Back on the Sega Mega-Drive, one of my favorite games I would play constantly was Streets Of Rage 2. For some reason 1 and 3 didn’t compare to the second outing of thug bashing. Plus there was a kid on roller blades who I thought was awesome. So I started off playing beat ‘em ups, a side from the classic FPS games which I don’t really need to mention  now.

When I finally got to play Castle Crashers on XBL I loved it, but for the life of me couldn’t complete the damn thing on my own. It was a perfect mix of old school beat ‘em up, plus some awesome medieval and quite comical graphics and theme, it was truly a game that brought back some fond memories.

Since then I have been thinking, what would be the perfect game to combine Castle Crashers and Streets Of Rage 2? Well put simply, there wasn’t one out on the market…Untill now.

I have been following Scott Pilgrim Vs The World intently. I have all the comic bar Volume 6 (just finished volume 5 see) I am pretty much booking the evening off for the day the film comes out, and to be honest I just think the whole concept of Scott Pilgrim is just beyond awesome. You may remember the post I did about the whole Scott Pilgrim universe a couple of weeks ago, but if you don’t the basic story is that Scott has fallen head over heals with a girl named Ramona Flowers and in order to date her he has to defeat her seven evil Ex-es, throw in a tone of video game references and you have a pretty awesome story. In the last post I only showed you a video of what the game has to offer, but now I can give you an insight into the game and what the Downloadable has in store for noobs and Pilgrim fanatics a like.

Character select, Mario style - Taken from IGN.com

From the get go you get to choose from 4 different characters. Scott Pilgrim himself, Ramona Flowers Scott’s love interest, Stephen Stills who is Scott’s friend and lead singer of his band Sex Bob-bomb and Kim Pine who is the band’s drummer. All of these characters have their own set of unlockable moves (which are unlocked as you level up though the game, much like Castle Crashers) and unique special attacks, they also have the ability to call in for a striker to help them for a momentary time. It is all what we are pretty much used to when it comes to a 2D side scrolling beat ‘em up. But there are a couple of nice little touches that keep the game fresh. For instance you can use sub-space if you so wish. On your travels if you find a door marked Sub-space you can use it to take a short cut through that level, this is completely in optional, in subspace you will find a number of mini games, one of which is a mini game where you have to destroy flying piggy banks to collect their coins.

Well that's sub space for ya - Taken From IGN.com

As with all old school beat ‘em ups, it’s not all about punching and kicking. Scott Pilgrim is no different, you do have some weapons at your disposal you can pick up bats, recycling bins, and even snowballs which does always add a nice element of carnage in there, but the really cool thing is you can pick up your team mates and do a team up attack also, nice touch.

Well that’s a little bit more info on the up coming game, I personally can’t wait for this title. Oh, but one bit of good news is that the Xbox 360 version of the game has been confirmed, so I am breathing a sigh of relief at least.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World hits PlayStation network on August 10th and Xbox LIVE Arcade on August 25th. Pre-order you PSN version and get an awesome Sex Bob-bom T-shirt for your PlayStation home avatar.

I hope they do one for XBox LIVE avatars…..

Garv.

Halo 3 brought us something that console fans had been yearning for in one shape or form since Halo: Combat Evolved, and that was a level editor of sorts. Dubbed Forge, this basic level editor would let players customise some of their favorite maps with a variety of weapons, props and vehicles.

Later on in Halo 3’s life Bungie released some unique DLC expand forge further, 2 maps came out over the months the first of which was Foundry, where keen level editors were given a small blank space to play with and a lot more terrian objects to play with, such as bridges, shipping containers etc, this got gamers such as myself pretty excited at the amount of freedom you had in such a small area. But when Sandbox came out for Halo Forge this took map editing for Halo 3 to a whole new level. You could create pretty much anything you wanted within reason, you were given 2 tiers to customise with a wealth of terrain and landscaping tools. With Sandbox I created my own game pretty much, which never really took off, but I may bring it back.

With Halo Reach just round the corner (about a month and a bit by my watch) what has Bungie done with the forge for the next game? Just to let you guys know, its worth noting here that this is the last Halo game Bungie will be creating. Also do you remember the Blood Gultch video I showed you on the last Reach post, with Sarge from Red Vs Blue asking what was beyond the mountains (or words to that effect) well your about to find out.

