Spectral Jester

Welcome back Elite,

EA has announced that it will unveil a new Medal of Honor title next month. Invites have been sent to various outlets for an event on Tuesday, March 6th, the week of the Game Developer’s Conference. The big announcement looks set to happen at 20:00 PST. It’s no surprise. EA has absolutely no secret about the fact that it’s working on a sequel, but nothing is known about the contents of the actual game. More details to be released on this title March 6th

Microsoft Flight is coming for free at the end of this month, with the Big Island available to download for absolutely nothing and the Hawaiian Adventure Pack, which adds the remaining Hawaiian islands, a new plane (the Vans RV-6A) and 20 new missions, will also be available to purchase on release day. In Microsoft Flight, you'll be able to explore the Big Island of Hawaii in a variety of planes without need for extra hardware or experience with flight sims. Sign in to Microsoft Flight using your Games for Windows Live ID, and you'll also have the opportunity to purchase the Maule M-7-260C and iconic North American P-51 Mustang to fly around in. You'll be able to download Microsoft Flight for your PC and start earning achievements on February 29th, 2012 from microsoftflight.com. Pricing for the Hawaiian Adventure Pack has yet to be confirmed. Chocks away and all that.

It's a big week on the Xbox Live Marketplace, with both Shank 2 and Gotham City Impostors making their way onto XBLA, as well as a the usual array of add-ons, Avatar gubbins and deals. It's Gotham City Impostors that takes the DLC cake this week though, with 105 items of customisation content already available at between 80 and 320 Microsoft Points apiece. Mental? Yes, it might just be. Back in the sane world, there's also Forza 4's American Le Mans Series Pack to grab, some DLC for Reckoning and a new Pinball FX2 table on the way. Warp will also be kickstarting the XBLA House Party festivities next week, and there's deals on Crimson Alliance and Batman: Arkham City add-ons. It looks like these listed prices for Arkham City might be erroneous though, so we'll look into that. Still, there's a lot to check out here, including a Kinect Disneyland Adventures demo this week and a demo of something called Mass Effect 3 next week. Have a look at all the goodies on offer from the XBL Marketplace this week. Shazam! Xbox Live Arcade •Gotham City Impostors - 8-Feb - 1200 MSP •Shank 2 - 8-Feb - 800 MSP •Warp (House Party Title) - 15-Feb - 800 MSP Game Add-Ons •Forza Motorsport 4 February American Le Mans Series Pack - 7-Feb - 560 MSP •Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Online Pass - 7-Feb - 800 MSP •Reckoning Finesse Bonus Pack - 7-Feb - 240 MSP •Gotham City Impostors Various Add-Ons x105 - 80-320 MSP •Pinball FX 2 Epic Quest Table - 15-Feb - 240 MSP Deal of the Week Crimson Alliance Add-ons - Feb 7–Feb 13 •All Character Pack - 800 MSP (33% off) •Wizard - 560 MSP (30% off) •Mercenary - 560 MSP (30% off) •Assassin - 560 MSP (30% off) Batman Arkham City - Feb 14–20 •Nightwing Bundle Pack - 560 MSP (36% off) •Robin Bundle Pack - 560 MSP (36% off) •Bat Signal - 240 MSP (33% off) •Batarang - 320 MSP (31% off) •Batmobile Toy - 320 MSP (31% off) Sales & Specials Square Enix Publisher Sale - Feb 7–13 - up to 50% savings Games on Demand •LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 - 7-Feb Demos •Kinect Disneyland Adventures - 7-Feb •Mass Effect 3 - 14-Feb Avatar Marketplace •Kinect Disneyland Adventures Update - 7-Feb •Rip Curl - 7-Feb •Dark Creatures - 7-Feb •I Am Alive - 7-Feb •Deluxe Collection - 14-Feb •Batman Arkham City Update - 14-Feb •Mass Effect 3 - 14-Feb •MTV Beavis & Butthead Collection Update - 14-Feb [Via Major Nelson]

Director? Free? 20,000,000cR lol I kind of agree with OP would be a good money spinner, maybe do it nearer the release of H4. Even if it was priced at 800msp I bet loads of people would buy it

