As part of a promotional effort from Microsoft, several sites (including Powet.tv) were sent out part of a large ‘Halo 4’ image, split into 32 parts.

I got the email less than a half hour ago, but enough other fans and blogs got it that a forum goer from NeoGAF was able to stitch them all together.

What appears to the left may well be the box art for Halo 4. Behind the crouching Master Chief is the UNSC ship Forward Unto Dawn, broken in half from the event of Halo 3, is being sucked into the maw of the mysterious monster planet we saw in the E3 trailer last year. Also along for the ride are a few Covenant ships and who knows what else behind that fire and debris.

This next image transcends implications into an outright leak. This is the card back to one of the Halo 4 action figures. The first wave has Master Chief, an Elite Zealot, a Grunt Storm (whatever that means!) and a Red multiplayer Spartan.

Advertised as Wave two is another Spartan, Cortana, and two new characters: The ‘Crawler’ and the ‘Watcher’ with images of each. They’re kind of hard to see, since they’re toys and the images isn’t the best to begin with. Hopefully these new enemy classes mean we’re officially beyond The Flood as late game enemies. The Flood did not appear in ODST or Reach.

Halo 4 will launch on November 6 in North America, and is available for pre-order now. More news is expected soon, during E3.

Call of Duty gets a lot of crap for being the same game every single year. Not really so. There were only 4 World War II games, and 4 games that were not in World War II!

Since Treyarch was so successful with ‘Black Ops’ it seemed natural to continue that story in the “Modern Warfare’ off year. I am shocked and kinda impressed they took the daring move of putting the fight in the near future. The war is against the United States’ own unmaned drones and smart weapons which have been turned against us. Looks cool. I’m sure it will play the same as all the others, but it looks cool.

I hope we get to play as the craggy, hairy, wrinkled guy.

Master Chief or Commander in Chief? If you’re in the US, thats what you’re facing on November 6, as Microsoft will be launching the first chapter in the next Halo trilogy, Halo 4. This day also happens to be Election Day, with national and local offices including the Presidency on the ballot in all states and territories.

Halo 4 is still pending a rating, but is expected to be rated “M” like others in the series. M rated games are available to those age 17 and up, while those 18 and up are eligible to vote. Just a friendly reminder to vote by absentee ballot if you’re planning to attend a midnight launch and spend all night playing.

Halo 4 is on the cover of the next issue of Game Informer (see image) and many details from the interior article are already online. Expect the Covenant to return in reduced numbers, a Forerunner planet, and a new faction that will challenge players beyond previous games.

Read on for the press release as well as two new “Red vs Blue” videos about the announcement.
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The voice cast for the upcoming zombie cheerleader game “Lollipop Chainsaw” has been announced. The main character of Juliet Starling will be played by none other than Tara Strong, the voice of Twilight Sparkle on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Juliet’s boyfriend, severed head Nick, is played by Michael Rosenbaum, Lex Luthor from Smallville and the Flash from Justice League.

Also appearing are Gregg Henry as Juliet’s father, Sean Gunn as Swan, Mindless Self Indulgence‘s Jimmy Urine as Zed, Shawnee Smith, Linda Cardelleni and Michael Rooker.

Keep reading to watch the voice talent trailer to see them in action.
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Don’t have a cow, man.

The Simpsons Arcade game finally invades Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network and we took advantage of the four player simultaneous play. Instead of the normal review of the game you’re used to seeing on Keep Playing, this is an entire play through. Also, you’ll hear running commentary from our (sometimes) podcast lineup of Adam, Ernie, and Zero along side myself. We’re going to dish on Simpsons trivia, point out some relevant gameplay facts, and make crass jokes.

Enjoy! This episode has a 40 minute run time, so I’ll save you the trouble and let you know the inevitable Terminator reference is at 7:58.

The launch of Mass Effect 3 is without a doubt one of the most disastrous I have ever witnessed. First, we learned of the import save problem if you decided to move your game to the new Cloud storage feature. The only solution is to track down the hard drive on which you originally finished the game; an impossibility for some. BioWare is offering no other solutions.

Second: just yesterday, we learned of the Shepard face import problem that also has no official solution… yet. This one BioWare is going to fix. In the mean time, there are a bevy of homebrew solutions, but all are overly-complicated.

Then there’s MY problem… This is what NewEgg sent me today:

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Microsoft has issued a video preview of Halo 4 showing off much more than we’ve seen before, but far far short of what you probably want to see.

The video starts with the closing cinematic from Halo 3, so spoilers beware if you managed to not complete that game since the last time Earth had a leap day.

The designers and producers at 343 Industries walk through some of the changes to the Spartan armor and do reveal that multiplayer features the next generation Spartan IV equipment. Master Chief himself was (or is?) a Spartan II, and much of the Noble team from Reach were Spartan IIIs. 343 were not kind enough to talk about armor abilities, but it does seem that dual wielding is gone for good.

Only a small fragment of campaign footage appears, and they’re not revealing the enemies just yet. We’ll probably have to wait until E3 in June for more answers.

There are a lot of couples in video games, but is there romance? Mario and Peach, Luigi and Daisy, Link and Zelda, The Brooding Loner and the Star-crossed Japanese Flower Girl Who Loves Him, and — of course — Samus and the baby Metroid. Do any of these games do romance well, or is it just assumed? And how far is too far with player-to-NPC romance? Sean and Vinnk wonder if video games can truly ever be your Valentine as they discuss these problems, the likelihood of your characters ever finding true digital love, and the potentially unfortunate state of Princess Zelda’s armpit hair.

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