By now I’m sure that nearly all of you reading this are aware of my love/hate relationship with Halo 3. Yes, I play it daily and love and hate every minute of it. This video, made to reflect the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” ads, absolutely nails some of the major flaws that can be found in the game.

What the f***? The BR’s broken.

As any faithful Halo 3 player knows, the new map “Cold Storage” was debuted two nights ago at MLG’s competition at San Diego. The map, which is a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved’s “Chill Out” is Bungie’s final announcement of the new map pack which will also contain the new maps Purple Reign and Moonbase Alpha. Above is some of the first footage debuted at MLG San Diego in which MLG Halo 3 pros Karma and LegendPimps teamed with Bungie developers Shishka and Luke Smith to play a quick 2 on 2 game on the new map.

In all honesty, being a huge Halo fan I’m not very impressed by this announcement. Chill Out never really stood out as one of the best maps in the Halo series, and I was hoping that Bungie would announce a remake or reimagination of Midship, Sanctuary or even Blood Gulch. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the remake is when the third map pack releases later in the year.

Dearest Bungie:

I realize that this may or may not make me sound like a broken record, but Halo 3’s matchmaking system is broken. No, not simply flawed or a little borked but full-blown broken.

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I am a strange person. I’ve heard it all throughout my life. There was nothing more fun to me as a child than getting up on a Saturday morning, watching cartoons with a big-ass bowl of cereal and then spending the rest of the day gaming on any and all systems that I had access to. Growing up a gamer in the early eighties has enabled me to see the rise of every game console except for the original Pong. I’ve been gaming since I learned to read at the age of three, when I learned how to run my old man’s Commodore 64 all because I wanted to play Time Pilot.

Many of you have been fervently reading and commenting on my other posts that I’ve done since my inception to MEGATONik, and I can’t thank you enough for your support. In thanks to you, the community, I’ve decided to put in a ton of work and bring you a special post that near and dear to my heart, my Top 50 Console Games of All Time.

I will try my damnedest to explain the reasons why I think why a certain game is deserved of it’s spot. Certainly many of you will disagree with the order I have put the games in but I always welcome your comments and suggestions. It is thanks to all of you in the community that I have been able to hone my craft by subjecting you to my subjective opinions about video games. Without any further ado… let’s get this thing started! Hit the jump to be defeated by a wall of text designed to titillate and please you.

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I’ve heard plenty of people complain about how melee works in Halo 3, and while it may not annoy everyone there are those that find it to be an issue. Fortunately, Bungie has been listening to the community’s feedback in between designing new maps and building castles with their money (or maybe pulling a Scrooge McDuck if that’s their style), so the next update will include some changes to the way melee is handled. Certain aspects like shield depletion and simultaneous strikes, among others, will be adjusted to make it more fair:

The bottom line is that we felt it could be improved without alienating folks who hadn’t noticed any problem and so we’ve been working with real life players, like one or two external hardcore clans, as well as the MLG guys, to make sure the changes are satisfactory, balanced, fair and fun.

What I think is really great is that they aren’t only listening to suggestions, but letting outside sources actually be a part of fixing the problem and making improvements. Getting direct help from the players themselves seems like the best way to get it right. Hopefully the vast majority of players end up liking it as well, since they are going pretty in-depth with what needs to be changed to make sure it will actually be better:

We chatted about the general nature of the changes – subtle versus significant, perceived fairness versus actual fairness, system link versus online. Then we rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in. Obviously the MLG guys wanted to see the nature of the changes, so we played a couple of games where points were only awarded for front-facing melees, just to force the issue. The number of simultaneous deaths goes up as a result of some of the changes – but it was the visceral response we were looking for.

Looks like those of you who always blame your losses on cheap melees will have to think of a new excuse (perhaps blaming the rest of the team for being “noobs” and not helping?), since bashing someone over the head with a gun will soon be a much more refined action. The update, which will include a lot of other changes in addition to the melee fix, should be out in a few weeks.

