343 Industries released an absolute avalanche of statistics and other information recapping the Halo 5: Guardians beta on Thursday, detailing the testing phase which ran for three weeks at the end of December through into early January.

The beta phase was scheduled a little less than a year ahead of the game’s scheduled release date this coming fall, marking the earliest that Microsoft had ever launched a Halo beta in the history of the franchise.

343 Industries was positively blown away by the response it received from the beta, which saw about a million gamers knock out just over 20 million matches over its entire duration. Those millions upon millions of matches — which exceeded the developer’s expectations a great deal — provided the team with invaluable feedback regarding how it could tweak the multiplayer experience to perfection ahead of the game’s official release.

343 executive producer Josh Holmes talked about the philosophy of the team in regards to why exactly the beta was even considered and what the team hoped to accomplish.

“With Halo 5 being such a big evolution of the combat experience for Halo, we wanted to be able to take these new mechanics, the new Spartan Abilities, and put them in the hands of the community and use that feedback to hone the experience,” he said.

Although there were some internal doubts within 343 Industries about whether or not releasing the beta so early was a good idea, Holmes said that the devs now understand just how valuable the beta process was to making an exceptional game.

“Some people [said], ‘Should we really be doing it this early?’ And now, coming out the other side and having all that great feedback and data we can use to inform our development; those same people are like, ‘Yeah, really, really glad that we did this.'”

“I think everybody was nervous and excited to see how fans would react to a lot of the new mechanics, the new ideas, the new modes,” he went on. “A combination of excitement and nervous energy, and maybe a little bit of exhaustion as well because there’s just so much work that goes into packaging something up, getting it ready for release, releasing it, and then supporting that throughout the process of the beta.”

And now, let us dive headlong into the deliciously delightful world of the Halo 5 beta stats and planned gameplay tweaks.

Ready? Let’s roll!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

HALO 5 BETA STATS & TWEAKS

STATS:

• Total Number of Player: About 1 million
• Total matches played: nearly 20 million
• Total gameplay hours: 2,539,847
• Total Kills: 181,389,366
• Total Assists: 92,245,468
• Total Ground Pound Kills: 565,902
• Total Spartan Charge Kills: 1,286,085
• Frag Grenade Kills: 11,529,664
• Plasma Grenade Kills: 1,104,218
• Total Shots Fired: 6,492,761,794
• Battle Rifles were carried for: the equivalent of 207 days
• Most popular power weapon: Sniper Rifle – 6,606,200 kills
• Most Medals Earned: 24,998 (SSlCK)
• Killpocalypse Medals Earned: 1 (Omnipression)
• Total hours watched on Twitch: 44,693,800
• Most minutes watched on Twitch of a single gamer: 7,852,300 (Ninja)
• Gamers with the most unique viewers on Twitch:
  • Ninja: 437,960
  • Walshy: 348,460
• Red vs Blue Win Percentage: Red: 47.45%, Blue: 52.55%

CHANGES:

Spartan Abilities:

• Don’t like Sprint in your Halo? You’re in luck, as 343 will allow you to toggle off Sprint and all other Spartan Abilities in custom games.
• Increase base speed (faster base movement)
• Increase strafe acceleration (faster, more responsive strafing)
• Reduce top sprint speed (narrow the delta between base movement and sprint)
• Modify Ground Pound controls to prevent conflicts w/ crouch jumping
• General tuning & bug fixes for all Spartan Abilities (Thrusters, Clamber, Ground Pound, etc.)

Weapons:

• Goal is to balance all weapons to be equally effective both in and out of zoom while continuing to respect the function of each mode.
• 343 is changing the Hydra weapon to make it more effective when not zoomed so that it feels like a true power weapon.
• Sniper Rifle: improve scope experience to making it less “clunky” and faster to scope in
• DMR: adjust position of the scope to improve visibility
• Bring back the SPNKr Rocket Launcher as a legendary version of the weapon
• Reduce bonuses for automatic weapons in Smart-Link & w/ headshots
• Remove grenade detonation in mid-air based on weapon fire
• Ability to turn on/off vibration feedback for weapons
• General tuning and bug fixing for all weapons

