We’re in the red zone for pre-E3 bullshit. A week before the show is usually when we get a dumptruck full of fakes, bogus retailer listings and LinkedIn resumes confirming everything but the return of the Dreamcast. This, however, is so bizarre I’m compelled to share it. Because someone may be having a little fun here.
Turn your speakers down if you play this video. The music is obnoxiously loud (perhaps deliberately) and lyrics are NSFW.
Shakycam? Oh yeah, right off the bat. Terrible video quality? Yes — this appears to be a freaking VHS recording of Halo 4. It’s also in a goddamn barn. And the awful music is just a straight up troll. All of that, plus the fact this video has not yet been pulled, has led some to believe 343 Industries is trolling us hard — and quite successfully.
Look at the Twitter profile referenced in the video’s notes on YouTube. It’s “@420xSkidxBluntz“, an account created yesterday, and yes, he likes smokin’ weed errrrrday.
If you have the eyeball strength to watch through this, it’s allegedly footage of Halo 4‘s multiplayer beta. NeoGAF found the leak about 6am EDT (3pm AEST), and that community, as you can well imagine, is laughing itself to death while doing a good job of analysing what really is being shown.
One commenter there pointed out the gameplay looks faster than Halo 3 and Halo: Reach, with “a generous amount of sprint time”, given to you, plus faster weapon switch. “Railgun looks sweet. Couldn’t really tell how powerful it was, though,” he added. Another user called out the personal ordnance and promethean vision. So there’s some legitimacy to what’s being shown in the video. But holy crap, the presentation.
Update: A Microsoft spokesman has seen the video and tells Kotaku: “We are conducting an internal beta test of Halo 4, which is a standard development practice for most video games. We have no plans for a public multiplayer beta for Halo 4.”
That reply strongly suggests to me Halo 4 is what we’re seeing in this video and that it is not the official work of anyone at Microsoft or 343.
Leaked Halo 4 Gameplay [NeoGAF; h/t Chris K]
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