$5 million lawsuit filed against Microsoft over Halo 3, Xbox 360 problems

Halo 3 is designed from the ground up to be compatible with the Xbox 360, right? A federal lawsuit filed last week against Microsoft and the game's developer, Bungie, claims it is not. The suit alleges that Halo 3 "routinely, consistently, and systematically 'froze,' 'crashed,' or 'locked up.'" The suit then claims that these issues "disrupted game play". Yes, freezing, crashing and locking up would disrupt game play. The plaintiff, Randy Nunez, is seeking class-action status along with $5 million in damages plus costs and attorneys' fees. In a country where you can win a huge amount of money for spilling coffee on yourself, I suppose frivolous lawsuits like this are inevitable.

While the famous McDonald's coffee lawsuit is often unjustly cited as an example of what is wrong with our civil justice system, the facts in that case actually warranted the jury's decision. In this lawsuit against Microsoft and Bungie, the plaintiff is claiming that interruption of his game play warrants a $5 million check. Even if you could prove that Microsoft and Bungie intentionally released Halo 3 with knowledge of hardware/software compatibility issues -- which is a tough sell considering Microsoft's widely publicized $1 BILLION investment in correcting the Xbox 360's hardware issues, including extending the console's warranty length to three years -- how can you claim that interrupted gaming is worth $5 million?

I love my games, and yes, it is frustrating when serious performance issues ruin a gaming experience, but no GAMING experience is worthy of $5 million in compensation. Hellooo, McFly!! Perhaps Mr. Nunez should consider using his time to acquire gainful employment rather than wasting our court system's precious time with this bunk.

Latest on Halo 3 DLC from Bungie

Halo 3's motto has been "Finish the Fight", and soon (hopefully) you'll get to finish the fight some more with new downloadable content including new maps. One of those maps is called O.K. Corral. According to Bungie's Luke Smith, "it is an asymmetrical medium-sized map and O.K. Corral had its lighting tweaked considerably. The changes shifted the sun’s position, giving the entire map a warm death-at-sunset feel." Sounds cool to me.

He also dropped some more details about "Jodrell Bank" and "Purple Reign". The most interesting to me was "Vandelay", which Smith says is the simplest map Bungie has ever made. It is specifically intended to be used in the forge mode of the game for creating some maniacally fun maps.

As far as when you can expect to actually receive the new goodies, he was pretty vague. We'll update you when we hear more.

Halo 3 Matchmaking Patch Available Now!

Bungie has released a patch today on Xbox Live for Halo 3's matchmaking system. The big fixes are listed below. Glad to see less Shotty Sniper!!

Big Team Battle matches are now 16-player affairs.
In the Team Slayer playlist, the appearance of Shotty Snipers has been greatly reduced.
Now, when players veto Shotty Snipers, the game that results from the veto will not be Shotty Snipers.
In one-sided VIP matches, the attacking team will now see a waypoint for the VIP they are hunting.
In Lone Wolves, Slayer gametypes will appear more frequently.

Always good to see a developer respond quickly to player feedback. Thanks Bungie!

Halo 3 - Job Well Done!

For those of you in a hurry I'm not going to waste a lot of words giving you my opinions of Halo 3. No, instead, I am going to sum up the best way I know. Simply put, Halo 3 has surpassed almost every high expectation I had for it before release.

Graphically, it is a stunning game, especially in terms of set pieces. Many of the areas in which you find yourself cause you to take pause, in slack- jawed awe. Your first experience in Mombasa is a glorious gaming moment to be sure. Other times, you'll be joyfully going along laying waste to countless enemies, when you'll unintentionally look up into the sky only to be caught up in the splendor of an aerial battle taking place many miles above the planet's surface.

Halo 3 does a great job of offering a tailored experience as well. If you are a shooter noob who has never touched a controller, you can still beat the game on the "Easy" difficulty level. And if you are a well-worn veteran of countless fragfests you will still find a mighty challenge in the "Legendary" difficulty level.

My only complaints about Halo 3 are pretty nitpicky things. Some of the level design (I'm looking at you Cortana) is a little confusing and some of the faces of your human allies aren't exactly up to par with the rest of game's graphics. But really, other than that, there is not a whole lot to complain about with Halo 3.

Multiplayer is an absolute blast. 4 Player cooperative play through the campaign is fantastic fun. Matchmaking is everything gamers have come to expect from the Halo franchise...in other words, it is unparallelled. The new theater options allow for after-the-fact viewing of complete play sessions, repleat with options for fast forwarding, rewinding, viewing from any angle and editing and saving for later sharing with friends via Xbox Live. It truly is a feature that should find it's way to all online multiplayer games.

As a fan of the original Halo who was sorely disappointed with Halo 2, I can tell you that Halo 3 has been a thrilling ride and I am impressed with the job Bungie has done delivering an engrossing story, fabulous settings, excellent gameplay and options galore. If this truly is the end for Master Chief, I don't think he could have wished for a much better send off.