The Mainstream adjusts its Halo
Sept. 25 has come and gone, and while the launch of Cabela's Trophy Bucks went strangely unnoticed, the launch of Halo 3 has drawn all kinds of press attention. Mainstream stories on the launch generally fell into one of four categories: Stories on the ridiculous marketing blitz for the game; stories on the amazing opening day sales for the game; stories on the unique playtesting setup Bungie used in making the game, and, most worryingly for Microsoft, stories asking whether or not the game can help revive Microsoft's faltering Xbox 360.

On that last score, the mainstream consensus seems to be that, while the Xbox 360 and Halo are nice enough for hardcore gamers, Nintendo and the Wii are where the real action is. Much like Hillary Clinton's primary campaign, the Wii has taken on an air of inevitability among the mainstream press, quickly becoming the system to beat this holiday and this generation. While the Wii's continued dominance is far from a foregone conclusion, the system's quick start and mindshare advantage among the chattering class might actually end up contributing to its long term success. And the cycle of hype continues.

Back to Halo -- while it's nice to see a game launch getting so much mainstream attention, it's kind of discouraging to know that most of these publications will go back to largely ignoring the gaming industry by the end of the week. Unfortunately, most of the mainstream press still sees games as something only to cover when a major event comes along.

Specializing in Halo
In the specialist press, reviews have been predictably and overwhelmingly positive (though, as always, there are some qualifiers). Microsoft was definitely on the ball in stopping any stories that might have derailed the launch hype: Pre-launch, a rumor about bans for extra-early adopters got nipped in the bud by a quick Microsoft response; and post-launch, a story about scratched limited edition discs was similarly cut off by another quick response.

As far as TV goes, I didn't catch GameHead's special Halo 3 episode yet, but I did pick up some of G4's ridiculously massive five-and-a-half hours of live coverage on launch night. Surprisingly, I generally liked it – they captured the excitement of the lines without being condescending and managed to cover the Halo phenomenon from a variety of interesting angles. I especially liked the extended debate on single- vs. multi-player. Good stuff.

Where does he get all those wonderful toys?
Speaking of Halo hype, Microsoft went a little overboard with the media package sent to the newly-redesigned MTV Multiplayer. Besides a copy of the $120 Legendary Edition of the game, MTV's Stephen Totilo got a canavs bag full of Halo stuff, including a Halo branded Xbox 360, controllers, a headset and more. Don't worry about the swag affecting Totilo's judgment of the game, though – he skipped the middle man and let Bungie write the review. Sheesh!

Seriously, I doubt that this massive outpouring of cool stuff really affected Totilo's coverage of the game or his treatment of Microsoft. Mostly I'm just jealous that I just got a copy of the game and not a big bag of Halo goodness. Maybe if I write more bad things about Microsoft they'll feel the need to bribe me more. Hmmmmmmicrosft sucksmmmmm...

Destructoid goes Bomberman
In the disturbing-conflict-of-interest department this week comes word that Destructoid's box-headed robot mascot will be available as a playable character in a downloadable pack for Hudson's Bomberman Live. You may remember Hudson as the company that sponsored Destructoid's trip to E3 this year. Destructoid doesn't make any money from the placement, but Hudson does get ad space on Destructoid's site in exchange for the in-game appearance.

Now, will this lead Destructoid to give more favorable coverage to Hudson or its games? Probably not ... again, I doubt they're that easily influenced. But in journalism, you always have to consider whether an average member of the audience might reasonably perceive a conflict, and that's a big risk in this case. The first thing many readers will think of when reading Destructoid's coverage of Hudson in the future is their close working relationship vis-à-vis Bomberman Live, and that could affect the way they consider this coverage. Credibility is everything in journalism, and any formal relationship that could affect that credibility should be entered into very cautiously.

Defend Your review: Space Giraffe
Dan Amrich's two-out-of-ten review of Space Giraffe drew some harsh responses from fans of the game, not least of which was the game's creator Jeff Minter, who called Amrich out on his message boards, saying Amrich failed to gain "even the most basic level of competence" at the game. Amrich defended his take on the game on his blog recently, saying, basically, that he takes his responsibilities seriously and stands by his harsh opinion. "Reviewing a game by saying 'I didn't like it but I guess you might, maybe' is really, really not what critique is about," he writes. "Without honest and specific feedback, a review is worthless. And in this case, the honesty is brutal."

Personally, I applaud Dan for his honesty and for standing up for his opinion. While many people think there's some objective standard to game reviewing, that's simply not true for the most part. A review is an almost wholly subjective analysis of one person's experience with a game, and just because the consensus among players and other reviewers might be different, it doesn't make the minority opinion any less valid (provided it's well-informed and well-argued, which, in this case, it was). It's easy for a game maker to try to single out and pick apart a negative review set against an overall positive whole, but in general, unless there are some massive factual errors, they should just suck it up and respect the writer's right to his own opinion.

The Future of Nintendo Power
So the rights to publish Nintendo Power have been licensed out to Future U.S. I don't have much to say on this yet until I actually see the first Future-produced issue (due to be the Dec. '07 edition), but I will say I'm not that surprised. The magazine has been trending to a slightly more objective take on Nintendo news for a while, and this move just cements that trend. Still a part of me is sad to see an end to the era of Nintendo's self-published propaganda. R.I.P.

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Got something you'd like to see on Media Coverage? Send it to kyle.orland@gmail.com.

Kyle Orland is a full time video game freelancer based out of Laurel, MD. He writes for a variety of outlets as detailed on his workblog. He's the co-author of The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual. He writes about games he's played recently on his playlog Games for Lunch. He doesn't know what love is, he just does what he's told.

Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.