The first look video has been embedded at the bottom of this post, it lasts over 4 minutes and we get to see lots of glimpses of what 343 Industries plan to bring to the game, one thing which is reaffirmed is Master Chief’s new armor – something which we spoke about in detail in this article. We have added an image below which shows Master Chief’s armor in Halo 3 alongside the new armor in Halo 4 below.

343 say that in Halo 4 they want it to feel like you’re controlling a heavy, powerful, yet athletic super hero when you’re controlling Master Chief, there’s a brief mention of new gameplay being added – however no further details were disclosed. Something else we get to see is the new HUD (heads up display), you can see a screenshot showing this below, 343 say that it’s quite similar to a fighter jet HUD, do you like the new look?

Some other things which get a mention in the video include a teaser toward’s the plot, there are no specifics, but we are told that the campaign will entail Master Chief fighting for something important against a bigger threat than ever before. At times in the video we get to see the use of facial tracking technologies which suggests that cinematic sections in the campaign will feel more immersive thanks to accurate expressions, this combined with more detailed visuals than ever before should combine nicely.

The video also reveals that all weapons, vehicles and enemies have been graphically overhauled and we can confirm that you’ll have the familiar Battle Rifle at your disposal with its precision sight and burst fire – you can see the new-look design below.

There are still a few more things to tell you, if you thought that Halo 3′s sounds weren’t quite making the most of your audio equipment we can confirm that the sounds of guns etc should be great in Halo 4 thanks to an all-new audio team who are hard at working capturing the all new sound effects. But that’s not all, we also know that 100 tracks have already been recorded by the orchestra.

It’s not just sound which is completely new, the multiplayer maps in this game are said to be built from scratch as well, so you won’t just see segments of terrain and building from previous Halo games “cut and pasted” into Halo 4, instead you are seeing completely new designs which take competitiveness very seriously. In the first look video we get to see two of these fresh new maps, one of which is called Warhouse and the other is called Wraparound. Warhouse is pretty intriguing, it’s basically an abandoned military base which surrounds a giant mech which is being built, as for Wraparound we don’t know a great deal, but 343′s Lead Designer (Brad Welch), tells us that it is a looping arena with lots of verticality.

That’s about all we can tell you about what’s revealed in the Halo 4 first-look video, however we must just point out that everything which we’ve told you is “subject to change” (343′s words not ours). Check out the video below and tell us if you spotted something which we missed.

Are you impressed by what you’ve seen? Do you think 343 Industries will deliver a better Halo game than what Bungie ever released?

The Hollywood legend has reportedly been seeking the movie rights to the popular shoot‘em up for quite a while. Now a recent French press release for Halo: Crytum, a new book, is suggesting that the director responsible for such classics as E.T., Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Jurassic Park has indeed been successful and the movie will hit the big screen in 2012.

A translated statement from the press release stated ‘A film adaptation is set in 2012.’ It went on to explain that both DreamWorks and Spielberg will be conducting the movie cooperatively, describing them as ‘heavyweights of American cinema.’ As with a lot of news that come from translations, this could end up being a huge misinterpretation. On the other hand it could be true which means we are some of the first to know.

According to CVG, reports that Spielberg was interested first began to circulate in October last year, now a year later it could well be happening based on the novel source material. By basing the movie on the novel rather than the source which Fox and Universal used for their Halo movie failure, DreamWorks and Spielberg will avoid legal battles.

What do you make of this news? Are you excited to hear that there could be a Halo movie with a blockbusting director?

Yes, that’s right the ever-popular Warthog will show up in Forza 4, now before you get too excited please note that you will not be able to drive the Warthog in the game, however a well-hidden Easter Egg will let you take a closer look at Halo’s iconic battle jeep. We have embedded an images showing this below, you can see more image via this link.

When it comes to Halo vehicles the Warthog is considered as the fan favorite, with a machine gun mounted on the rear and four wheel steering it packs both firepower and maneuverability – it is just a shame that you won’t be able to unlock it as a playable vehicles as we remember Toca Touring Car Championship where a cheat could unlock a tank, this certainly added another dimension to the game.

When viewing the Warthog in Autovista mode you will hear narration from Halo’s central character Cortana, apparently she will talk about the vehicle’s prowess and tell stories – we are sure that this will interest hardcore Halo fans and we expect high levels of detail. We can confirm that when taking a look at the Warthog you will be able to open the door, sit in the driver’s seat, start it up and even pop-up the hood – it sounds awesome!

We think that it would be nice if other vehicles from popular games turned up in Autovista, obvious choices include the Batmobile, the Mako from Mass Effect and the Buggy from Final Fantasy VII – feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section below.