Forge World, as it has been dubbed for Halo Reach is this single biggest editable landscape that Bungie have ever created for the Forge Universe, just so you know how huge this is, Bungie have pre made 3 whole multiplayer maps in this world at the same time, in one place you have Blood Gultch, which has now been dubbed Hemorrhage, in another you have Pinnicle which is another remake of the classic map Ascension and in the 3rd proverbial corner you have Cage which is a map suspended in mid-are with a variety of ramps and walk ways designed for close quarters and sniper ranged combat.

Just a snipit of forge world. Taken from IGN.com

The awesome thing here is you can delete all of this and run free in the Halo World. You will be able to tell from the get go that this World is back on the ring planet itself. As a blank canvas the world is split up into five areas called Canyon, Island, “The Rock,” Quarry, and Coliseum. Each of these are big enough to house a full on playable level, that’s again another taster of how stupidly big this map is and it is all yours to edit.

Keen forgers out there will be very pleased to know that actual level creation has been improved and re-tweaked. It is now way more user-friendly than it was back on Halo 3. For hours at a time I would get easily frustrated trying stand a block up in Sandbox, or aligning a walk way correctly so there were no gaps. Now in Forge world every object has 3 settings, you can make each object realistic like in Halo 3, or suspended in mid-air meaning they won’t drop to the ground as soon as you let go, and my favorite, you can make each object phased, meaning you can merge objects together to make one huge thing. There are 150 objects to choose from, including massive stair cases, huge platforms, all sorts really.

Here is some of the stuff you can use, only some mind. Taken form IGN.com

The world is yours to customise, you can section things bits off for small maps, or just make the biggest multiplayer map ever, all in all Forge world is amazing, and with another 3 forge built maps coming with the release of Halo Reach, I can safely say that Bungie have not skimped out on this one.

Garv

Original Rumour: Capcom Vs Namco, a game putting various characters from the Capcom and Namco games and pitting them against each other. Much like Marvel Vs Capcom.  There will be two games being made one by Capcom with the Street Fighter IV engine and one by Namco with the Tekken 6 engine.

This rumour got me very excited indeed. The very thought of a game with the slight chance of a battle between Dante and Nightmare from Soul Caliber made me feel a bit giddy. I then thought about it after my initial thoughts and I didn’t think there would be enough variety of characters in the Namco side of things, where as Capcom pretty much had the superior characters.

Then the announcement finally came on Saturday at Comic Con, that the game is in fact going to be Tekken Vs Street Fighter.

Official Announcement: Street Fighter X Tekken will be a game that pits the characters from the worlds most popular fighting games. Tekken and Street Fighter. Two games will be made, Street Fighter X Tekken, a 2D fighting game, which Capcom will develop on the Street Fighter IV engine, and Tekken X Street Fighter a 3D fighting game, which will be developed by Namco on the Tekken 6 engine. Not much is known about Tekken X Street Fighter yet. But Street Fighter X Tekken will feature tag battles and re-worked move sets for the Tekken characters to fit in with the Street Fighter theme. I imagine that Tekken X Street Fighter will feature much of the same on its 3D fighting plain.

Ok, granted this is not what we thought it was going to be, but I have been thinking long and hard about this concept, and the more and more I think about it, the more and more excited I get. A game focussing on only characters from two of the best fighting games out there and then putting them together into 2 titles sounds pretty awesome. Besides the exception of Yoshimitsu, having a VS fighting game with just fisticuffs appeals to me more some how. Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of Marvel Vs Capcom 3, for its sheer rediculousness. But to have a serious verses fighting game hasn’t really been made.

With all these thoughts my mind has been coming up with some dream battles again. The difference this time is that these battles are really likely to happen. Note, they are 1 on 1 battles, I will take tag battles into account in a later post. So without further a do, here is my top 3 match-ups.

I had to put my favorite characters from each game first. I always liked Youshimitsu becuase he was the only Tekken character with a sword, and Bison is cool because his psycho crusher is awesome and he is just deliciously evil. thinking about it these two would probably make up my dream tag team. But for now I will say this,who will win? Psycho Power or pointy sword?

