Get it here! [bungie.org]

Note: Hot Blooded Gaming does not vouch for the integrity of the files linked to herein. We attempt to make sure that there is no malware, but we are not perfect. Download at your own risk.

Marathon was considered to be the Macintosh’s answer to Doom, and has inspired quite a cult following. Those of you familiar with Halo’s history may know a little bit about Marathon, often considered to be Halo’s precursor (and, indeed, created by Bungie Studios before they were bought by Microsoft.) There are many parallels and references to the Marathon universe and storyline throughout the Halo series, and luckily, we’re able to play them all for free!

Marathon: Aleph One is an open source port of the Marathon: Durandal engine, created in order to make the games playable on modern hardware with some graphical and user interface updates. Following the popularity of the project, Bungie released the official files for Marathon, Marathon: Durandal, and Marathon: Infinity, the entire trilogy of the series, for free on the internet. (You’re also able to buy an upgraded version of Marathon: Durandal on the Xbox Live Arcade.)

Marathon is an old-school shooter, but it laid a foundation for Bungie to create the epic Halo franchise. Here, you’ll find a shield system (rechargable at certain areas, where shields never runs out!); enemies with similar names to enemies in Halo (Hunters, for example) and even the SPNKR Rocket Launcher.

Not only are these games cool from the point of view of a player looking to “get more Halo,” they’re fantastic Doom-style shooters with an amazing storyline told throughout the game in the form of terminals. There’s quite a bit of reading but there’s a lot of depth that makes the game that much more enjoyable.

At the site, hosted on the same servers as halo.bungie.org, you’ll find the Aleph One program and the scenario files for all three of the Marathon games. I recommend starting at the first and working your way up. These are classic games with an incredible, truly heroic storyline, with a breathtaking end to the series.

Enjoy slaughtering the Pfhor; I know I will!

Is this good or bad? I feel it’s somewhat ridiculous that Microsoft bans for the glitch, personally; while it’s slightly different, I would have been totally shocked if I was banned for BXRing in Halo 2, which became a very popular competitive technique.

Do you think Sony or Microsoft has it right?

News: Sony NOT banning for MW2 Javelin glitch [CVG via Kotaku]

I’ll let the video do the talking.

Play it here! [Kongregate]

Multitask is a nifty little Flash game that, as you may have already guessed, tests your ability to multitask. You receive a point for every second you don’t fail the game; the catch is that as time goes on, different minigames are added and you’re expected to play them all at the same time.

The game starts with a simple ball-balancing game, moves on to a simple dodging-up-and-down game, then incorporates a game where you have to collect boxes in a given time span, and finally adds in the popular helicopter-style game. Once that fourth game is added, I basically lose my sh*t, and fail pretty quickly; the game is added at 80 seconds and I’ve only lasted til 88. I normally lose because of the ball-balancing one.

Multitask is an enjoyable way to kill a few minutes. See if you can beat my paltry score of 88!

That’s some of the highest praise you can give to the game, possibly the most heavily anticipated game ever made. It’s an absolute joy to play, just like it’s predecessor; in terms of story, Modern Warfare 2 blows away the original, and absolutely deserves the description “epic.”

It’s a story of betrayal, the horrors of war, the problem of patriotism, and the lengths to which people will go to fight for their country. The stunning scenes of the nuclear missile from space, the attack on the White House, the fighting in suburban American neighborhoods; these all evoke a powerful reaction. The leaked “airport scene” from the campaign is the most stunning of all the controversial scenes, but it wasn’t the only time that I messaged my friends saying “I can’t believe they did that.” This is a game that starts out sort of slow but builds up rapidly and never lets down.

The final few missions are epic and evocative of Metal Gear Solid 4 in some senses, and it works well. There is a marginal stealth element in certain parts of the game that is done tastefully, much like All Ghillied Up in Call of Duty 4.

I feel that the story is very anti-war, as I did with Call of Duty 4, and Modern Warfare 2 takes it even a step further, with a reasonable amount of what would be called “anti-American” sentiment by some people. It demonstrates that the American military isn’t infallible, and neither are its leaders. The campaign, as mentioned before, deals with the horrors of war in general, and every side is guilty.

