Bored with your usual Halo 3 experience? Stepped away from the game in its entirety for a while? Well, here’s your calling to come back.

Bungie has released Title Update 2 which adds an insane amount of new stuff. Need some new achievements to get you back into the game? Check. How about some major playlist alterations? Double check. Bungie.net overhaul? Triple check. New ranking system (that doesn’t erase the old system)? Check, double check, and triple check. Some stages in the playlists will be undergoing alterations as well, such as Epitaph without shield doors. Ouch.

The update is a freebie, and will download the next time you play Halo 3, assuming you haven’t done so already.

Typically, when you buy older stuff at a garage sale, you don’t expect anything relevant especially when you’re dealing with magazines. However, a recent purchase of some PC-based gaming magazines revealed this little gem: quite possibly some of the first news on Duke Nukem Forever ever in print. The amazing part?

The site remains up to this day.

It’s nearly 10 years to the day that the October ‘98 issue of PC Games landed at retail, and yet there’s still reason to keep this one around. The full text for this “Bookmark This” snippet is as follows in case the scan proves unreadable:

“Another stompin’ preview site - and hell, it’s for Duke Nukem Forever, so all the better. Get the full scoop on The Man’s next adventure, with a description of the game, progress updates, developer interviews, fingers, and links to other DNF sites. Mmm… it’s looking good.”

And it’s been “lookin’ good” for 10 years. Check out what’s left of the site at Duke4.com.

Surely to spark a fanboy war of biblical proportions, Edge magazine (easily the most respected magazine in the industry) has given Halo 3 the award for most innovative game of 2007. Bungie’s FPS sequel beat out Portal, Wii Fit, Mario Galaxy, Rock Band, and Grand Theft Auto IV for the award.

What many people may not realize is how in-depth the experience is. Forge is simple to use and complex. Replays, saved videos, and photos have led to some amazing work and memorable sights since the game’s release. Bungie.net tracks all statistics in detail as you play, something no other console shooter can claim to do (at least with this level of depth). Kudos for Edge for not bowing to pressure to give it to Portal, which many may have considered immediately. Great game, but doesn’t have the lasting appeal of Halo 3.

Fans of the excellent FPS Frontlines will be pleased to learn that the THQ published title is gaining some free content. The release (which is available now) will be one of five, although whether or not all of them will be lacking financial input remains to be seen. This first one is Barnyard, which includes some new weapons and vehicles.

The next five? They could be coming anytime apparently.

But it is his newest creation, that is looking to become, quite possibly one of the best games ever! Spore is a massively single player online game. So why am I writing about it here? Have I gone mad? Well not yet, But Spore does have me waiting in excitement for its release! You can find Spore’s homepage here http://www.spore.com/

Spore is a massive God simulation game, due for release in September 2008, in which players control the evolution of a species, from its very beginning as a single cell organism, through to a sapient land walking creature. Right up to the development of interstellar travel, I mean how cool is that? One of the things that have always let me down in simulation games, is the lack of repetitive game-play, you can only evolve so far, for example in Age of Empires: Gold Edition. You can only evolve your race from the Stone age to the Iron age, which limits the playability of the game.

But in Spore the game play is completely open-ended and it uses “procedural generation” meaning that you can create within the game world, which provides a seemingly endless scope for game-play, and character creation.

Wright has been quoted as saying that the “Game will consist of several long phases” with game-play styles ranging from strategy to life simulation. But unlike other Sim style games, the player is not forced to finish one phase before moving to the next. But rather can choose how long they play each phase.

The game opens with a comet crashing into a planet, leaving the seeds for life to begin. Which opens up into the first phase of existence, the Tide pool stage. Within which your little microbe swims, once you have looked after your microbe (prevented it from being eaten) And have managed to get it to eat several other microbes. You can edit it, by changing its appearance and giving it new abilities and defensive strengths.

Eventually you have the option of moving on to land, and this is where it gets interesting! Well more interesting. As your creature evolves, its evolution depends entirely on what you do with it, its strengths and weaknesses will be characterized by how you choose to evolve it, and the personalities of user created species are dependent entirely on how the user plays them.

In the creature editor, players are also able to create their own species, And this is where the multi-player part comes into its own, Because everything that a player creates, creatures, vehicles etc. are all automatically uploaded into Spore’s online database. And from this database other players of Spore can choose to play as your creature, and use your vehicles. Wright has also been stated as saying “that users will be given statistics on how their creatures fare in other peoples games, so for example stats on how many times a user created species has been played by another gamer.” How often a user created civilization has been destroyed or had an alliance made with it. And it is this right here that revolutionizes the god simulation. For the first time you can create a species and send it out into an online gaming universe, and see just how good you are at creating life. And lets face it, who doesn’t like to play God on occasion? All the content you see in the game is user created. The game will create a sound ecology in your game, by importing what it thinks your world needs from other players content.

The genius of this game is that Wright has created a game where almost everything is created by the players! From the simple stages in the ‘Tide pool’ to the more advanced civilization stages. Wright has effectively created a multiplayer game world, using a single player game. And its a bold experiment in gaming. One that looks as if it will be a huge success! Hopefully more game designers will take a page out of Wright’s book, and experiment more with creating games, and game worlds that incorporate things we have not see before. Instead on just creating carbon copies of other game styles. As any gamer will tell you, we all want to play something we never have before.

In my mind Will Wright is a genius, and I can’t wait for this game to come out, so I can create and share my Spore universe. And become God (did I say that out loud)?

You can find heaps of information about Will Wright here at Moby Games.

And its worth checking out this video of Spore too! Check it out here.