Put simply, this would be an awesome wrestling match, even though I could never really use King, able was really cool to use in SF IV. So I am confident that this will be an awesome match up if someone uses King and I can kick their butt.

The fight of the old timers. I was torn whether to have Akuma or Gouken in this matchup, but I decided, Akuma. Why? Well put pure and simply, this battle would be about pure strength and power. Also both these old fogies have a wealth of fighting experience and awesome pointy hair.

I think it is safe to say, I am pretty excited about this fighting game. Now when’s it coming out? I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

Garv.

P.S. Oh, amost forgot, I found some footage of the demo shown at comic-con, showing ryu, Kazuya, Chun-li and Nina Willaims. Enjoy!

The original Plus XP Banner, gotta love generic pixel text

Anyway as I was rooting through the backlog of posts I came across this quite frankly embarrassing review for Mirrors Edge I did, so Sit back and relax while you read this quite awful post.

NOTE: I left the spelling mistakes in just to give you the full experience.

***

For me the First perspective in games is one of my favourites. From a young age I was playing First person shooters with my dad on the pc. So I have grown up with and experienced my fair share of first person games.

Mirrors Edge takes the first person perspective to a new level in gaming. A first person platformer I think is an awesome concept, this game has taken the concept and made it into an exciting and fresh gaming experience.

The second you set your eyes on the flawless city landscape your breath is taken away. The metropolis you are going to be running through looks flawless and clean. The use of bright colours and slight visual effects when you are running makes the visual side of this game a fresh new and breath taking experience. Dice have nailed the visuals in this game. So if you have a nasty fear of heights, be warned.

For me the First perspective in games is one of my favourites. From a young age I was playing First person shooters with my dad on the pc. So I have grown up with and experienced my fair share of first person games.

Mirrors Edge takes the first person perspective to a new level in gaming. A first person platformer I think is an awesome concept, this game has taken the concept and made it into an exciting and fresh gaming experience.

The second you set your eyes on the flawless city landscape your breath is taken away. The metropolis you are going to be running through looks flawless and clean. The use of bright colours and slight visual effects when you are running makes the visual side of this game a fresh new and breath taking experience. Dice have nailed the visuals in this game. So if you have a nasty fear of heights, be warned.

The game play it self is straight forward with the use of only four buttons. One for jumping/high movement, one for crouching/low movements one for interacting with switches etc and the all important attack button (and of course not to mention the analogue sticks for movement and looking). This straight forward control system is good for anybody to pick up and play, but the real skill is when it comes to the timing of your movements and keeping the flow of play going.

If you have not experienced vertigo, then play mirrors edge.

The game plays well, once you have the momentum going you feel unstoppable but it doesn’t last long and is stopped by either not knowing where to go next or an enemy with a gun hailing you with bullets. Which can be frustrating, many times I have had to start a section again because I have been over run by the enemy, or have had to take the trial and error approach when it came down to figuring out where to go next. But with all that said by the time you want to go through the game again (and believe me you will) you will have a greater chance of getting your momentum going and experiencing the true feel of the game.

The use of weapons in the game is fairly spaced and simple, which is good because this is no way by any means a shooting game but the inclusion of guns do help when you want to get out of sticky situations.

The story is simple and solid, you do feel compassion for the main character. But what this game does lack is good cut scenes. The cut scenes are cartoon based and feel very out of place with the graphical genius of the game play. The cut scenes and the game play don’t merge together well. But don’t let that change your mind because what the game lacks in cut scenes it makes up for in game play.

The online race and time trial modes are a great way for you to show off your moves and keep the game flowing well. With you racing against the clock it brings a great element to the game when you are done with the campaign mode.

So to sum up. Mirrors edge combines plat forming and the first person perspective well, making a great gaming experience. Even though the enemies feel cheap from time to time and the cut scenes aren’t that hot. It is defiantly worth playing.

Score: 7.5 out of 10

***

Wow back in the days when I used to give scores to games. I look back at this and think, I have come quite a way away from what I once was doing. This was only about a year or so ago and since then, myself, the staff and the site has come along way.

