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.
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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.
Halo3Planet.com administrator Adam Pisani will be on his way to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington on August 29th.
He’ll be digging as deep as he can into the mysteries of the future of Halo 3 and Bungie, and will likely be easily found near the Bungie/Rooster Teeth booth for most of the weekend, possibly beating people up on the grifball court.
Adam will be keeping the site informed on any and all gaming news that is released at PAX, official and rumour alike.
If you’re going and would like to meet Adam, post so in the comments. If we get enough interest, we’ll have him hang out near the Bungie/Rooster Teeth booth at a specific time when you can come say hi. He’ll be the guy with the curly hair and the goofy lookin’ IWHBYD t-shirt.
It appears all the hype was for nothing…or was it? Harold Ryan, Bungie’s president, has posted a letter on the front page of Bungie.net, as shown above. Click the image for the larger size.
So what does this mean? Nothing really. Bungie has been known for trickery in the past, and we won’t know whether or not to believe Harold Ryan until E3 is over. If we don’t get an announcement tomorrow we might have to wait a little over a month for Penny Arcade expo to see an announcement.
UPDATE: Not only did it not show up at E3, the announcement will apparently not show up at PAX in August either. Bungie’s official statement is that they will be showing off new multiplayer content (we’re putting our money on maps), but will not be making their big, massive, much anticipated announcement.
If that wasn’t bad news enough, the Fan Party went under. It appears that we’ll have to wait for some other time to live it up with the community team.