Halo 3

So, with its work on Halo finally done after ten long years, Bungie has commemorated this year's Bungie Day by bidding a fond and emotional farewell to the franchise that made its name, passing on earnest good wishes both to its fans, and to the new Microsoft team taking over the series.

In a blog post on Bungie.net, the studio has related not feelings of sadness, but of hope, both for the future of Halo and for the future of Bungie's upcoming works as it begins its new life after the Chief. It's all rather heartfelt, but being Bungie, slightly overblown in the gravitas stakes too. So while I have no doubt that the post was written with tongue placed somewhat within cheek, I felt that mere written text could not do Bungie's sentiments justice. Bungie's final words to the Halo community deserved something more. A more significant delivery. So I decided that a dramatic reading was necessary.

I called Simon Callow, but he was busy, so I made it myself. I have a beard so I think I'm pretty well qualified.

This time next week we’ll be buried under an avalanche of E3 news. Every outlet (including GR) will be tripping over itself to get news posted first, to be a part of the biggest announcements of the world’s premier videogame show. But in just a few weeks, all that hustle and bustle will fade away, and all that breaking news will be replaced by even newer headlines. The cutting edge reports, the reveal trailers, all of it will be commonplace and old.

With that in mind, we thought it’d be (moderately) entertaining to look back five years and recall those moments from E3 2006. Back then, these stories lit up the internet and fueled speculation for months – today, they’re ancient relics most of us barely remember...

As you're likely already aware, last week we posted our 100 best games of all time list. Judging by the response from you and other readers around the internets, we ruffled a few feathers and "left out" some key games. We assumed this would happen (of course it would, there's no way we'll include every game everyone ever loved) and spent a big chunk of our latest podcast defending and expanding on said list.

This discussion was part of TalkRadar 145, but if you'd prefer to hear it in isolation (and not part of a two-hour podcast), we're presenting it to you now for easy access.

Sometimes GamesRadar goes above and beyond the CoD just to entertain you. Most other times we drastically underestimate how long ideas take to execute, and end up sacrificing health, sleep and personal play time just to see it through. This was bit of all that.

Every now and then, be it at work or play, we all feel like saying: “Screw it. I simply can’t be assed.” There’s no shame in it. After all, apathy is both big and clever. But what if some of our favourite game characters took this bone idle approach to their adventures…

We love the original Halo. So the scalding hot rumours that 343 Industries (Microsoft’s new internally-formed Halo studio) is about to remake the original, in honour of the Xbox classic’s ten year anniversary, obviously pleases our inner Spartans. As soon as we had said Spartans removed with invasive surgery (that shit’s just not healthy), we got to thinking about what we’d like to see from a remake of Master Chief’s first adventure. Read inside to witness the misty-eyed wish list with the blinking holes in your head.

Halo wasn't the first shooter. Halo wasn't the first to introduce online multiplayer. Halo wasn't even the first Bungie game to feature an armored peacekeeper and sexy female AI battling aliens in outer space. Halo, in many ways, is unoriginal.

Yet no other series – with the possible exception of Grand Theft Auto – has had such a clear, obvious and indisputable impact on the videogame industry over the past decade. To welcome the release of Halo: Reach tomorrow, which also marks the end of Bungie's involvement with their best-selling creation, here are seven of the franchise's biggest influences...

Games are no stranger to wild crossover events. From Smash Bros to Marvel vs Capcom, we’ve seen some of the industry’s biggest names go head-to-head for years now. But as games become increasingly expensive to produce and market, publishers are always on the lookout for the “sure thing,” something that’ll appeal to a wide audience right out of the gate. What better bet than more crossovers between existing, surefire hits?

Street Fighter x Tekken is just the latest. There will be more mashups coming, and there’s no doubt some of them will mix up series we’ve been dying to see together for years. So, in the wake of SF x T, what once-improbable crossovers could developers be conjuring up next?

You've read this sort of feature before. Website X points out that Character Y looks a whole lot like Celebrity Z. Readers agree or disagree. Publish and repeat. The articles are always fun, but eventually, the same obvious choices show up again and again.

So what makes mine any different? I didn't decide these matches – an all-knowing, face-recognizing, database-searching, algorithm-crunching computer did!

The results were… unexpected.

The purpose of any good trailer is to sex up the thing it's selling. That or give you informative warnings about head lice prevention. So we get that games sometimes appear more exciting than they actually are when they're compressed down into 90 second chunks, with ninja editing skills and a rousing soundtrack.

But bugger us if watching the Halo: Reach trailer then seeing the playable footage from Microsoft's E3 conference isn't the equivalent of Songs of Praise being advertised with a Debby Does Dallas trailer. Take a gander inside to see what we're talking about.