Presentation

• Remember those intro and victory sequences, when Spartans would chest-bump and high-five? 343 now thinks that doesn’t quite fit with the game’s tone. As a result, you can expect the final sequences to feature considerably fewer chest bumps and high fives.
• Post-death replay: this will become an opt-in feature. After death, players will see a traditional follow-cam and have the option to view a replay of their death from the killer’s perspective (as long as the feature is enabled within the playlist)
• Medals: decrease frequency and number of medals displayed in the medal feed
• Spartan chatter: players will have the option to turn this on or off in the settings menu
• Adding highlights to placed/dropped weapons to make them easier to see
• General tuning for announcer and Spartan chatter to reduce the frequency of events and focus on the information that matters most to players

Competitive Skill Ranking

“Our skill rating system is one of the pillars for competitive play of Halo 5: Guardians and we’ll be continuing to refine it throughout development. The focus for our team coming out of the beta includes:

• Improved skill detection during placement phase
• Improved skill matching
• Improved team balancing
• Prevent skill boosting
• General bug fixing & tuning

Matchmaking

Did you think the Halo 5 matchmaking system didn’t adequately match-up players of a similar skill? Then you’re in luck, friend! 343 Industries stated that it’s tweaking the matchmaking system from the ground up and not only will you get into actual games faster but you’ll also be placed into more competitive matches on a much more regular basis.

Post-beta, the 343 team plans to focus on working on and improving the following multiplayer aspects:

• Much faster matches
• Better skill matching
• Better feedback to players in the lobby and matchmaking experiences
• Allow players to set desired datacenter for matchmaking (may impact matchmaking speed and skill balance)
• Improved party vs party matchmaking
• Hide CSR ranks until in match to de-incentivize quitting
• Punish quitters with CSR penalties and matchmaking bans

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

That about does it, though, boys and girls. As if we weren’t already looking forward to Halo 5 the same way we used to look forward to Christmas as a kid, now we’re looking forward to it even more so. Gee thanks 343 Industries!

Thanks to Blizzard making Warcraft III models available within the (ridiculously robust) Starcraft II map editor, it’s now conceivably possible to create a new Warcraft real-time strategy game. Since it’s been so long, practically everyone and their mother’s plumber is frothing at the mouth for Blizzard to finally give in and create some kind of sequel to Warcraft III.

Fortunately, fans of the famous RTS game no longer have depend on Blizzard themselves to do so. All that’s left now is there for some clever, enterprising fan to go about creating just such an update. Considering there’s over 3,000 materials from the game that have been made available — everything from the hero models to the NPC characters, structures and even spell effects, believe it or not.

So while Blizzard themselves may be too busy with their other projects to make an official Warcraft IV, they’ve gone ahead and given their fans literally everything necessary to make an unofficial Warcraft IV for the pining community.

For those of you who already have an Xbox Live Gold subscriber level, check out some of the deals that are currently on sale on the Xbox Live store. The complete list is below for Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Xbox One

Games

• Battlefield 4 – 60-67%
• Battlefield 4 Premium Edition – 50-60%
• EA Sports UFC – 67-75%
• Madden 15 Super Bowl Edition – 50-60%
• NHL 15 – 50-60%
• Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare – 67-75%
• Titanfall – 67-75%
• Titanfall Deluxe Edition – 67-75%
• NBA Live 15 Digital Edition – 60-67%
• Dragon Age Inquisition – 33-40%
• Dragon Age Inquisition Deluxe Edition – 33-40%
• NFS Rivals Complete Edition – 67-75%
• Peggle 2 Magical Masters Edition – 60-67%

Add-ons

• Battlefield 4 Premium –  50-60%
• Titanfall Season Pass – 67-75%

Xbox 360:

Games

• NFL Blitz – 75%
• NBA Jam On Fire Edition -67%
• Prototype – 50%
• Prototype 2 – 75%
• Kingdoms of Amalur – 80%
• Madden 15 – 60%
• NCAA Football 14 – 75%
• NHL 15 – 60%
• Titanfall Deluxe Edition – 75%
• Burnout Paradise – 75%
• Bulletstorm – 75%
• Crysis 3 – 80%
• Crysis 2 – 80%
• Crysis – 80%
• Dragon Age 2 – 80%
• Fight Night Champion – 80%
• Mirror’s Edge – 75%
• Need for Speed Most Wanted – 80%
• Need for Speed Rivals – 67%
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit – 80%
• Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare – 67%
• Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel – 80%
• Army of Two: The 40th Day – 75%
• Dead Space – 80%
• Dragon Age Origins – 70%
• Fuse – 80%
• Skate – 67%
• Skate 2 – 67%
• Skate 3 – 75%
• Dragon Age Origins: Awakening – 75%
• Syndicate – 80%