February Matchmaking Playlist Update Speaking of being eternally grateful, the team that designs the Halo: Reach playlists always appreciates the feedback you leave in the Matchmaking section of our forums. They’re looking for additional feedback this month, though, so let’s dip into the specifics of the February Matchmaking playlist update, which is slated to go live on February 7, so you can find out yet another way to make your voice heard. • Grifball updated. Map changes include Radiant being removed and Impact Arena (Grifball) and Sierra Vista (Grifball Dash) being added. One additional change to this playlist is that Blargball variants will now appear in voting slot three only. Semi-related, to vote for that choice, you must say “wort wort wort” into your mic while simultaneously selecting that option. Please note that saying “wart wart wart” will render your selection null and void. • Squad DLC updated. Squad DLC’s population is dangerously low. To breathe some life into this list, we’re making a few changes. Anniversary maps have been set to optional, and Noble and Defiant maps continue to be required. We have also heard your concerns in regard to a few achievement-friendly game types still being difficult to find. In response to that, we’ve added the following objective game types to voting slot three: Multiflag on Highlands, 1 Flag on Highlands, 1 Flag on Condemned, Invasion on Breakpoint, Crazy King in Breakpoint, 1 Flag on Breakpoint, 1 Flag on Tempest, Multiflag on Tempest, Crazy King on Tempest, Neutral Bomb on Tempest, Multiflag on Condemned, Crazy King on Condemned, Crazy King on High Noon, 1 Flag on High Noon, Crazy King on Breakneck, 1 Flag on Breakneck, Stockpile on Ridgeline, Neutral Bomb on Ridgeline, and Crazy King on Ridgeline. • Rumble Pit updated to TU settings. TU game types are our standard Reach Matchmaking settings with the Title Update changes. Those changes are: damage bleed enabled, modified reticle bloom, sword block removed, Armor Lock modified, and Active Camo modified. • Infection updated. Map changes include Sword Base being removed and Uncaged replacing The Caged. Also, we’ve noticed some feedback coming from both matchmaking and internal playtests about players getting betrayed by teammates at the beginning of games. Since that sometimes results in a less advantageous respawn position, we’ve removed friendly fire in an attempt to cut down on that particular form of griefing. P.S. One final effort is all that remaaaaaaains, so please, dear players, just focus on the braaaaaains. • Banshee replaced with Revenant on Breakneck. The classic Gauss ’Hog vs. Banshee battle on Headlong will continue. We bid adieu to the flying purple thing on Breakneck, though, and welcome its hovering brethren in its place! • Rocket ’Hog Race weighting reduced in Multi Team. I think this game type should be renamed “Spawn in the Passenger Seat Every -Yoinking- Time.” That has absolutely nothing to do with the reweighting, by the way. I just don’t want the impending name change to take you by surprise. • Zero Bloom moved to Competitive category, and Beta category hidden. Zero Bloom Slayer is popular enough to be moved to the Competitive category. We’re working on what will be in the Beta category next, but it needs a little more time to marinate in order to reach its maximum important status. Keep an eye out for its return in the near future. • Classic game types removed from Anniversary Squad, and One Bomb Damnation moved to Anniversary Classic. Classic game types are being removed from Anniversary Squad, and One Bomb Damnation is moving to Anniversary Classic. What? I already said that? Fine then. Moving on. • Team Slayer changes. Make your voice heard! We are in the process of deciding if the Team Slayer playlist will be updated to TU settings. This continues to be one of the most popular playlists, so we are not taking this decision lightly. In an effort to get player feedback that's as accurate as possible, we are going to pull voting data over a two-week period. To do that, we’re removing one of the voting choices. That will leave you with one vanilla choice and one TU choice. We realize that ties default to the highest voting option, so in order to balance the results, vanilla will be the top selection for the first week, and TU will be the top selection for the second week. Once the results are in, we’ll analyze the data and make an informed decision. So, participate in the Team Slayer playlist starting on February 7, and make your voice heard! Because the other option, of course, is forever holding your peace…. • Team Hotshot added to Action Sack. Right about now you’re probably asking yourself, what is Team Hotshot? To answer that question, I grabbed the playlist designer that created this game type, and asked him a few questions. Mr. L, I’d like to ask you, on behalf of both people reading the Bulletin this week, what exactly is Team Hotshot? Team Hotshot is a new game type in which a player’s damage output is tied to the number of successive kills the player has achieved. When you spawn, you’re at level zero. One kill progresses you to level one, the next kill progresses you to level two, and the third kill progresses you to the third and final level. We call this the player’s “heat.” The twist is that players will notice their speed is tied to their heat level. Congratulations on doubling your readership, by the way. Why, thank you! Back to business, though. How did you come up with this game type? My original idea for Team Hotshot was to have the person get stronger with every successive DMR bullet that hits a target. What it eventually morphed into was players getting stronger as they get kills. So it’s not every shot you land, but every kill you get. The tricky part was that you have this rich-keep-getting-richer economy, and there needs to be a balance for all the players who are suddenly stronger than their opponents. So, the idea was much like working your way up the weight classes of boxing; the stronger you are, the slower you are. The heavyweights in a boxing match don’t throw 120 punches per round like the featherweights do. But when you get hit with a haymaker from a heavyweight, it puts you out. They throw fewer punches but have more power behind them. Hotshots are similar. They can’t move around as quickly, but they can do more damage. What is a good strategy when playing Team Hotshot? You want to work with your team to protect the slower players who are putting out more damage. You also want to get those people power weapons. Here’s why: when you’re at the third level of heat, you are doing significantly more damage than a player who just spawned. For instance, one sniper shot anywhere on an enemy player will kill them. That brings up another point. Players who are ascending through the heat levels need to be more careful about their ordnance output. When one grenade can kill an enemy player, it can betray a teammate just as easily.