Admittedly, the story plays a secondary role to the gameplay, which is fantastic.  Call of Duty 4 did console FPS combat on-par with my favorite shooters, Halo: Combat Evolved and Shadowrun. The controls are identical, the new features (such as the heartbeat sensor and the awesome Predator missile) are really cool to use, and nothing that was not broken was tampered with. The ACOG scopes are a little better, I believe; that’s the only real difference between the gameplay of the two games.

Small issues remain, however. The traditional Call of Duty method of artificially lengthening the game comes into play. Enemies pour out of the same buildings one by one over and over, you kill them all, and then proceed. Later levels have this lessened somewhat, however, and the final set of levels eschews this concept almost completely, in favor of running by most of the enemies and picking your battles carefully. The vehicle sections are decent, but nothing spectacular in terms of gameplay, though the presentation (especially in the snowmobile segment) makes you go “wow.” There are also a few parts, notably with the vehicle sections again, where it feels like luck is what gets you by rather than skill; often times you take one path and die, and you take the same path again and get by untouched.

Really, it’s hard to find cons in this game. It’s just incredibly well-done.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a working Internet connection with my Xbox 360 at the moment, so I’m unable to play on Live; a marginal amount of splitscreen leaves me confident that the gameplay is very similar to the original, just with more features. That’s a positive thing.

Great gameplay, engrossing action-movie style campaign, multiplayer that seems as fun as the original, a new Spec Ops mode that I haven’t touched (though the lack of a post-campaign Mile High Club style mission was disappointing) makes Modern Warfare 2 a strong contender for the Game of the Year.

That’s only half news. Rock Band 3 was pretty much confirmed once Rock Band 2 was released.

The cool thing is that, in an interview with Harrison, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune was able to get this tidbit out of him:

“I’m working on ‘Rock Band 3′ and making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game. Give me a couple years, it’s going to happen.”

I’ve been bored with the Guitar Hero standard guitar controller for a while; there are only so many interesting patterns you can play on 5 frets on one string. This sounds kind of cool. I guess we’ll see where it leads us.

The ever-changing Thenewno2 [Chicago Tribune via Kotaku]

No Doubt is suing Activision over the use of the band’s likenesses in Band Hero, the tween-oriented Guitar Hero knockoff featuring such star power as Taylor Swift. No Doubt claims that they only agreed for the band to be able to be used during No Doubt songs, but, like Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5, you can use them when playing any song.

You’d really think they’d have learned. I don’t know anyone who would go out and buy Band Hero just because oh my god, you can play as Gwen Stefani singing Honky Tonk Woman.

Activision, of course, claims that they have a contract that specifically allows them to do what they have done.

I prefer Rock Band, myself.

No Doubt Sues — Gwen Is Not A Man! [TMZ via Joystiq]

Broadway Lodge, a rehab unit in Britain, recently opened a new video game addiction rehabilitation unit. I don’t see how this helps, personally; I was under the impression it was mostly the Chinese and the Koreans who were dying at their computers.

The representatives of the center say that video game addiction is a serious issue and Peter Smith, a counselor at the clinic, was quoted as saying ”It’s not unusual for people to get so obsessed with online gaming that they forget to eat and drift towards an anorexic and undernourished state.”

This all seems a little panicky to me, but maybe they’re just trying to do the “right thing” and help people who are in need. I can only offer anecdotal evidence, but I’ve never let myself become anorexic or undernourished due to video games. . . quite the contrary in fact.

Although, admittedly, I’m part of Hot Blooded Gaming, a group that became popular partially due to spending 36 hours or so in front of a TV playing Metal Gear Solid games.

Britain’s first computer rehab clinic opens [Telegraph]

Did you know:

• In the Fallout world, the bombs fell on October 23rd?
• The original inspiration for VATS was Burnout’s crash mode replays?
• The Fat Man is based on an actual  nuke-launching rifle?

A lot of other cool facts are available on the page. Go check ‘em out!

What You Didn’t Know About Fallout 3 [GameInformer]

Spectrum Fantastic Art [via Joystiq]

Developer website | Download it here!

Note: Hot Blooded Gaming does not vouch for the integrity of the files linked to herein. We attempt to make sure that there is no malware, but we are not perfect. Download at your own risk.

Changing up the gears a little from our mainstream Flash games, here comes a little-known PC freeware game, Eversion by Zaratustra Productions. Eversion is a tricky little fellow and the first “artsy” game that I’ll be spotlighting.