Basically this is my long-winded way of saying, everyone’s doing great on the site and I wouldn’t give it up for the world.

Garv.

Not to be confused with this...

Now just to let you know, this is not to be confused with the Namco X Capcom RPG title back on the last gen consoles, these are strictly fighting games. Now Capcom Vs Namco will be developed by Capcom on the Street Fighter IV engine while Namco Vs Capcom will be developed by Namco on the Tekken 6 engine. Now the first game sounds good, I love 2D fighters now, it’s a fact. But having a some street fighter character play on a 3D surface, could be a little weird. I have a nasty suspicion that in some ways it won’t translate well, or I could be really wrong and this will be the fighting game of the century. Only time will tell.

I got this information from both Kotaku.com and Gameinformer.com. The rumour itself looks pretty strong as it has been hinted that a trailer for both games will be at Comic-Con in San Diego California this weekend. So stay tuned to Plus XP for more info as I get it.

In light of this pretty epic fighting mash-up. Here are some epic battles which I hope to play if this all takes off.

This would be an epic battle. The most demonic creature in the Soul Calibur series, Nightmare. Versus the demon slayer himself Dante, from Devil May Cry. This would be an epic sword fight resulting in huge demon powers and possible some epic sword skills from both sides.

M.Bison fighting in the Capcom corner, against Kazuya Mishima in the Namco corner. This would be a huge fight over nothing but power alone. You know in the playground back in primary school where you thought you were the cooler and most popular kid? Well think that, but with evil and powerful instead of cool and popular then you will get a vague idea of how cool this match-up would be.

The fight that will probably never happen. Seeing as Spawn was only in Soul Calibur II and Namco lost the writes to ever use him again. Jedah Dohma from Darkstalkers only appeared in Capcom Fighting Jam and again, was never to be seen again…well apart from Darkstalkers. Anyway this match up would be a proper epic Demon fight with all sorts of crazy powers, and it would probably just make me nerdgasm just a tiny bit.

So if this rumour is true, then we may be in for an epic fighting game. I guess we will get some sort of confirmation at Comic-con this weekend.

Garv

Recently I have been reading the Scott Pilgrim series of Comic books, and believe me when I say that these are beyond awesome. In a nut shell the books are about a 23-year-old guy called Scott who finds the girl of his dreams (literally) and then has to fight her 7 evil Ex’s in order to date her. Sounds pretty cool, but if you thrown in a load of video game references you are in for a total geek fest. I am only on volume 4 of 6 and I love it.

So when I heard they were creating a film of this comic book series, I was a little dubious. I then watched the trailer and noticed Micheal Cera ( you know the huy who was in movies like Juno, Super Bad and Year One), I was thinking that this film was going to be pretty poor, I’m not the biggest Michael Cera fan. But, now I have seen the latest trailer a countless amount of times, he is growing on me. I then saw how much detail they have put into the gaming references, and it is my top movie I want to see this year.

Now we take one story line that is full to the brim with game references, we make a movie of it, then we make a Video Game. Now most people who know me, know that I am not the biggest fan when it comes to film to game/game to film conversions. But I think what they have done with this title is just got from Comic to game, totally disregarding the film, clever move (Even though the movie look flipping awesome).

Now not much is known about this game, but what we do know is that it will be a downloadable game, the PlayStation 3 is going to get its hands on it first, and the 360 will get it….later.

After seeing very little of the game,I have found out that it takes its inspiration from retro arcade games, 2D pixel graphics are used in this game, and I for one couldn’t be happier. This is the perfect setting for Scott Pilgrim game ans all the references in the story line range from the original Sonic and Mario games to stuff from Final Fantasy.

Again, I don’t know much about the game so I will leave you with this world exclusive trailer from Game trailers. It left me wanting to know more, so as usual, more news as I get it.

Garv.

Note: If you don’t want to feast your eyes on the Halo Reach Achievements, I suggest you take a look at the other posts on the site to take your mind off this one. There is always the Halo Reach Fire Fight article I did to keep you occupied.