Apparently Halo Anniversary will allow you to download its maps to your hard drive, which means that if you have the Reach disc in the drive you will be able to play Anniversary’s maps, not only this but people who play Reach but do not buy Anniversary will be able to buy Anniversary’s maps as DLC, which got us thinking about the Call of Duty franchise.

With new Call of Duty games arriving each year and at least 3 map packs hitting each game a lot of maps come and go, wouldn’t it be great if Call of Duty games which use the same engine offered this functionality? The big problem at the moment is the fact that there is not just one game developer working on Call of Duty titles, in terms of current-gen consoles Treyarch has developed Call of Duty 5 & 7 (World at War & Black Ops), whilst Infinity Ward has been behind Call of Duty 4 & 6 (Modern Warfare & Modern Warfare 2).

We think it would be great if from this point on developers gave their Call of Duty games a similar feature to Halo: Anniversary, for example with Modern Warfare 3 (CoD 8 ) being developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games perhaps the game’s maps could be locally downloadable – meaning that if and when Modern Warfare 4 arrives you can play multiplayer game modes on your MW3 maps. Likewise if Treyarch is working on Black Ops 2 and plan to release Black Ops 3 the BO2 maps could be playable on BO3.

In theory this is a great idea, however there are some difficulties to overcome, firstly and most obviously games move on, for example on Modern Warfare (CoD 4) there were different weapons, perks and killstreaks to MW3 (CoD 6) – surely gamers need “a level playing field” to ensure games are balanced? Secondly graphics are always improving, which means old maps would look inferior to the shiny new maps which future titles will bring.

Previously Infinity Ward and Treyarch have both made money from revamping their old maps, which means that they could lose a source of income by making maps playable across different CoD games, obviously consumers want this but money makes the world go round.

Do you think Call of Duty developers will / should allow this functionality? Let us know in the comments section below…

The article was written by The Sun’s health editor, Emma Little, it talks in detail about how Chirs Staniforth died outside a JobCentre, apparently he was talking to a friend about how he woke in the night with a weird feeling in his chest, however thought nothing of it, shortly after the converstion Chris dropped a packet of chewing gum and whilst attempting to pick it up he jolted back and began to spasm, an ambulance was called, but the paramedics could not save him.

It has now been confirmed that prior to this Chris did not suffer from any health issues, however the long spells his body stayed stationary for resulted in deep vein thrombosis, this was what caused Chris’ death, and his father wants people to realize of the serious risks game addiction can cause. According to The Sun’s article Chris lived for his Xbox and absolutely loved playing Halo, that said his faster wanted to make it clear that he didn’t blame the console’s manufacturer Microsoft.

If you are worried about someone you know encountering a similar fate you may want to point them in the direction of some deep vein thrombosis signs and symptoms, there are some things you can do to help prevent this from happening, check out this link for details.

We would love to hear what you think about this sad incident, do you think developers should do more to make gamers more aware of the risks? We think that loading screens which show warnings, or a leaflet inside the game’s box could perhaps make a slight difference, however at the end of the day it is up to the individual to live a more active lifestyle as we think everyone knows that long spells of gaming are not good for health.

Do you exercise between games?

Not only did Phil Spencer say this but he also said “It’s not Halo-anything, it’s Halo 4. It’s the beginning of a new trilogy”, if we take this statement literally it would be fair to presume that 343 Industries will be developing three Halo games, we presume these will be called Halo 4, Halo 5 and Halo 6. Up until today we had no idea that another Halo trilogy was coming.

Other statement from Spencer suggest that Halo 4′s campaign will be immersive and story driven, as we stated in the opening paragraph Master Chief will be featured in this game, we are led to believe that that the game’s campaign will evolve around him. Spencer also goes on to say that when it comes to Halo 4 “It’s not about re-enacting previous wars, it’s not the kind of comic-book pulp that Gears of War”.

As you can see Phil Spencer only really talks about the game’s campaign and doesn’t once mention multiplayer aspects of the game, does this mean that Microsoft Game Studios are happy with online game modes? We are not sure, however many think that when it comes to downloadable content Reach was a little disappointing. So far just two map packs have been released (the Noble Map Pack and the Defiant Map Pack), this isn’t a lot considering the game first arrived back in September 2010 and is nothing compared to the frequent DLC releases we see for Call of Duty games.

Back in September 20101 when Reach arrived we heard very few criticisms of the game’s campaign, in fact reviews were great and if you check out metacritic you will see that 99 critics scored the game very highly which has resulted in a metascore of 91/100 which makes you wonder why Phil Spencer talks about this game and Halo: ODST as if they were failures.