Ever wonder how a player died in Halo 3? I mean, you see it on screen that they committed suicide, but it doesn’t make any sense? Time to call in the Halo 3 Homicide Detectives.

College Humor NAILS this one. They recall everything, from standard Xbox Live chatter about screen names to the idiocy of Shotty/Snipers matches on Snowbound (or any boards really). If you want to get picky and be a jerk about it, the dead Master Chief should be blue not green, and the battle rifle fires too many shots. Okay, that is too much. Kudos College Humor for a priceless take on the world of online Halo.

Those enjoying Halo 3 get an extra gift on July 7th. Bungie is not only giving you a free theme and gamerpic on that day only, you’ll also have a new mutli-player map to download… for free. Well, kind of. The newly redone Cold Fusion, a remake of a Halo map is really free. The catch is you need the Legendary map pack to actually use it. You had to know it was too good to be true.

There are some truly talented gamers out there. Actually, it’s to the point where some of these moves shouldn’t be able to be performed by humans. It’s almost impossible to pick a favorite from this recent selection, but some of the medals earned will be foreign to even the most experienced players. Killtastrophe? Seriously? That’s flat out disgusting play (especially if you’re on the receiving end) though massive kudos for pulling it off.

If Halo 3’s stats are to be believed, no, you couldn’t possibly be reading this. You’re dead. You and everyone else on Earth for that matter. By a count of over 43 million, Halo 3’s kill count has officially beaten out the planet’s modern population.

However, consider that Halo takes place in the future with humans living all over the place, and you’d have to think that there would be more humans around. On the other hand, they have been wiped out by the Covenant, so maybe those numbers are still too high. 6,743,784,316 kills? That’s a lot of dying.

Guy Somberg is unhappy. Very unhappy. It seems the game he worked on as one of the original programmers isn’t doing so hot. Posting on his blog (the post having since been removed), Somberg explains his unhappiness:

“Work is depressing right now. Never mind the fact that Hellgate isn’t as popular as anybody had hoped. Never mind the fact that there exists a term ‘Flagshipped’, meaning where a company basically over-promises and then screws you. Never mind the fact that the forums are totally populated by people who do nothing but complain and talk about how much the game sucks. Never mind the fact that people do the same thing in the game itself.

Ouch. In other news on this FPSRPGMMO (phew), it seems most of the design team - including three of Flagship’s founders - have ditched the project as well to move onto other stuff. Those awaiting any future content are apparently going to be waiting… and waiting… and more than likely waiting.

They’ve chosen the top 10 Halo 3 plays from Major League Gaming and gave them a nice video treatment. If you’re looking to feel small and realize how awful you are at Halo, here’s the video (Editor note: Embed into article please?) you’ve been looking for. While the non-gamer sadly won’t have a clue why this is a special clip, even the casual FPS fan will stare in awe at the sickening sniper skills on display.

Simply put, some of those shots are inhuman, and others (like the double kill with one bullet on the Guardian) are unquestionably luck or dumb play on the part of the other team. The PGA may use it as their slogan, but it seems to fit here too. These guys ARE good.

A year before, Sir Howard had vowed to bring down the silo mentality within Sony Corporation. And to be fair to him, much of the strategy meeting was based around the new integrations between products across different divisions - for example, bringing together products from SCEI, Sony Ericsson and Sony Electronics.

As time goes on, Sir Howard and Sony want to break down the walls and marry more of their products up with each other.

But there is one wall that refuses to fall, no matter how many people appear to trumpet their voices at it.

The geographical split within SCEI.

There are now far too many examples of this silo attitude. The latest regional issue, US exclusivity until 2009 for the new PS Video Store, has been worsened by David Reeves comments from E3 today.

He states that Sony believes “local content is important” which is what Sony are “working on right now. The dates for video content will come later this year.”

Local content. Schmocal content!

At what point are movies like Cloverfield, The Bank Job and Rambo ‘local’? They have all been distributed globally. They are all global movie brands.

Yes - they may have been released at different times, but timing can be handled through IP location and hardware information without issue.

Yes - Sony may want to play different trailers ahead of the feature, but that can be handled through location-based advertising too.

We also understand that Home is going to be region locked. I won’t be able to virtually meet my US friends unless I explicitly invite them to my private Home space. And I won’t be able to sit in the public areas and play a game of chess with them. The reason?

Sony don’t want you to be watching US adverts if you’re in Europe.

Is it really beyond the wit of Sony to feed the right adverts to the right place by using location-aware advertising? I think not.

Whenever I visit other countries and I open up a website, I get local banner advertising on the same sites I visit every day from the UK. Why can’t Sony do the same?

The PlayStation Store in Europe is another cause for concern. Did SCEE and SCEA put their heads together when they created the new PS Store categories. No. Apart from a core understanding of the new update process, SCEE went their own way and didn’t collaborate with SCEA.

They say it is because they have dozens of sites to update, whereas SCEA only has one. I say it’s because they just didn’t talk.

Result? We end up with an inferior PS Store with categories that don’t make sense.

Silo mentality rules.

What else shows the huge gap in best-practise marketing processes between SCEA and SCEE?

How about Qore - US only; despite being a joint effort with a global media company, Future Publishing. Official PlayStation Blog - US only; despite the fact that the content there is as relevant to Europe as it is to the US.

So whilst Sir Howard may be doing a good job in bringing different Sony divisions together, we would ask him, David Reeves, Kaz Hirai and others to take a look at the geographical silos that still exist within SCEI alone.

Europe - one of the stand-out regions for PS3 sales - is depending on them to deliver, and we see no good reason for the gulf between SCEI’s companies to exist.

‘Local content’ is not a good enough argument.