Add-ons

• Mass Effect 3: Genesis 2 – 50%
• Mass Effect 3: Citadel (1 of 2) – 50%
• Mass Effect 3: Leviathan – 50%
• Mass Effect 3: Omega – 50%
• Mass Effect 3: From Ashes – 50%
• Mass Effect 2: Genesis – 50%
• Mass Effect 3: Firefight Pack – 50%
• Mass Effect 2: Arrival – 50%
• Mass Effect 3: Groundside Resistance Pack – 50%
• Mass Effect 3: Alternate Appearance Pack 1 – 50%
• Titanfall Season Pass – 75%

Today, Ubisoft announced that Hurk Deluxe, a new piece of downloadable content for Far Cry 4, is available now on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and PC. Hurk Deluxe includes five missions playable in single-play, including Yak Farm, Blood Ruby and Hurk’s Redemption. The new content gives access to an arsenal of new weapons such as a harpoon gun for Hurk.

Hurk Deluxe is available as part of the Far Cry 4 Season Pass or can be purchased separately. The Season Pass includes Hurk Deluxe as well as the following content: The Syringe and Escape from Durgesh Prison, which are already available, and Overrun and Valley of the Yetis, both of which will be available soon.

The Far Cry 4 Season pass is available from PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, uPlay, Game, Amazon, and other game retailers. Check out the latest walkthrough below to see what’s in store.

With the Super Bowl less than a week away, EA Sports’ Madden NFL 15 simulations predict that the New England Patriots will win Super Bowl 49 over the Seattle Seahawks. With a final score of 28-24, New England will need a last minute touchdown drive to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat according to this year’s Madden. After an Earl Thomas III pick-six gives Seattle a 17-14 lead at the half, and then a nine-yard rumble by Marshawn Lynch into the endzone caps off the third quarter’s opening drive, Madden predicts Seattle would have a 24-14 second half lead on the Patriots.

Courtesy of what would end up being a 335-yard, four TD performance on the way to the Pete Rozelle trophy (Super Bowl MVP), however, Tom Brady would not be denied. He would lead New England to two late TD drives, including a pass to Julian Edelman for the game winning score as time expires.

If this prediction is accurate, the New England Patriots will have won their fourth Super Bowl in eight tries, with all the wins coming from Tom Brady at the helm. There are five other franchises that have won at least four Super Bowls (Pittsburgh Steelers, Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants). The Seahawks will try to prove the computers wrong, though, and win their second of back-to-back titles in what amounts to their third trip to the Super Bowl.

In my personal opinion, I feel if Seattle’s defense plays to their potential, and the offense takes better care of the ball than they did against Green Bay, Seattle will be tough to beat, even with the New England running on all cylinders.  If Seattle struggles, I still don’t see Tom Brady throwing for four touchdowns on Seattle’s defense. With this in mind, my prediction is that Seattle will come out with a victory and win their second Super Bowl title. Regardless of the outcome, I hope to watch a better game than last year’s Seattle thump against Denver 43-8.

Gearbox recently revealed that Lady Aurelia that Baroness, otherwise known as Lady Hammerlock, will be available as a playable character in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel today. Lady Hammerlock will be available starting today on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC via Steam.

“Aurelia is the heir of the Hammerlock family fortune, but when she’s not riding her hoverbike through the endless hallways of her orbital turbomansion, she’s out hunting the latest and greatest game in the galaxy,” Gearbox explains. “If these expeditions should put her in conflict with her younger brother Alistair – aka Sir Hammerlock – all the better. The only thing more fun than shooting a rare animal Alistair intended to study is the look of abject horror and surprise on his face once Aurelia wears its carcass like a jaunty scarf.

“Normally, Lady Hammerlock would never be seen within a light year of Pandora, but she’s grown bored as her turbomansion grows cold, while her lust for violence grows hot. She’s headed to Elpis with nothing more than an expensive gun, an experimental Cryo diadem, and a powerful belief that shooting angry things in the face is a good deal of fun.”

Lady Aurelia’s action skill is called Cold As Ice, which lets her throw out a Frost Diadem Shard that seeks out enemies and attaches to them, dealing constant damage. If the target dies, the shard will move onto a new enemy and continue to do so until a target doesn’t die from damage.