Not only does the Halo series promote violence, but now it’s starting a new trend with school kids: teabagging. The Asbury Park Press reports that in Point Pleasant Beach, kids are teabagging each other outside of school grounds.

The report states:

A group of boys has been involved in bullying others, and officials said their actions have included physical attacks, taunting and sexually harassing victims by making their crotches touch other boys’ heads while fully clothed — something apparently inspired by the Halo video game series, in which players can perform a posturing move over a defeated enemy.

Jane Chmielewski said her son, a seventh-grader, was assaulted by a pack of boys who then sexually harassed him. However, since that incident took place outside school grounds, district officials said they were not able to investigate the situation or punish those involved.

Jane Chmielewski’s son was apparently approached by 10 boys, put in a headlock, and teabagged. He was also recorded with a cell phone camera. Before this incident happened, another altercation occurred, in which the boy was thrown to the ground, kneed, and got a garbage can placed over his head.

Schools classify this as sexual harassment, and that this new teabagging trend is most likely inspired by the Halo series. The Board of Education has introduced a new policy that allows them to punish students bullying outside of school grounds. The punishments range from verbal warning, to expulsion.

Get ready for some incredibly big numbers because I’m about to unload 2007 videogame sales on you and they are really massive. According to the NPD group overall videogame sales (console software, hardware and accessories, etc., etc.) were nearly $18 billion for 2007. This would be an increase of 43 percent over 2006 and is also commonly referred to as a shit-ton of money. Someone better be pulling a Scrooge McDuck money vault swim right now or it’s all going to waste if you ask me.

Breaking the numbers down, software sales totaled $8.64 billion for the year, an increase of 34 percent over 2006 with Halo 3 and Wii Play being the top selling games of the year with 4.8 million and 4.21 million units sold respectively. Looks like a free controller can do a lot for a game. Hardware wise it’s no surprise that the Wii and the DS dominated the market selling 8.5 million and 6.29 million units sold, respectively. Xbox 360 followed, selling 4.62 million, PS2 sold 3.97 million, PSP sold 3.82 million, and PS3 sold the least, with 2.56 million sold during the year. Of course with a year like this even coming in last isn’t that bad as the PS3 has been seeing a steady resurgence and sales are up for everyone.

Thanks mostly to the Wii and its plethora of peripherals (say that three times fast) peripheral sales were up 52 percent with sales reaching 2.26 billion dollars. The Wii Remote and nunchuck were the top sellers despite the release of this. Hit the jump for a list of the top selling games and some quotes from everyone’s favorite quote givers, analysts.

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I don’t know about all of you wonderful readers out there, but there’s nothing that I love more than making Top 10 lists. Maybe it’s a genetic imperative that I inherited from my OCD father. Or, it could be the hours of David Letterman I watched as a kid. Whatever the cause may be, it warped my mind into the categorizing, importance-assigning machine that it is today.

With that being said, tonight’s Top 10 is one that many of you out there will either be enthralled by or absolutely disappointed with. To see what type of reader you are, just click that little jump down there. You know you need to.

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A couple of weeks ago, we brought news that new downloadable maps were coming for one of the best shooters of the year, Halo 3. Earlier today, the maps went up on Xbox Live for a price of 800 MS points. The three maps are detailed below:

* The symmetrical valley of Standoff, with its entrenched bases and fields of boulders is ideal for mid-sized objective and Slayer game types.
* The vast, labyrinthine passages of the Rat’s Nest bring something completely new to the multiplayer experience: an indoor vehicle paradise. Strongly influenced by the Campaign mode, this map is ideal for big team battles.
* Foundry is the ultimate Forge map. Players can edit every single object in this voluminous industrial warehouse, placing stairways, walls, bridges, and tunnels to create an entirely new play space and build almost any kind of map imaginable.

While 800 MS points (or $10) may seem like a lot for three maps that will be available in a couple of months, hardcore Halo fans, such as myself, won’t be able to resist.