There are 49 achievements in all, 23 of which will be specific to campaign mode. The other 26 are split between firefight, multiplayer, training and the level up mechanic which we have all come to love in massively multiplayer shooter games. The training achievements can be earned in firefight or campaign so the choice is up to you.

Here are six achievements that have been explained in their entirety:

A Monument to All Your Sins – Complete each Campaign Mission on Legendary – alone.

Banshees, Fast and Low – Hijack a Banshee during the Reach Campaign.

Yes, Sensei – Earn a First Strike Medal in a Matchmaking game.

A New Challenger – Complete all of the Daily Challenges in a given day.

Make It Rain – Purchase an item from the Armory that requires the rank of Lt. Colonel.

If They Came to Hear Me Beg – Perform an Assassination against an Elite to survive a fall that would’ve been fatal.

Bask in the glory of the reach achievements

All pretty standard really, what you come to expect from a Halo game. Some of these are pretty cryptic but then again we don’t know the full extent of the game yet, so they will be answered soon enough.

Bungie have also announced Medals, Now these can be achieved through skillful combat and being just plain awesome. Here is a taste

Rejection – Armor Lock and survive damage that would be fatal.

Protector – Save a teammate by killing his foe.

Showstopper – Kill an opponent while they are performing an Assassination.

So Halo reach is shaping up nicely, and looks like there is going to be plenty of gaming fuel for all you achievement hoares out there.

More info as I get it.

Garv

Well I can tell you now that after reading up on Fable III recently, the game has promise and it’s very far from just another rush game job.

For those of you out there who don’t know about Fable, I will give you a quick run down. Fable as a series takes place in the world of Albion. It is an epic tale mixed with a good does of British humour. It is kind of what you expect a story to be like when it has the name Fable, a fairytale-esque story line mixed with some good game mechanics. If you have not tried fable, sink your teeth into Fable II. Even though Fable I is good, II is a better step in the right direction.

Now onto Fable III. Fable III starts in the eyes of the son or daughter of Fable II. After Fable II finished the hero of Albion had 2 twin children. Now in classic story telling form, one of the twins turns evil, this twin being your brother, becomes King of Albion and has turned a tad insane, so you band together a front of people to overthrow the king. Then you yourself become ruler of Albion. Becoming the ruler of Albion takes up about half the game. The second half of the game is where you have to rule Albion. This is where the game comes very much into its own with new game mechanics and what sounds like a hell of a lot of moral choices.

The biggest new gaming mechanic to feature in Fable III is the ruling mechanic, once you sit your virtual bum on that thrown a whole load of stuff opens up to you. Now back when you were trying to overthrow the last king, people came up to you and asked things that you can promise to do when you become king. The one example I found was our old friend from Fable II, Reaver, come up to the new prospective ruler and asks is he can have a portion of the Albion land for factories. Now when you become the ruler of the land you have the choise of keeping promises such as this or not, in true royal fashion. You also have the money of Albion to think about. Are you going to use people’s tax money for good of the land? Or are you just going to make an Uber Castle for yourself and laugh your royal fat arse off while sitting on a pile of money? The choice is of corse up to you.

Another thing that has been added to your royal game mechanic system is a follower meter. (and before you ask no, you’re not going to be spending hours of virtual twitter gaining followers and typing things like ‘LOL you at all the moneyz I Haz.”) How this works is that the more people who follow your ways, the more stuff opens up to you around Albion. You get followers by doing quests, keeping promises and just plain grinding. The good old follow me or I will kill you probably works here as well. Soon enough you will get so many followers that a revolution will start and all will be great.

Ok so now your king and you have all this land to rule over, what else can you do? Well one of the things I did pick up on is that you can craft your very own weapons. Now this is a very interesting game mechanic in itself. You know in Fable II where your body changed depending on what you did? When you used magic a lot you had loads of blue glowing lines on you, or if you used a lot of melee attacks you became the size of a house. Lionhead have now applied this morphing technique to weapons. Say you have a standard sword, if you like to do a lot of flourishes your blade is going to get longer, if you kill a lot of the same type of enemy your hilt is going to change. If you like killing innocent people your blade is going to change, and so on. This makes for what quite frankly sounds like an amazing game mechanic, and the beauty of this is, your weapon is going to go up in price the more you use it, so that’s a paid job in itself in the game. The awesome thing here is though, it works on any weapon. Guns, swords, hammers, axes, you name it.

