Just a last minute note here that I’ll once again be at the Penny Arcade Expo, and once again I’ll be keeping our Twitter feed updated with all the latest hooplah that will inevitably be going on there. A fair deal of it will probably be Grifball related, as I’m on a panel there for the “online sport,” due to me being an administrator over at Grifball.com and the official Grifball league.

The updates should start coming in later today when I hop on my flight to Vancouver and then Seattle, and the gaming stuff (with the exception of a possible dinner/party with whoever’s there tonight that I might know) should start updating tomorrow morning when I sneak into the exhibition hall a couple hours ahead of the enormous line of gamers.

Read the full story on Bungie.net. It’s news no Halo fan can miss out on.

Theories abound about who came up with the dastardly plan have abounded since the news broke an hour ago, and the generally held belief that Gears of War icon Cliffy B is responsible has just been confirmed.

Says Cliffy B, “Suck it Bungie, I TOTALLY got you good.”

When questioned about why exactly he released the virus, Mr. B threatened the crowd with a real life version of the Lancer weapon from the Gears of War series.

Click here for important details regarding the Conficker worm.

Once the maps go live we’ll have HD videos of exactly how to get the three skulls on the maps (and the achievements that go with them), but for now, enjoy these six images we shot from outside the boundaries of the maps.  The scenery on these three maps is breathtaking, to say the least, and the full res versions of these screenshots would make some very nice looking desktop backgrounds.

The night sky above Orbital.

Took this one from outside of Orbital, facing the planet below.

Something of an establishing shot of Assembly’s immediate surroundings.

Assembly from above.

As wide a shot as we could manage on Assembly. That little “egg” in the middle of the shot is the entirety of what we had in the first Assembly image. The “cavern” is gigantic. Certainly bigger than the surroundings of the other two maps.

Shot of the cloud and mountains outline of Sandbox. Would have taken a shot of the sun-rise/set, but the way it’s set up it looks best from the map area anyway.

Click the images for the high-res (1080p) versions.

I mentioned on the forum that I’d be linking to the achievement guides I make on AchievementHunter.com, and with two weeks of videos under my belt, it’s time for the first batch.

Unfortunately my first batch happened to come about during a VERY busy time of my life, University Final Exam week(s). With all the studying I’ve been doing, I only managed to post two videos in my first two weeks with the site. Oh well. The videos are linked below.

The first 4 achievements in Fallout 3 (Vault 101 Citizenship Award, The G.O.A.T. Whisperer, Escape!, and Psychotic Prankster)

A guide to getting Fable 2’s “The Menace to Society” achievement

I apologize for the fact that neither of the videos is Halo 3 related, but realistically we won’t be covering much more of Halo 3 (at Achievement Hunter that is) until Halo 3: ODST arrives sometime next year. Until then, I hope you enjoy my guides all the same. I’ll be adding a new wrap-up of my achievement guides every second week.

Here at H3P we focus typically on the stories themselves, and not the admins posting them. Myself (Adam) and David (the webmaster) have been bringing you stories about Halo for over a year, and as of last night, I’m also bringing achievement tutorial videos to AchievementHunter.com, a site dedicated to showing users how to get achievements in games on the XBox 360, as well as other platforms that are now starting to support achievement-like goals. Achievement Hunter also happens to have a special tie to Halo, as it is a Rooster Teeth project.

You may recall that Rooster Teeth invented Halo machinima with it’s outrageously funny series Red vs Blue. Over the past 6 years they have entertained us with machinima from Halo, The Sims, Shadowrun, FEAR, and released a teaser for a new Red vs Blue animated series at PAX this year.

In order to gain this spot at Achievement Hunter I had to win a competition that involved myself and 39 other entrants sending in demo videos, with the promise of a spot as a Hunter and a Blackmagic Intensity capture card, the same fantastic card that Rooster Teeth uses for all of their fantastic videos.

What this means for H3P is that I’ll be updating the front page weekly with new Achievement Hunter and Rooster Teeth news, as well as the usual digest of interesting Halo 3 news and announcements.

Here’s the original story in it’s entirety. I’m known as LBCountry on Rooster Teeth if you want to drop me a line there.

On Thursday morning at 7:07 a.m. PST, Bungie released a trailer for their Expansion for the Campaign of Halo 3.

Early Thursday morning, a trailer revealing appeared on the Xbox Live Marketplace and Bungie.net. It’s difficult to determine whether the trailer is an expansion of Halo 3, or a new game entirely. In the trailer, the Halo 3 logo is shown, as well as the words, “Prepare to Drop“.

On the Xbox Live Marketplace, the description reads:

“High action and deep mystery await players in the new Halo 3 campaign experience. Prepare to drop!”

Bungie had originally intended to make this announcement during E3 2008, but had their plans changed by their publisher Microsoft. Before changing, a mysterious counter had appeared on Bungie.net which was stopped, and then returned on Wednesday, Sep. 24th 2008.

Many speculated that this announcement could have been for the now confirmed “Mythic Map Pack“. According to Bungie.net, “We do have new maps still coming to Halo 3 but the release specifics are still being worked out with our partners.“

They’re all shaky cam, but the videos still do a decent job capturing the ins and outs of Assembly.

The videos were captured by CrunchGear and Kotaku.

Corny titles aside, Bungie released Assembly, a future DLC map code named “Purple Rain,” to the ravenous hordes of the Penny Arcade Expo today. I played a couple games on the map (8 for all standard slayer), and was generally impressed with the new map. It looks and plays a whole lot like midship, with some key changes. There are even traces of Wizard (Warlock in Halo 2) in the map, especially in the central area.

I suppose you have to play it to really get it, but it makes for some fast paced, open air action with little natural cover. The majority of the ducking out of the way on the map involves jumping off of the numerous ledges and slipping into one of the many “underpasses” to the bridges of the map. A good deal of the battle is vertical on the map, and it seems to add another layer of depth to the game. In my first game on the map I managed a respectable third place (11 kills to the winner’s 15).

The setting seems to be some open area within a ginormous Covenant ship, one that contains other ,slightly less hugantic, structures. All I can say on the artwork is that it is extremely detailed and quality as always.

For more general PAX information, keep an eye on the Twitter Feed, and DamnGamer for full stories.

During my trip to the Penny Arcade Expo I’ll be keeping the Twitter updated with everything I’m doing. I’ve called in a favour or two from a couple of my friends in the gaming industry, and as a result I’ll be skipping a lot of long lines for game and hardware demos, as well as visiting a few private events and dinners.