Halo 3 Planet

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.“

You may have seen Adam’s “Assembly” announcement on Twitter, or here on H3P earlier, and now a few videos are starting to emerge showing off some real gameplay on the map.

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.

Halo3Planet.com now has a Twitter feed! Simply go to Twitter.com/Halo3Planet to stay updated. If you have a twitter profile, you can follow the feed online, as well as on your mobile phone.

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.