Sorry for the delay enforced absence, yep this is definetly offline credits being removed when you go online. With an offline account you can sit in forge world for a week and then exit as an inheritor

There are two games vying for your attention on the Xbox Live Arcade this week, and both are family-focused Kinect affairs, which means there's nothing for you this week if you're neither a child, parent or Kinect owner. Still, there's a bunch of new add-ons and demos to check out. If you haven't had a go on them yet, there's demos of Syndicate and UFC Undisputed 3 to sample, and there's a whole host of add-ons for various titles, including the first batch of customisation and music DLC for Soul Calibur V. You'll also find a free grappler for WWE '12 and some other bits and bobs, like the Dead Island Ryder White story add-on. And finally, if you haven't snapped up Bastion yet, we'll urge you once again to do so. It's marvellous for 1200 Microsoft Points, and so an absolute steal for a mere 600. Buy it! Check out what's on offer on the Xbox Live Marketplace this week: Xbox Live Arcade •Happy Action Theater - 1-Feb - 800 MSP •Rhythm Party - 1-Feb - 800 MSP Game Add-Ons •Iron Brigade Rise of the Martian Bear - 400 MSP •UFC Personal Trainer Cain Velasquez Workout Pack - 800 MSP •Dance Central 2 - "Forget You" - Cee Lo Green - 240 MSP •WWE '12 Brodus Clay - Free •Soul Calibur V Catalog 1 - Free •Soul Calibur V Music Catalog - Free •Soul Calibur V Music Pack x 2 - 240 MSP each •Soul Calbiur V Female Customisation Equipment -160 MSP •Dead Island Ryder White - 800 MSP Deal of the Week •Bastion - 31-Jan–6-Feb - 600 MSP (50% off) Games on Demand •Cabela’s Outdoor Adventures - 31-Jan •Section 8 - 31-Jan •First Templar - 31-Jan Demos •Syndicate •UFC Undisputed 3 •The First Templar •Kinectimals Now With Bears Demo Avatar Marketplace •Deluxe Collection - 31-Jan •The Darkness II Update - 31-Jan

Halo fans and VIP members rejoice… and check your Forza 4 inbox! The latest community VIP car will be rolling in to your inbox soon, featuring everyone’s favorite Spartan in a sweet Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition livery. A special shout-out to Forza community member KCTigerFan, who contributed to the painting and design of this car. Enjoy it! This post has been promoted to an article

i love the pyramid picture

getting an xbox

Donut that was brilliant, i was actually gutted when the video finished. I WANT MORE

Awesome post, and those shout outs are spot on. And thank you for those words, they really do mean a lot. Look forward to your 2000th post

As for any confusion. Firstly play Halo CEA and find ALL TERMINALS When the achievement pops up for all terminals found, save and quit Load up Halo Waypoint Then follow all the steps in the original post The first screen shows coloured dots press the corresponding coloured buttons on your Xbox controller following it left to right. Don't worry about the symbols I've attached all the pictures for you The cR is added I think on a Wednesday, but it does take a few days.

The terminals are from Halo CEA there is no achievement for unlocking the terminals in waypoint You just get the achievements in Halo CEA As for the 10 spots and you only input 5, maybe preparation for Halo 4?

