Halofest, One Day Later August 7, 2010

I attended the Halofest last night at one of my local GameStops, and let me tell you it was quite an adventure, well the getting there was quite the adventure, the event itself was pretty low key.

After 9 o’clock the store closed (officially) and they started letting people in to watch the show.  The show was a 30 minute broadcast through GameStop TV’s feed.  It was broken up into a single segment and looped three times over the course of the night.  This was pretty considerate for people like me who got every single red light between my home and the GameStop and came in a few minutes late.

There were two giveaways last night as well.  There was a text to win event (which has since been deactivated, it was only good between the times of the event) where you could win the Halo Reach full sized statue shown at E3, and there was a local contest where you could win a copy of the Legendary Edition of Halo Reach (one winner per store).

As for the substance of the video content of the night, well there were a few positives.  Rooster Teeth posted the video they made especially for the night, you can enjoy it as much as I did.

There was also a pretty funny video of TSquared trying to break into 343 Industries (wrong place genius, you’re supposed to be breaking into Bungie) like Solid Snake in a cardboard box.  When he fails he’s just let inside by Frankie.

Things I learned from the event.  Well unfortunately most of the content was multiplayer strategies, to a person not so much interested in multiplayer, there was very little single player information provided that we didn’t already know.  I did however learn that the new firefight modes will have a versus mode, enabling you to play as Covenant or Spartans against your friends or in matchmaking.  The cool part is that at halftime you can switch teams.

I also caught what appeared to be a new weapon called the Target Locator.  It reminded me a lot of the Ion Painter and Hammer of Dawn, in that it fires a harmless laser which when fully targeted will bring down a rain of destruction from orbit in the form of tons of rockets.  Perfect for taking out Phantoms.

The downside of the night?  Age discrimination is alive and well it seems.  GameStop was throwing out everyone who didn’t have a form of identification on them.  My neighbor, who helped me get Recon in Halo 3, was turned away immediately.  You would’ve thought we were going into some kind of bar.

You can also check out Halo Reach‘s official GameStop website here.  Hopefully more content will be posted up.

Oh and by the way everyone, Halo Reach was confirmed Gold yesterday, which means it’s complete.  The game for some reason is still scheduled for release September 14th, 2010, it’s not going to need 39 days to manufacture, manufacturing takes about two weeks, even for large quantities.  Release it early, Microsoft.