Halo 3 Beta could experience some short-term problems tomorrow

Bungie has let Halo 3 Beta players know that they will be uploading feedback data from the game for a short bit of time tomorrow. During that time (10 am to 1pm PST) gamers could experience some crashes during gameplay.

All of the details are included in their post right here.

Pac-Man, The Big Apple and YOU!!

Most of you are probably aware that the Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championship takes place in just a couple of weeks on June 5th. What you may not be aware of is that the event is open to the public PROVIDED you get yourself on the invitation list.

The folks over at Gamerscoreblog.com have made it easy to grab an invite by including the email link to contact in their Pac-Man post here.

Not only will you get a chance to witness the best Pac-Man players from around the world as they battle it out for World Champion status, Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man's original creator, will be on hand to present the prize!

It looks to be a very fun event and I hope to see you there!

Why New England residents are considered rude

We in New England are well aware of our reputation as being rude and unfriendly people, but those of you who have never taken up residency here in our area may not be aware of the reason why.

Tuesday's high temperature in my area was 86 degrees with enough humidity in the air to make it feel much warmer than that. Yesterday, the high temperature reached only 48 degrees with a fairly strong wind and rain throughout the day. That's a nearly 20 degree swing in only two days! After turning on the air conditioner to cool the house down mid-week, I found myself switching back over to heat last night due to the fact that the house was freezing cold.

Want to know why we here are so angry?? We never know what to wear when we leave the house in the morning!!!!!!!

Bungie and Microsoft re-mailing codes

All may soon be well in the world of Halo 3 beta code winners. According to an update on Gamerscoreblog.com and Bungie.net, new emails were sent to all winners in the 3 ways to play competition.

Winners are being advised to keep a very close eye on their junk email box in the event that the message is flagged as spam. By staggering the mailings and slightly modifying the sending address, Bungie and Microsoft hope to avoid the filters, but they can not guarantee it.

Those who still have not received an emailed code by 4:00 pm PDT are advised to call Xbox support and, once your winners-status has been confirmed, they will attempt to help retrieve your code.

Halo 3 beta launch smooth as broken glass

Yesterday's official launch of the Halo 3 multiplayer beta drew a number of different emotions from gamers, depending mostly upon which side of the fence they ended up on.

For those who had received a code for the beta, either through a competition or direct from Microsoft, their download experience went according to plan. Those who had intended to use their copy of Crackdown as their point-of-entry however, found themselves waiting until around 9:30 pm Eastern Time last night before they were able to jump into the fray.

Alas, not all of the issues have been corrected as many who won entry via the Rule of Three competition that Bungie conducted have still not received their codes to download the beta. Frustrated for sure, those who are still not in have created a thread on the Bungie.net forum dedicated to those who are still waiting. As of this writing, the thread contained 2050 posts, yet still no word from Bungie on the subject.

The one upside to this unfortunate mishap is the fact that Bungie will now be extending the beta for an additional 4 days (ending now on June 10th ) in order to make up for the inconvenience. However, until all codes have been distributed as promised, this ordeal is still ongoing.

It's truly unfortunate that an event like this that so many gamers were looking forward to has turned out the way it has. With any luck, Bungie will resolve the rest of the outstanding issues today and we can all do what we planned to do originally; Play the heck out of Halo 3.

Latest podcast episode now posted

Episode 16 of The Rabies Shot featuring the interview with Bungie's own Frankie is now available.

Hope y'all enjoy it :)

Halo 3 beta media and impressions

Once again, I have been failing miserably in keeping this blog at all updated. I could list a number of reasons as to why, but they sound too much like excuses so better I skip that part...

So why all of a sudden have I made this effort to post? I wanted to share some of the great experience I had yesterday at the Halo 3 Preview event that took place in New York (thanks to Microsoft and others for the invite).

Not only did I have a chance to play the beta, I also had the pleasure of meeting a number of really great people from the industry including Frank (Frankie) O'Connor from Bungie who was kind enough to let me interview him for the podcast.

The show should be available later this evening. I'll be sure to post here when it's ready. In the meantime, I invite you to check out the photos and video I shot while at the event as well as the article I wrote regarding my first impression of the game.

I hope you enjoy the content and I appreciate you stopping by.