinity investigating a resurgence of the human Insurgency that was prevalent pre-Covenant war. Dustin brought it up that people might not want to fight against fellow humans though. True enough. It was just and idea that I thought of while brainstorming SpOps Season 2.

• Another thought is that the UNSC does finally get the second part of the Janus key somehow and starts to explore other Forerunner installations. That story arc could go just about anywhere.

Chew on those ideas for a bit. Once Dust gets those links up, I’ll post them here and you can have a listen for yourselves. The E3 podcast was a long one at around 3 1/2 hours. We have a panel of folks.

Last night’s Spartan Ops finale was just under 2 hours and was solely Dust and myself. I think I talked the most during that one, LOL. Once I get started brainstorming, it’s hard for me to turn off the engine sometimes…

-Sal

Podcast w/Podtacular re: Spartan Ops Episode 9 Key

Last night I recorded a podcast with POD Dust Storm of Podtacular. This is the next installment of our review of each episode and a break down of each playable chapter. This time we talk about episode 9, “KEY.”

You can download the podcast

      here
. You can also listen to it at Podtacular without having to download it here.

Beyond talking about the episode and chapters, during the podcast, I also briefly talk about the Janus Key and it’s real world correlation. Look for an article about that shortly.

Custom UNSC Broadsword made of Mega Bloks!

My friend “Goodwill Hunter” (whom I’ve previously interviewed on the blog), has posted a brilliant custom UNSC Broadsword over on SpartanBloks. I highly recommend checking out the thread for more pic of this great custom.

Now hopefully Mega Bloks will take notice and make the Broadsword a reality as a building set. (Hmm, maybe news at this year’s New York Toy Fair???)

-Sal

HFFL partners with Podtacular to bring you Spartan Ops the Podcast.

Last night I recorded the first in a series of podcasts with POD Dust Storm from Podtacular regarding the episodes of Spartan Ops. During the podcasts we talk about the CG vids/storyline and go over each of the missions briefly as well as a short stat report.

Here’s the link to the Podcast.

Halo 4 Spartan Ops: Departure

And don’t forget that you can also follow the HFFL specific portion of this partnership through my “Mission by Mission” articles for a further more detailed look at each of the missions through gameplay.

Here are the first two articles in that series:

Spartan Ops, Mission by Mission: Episode 1 “Departure”, Mission 1 “Land Grab” (or SpOps 1-1)

Spartan Ops, Mission by Mission: Episode 1 “Departure”, Mission 2 “Sniper Alley” (or SpOps 1-2)

-Sal

I was a featured guest on Dust and Echoes Podcast, take a listen.

DAE: Episode 27

I’m about halfway through. We talk about Forward Unto Dawn, the reviews and graphic novels I do for those episodes, Halo 4, Halo toys and a bit more.

I always enjoy doing podcasts. Quite like a talk show, but much more casual.

Please hop on over to their site at the link above and them come on back and let me know what you thought of it. Replies are always welcome!

-Sal