Big news in the Bungie Weekly Update this week: Cold Storage will be released on Bungie Day (the 7th day of the 7th month [July 7], get it?), and will be 100% FREE forever. To add to that joy, the Legendary Map Pack (Avalanche, Blackout, and Ghost Town) will be a mere 600 Microsoft Points, down from the previous 800.

In honour of this news Bungie is putting on a 7 player free for all playlist for 48 hours, seemingly exclusively on Cold Storage. Additionally, there will be a free gamerpic and theme for a limited time (24 hours), and a bunch of other cool things.

The Update has other news, as well as a ViDoc about the new map. Hooray!

Two more images of Cold Storage, the latest Halo 3 map, showed up todays Bungie Weekly Update. This time they are level overviews, and they appear to indicate that the map has been essentially re-skinned and re-spaced for Halo 3, much in the same way that Lockout was updated to Blackout.

Here’s the overview with weapons and items marked, and here is the same screenshot, but without those pesky weapons boxes.

Click here to read the full story, which has more than just Cold Storage information.

The above is the first of two trailers for the upcoming machinima The Land Grab from Separate Intelligence, a group that a few of our most regular users belong to.

DamnGamer.com got the original release on the trailer and an exclusive interview with the creator, and we recommend you check it out.

Bungie’s updated their gallery with some brand new screenshots of Cold Storage, the remake of the classic Halo map, “Chill out”.  High Resolution versions of the screens can be found in the Bungie Halo 3 gallery.

I think it’s safe to say that the Halo community is pretty excited about the release of this map.  While we don’t have any new details about a release date, Bungie states that we’ll learn more about this map next week!

Arguably Halo: CE’s most popular map, Chill Out was put on display last night by Bungie at the MLG San Diego event, the second stop on the 2008 MLG Pro Circuit. The new map - dubbed ‘Cold Storage’ - was displayed by Luke Smith and Shishka in an exhibition match against two MLG stars. The boys from Bungie made no mention of the intended release date.

MLG has kindly hosted some images from the event. Follow this link for the gallery.

We’ll be keeping you updated on the new maps as they are announced, and we might even help a few lucky readers pay for the pack.

Due to lack of quality clips from the playoffs, the Halo3Planet.com Spring Smash Grifball Tournament’s highlights will almost assuredly not happen. At least we got one solid reel out.

However, one of our admins, HaloHero, has been editing the highlights for the Rooster Teeth Official Grifball League, and the above videos are the final products. We hope you enjoy them. Look forward to more in the coming summer league season (date of league unconfirmed).

Also, be sure to check out our Grifball Spring Smash t-shirt at the H3P Apparel Store.

From Rooster Teeth:

It is with the utmost pride and pleasure that we declare the start of our new series, Red vs Blue:Reconstruction. The Sponsors are watching the extended cut of the episode right now in the forum, and the final cut will be available here just as soon as the data gods bestow their favors upon us. (UPDATE: It’s up now. Look up!) That means we’re encoding and uploading. We plan to release RvB:re on Mondays all throughout the Summer, so please stay tuned.

We’re pretty excited!  The first episode is really well done (we would expect no less from RT), and I think it’s safe to say that this series will be just as popular, if not more so than the original RvB!

We’ve got a new lineup of Halo 3 Planet related apparel for all of you loyal fans out there.  Whether you participated in the latest “Grifball Spring Smash ‘08 Tournament“, or you’re just someone who loves the site, we’ve got something for you.  Check it out:

• IWHBYD Skull White T-Shirt
• H3P Grifball Spring Smash
• Halo 3 Planet Dark T-Shirt
• Halo 3 Planet Women’s Cap Sleeve T-Shirt
• H3P Official Women’s Dark T-Shirt
• Halo 3 Planet Mini Button
• Grifball Spring Smash Mini Button

Visit our H3P Online Shop!

Several folks have already started putting together Canvases for the Legendary Maps released today. If you’re interested in grabbing the blank versions of the maps, check out the links below:

• Avalanche Canvas
• Blackout Canvas
• Ghost Town Canvas

Thanks for the tip Max!

This is just a friendly reminder that the Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack is due for release, tomorrow, April 15th. If you get a chance, you’ll probably want to start downloading the new map pack as soon as it’s released, as it will take some time to actually download all of the files.

For those of you looking for a recap of the Legendary Map Pack, here are the 3 maps that will be released tomorrow:

• Avalanche - A brand new rendition of Sidewinder. Not exactly a remake.
• Blackout - A remake of Lockout!
• Ghost Town - A brand new map, which some say slightly resembles Turf from Halo 2.

Tomorrow’s going to be an awesome day!

EDIT: *YAWN* Ok, the maps are live for all you night owls who stayed up.