In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
Almost two years ago, I wrote a review for this site. It was a little review about a little expansion for a little game. That game was Halo 2 and it carried me through my first year of university. Without Halo in my life, my post-secondary education would have been empty and meaningless, which is why I am pleased to announce the conclusion of my undergrad career with the review of Halo 3. That’s right, Master Chief is back to finish the fight, and so am I. Released September 25th, 2007 exclusively for the Xbox 360, the exciting conclusion to the Halo trilogy made history with first-day sales reaching over $170 million in the U.S., setting the record for highest gross of an entertainment product within 24-hours of its release. Impressive to say the least, but in the end, once the fight is over and the clouds of plasma mist disappear, was it really all that special?
For those who have managed to avoid the hype all of these years, let me break down the storyline. You play as Master Chief (Spartan 117), one of many cybernetically enhanced human soldiers called Spartans. Armed with technologically-advanced battle armor and a spunky female cyber partner named Cortana, you are the earth’s secret weapon against the alien race known as the Covenant and the spore-like Flood threatening the entire universe. Halo 3 is the final title in the Halo Trilogy of First Person Shooters (FPS) in which the story comes to an end the only way Bungie Studios knows how – with a bang. This game starts a bit after where Halo 2 leaves off. To be more specific, Halo 3 begins where the comic mini-series Halo: Uprising ends. You begin as Master Chief who crash lands on earth leaving his cyber-pal Cortana on the ship he falls out of. Your first mission is to stop the Prophet of Truth from uncovering a new weapon and find Cortana in the process, from here the havoc multiplies.
The game mechanics are somewhat different than past Halo games. Most of the controls and physics are very similar, however now you can finish the fight online with up to four players at the same time. The first player takes control of Master Chief, while player two controls the Arbiter (your rival in Halo 2) and the last two players take the role of two Covenant Elites who apparently have their own personal background stories. When you play with more then one player, the difficulty increases slightly but it feels as though it is not hard enough to warrant the extra firepower. If you’re going to play through the campaign online, I suggest playing on a harder difficulty level then you would normally attempt. The AI in this title has been revamped as well and actually feels more like a group fighting together than a bunch of scripts doing what they are told. For example if you are fighting 4 brutes, and three of them are killed, the last might fall back and wait for reinforcements or make a kamikaze run. As well, in the campaign mode, along with secret skulls you find to unlock ‘cheats’, there are 7 terminals you can access to gain background story information, and a campaign meta-game that tallies scores for either every player or the team as a whole, gaining multipliers for beating missions faster, on harder difficulties and with more cheats activated. All in all there are 9 missions in the campaign mode to complete and end the story of Spartan 117.
For those hopping into Halo 3 before playing the first two titles, story-wise you may be a little confused… actually even if you played the first two, you still may be a little confused as to what’s going on. Admittedly the story and progression to the climax of this title are quite epic, but compared to Halo 2, it just doesn’t seem up to snuff (come on – battling in a building falling from the sky!). Everything needed in the story was there and nearly everything was neatly sorted out by the end of the game, but it still felt like it missed that one big battle that makes a great game memorable.
The graphics in Halo 3 are nice, but compared to those in Halo 2, it feels as though they have just improved certain aspects without introducing much original content. I guess it’s as they say – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. What has been improved upon is easy to see, including a much further view, global lighting and depth of field effects, real time shadows, increased terrain, model and weapon detail, and real time reflections in water. While the game was rendered in 1152×640 resolution instead of 1280×720 as most fans expected, it was a deliberate choice by Bungie to maintain frame rates. The Xbox 360 also has the capability to upscale Halo 3 to 1080p anyways.
While the graphics were only a small step up from past Halo titles, the audio was more of a giant leap from Halo 2. To put this into perspective, Halo 2 had roughly 15,000 audio clips; Halo 3 contains over 50,000 audio clips, most of those belonging to dialogue between characters. Distance also plays a factor as certain cut scene recordings were taken at different distances to create a more realistic audial experience. The past title’s composer has taken the helm again for an epic and original score but again, on a much larger scale. If the orchestra isn’t your idea of Flood busting beats, Halo 3 features a custom sound track feature, allowing players to replace the in game music with their own. While playing online, the headsets work perfectly. Teammates and their comments are crystal clear. If near an opponent while they shout a command to their buddies, you can actually hear them with the volume being based on the distance from the opponent to you (think the enemy hiding around a corner letting their teammates know when they’re going to jump out and blast you, and you hear every word of it).
All in all this reviewer and fan of the Halo franchise feels that it may be the story that brings people to the game, but it’s the online play that makes them stay. Either online with up to three friends split-screen, or offline using LAN capabilities for more players, you can compete in a large number of play modes. Xbox live and Halo again uses a mix of their Trueskill ranking system and overall experience for setting up online battles, so you will almost never be matched up with people too easy or too hard to fight against or with. Playing either ranked, or unranked with guests in battles ranging from two to sixteen players in a plethora of choices, from social double battles to free for all oddball (carry around a skull for as long as possible) to big team gravity hammer battles, the options are endless.
The story itself can last anywhere from 10-30 hours depending on your difficulty, skill or playing style, but with all the unlockable extras and multiplayer game modes this game has the ability to keep players interested and on the edge of their seats for months. Heck, the MLG (Major League Gaming) still has their extremely successful Halo 2 championships every year. From skulls giving you the ability to unlock ‘cheats’ in the story mode to special unlockable armor pieces to use in multiplayer battles, there are plenty of things to do after the fight is finished. There are also the Xbox 360 achievements (getting all the achievements unlock the samurai sword for online play). Since this Halo is also the first to be on Xbox 360, Bungie has promised the public downloadable content including new maps and modes of play in the future as they tweak their matchmaking options to the public’s approval. Bored of the maps used in online play or replaying the story? Why not head over to the Forge, new to Halo 3 and use the extensive map editor to create your own levels, or record your own videos of your favourite Halo moments, or snap pictures of you decimating your friends and send them over the Live service for extra gloat-appeal. With all this at your finger tips and more to come in the future, the possibilities for Halo’s replay value are virtually endless!
Graphics: 4.5 / 5.0
Gameplay 5.0 / 5.0
Sound 5.0 / 5.0
Replay value 5.0 / 5.0
