Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

halo posts

Filed under: Gaming, Freeware, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Call of Duty for the iPhone will track your World at War kills

Activision has released Call of Duty for the iPhone... but don't get too excited, it's not exactly what you think. The first-person shooter hasn't quite been ported yet. Instead, they've released a "Call of Duty: World at War companion," which instead lets you track the activity on the popular World War II shooter game. You can track all of your ingame stats, and even follow your friends in the game and what they've done with their characters as well. And the app also comes with a news browser, to keep you up to date on the latest map releases and updates with the game. It's completely free, though you of course need a Call of Duty: World of War game for Xbox 360 or Playstation to actually get anything out of it.

In that sense, this app isn't quite so notable for what it is (World at War wasn't nearly as popular as Call of Duty 4, and this app is specifically about Treyarch's game), as what it portends: with Blizzard releasing their Armory app and a few other game companies releasing "companion" apps like this, we could be in for a very interesting holiday videogame season this year. Ports or translations of games don't do much to sell copies of the real games (as they tend to be either too similar or too different to the parent games), but "companions" like this can represent added functionality, and thus can do a lot to help and promote games on other platforms (imagine a Halo ODST app that sent you a push notification when your friend was playing or got a higher XP score than you did). This is far from the last we'll see of "companion" apps like this.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Cool tools, Freeware, iPhone

iHaloStats puts Halo info on the iPhone


This little app combines pretty much my two favorite things right now: my copy of Halo 3 and my iPhone. iHaloStats pulls all of the information from your Halo 3 matches available on Bungie's site (and if you haven't played the game, yes there is a ton of it -- every shot, grenade throw, and double kill is tracked for you), and puts it all in a convenient, if a little complicated, format on your iPhone. All of your ranks, kills, skills, medals, and promotions are all there.

And in fact, it's not just your info -- you can punch anyone's gamertag in and instantly see how far they've gotten in game. Is your friend bragging that he finally beat it on Legendary? Dial him up and check out that claim with ease.

Very impressive, and to tell the truth, I'd like to see more tools like this (maybe even some official ones?) to extend the various games we play. Considering how tracked and connected videogames can be nowadays, it's exciting to see possibilities like this arising.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is fighting through enemy territory to get to the Mac


Apple Insider has some shiny new Enemy Territory: Quake Wars screens for your drooling pleasure. I have to say-- the last few Quake games (and I'll include Doom III in that list) haven't really floated my boat much. As good as the graphics look, that old id charm just doesn't seem the same with games like Portal and Halo around. But Enemy Territory was definitely a winner (I played it on my Powerbook quite a bit), and so ET:QW is sure to be some good times.

Unfortunately, Aspyr is porting the game, and their id ports in the past haven't exactly been up to snuff. Plus, apparently they've been hampered by updates to the already-released Windows version, so the Mac version is still only in alpha, while the other versions are out in the wild, already letting folks shoot at each other. And worst of all, AI says there is no online in the alpha version (!). Call us foolish, but we'll at least hold out hope until we see the actual release-- maybe with id making a conscious effort towards Mac gaming, Aspyr will get this one right.

Filed under: Macworld, Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends

Bungie says Mac games are still a possibility

Macworld has a quick chat with Bungie after this morning's big announcement that the company is "evolving" away from Microsoft a bit, and the good news is that a new Mac release from our favorite game developer (before they were bought out by the Evil Empire, that is) is not out of the question.

Spokeman Brian Jarrard plays pretty loose with the announcement, and says that while Bungie and Microsoft are going to retain their developer and publisher relationship, his company won't "rule out anything going forward." He says the move will let Bungie "[control] our destiny, and that puts us in a position where we could put ourselves back on the [Mac] platform definitively again."

We can only hope. EA and id games made a big appearance at this years' WWDC, and I think I speak for many, many Mac gamers when I say we'd love to see Bungie announcing a brand new game at Macworld in a few months.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Developer

Rumor confirmed: Bungie is free, kind of

Wow. The rumors were true -- Bungie is "evolving" its relationship with Microsoft, and "embarking on a path" to become, once again, an independent developer. Pretty amazing.

Unfortunately, the press release from MS makes it sound like Bungie's not quite free and clear yet. Microsoft expects Bungie to keep developing Halo, and working with them on future Halo-related projects. But that could be Microsoft just trying to look at things through rose-colored glasses. Or then again, it might not: the official word from Bungie is that they remain partners, and "nothing has changed." What a shame.

My official guess (TM) is that Bungie will release a brand new intellectual property, and that it will arrive not only on the Xbox, but on other consoles as well (possibly including the Mac, but let's not count our chickens before they hatch). For all their talk of a split, Bungie still isn't as independent as it once was. Microsoft is still in the picture, and it's pretty unlikely that Bungie will go back to developing specifically for the Mac again any time soon.

via x3f -- thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Apple, Mac mini

Up to 3GB of RAM in the Mac minis

Reader John L kindly dropped us a tip that Other World Computing has upped their Mac mini memory upgrades up to a whopping 3GB of RAM. And in fact, if you really want a Mini that flies, they'll even squeeze 4GB under the hood, even though they say the Mac Mini can't really handle that much.

The performance testing they did just completely confounds me, however-- in situations where lots of memory was needed (the "RAM Hog" setup), 4GB clearly beats everything else. In fact, in most of the regular testing-- the Photoshop test and the "Stress Test" the memory runs exactly how you'd expect: more memory means quicker processing. But in the last two tests, the Halo test and the Xbench test, the mini actually ran faster at just 1GB (which is what it ships with) than the 3GB, and almost as fast as the 4GB. The reasons for that are probably technical (too technical for me, although I'm sure our talented commenters have some answers), but it seems that in some situations, extra RAM just doesn't help.

Still, in situations that ask for a lot of memory, having more will definitely give you a nice bonus in speed, and it looks like the mini can now hold more than ever. When I buy mine (in October when Leopard drops, assuming Steve lets it live that long), I'll probably just double it to a reasonable 2GB. But if you want that extra power, it's good to know it's there.

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


Follow us on Twitter!
 TUAW [Cafepress]

Featured Galleries

DNC Macs
Macworld 2008 Keynote
Macworld 2008 Build-up
Google Earth for iPhone
Podcaster
Storyist 2.0
AT&T Navigator Road Test
Bento for iPhone 1.0
Scrabble for iPhone
Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer Briefcase
Apple Vanity Plates
Apple booth Macworld 07
WorldVoice Radio
Quickoffice for iPhone 1.1.1
Daylite 3.9 Review
DiscPainter
Mariner Calc for iPhone
2009CupertinoBus
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
MLB.com At Bat 2009
Macworld Expo 2007 show floor

 

More Apple Analysis

AOL Radio TUAW on Stitcher