News HC Weekly Recap June 30th 2015

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It's Monday Tuesday, which means it's time for this week's weekly recap (Monday's suck anyway).

There's no bulletin to use as a cheat sheet for me this week so I've ventured out into the interwebs to find out what's out there to give you that weekly dose of both Halo and non-relevant news.

#SplitscreenGate

Originally the plan for Halo 5: Guardians was for it to maintain split screen functionality, simply reducing the max player count from 4 down to 2 for the sake of frame rate preservation.

New information on this has however come to light. Eagle eyed twitter user 'bengvr3' spotted that the listing for Halo 5 on the Xbox Store now only lists the game supporting 1-1 players. You can see this twitter post in the image below.


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Josh Holmes later made the following statement in response to this;

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Unfortunately for those that use the local play features when playing Halo, it's strongly suggested that Split Screen functionality is officially dead in the water.

Personally this doesn't affect me as I'm a solo player and only have 1 controller for my Xbox One, but I can understand that this could be a massive blow to those whom wanted to experience the campaign with a family member or friend on the same system.

Naturally the that's the straight-up negative way of looking at this scenario but on the bright side this could mean that 343i are finally taking overall performance of Halo 5 seriously, the premise of 60fps, and the use of dedicated servers across the board is certainly an enticing prospect and I hope that 343i are able to deliver. Remember, this is the first Halo game made 100% in house by 343i (Certain Affinity Handled H4 and H2:A multiplayer previously).


Of Halos and Waypoints

Snake: First things first, Yes, it's me! Due to my unforeseen dental issues I'd like to apologize for my absence, but it won't be long now until you have my full attention once more. Moral of the story kids, take care of your teeth but enough of my rambling, lets get move unto some news, shall we?

In this weeks Halo Community Update, Josh Holmes answers some of the communities questions regarding Warzone. Two things that caught my attention were the fact that you can unlock any pre-order "exclusives". Pre-ordering for that item simply guarantees that you'll have it unlocked from day 1 and can avoid all the work to unlock that particular item.

The other thing that caught my attention, was the fact that we'll see different map specific bosses on each Warzone map. I'm curious to see if we'll be facing any of the new, unnamed, Forerunner class of enemies as seen in the campaign. That hardlight sword just looks badass, so seeing it in action in large scale combat should be both interesting and intense.

If multiplayer isn't your thing, you'll be glad to know that the latest edition of Halo: Escalation has finally released. Be sure to also give Canon Fodder a quick read as well. You never know, you might just learn something new about the Haloverse.
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Halo Titbits
Thanks Snake, now onto some extra smaller bites of Halo news;
  • HCS will retire H2:A after the end of it's second season with season 3 beginning after the launch of Halo 5. Plans for "invitational" events in the run up to the game's launch much like we had for H2:A previously seem to be apparent.
  • Polygon has a new Halo 5 related article in a Qn'A format discussing multiplayer design choices and inspiration for new features included in the game. When I had a flick through it earlier I noticed that MCC is briefly mentioned. It's nice to see they haven't 'completely' forgotten about it's existence.
  • Game informer are planning on doing a Halo 5 related podcast with guest appearances with lead developers of the game Soon™ and want you to send them any questions you'd like to ask the devs about the game. They've requested that if you have a question, to post it in the comments section on this post on their website.
  • Some users whom are eligible for a free copy of ODST whom have not yet redeemed it (for whatever reason) are noticing that their code has seemingly vanished. This is purely down to the use of the Xbox message system. If you are affected by this issue, please go here for support to have your code re-issued.
Red vs New

To round off our Halo-centric News, our starchy reptilian friend is back again to let you all in on what's going on in the world of Red vs. Blue! Take it away Snack;

Snake: Last week on Red vs Blue...
Carolina decided to take on Shark face. Thinking it an easy fight, Carolina was caught off guard by Shark faces "upgrades", and things only went down hill from there. Church is also showing signs of his system failures thanks to not being able to process things fast enough. Seriously? Just download some moar ram!

While the Reds are about execute the escape plan, Wash decides to flush out Locust with a pretty interesting plan. Remember, if it looks stupid but it works then it ain't stupid.

After Doc is finally knocked out Tucker, Caboose and Emily are saved in the nick of time by Donut and Lopez.

You can watch the full episode by clicking here.
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Of Strikes and Savings

As you're likely aware Tuesday brings in the new Deals with Gold as well as the Destiny Weekly Reset.

Last week when I 'had a crack' at posting one of these here recaps I received some feedback from -Orzium-
too much destiny news!

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At first when I read this I thought to myself "Oh WAAAAOOOOWWW", but here at HaloCustoms we like to take your feedback on board so if you would like any information on the reset this week, you can simply find it here.
TL;DR Nightfall: Phogath - Epic, Nightfall, Juggler, Void Burn, Solar Burn / Heroic: Omnigrill - Heroic, Juggler.

On Deals with Gold this week however the following offers available for the course of this week;

Xbox One
Xbox 360
Simply click on any of the above links to find out prices and availability for your region. Personally I'll be picking up Skate 3 for backwards compatibility, it's not yet supported or confirmed to be supported... but my gut says, maybe.

Pinch, Punch, First of the Month

Tomorrow ushers in the time once again for moar free stuff, and Xbox One is finally moving with the times and is getting 2 games a month from now on, just like it's little brother.

Xbox One players get Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and So Many Me. Xbox 360 players on the other had are getting Plants vs. Zombies and Gears of War 3.

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This week I'd like to feature my favourite minigame that I've played fairly recently. Check out this video feature by Zandril as it will likely give you a better representation than I can with 'mere words'


The minigame in question is Geronimo! by ChewyNutCluster. Simply put, imagine if Michael Bay directed a mash-up of 'Gravity' and 'Waterworld' focusing on 'sploding spartans spiralling down to splatter unsuspecting spartans with said 'splosions (how's that for a tongue twister).

Snake: On top of this I also decided to include this compilation that I had seen courtesy of Fuzzle for this weeks community content. Be sure to check it out. It may not show all of the easter eggs found in the Halo games, however, it does show a hell of a lot so be sure to show that video some love and perhaps give it a like.

Don't forget, you still have six weeks to submit your MYM Squad CTF maps. So get cracking and start capping.

Also if you have any content that you'd like to share, feel free to drop a link on my profile. I'll be sure to check it out as soon as possible.
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Cheers for that reminder Snake! Well that be all for this week gents, and ladies? Feel free to discuss anything mentioned in this weeks news (or anything that might have been missed) below, I'm interested to read on what your thoughts are in regards to the likely loss of split-screen functionality in Halo 5 and how this might both positively and negatively affect the game, moving forward.

Other than that, Happy Halo-ing everyone :)
 
You think that adding splitscreen but decreasing framerate from 60 to 36 just in splitscreen is a viable option? So at least we can get split-screen campaign; even though the framerate is made to be lower~