I like this idea, would make it a bit different the announcer IS HALO

Xbox Live generated a record $144 million In revenue in 2011, according to a new report issued by the Research & Analysis division of analyst firm Forecasting & Analyzing Digital Entertainment, LLC (a.k.a. FADE). Sales of titles on XBLA grew by 18%, with Ubisoft's From Dust as the single highest-grossing title on the service in 2011. From Dust sold 308,000 thousand units with a total sales gross of $4.6 million. The most-downloaded paid title on XBLA in 2011 was Microsoft's Full House Poker, which sold 375,000 copies and generated $3.6 million in revenue. FADE attributes the success of these high-grossing XBLA titles to Microsoft's “Summer of Arcade” promotion, with seven of the service's ten top-grossing XBLA games seeing launch as Summer of Arcade titles. Some surprising entries in the top ten including Castle Crashers, in its fourth year of sales on Xbox Live, still selling 335,000 copies to gross $4.6 million in revenue. FADE puts Castle Crashes at #2 on the top grossing list, behind From Dust, though the profit margins for a four-year-old game are probably much fatter than those of a new release. Overall, FADE considers Castle Crashers the single highest-selling and highest-grossing title released in the history of digital download games, moving over 2 million copies across XBLA and PSN. Emerging new hits include Fruit Ninja Kinect, which moved 323,000 copies in 2011 with a major spike in downloads over the holidays (likely due to the download code tie-in with The Gunstringer). Downloadable RPGs also have a strong representation on the top-selling list, with the XBLA versions of Torchlight, Bastion, and Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale filling out the #7, #9, and #10 positions on the list (respectively). You can check out FADE's complete top ten list of top-selling XBLA titles by number of units sold in 2011 below. Estimated Top Selling Titles, by Units Sold (Annual, 2011) 1. Full House Poker (Microsoft Game Studios) - 375,000 Units / $3.6 Million USD 2. Castle Crashers (The Behemoth) - 335,000 Units / $4.6 Million USD 3. Fruit Ninja Kinect (Halfbrick Studios) - 324,000 Units / $3.2 Million USD 4. From Dust (Ubisoft) - 308,000 Units / $4.6 Million USD 5. Trials HD (RedLynx, LTD) - 286,000 Units / $4.0 Million USD 6. Magic: The Gathering (Stainless Games) - 278,000 Units / $2.7 Million USD 7. Torchlight (Runic Games) - 272,000 Units / $4.0 Million USD 8. Toy Soldiers: Cold War (Signal Studios) - 241,000 Units / $3.6 Million USD 9. Bastion (Supergiant Games) - 241,000 Units / $3.6 Million USD 10. Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale (Bedlam Games) - 210,000 Units / $2.8 Million USD SOURCE: From Dust Highest Grossing Game of 2011, as Xbox Live Arcade Market Sees Growth in 2011 [Press release]