We would love to hear feedback from Halo fans, therefore feel free to answer the following questions in the comments section below. Do you think Halo has lost its way? What do you think needs to change when it comes to Halo 4? Do you think the Halo: Reach campaign was lackluster? Do you think big changes need to be made to the game’s multiplayer aspects?

If you check out GameBlurb’s article you can see tons of leaked information regarding the next installment in the Halo video game series, all of which was originally posted on the Bungie.net forums, we won’t post any of the major spoilers here, but we will highlight some information which will be welcomed by many.

The spoilers talk in detail about the game’s setting and story line, things we don’t mind telling you about mainly consist of weapon, vehicle and maps information, but please remember we do not know how reliable the source of this information really is.

Apparently Halo 4 will feature fan favorite weapons and vehicles, there will be new vehicles to along with new weapons. Apparently weapons will feature an “unprecedented level of customization”, this sounds exciting to us as it seems to build for where Bungie left off with Halo: Reach. Other details suggest that Halo 4 will push the action genre boundaries and will feature huge maps which span land, sea and space.

Remember if you don’t mind reading spoilers check out the link to GameBlurb which can be found in this post’s second paragraph, the 500+ words of info which we read sounded pretty legitimate to us, what do you think?

We have embedded a trailer showing the remade and remastered Halo: Combat Evolved at the end of this post, the narrator tells us that the campaign and seven of the greatest multiplayer maps of all time have been overhauled to suit today’s expectations, also we can confirm that you can play co-op over Xbox Live.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will be available from November 15 and we are led to believe it will cost $39.99, the remake has been developed by 343 Industries, who are also the guys behind Halo 4.

When Combat Evolved first arrived lots of things were different in terms of gaming, one thing we didn’t see last time was game Achievements, the Microsoft E3 2011 press conference confirmed that Achievements will be there this time around.

The only thing we are currently unsure about is its price, $39.99 seems a bit steep for such a dated game (even with its new makeover) what do you think?

Gears of War 3 is currently in its final stages of development and has been given a release date of September 20, however new talks show that there may be more work planned for the title before its release. Eurogamer tells us that Cliff Bleszinksi, lead designer for Gears of War, has admitted he wants to see Master Chief in this years game.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. I actually approached Microsoft on getting Master Chief into the game, but those guys are kind of squeamish.” There is no word of the reply as yet however we do know that the work is ongoing to get Master Chief in a COG suit and maybe allow him to be exploited as DLC for gamers.

We think it would be great to fuse the two titles together, however as Cliffy B said; “Gears is like Mortal Kombat and Halo is like Street Fighter”, maybe the question is, would the gore suite Master Chief? Whatever the outcome, we would love to see Master Chief appearing in Gears of War 3 this September and we can’t wait to hear the outcome. Do you share the same opinion?

Some of the most talked about Xbox exclusives some of which are still rumors are the likes of Halo 4, Gears of War 3, Project Draco and one that I like the look of Codename Kingdoms. Previous releases from the series of Halo and Gears of War have been extremely popular and there doesn’t look like anyway that these will not exceed all expectations, as did their predecessors.

Halo 4 is still rumored at the moment, but I can see no reason as to why they would stop one of the most successful franchises at Halo Reach. What, have they run out of ideas? Surely not, the creativity that has been pumped into the Halo games is second to none. The other thing to remember is they don’t necessarily need to continue the story, they could jump back towards Halo Wars and create a sequel. I found a pretty good thread that will keep you up to date with and further rumors surrounding Halo 4 which you can view here or head over to their official site here.

Onto Gears of War, one of the most playable franchises of all time sees their latest game Gears of War 3 released on April 5th 2011. Let’s hope that the game has a decent storyline this time round to match its incredible graphics and addictive gameplay. If you want to learn more about Gears of War 3 then head over to their official site by clicking here, you can get involved with the community, view screenshots and watch some of the videos. We have also included the gameplay footage from E3 courtesy of realidad20 at the bottom of the article to get you thinking about it. Unfortunately we are going to have to wait for a little while to get our hands on it.

Some others that are exclusive to the Xbox 360 that we haven’t yet mentioned are the likes of Codename D, Steel Battalion Heavy Armour, Rise of Nightmares, Xcom, Haunt and of course, Star Wars Kinect. To read more about these titles head over to OXM.co.uk, we also found a few other exclusive releases which you can view over at gamethirst.com where Ernice Gilbert has written an article.

Which of these are you looking forward to most or is there a different game you are after? Let us know in the comments below.