Activate your bubble shield and pull out your shotgun, 'cause this is Spartan!
[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers theme plays.]
Hello internet and welcome to Game Theory, the show that's almost as satisfying as the celebratory teabag after a well-placed headshot.
Almost.
This week begins a shameless grab to expand my viewership by tackling some of gaming's most popular franchises.
To kick things off right, we're looking at power armor served up Master Chief style.
Why not Metroid, Crysis, Fallout, Vanquish, or any of the other hundred games that feature it?
Because the Spartan armor actually exists.
In fact, it may even be better in real life, and here's the kicker.
You, precious viewer, can own it for yourself.
Interested? Then pull out your credit card and keep watching.
First, let's get one thing straight.
Power armor is not to be confused with mech suits.
Anyone else remember Mech Warrior for the PC?
No one?
Man, the nineties were too long ago.
Alright, alright, Avatar or District 9 then.
The difference is that a mech has a person sitting inside piloting it.
Basically, the same as a car, if your car had two tons of machine gun ammo, a pulse laser, and thirty anti-aircraft missiles.
Compare that to power armor which is in essence a part of your body.
Hence its real world name, powered exoskeletons.
Getting down to brass tacks, in Halo, Master Chief's armor is named Mjolnir, a name borrowed from, the Norse god, Thor's hammer.
The suit is hooked directly into the Spartan's central nervous system and is able to translate the electrochemical signals of the brain into digital code
allowing the user's thoughts to command the armor's movements.
According to the game's official wiki the suit amplifies force, doubles lifting capacity, and speeds up reaction time by a factor of five.
However, the benefits come at a price.
Ordinary humans can't use it.
Only those with a skeletal augmentation can wear the suit, eliminating everyone but a Spartan-ll and Wolverine.
I should also point out that the suit weighs about a thousand pounds, almost as heavy as an entire season's worth of Biggest Loser contestants.
It also comes with a host of clips, belts, and magnetic holsters, that allow for easy carry of two weapons.
Well, believe it or not power suit research began way back in the 1960's, taking place sometime between hippy lovins and war protests.
The US military, with a surprising amount of time available for a government agency waging war in Vietnam, along with the help of GE developed the
Hardiman, a powered exoskeleton that made lifting 250 pounds feel like lifting 10 pounds.
Pretty awesome, except for the fact that the full suit weighed in at 1500 pounds and would occasionally break out into violent uncontrolled motion, much like me on a dance floor.
It was also harder to remove than a plasma grenade latched to your chest.
Needless to say, the project was scrapped.
Then in 1986 came the first version of the life suit.
After, breaking his back in a parachute accident and reading the book Starship Troopers while in recovery, US ranger, Monty Reed conceived the idea of a robot
skeleton that could help the paralyzed to walk again.
Now, fourteen iterations later, the life suit, which is powered by compressed air, has done just that.
It can also lift over 200 pounds and walk three miles in ninety minutes, but we want to make a Master Chief, a one man army of strength and endurance and that's why
we need to check out the Raytheons Sarcos exoskeleton designed in Utah, which grants you full range of motion while providing almost a limitless amount of endurance.
Seriously, this scrawny guy was pumping two hundred pounds until he got bored.
It makes carrying 150 pounds feel like nothing.
So there you go with your super strength but what about a suit that could also read your mind?
Well to find that we find ourselves headed to Japan. Surprise, surprise. To a company with a twisted sense of humor.
Cyberdyne yes, they're named after the evil company from Terminator, has developed Hal, yes they named their product after the evil computer from 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Hal Five senses electrical impulses in the skin to determine the user's movement that predicts the desired motion from a set of likely movements.
According to Cyberdyne it increases the strength of the wearer about ten-fold.
You too can look like the Wii's new controller by renting this suit for only one thousand bucks a month and if none of this interests you can always turn yourself into a
giant robotic spider controlled by the movement of your fingers like these guys did back in 1997.
I can see your disappointed comments now, because none of these actually look like Master Chief's armor and you're right.
If you were shot while wearing any of these, good luck surviving, but just think about combining this super powerful exoskeleton technology with a suit of armor
that's bullet-proof without needing to recharge a bubble shield, allows you to sprint without needing to equip a special ability, and is able to be worn without having
adamantium for bones or an HDMI hookup implanted into your brain, you'd have something better than Halo's design.
Well we're not far off. In Canada, Troy Hurtubise, formerly known for his anti-bear suits, has developed the Trojan, uh close enough, but offering even more protection from life's little stray bullets.
The armor comes equipped with pepper spray and a capsule of salt for your front line fry cravings, emergency lights, an ingestible tracking device, a voice recorder
mini rc scouting car with video feedback, a head-mounted laser pointer because, I don't know there was space on the helmet, and even a shot of Morphine for a quick trip.
It's club-proof, knife-proof, bullet-proof, explosion-proof, and idiot-proof.
It even has a knife slot and two easy-draw holsters, allowing for the crucial dual-wield, and to keep you cool while wearing a huge suit of plastic and ballistic foam, the helmet comes with what amounts to a solar-powered air conditioner.
Oh, and there's a clock that comes out of your crotch, did I mention that?
And you too can be a human Swiss army knife for the low, low price of two thousand dollars per suit.
"Wow," you must be thinking to yourself. "He looks a lot like Master Chief."
Way to stay sharp Joe gamer.
He openly admits that the Trojan's design was inspired by Halo's tech. Revelation that brings me to my final thought.
Bungie created such a brilliant sci-fi world in the Halo franchise that as we saw today it's shaping the future of military armor.
Combining human enhancing robotics with a suit that's bullet-proof, light and comes with a crotch clock. Huh, Halo may have started as combat evolved but with a new trilogy just announced technology of Halo may just be a
thing of the past, but truly what can I say to best sum-up what we've seen here today? Only this.
Power armor is sweet, but hey that's just a theory, a game theory! Thanks for watching.
[Ode to Noobz by Machinima starts playing.]