The internet might have banded together to put the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in its rightful place – on the shelf (for now) – but as we quite rightly pointed out last week, the battle has only just begun. This time it’s Europe’s turn with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has been deceptively lobbied behind-closed-doors by the same bodies in the US that pushed SOPA & PIPA so aggressively. Just because you’re not European though doesn’t mean this shouldn’t concern you, oh no. According to ACTA, just about every “developed” nation – including the United States, Japan and Australia, amongst many more outside Europe – is about to feel the brunt of this deceptive and potentially global economy ruining and internet freedom destroying piece of legislation. It’s time to get our legal on… Again. So, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement… What the hell does this have to do with the internet? Absolutely everything in fact, and although it’s not as clear cut in name as SOPA & PIPA were, it’s essentially Europe’s version of those two proposed bills. Actually, it’s a much more severe piece of legislation with far wider-reaching implications that the music and film industries will use as a means to enforce their totalitarian stance on piracy. If there’s ever a wrong way to go about things, this is it. It’s like driving a tank over a crowd of innocent people just in the hope of squishing a few pirates on the other side. So how does ACTA differ from SOPA and PIPA then? Well, that depends on where you start, but the implications are just as severe. The main crux of ACTA is that it puts a legal and monetary obligation on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to police every piece of information that travels through their service, effectively turning them into a pseudo internet police, of sorts. These ISPs will essentially monitor your activity online, gather evidence and such, and then “co-operate” with copyright holders to protect their IPs. None of this right to a fair trial malarkey or due process. Your future is basically in the hands of ISPs and copyright holders, none of which are part of the democratic process and will no doubt quell freedom of speech in the process. ISPs, who are commercial companies, not elected bodies, would effectively become judge, jury and executioner online. It’s essentially a bullying tool for two prongs of the entertainment industry – music and films – who’ve refused to move with the times and adapt. It’ll not only severely damage privacy issues by allowing ISPs to gather private data on their users – without the need of a judge – but it’ll also impose criminal sanctions on individuals who are found to be “aiding and abetting” copyright infringement. With loose terminology like that, websites like ourselves, Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube could become a target, meaning that freedom of speech and innovation would almost certainly be impaired as a result. How criminal sanctions have been drafted into a “trade agreement” is almost certainly cause for concern too. Copyright holders would almost certainly hold all the cards and they won’t be afraid to use them even for minor infractions and frivolous cases. Outside the restrictions it’d place on the internet too, the Agreement even rather ridiculously ventures further into cracking down on generic drugs and imposing stricter sanctions on food patents. The controversy surrounding ACTA is much more abhorrent than that of SOPA & PIPA. ACTA is a piece of legislation that’s been deceptively drafted behind-closed-doors, shrouded in mystery and constantly shielded from the public forum. It’s been that underhanded that French MEP and “rapporteur” – basically, the overseer – of the Agreement, Kader Arif, stood down this week in protest over how it’s been handled, calling it a “masquerade.” “I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement,” said Arif, citing the following as reasons for his decision to step down: “no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.” “As rapporteur of this text,” he continued, “I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands.” In closing, Arif said, “This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.” The fact that 10,000 people took to the streets of Poland to protest ACTA this week, while a delegation of lawmakers in the country’s Parliament donned V For Vendetta masks to show their disdain for it, yet it was still signed, shows that something must be awry. What’s the worse thing about ACTA though? Well, not only does ACTA grant the creation of an “ACTA committee,” but it then grants them the power to consider amendments to the Agreement. That, my learned friends, is an awful lot of power to grant a committee made up of non-elected individuals. If Europe wanted to wipe their arse with democracy and ruin the foundations of every Western government in the world, then ratifying ACTA is as close to doing that as they can possibly get. It’d give lawmakers and non-elected officials a dangerous backdoor into manipulating legislation without the necessary checks and balances required, let alone obtain input from the public who allow them to wield these powers. ACTA is the first step to becoming a police-state. ACTA is the first step on the road to becoming a dictatorship. ACTA is a big '**** you' to democracy. ACTA is not only going to ruin the internet, it’s going to set a dangerous precedent that could undermine the last 30 plus years of democratic progress. Again, I’d like to reiterate that piracy and protecting the rights of copyright holders has nothing to do with our concerns with this latest piece of legislation. This however is about corporate control, censorship and secrecy. If the big corporations can bully and bribe the supposed democracies of this world, what hope do we have of living in a society where freedom of speech is paramount? Stopping piracy and protecting copyright holders rights is about balance, and if SOPA & PIPA was like killing a fly with a grenade, ACTA is like killing a single-cell organism with a nuclear bomb. Funded and lobbied by the archaic film and music industries – of which the MPAA’s corruption, for instance, has since become apparent since SOPA & PIPA were shelved – ACTA is a piece of legislation that could essentially send the world into the biggest depression its ever experienced; crippling the internet, stifling entrepreneurial growth and setting society back a good 20-odd years. The most ironic and profound thing to come out of all of this is that if the music and entertainment industries spent the time, money and effort they’ve spent on trying to buy themselves power and corrupt every democracy in the world, and actually tried to evolve their industry and move with the times, they and the world would be in a far better position. Instead, we’re all going to suffer for their lack of foresight unless we band together and constantly fight back. As it stands, ACTA has been signed in Europe by varying Member States – those who have not signed it have agreed to in the near future – and by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, but it is yet to be ratified in Europe which is the clincher for the agreement, meaning it’s not too late to make your voice heard. Democracy isn’t dead yet and now’s the time to prove it.

Kinglymusician The ban hammer effects the whole console. If its first offence it will be 24 hours. Unfortunately the ban hammer can't distinguish between a bad / beginner and a player that is just standing there. After the ban is lifted I can only recommend either playing custom games to practise or let the beginner play score attack, they are on there own, and it will hastily improve there aim, as mentioned above don't under estimate the power of score attack and firefight to help improve there aim and technique.

Holy moly I thought I was seeing things when I seen the member name, welcome back to the fold friend, is this a flying visit? Or are you sticking around a bit?

LMFAO...... so glad its been confirmed now

see thats what i dont get how you do all that, so from a complete forge virgin, that looks amazing

thats quite interesting as i just dont get forge at all, might have to have a bash at it and see what i can do. it just seems really complicated to me.

okay my vote, Nicest Member : Choot Em Funniest Member : Absolute Dog Toughest Mod : now this is a hard one, as I cant vote for myself, so my vote will go to Bob