As with all playable character, she has three skill trees available: Huntress, Cold Money, and Contractual Aristocracy. The Huntress tree focuses on sniping, while Cold Money focuses on ice damage and includes a skill that can add Cryo damage to any gun. Finally, her third skill three, Contractual Aristocracy, allows her to turn any co-op teammate into her servant, earning bonuses for their kill in addition to her own.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel‘s fourth, and final, add-on will set players off on a brand new campaign set inside the mind of Claptrap.

Just over a year ago, Bohemia Interactive released DayZ on Steam Early Access. On January 22nd, DayZ achieved 3 million slaes. This is the standalone version of the popular Arma 2 modification created by Dean Hall, that has started and defined an entire genre of video gaming and inspired other gaming studios.

Since the beginning of the DayZ Early Access program, the team has done a great job at keeping the game updated on a regular basis. Since the initial release, 24 updates have been added to the game. These updates are focused on improving the over quality and has even redesigned some of the most significant features including the inventory, multiplayer architecture and map improvements. As the DayZ team continues to outline their development plan for 2015, there are many more improvements in the pipeline.

“We would like to say thank you to every single one of the three million players, that have joined us on the journey of making DayZ. You all have helped make DayZ the best open world, zombie survival game. This is an amazing achievement, and we are really looking forward to start sharing with you all of our game design improvements, anti-hack solutions and other optimizations we have been working on for a majority of the last year.”

Starbreeze AB recently just announced DLC pack no. 15 and 16 for PAYDAY 2, titled “The Bomb Heists” and “Dragan Character Pack”, successfully launched on Steam on January 22nd. The DLC packs are now available for purchase for $6.99 via Steam and other digital distribution channels.

The Bomb Heists

•  A new contact, called the Butcher, brought to life by actress Mira Furlan (LOST, Babylon 5)
• Two all-new heist where you steal a bomb from a police protected train or a ship
• Pre-planning; plan the Bomb heists beforehand so you can perform the perfect crime
• Four new masks, materials and patterns
• The LEO pistol, a new secondary weapon with accompanying weapon modifications

Dragan Character Pack

• A new crew member called Dragan, the first Croatian member of the PAYDAY gang
• The new Lion’s Roar Assault Rifle with accompanying weapon modifications
• Dragan’s own personal Cleaver melee weapon
• Dragan’s mask that everyone identifies him with
• A new perk deck called the Infiltrator, focusing on using the environment to gain an upper hand

“This release is very exciting for us at Starbreeze; for the first time ever, an external partner has created the DLC. Lion Game Lion have made a fantastic job and we look forward to working together again. As for the DLC’s themselves, we introduce a Croatian character called Dragan to the PAYDAY gang, portrayed by Dragomir Mršic. He is cruel, brutal and utterly ruthless. We are also proud to present Mira Furlan as our latest contact named the Butcher. She tasks the PAYDAY gang to perform two new Bomb heists for an explosive reward.” said Bo Andersson Klint, CEO, Starbreeze AB.

“Finishing our first DLC packages for PAYDAY 2 with Starbreeze as our publisher marks an historic achievement for us as a studio. For me personally, having been part of OVERKILL before I started Lion Game Lion, this is a very special day. Having the type of developer-publisher relationship we have is very unique. We look forward to continue working with Starbreeze Studios.” said Nikica Petrusic President, Lion Game Lion

Over the last few months we’ve been waiting patiently for the release of Evolve. Today we were given a look at the full survival guide and all of what is to be expected in this highly anticipated title from 2kGames and Turtle Rock Studios. Get a full detailed description of what to expect from all of the content that will be included in the game. So grab your friends, gear up, and fight for survival or be extinct.

Evolve will be coming soon to the Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC on February 10th, 2015.

 

If you were upset that a zombie mode-which as been a staple in the Call of Duty franchise since World at War-was absent from Advanced Warfare on launch, then show no more worry as the new trailer for the Exo Zombies mode will prove it is worth the wait. The game shows four untrained and unprepared Atlas employees that are forced to survive a zombie apocalypse thanks to their friends at the Atlas Corporation.

Like previous entries, Exo Zombies features an amazing cast starring John Malkovich, Bill Paxton, Rose McGowan and Jon Bernthal that are all playable characters that must fight together against the zombie horde. As shown in the trailer, four will fight hordes of technologically advanced zombies at the Atlas facility. While the zombie mode always came free with the base game, that isn’t the case for Advanced Warfare. You’ll need to purchase the Havoc DLC which will release on Xbox Live with other consoles to soon follow on January 27th, 2015.

Be sure to check out the Exo Zombies trailer below.