Halo

Halo 5 is free to download and free to play for the next week (June 29 to July 5) if you’re an Xbox Live Gold subscriber. Not a bad deal that, since you can easily wrap up the singleplayer campaign in that time.

The popular Firefight mode is finally coming to Halo 5 multiplayer on June 29, Microsoft announced today. It’s part of a large package of content that’ll include new maps, Forge options, and more.

The previously leaked Halo Wars 2 open beta is official. During their E3 conference, Microsoft showed gameplay footage and announced that the beta will run from today until June 20th. The game’s full release has been pushed to February 2017.

Halo and Chrono Trigger Collide In the Newest Episode of Super Gaming Quiz

Current games! Retro games! Terrible games! Gaming podcasts are nothing new, but you’ll be hard pressed to find one like Super Gaming Quiz Alpha Turbo. Just to be upfront, the podcast I’m about to promote was created and is hosted by yours truly. It’s a labor of love, and I thought the fine readers of…

The Greatest Halo Player Of All Time Retired Yesterday

Everyone remembers the shock of playing online for the first time. I was never much of a PC gamer, so one of my first online multiplayer experiences was with Halo 2. It was, to be perfectly honest, demoralising. I think most of us can relate: you thought you were untouchable, you thought you were the…

Halo 5‘s Forge Map Creator Is Coming To PC (But Not Halo 5?)

One very cool part of the Halo series is coming to the PC this year, but you’ll still need to own an Xbox One to take full advantage of it. It’s a step in the right direction! In fits and starts, Microsoft seems to be taking PC gaming more seriously with Windows 10. In that…

6,000-Piece LEGO Replica Of Halo 5‘s Rocket Launcher

That’s the SPNKr, Halo 5’s iconic double barrelled rocket launcher in all its glory, remade with LEGO bricks by Nick Brick (via Brothers Brick). Looks amazing! It’s double barrelled, and you can remove the launch tubes and reload the weapon just like in the game. Even if it only shoots imaginary rockets, made with After…

Pokémon Battles Are Pretty Messed Up In Halo 5

The creative stuff people come up with in Halo 5‘s Forge almost reach Garry’s Mod levels of silliness. Here’s, for example, a very well designed map for Pokémon battles. It’s a rock-paper-scissors type map with Blastoise, Venosaur and Charizard, where the winner can eliminate the other player with a powerful weapon. It’s made by CaptainDireWolf,…

Halo 5 Grifball Is Better When It’s Played In A Quidditch Pitch

Halo 5 and Harry Potter sounds like a weird combination, but Hugabear’s custom mini-game, which adds Quidditch to Halo 5‘s Grifball, looks pretty fun. Grifball is a game mode in Halo 5 where players with Gravity Hammers and Energy Swords have to grab the ball and get it through one of the hoops. In this…

Kubros Pop Culture Construction Figures Are Fun Until The Parts Run Out

A construction toy take on the vinyl pop culture figure craze, Mega Bloks new Kubros sets are great, unless your kit is missing bricks. I got my first look at Mega Bloks’ Kubros during the Mattel party at Toy Fair 2016, and I couldn’t wait to get my oversized paws on them. Like the popular…

Halo ODST Cosplay Is Born To Kill

Dutch Props is a prop builder and cosplayer from (wait for it) the Netherlands. He’s also a member of the Stony Cosplay group, who specialise in Halo cosplay gear, and whose stuff is so good they’ve worked directly with Microsoft on ads and videos. This is his ODST cosplay gear. Love the cigarette packet, nice…

In Defense Of The Flood, Halo‘s Most Hated Enemy

Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo called The Library Halo: Combat Evolved’s most notorious level. An entry on Halopedia referred to it as one of the least popular levels in the Halo series. The Library is the hardest level in the game by far, a cruel gauntlet featuring seemingly never-ending waves of Halo’s toughest enemies. I love…

The grand finals of the 2016 Halo World Championship between teams CLG and Allegiance kick off at 7 PM Eastern. One team will win $1 million. The other team only wins $500,000. The tension should be mildly palpable. Watch it live over on Twitch.

Former Destiny Developers Discuss How Hard It Is To Make AAA Games

To say that making big games like Destiny is “difficult” is kind of like declaring the Grand Canyon is “deep,” so it’s always interesting to hear new insights from people who have been in the trenches. Ex-Bungie developers Jaime Griesemer and Marty O’Donnell, who have worked on Halo and Destiny, gave some pretty fascinating quotes…

The Best Video Game Shotguns

You can judge a first person shooter almost entirely on the strengths of its shotguns. A good video game shotgun is a bold and challenging weapon; a bad shotgun is a feather duster at a distance of more than a few feet. A good shotgun makes you feel like a champion, capable of taking on…

Firefight, where players cooperatively fight off waves of enemies, is coming to Halo 5 later this year. The fan favorite mode was introduced in Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach, but wasn’t part of Halo 4 Contact the author at [email protected]

Halo’s Arbiter Has Been Holding Back On Us

The Covenant’s best warrior has been a bad ass in the Halo games, but not nearly the bad ass he’s being in his appearance in season three of fighting game Killer Instinct As hinted late last month, the third season of Killer Instinct features a cameo from Microsoft’s storied shooter franchise. Instead of going with…

Players Are Doing Amazing Things With Halo 5’s Forge

Look at this ridiculous Halo 5 Forge mini-game. LOOK AT IT. Soz3rGaming gives us a video preview of “Flapjack Frenzy,” a map created by Halo 5 player SplinterBL. The name tells you everything you need to know about it: the mini-game has players commandeering “spatulas,” which must be used to flip players—who resemble pancakes—off the…

Mattel’s Doing All The Halo Toys Now, And They Look Killer

No offense to McFarlane Toys, who’ve done a great job with the various franchise figure lines over the years, but Halo is much too big a property for a relatively niche company to handle. Now Mattel’s got the master license, and they’re putting it to good use. Mattel and Halo aren’t exactly strangers. Mattel subsidiary…

Now This Is Halo 5 Podracing

Star Wars podracing and Halo? Sounds like a weird combination. But modder CaptainDireWolf was able to make a really funny Forge Map based on Episode I’s podracing scene. It was great scene (well, compared to the rest of the movie), but with a little Halo fun, it’s even better. The folks over at The Epidemic…