After looking at what Fable III has to offer this game is going to be huge. I have decided to make this a two-part post as there is so much more I have found out about his title. This is defiantly not a rush job, and it looks like Lionhead have gone all out here.

Garv

But there is a select few in this world that are so awesome that they make one appearance in a game and then are never seen again. These characters are very few and far between but every now and then this happens. So I have complied another one of may famous lists to let you know that these characters, are just to awesome to simply get rid of in my eyes, and yes, I am secretly hoping some game developers out there will read this article and do something about it.

Spawn – Soul Caliber II

This all started off when I was playing Soul Caliber II last week. When Soul Caliber II was released it was it came out for the three uber consoles of its time,  the PlayStation 2, the original X Box and the Game Cube. Each version of the game had a different special character that was unique to the console it was played on. PlayStation 2 had Heihachi Mishima from Tekken, the game cube title had Link from the legend of Zelda. But the X Box version had possibly one of the best characters to ever be in the Soul Caliber series, Spawn.

Why did I fall in love with this character so much? Maybe it was because of his immense power, once you knew his special attacks you became pretty much unstoppable with him. Some may say he was over powered but in my opinion he fitted well. I actually thought he was a genuine Soul Caliber Character created especially for the X Box (Note: Back when I first bought SCII, I had no real idea who spawn was, it was because of this game I fell in love with the Spawn graphic novels) after then reading the graphic novels I felt that Namco did an awesome job of incorporating his story into the SC plot. Thus making a well-rounded and maybe just slightly over powered character that fitted into the story well. Oh and his cape morphed into an awesome one-handed axe, how cool is that?

Vergil – Devil May Cry 3

For my next character, I have to say he was more written out temporarily (I Hope) than just totally forgotten about. I fell in love with Devil May Cry when I first played the 3rd installment of the game. Now the version of Devil May Cry 3 I had was the special edition where it let you play through the whole game as Vergil, Dante’s twin brother, who wanted to harness the power of their father and save the demons. As you played through Devil May Cry 3 with Vergil you had a different move set available, a different weapon  in the form of Yamato, the katana that was passed down to him by his father and instead of guns you had an awesome summon sword technique which would impale your enemies with a flurry of swords made of blue energy, but thats not all, you could even unlock the Nelo Angelo, Vergil’s Devil May Cry 1 incarnation which comes complete with his very own move set. The only down side to Vergil was lack of weapon variety but other than that he was an awesome character to play as and I am hoping to God that they bring him back as a playable character. Sorry Nero, but you just don’t do it for me.

MR CROW – Unreal Tournament 2004

Unreal tournament 2004 was where I really got bitten by the UT bug. It was probably the most played game on my PC to date, it was the game that finally got me used to a mouse for aiming and shooting, and the classic WSAD for movement. Now every time I played this game I used to love playing as Mr Crow. A Necris that wore a top hat and looked rather spiffy, even though he was zombie of sorts, he had some real class. Now with UT characters there is nothing that special about them. But for some reason, on the character select screen when Mr Crow was highlighted. The UT announcer would shout out MR CROW!!! and would only do that when he was highlighted. This made me want to use him more for some reason. Also he had the classic line of “I AM DEATH!” every time he murdered someone. All in All deliciously evil.

Gon – Tekken 3

Most fighting fanatics out there are probably going to kill me for mentioning this next one. Back in the days of Tekken 3 on the PS1 there was one character that I used to love playing as, just to piss everyone off, and this was Gon. A miniature T-Rex that randomly popped up in Tekken 3. Now you know how annoyed everyone got at Yoda on Soul Caliber IV as he was too short to even hit at times. Gon was exactly the same. I was using this guy before I really got into fighting games. I would just be sitting there giggling at this Dino as my friends got more and more frustrated. I can somewhat understand why they didn’t bring this adorable little creature back to the Tekken series. But I do miss him.