One of the important things about playing this game is not to go in with any real expectations, so I’ll attempt to keep the discussion short and sweet. (Please feel free to comment and discuss the game after having played it, however!) Eversion is based off of a short passage in H. P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book:

Sounds possibly musical – heard in the night from other worlds or realms of being.

In a word, the game is twisted; or rather, it twists while it is being played, and changes from what you expect to something very strange and very intriguing from an artistic point of view. Eversion certainly isn’t a perfect game, but it’s well done for what it is: sort of a “horror-platformer” with the intent to make you nervous, if not necessarily scared.

Give the game a chance and it’ll likely surprise you. It’s, at worst, a passable platformer; it’s at best an intriguing, disturbing game with quite a bit of depth.

(There’s also a hidden last level, if you manage to get every single gem. Good luck.)

A Microsoft spokesperson told IGN “”We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs [...] to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox LIVE.”

Apparently, the banning has been going on for about the past week, as evidenced by the amount of whiners on the Xbox.com user account suspension forums.

Arrr, matey. Pirates not be welcome here.

Microsoft Performs Mass Xbox Console Banning [IGN]

Super Mario World

What is it?
Considered by the staff here at Hot Blooded Gaming to be the quintessential Mario game, Super Mario World was the first pack-in for the SNES and went on to become one of the most beloved platformers in gaming history.

How can I play it?
Super Mario World (SNES)
Super Mario Advance 2 – Super Mario World (GBA)
Super Mario World (Wii Virtual Console)

John’s take:
We don’t plan on doing many Flashback Fridays for bad games, but this game is head and shoulders above most of the rest. Even today, Super Mario World stands as a symbol of close-to-perfection in platforming elements, with simple, unique powerups, beautiful colorful graphics and one of the most annoying levels ever. (Man, that seemed way harder when I was a kid.)

I was obsessed with this game when I got my SNES, and I was dumbfounded by the amazing level of color, the detail on the characters, and all the awesome secrets. You thought the Warp Whistles in Super Mario Bros. 3 was cool? Wait til you see the Star Road. Complete with an Halloween-style overhaul once you beat the special super-hard Star Road levels, it’s very fitting for today’s Flashback Friday.

I reminisce fondly even about jumping around in the very first “level”, Yoshi’s House, jumping around at first just to see if there was anything hidden around, and then coming back with Yoshi to eat all the fruits hanging at the top of the level.  I remember playing Yoshi’s Island 2 over and over just to kick the turtle shell into all the Koopa Troopers and get a 1up, to jumping as high as possible at the end of the level to try and get the most points, playing the bonus game at the end of each level and how exciting it was to pull off making every single block of the bonus level a star. I even remember feeling so cool when I unlocked the Top Secret Area! and figured out that, hey, if you jump up near your powerup when you have a fire flower and a feather, you can hit Select over and over again and get effectively unlimited points! This game was a magical thing for a young child.

As if the game weren’t cool enough for just being Mario in 16-bit, Super Mario World throws another curveball at you when you go through the Yoshi’s Island 2 stage, jumping up, hitting some ? blocks to get some coins and suddenly a freaking EGG comes out and HATCHES into a KILLER RAPTOR (pictured). Yoshi immediately became a fan favorite, especially considering that you could take a hit while on him and just hop back on, over and over and over! No skill required, perfect for a 5-year-old.

The game introduced a whole host of new features for the Mario series: the branching paths that you could take to make the game as short or long as you want (you could beat the game in 12 minutes,) the new awesome graphical effects in the haunted houses, the multiple exits to each level outside of a warp zone, the differentiation of the Koopa Kids rather than being variations on the same type of boss, and who could forget King Koopa’s smiley face hover ship?

The original Super Mario Bros. is often held up to be the iconic platforming game– usually by those too young to have actually played it in its heyday. People like myself, who grew up with these games, playing and loving them with all their heart, tend to find that Super Mario World is a pure evolution of the genre, moving that much closer to perfection. Let’s hope New Super Mario Bros. Wii can pull that off.

Dennis Hopper, the actor who played King Koopa in the superb Super Mario Brothers 1993 movie, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.  He’s currently being treated at the University of Southern California.

Jokes and bad movies aside, cancer sucks for anyone, and we at HBG wish him the best and a speedy recovery.

Dennis Hopper has prostate cancer [The Hollywood Reporter via Kotaku]