Eddie – SSX Tricky

I used to love snowboarding games back in the day. The pinnacle of this was SSX Tricky. I loved this game for the simple reason, that it had selectable unique characters. One of my all time favorite SSX Tricky characters had to be Eddie. Eddie was a disco dancing snowboarder with an amazing afro. As I look at Eddie now I can safely say, subconsciously, I wanted to be him. My hair is the size of a house now so all I have to do now is learn to snowboard and we are half way there.

What I did love about Eddie was his Uber Tricks. He was a Disco dancing sensation when he was on a snowboard, doing such moves as the worm, snake and the Robot while on a snowboard is beyond awesome. Why they took him out of SSX I will never know. Lets hope he will make a welcome return someday.

Well there you have it, a small selection of characters that have long been forgotten in my eyes. Feel free to comment on what characters you have missed from gaming past.

- Garv

My first taste of Halo came about when I was round my mates house playing multiplayer split screen. We were playing split screen death match and we chose a nice little level known as Blood Gulch. This was a very simple map that had a base on either side of the map, and a huge wide expanse of land in between. The perfect setting for pretty much any team based game variant. It was also perfect for vehicle battles and anything you can think of. The most simple of maps but the most used throughout Halo: Combat Evolved

Blood Gulch - The First Incarnation

I fell in love with Blood Gulch so much that when I got my own X Brick I organised lan parties (Before the days of Xbox Live) and we would spend hours play CTF battles, team death matches, death matches, pretty much and Halo game variant under the sun on Blood Gulch. Non of the other maps compared to this one, except maybe side winder, but that’s for a different post.

Of course as Halo got older there was always going to be a sequel. So Halo 2 came around, and I was ready to leave Blood Gulch behind and find a new terrain to rain death in. But lo and behold, Bungie had put the next incarnation of Blood Gulch into Halo 2. And I was more than happy to start reigning havoc on this level. Now dubbed Coagulation, not much had changed, save for the bases now have 2 levels and the addition of Banshees to the level. But it was still the same Blood Gulch I came to love in the first game.

The Second Incarnation - Coagulation

Ok so there were a couple of more rocks and the bases probably were a tiny bit closer together, but it was still the same map I loved, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Now this is where Halo 3 disappointed me. I was egerly waiting for the 3rd incarnation of  Blood Gulch. But there was nothing. I wasn’t giving up hope, I was going to wait for the DLC and hope that Bungie would bring back a new Halo 3 version of the map to us. But sadly, there was nothing. The closest thing I had in Halo 3 was Valhalla, and to me that map was nothing compared to Blood Gulch, even though it was very good, I still didn’t have the same nostalgia fix than I did with Coagulation.

The other base is on the other side of the map behind the camera by the way

So, eventually I just accepted the fact Blood Gulch had been dead and berried. Valhalla was the new incarnantion and the grandfather of all awesome Halo had been laid to rest. So I carried on my happy way play Big Team slayer and CTF on Valhalla, every now and again wishing it was Blood Gulch. I know it is very Fan Boyish but I really did love that map.

Then Halo Wars came along. An RTS game that was based before the Halo First Person Shooter saga. It was a very good RTS game and I really did enjoy play skirmish mode more than I did the campaign, but never the less it was fun. Now when I first booted up a skirmish game I had to take a double take. The creators had done themselves justice by making a Blood Gulch in RTS form. A huge grin spread across my face and I jumped straight in. It was very loyal to the original FPS map from Halo combat evolved and sure enough that was my favorite map for skirmish mode. It really translated well into the RTS form and I would play that map for hours.

The Halo Wars Incarnation

By now you are probably thinking, either ‘Why is he going on about a pretty much dead and berried Map from the first halo game?’ or ‘Hmm this is probably leading to something about Halo Reach. If you are thinking the latter you would be very correct (because the title of the post probably gave it away at the start.) Blood Gulch is back in Halo Reach! Bigger, Better and Greener than it ever has been, and It is looking awesome. Red Vs Blue did a nice trailer for the new map, with a couple more announcements about a new armour ability and a new warthog. So without Further adoo I present The Blood Gulch Resurrection!

As you can see this is shaping up to be one hell of a game. and I for one am hugely excited about Halo Reach. More announcements as I get them.

Garv