My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • Grifball Spring League – Starting Up

    Quikthnkr (the new commissioner of the Grifball Spring 08 League) dropped by to point out that signups are happening now. If your team participated in the Winter League (and didn’t get cut), you can sign up now – if you’re interested in starting a new team, signups begin today at noon (central time). More details and info can be found in Quik’s post. Get goin’!(Louis Wu 13:31:58 UTC)

  • Life after Halo is hazy

    Popular Mechanics has an article about the perils (and potentialities) of last year’s astounding year in videogame growth (led by Halo 3’s record-breaking first week of sales) – on the one hand, topping what has been done will be hard; there comes a point at which folks get apathetic. On the other hand, the boost to the industry overall has opened the door for smaller developers who might not have had a big enough market to sell to previously… Thanks, Grunt2552. (Louis Wu 13:29:07 UTC)

  • Newer shot of Cortana ArtFX Statue

    Darknesshasfallen noticed new shots of the upcoming Cortana ArtFX statue (first mentioned a few weeks ago, with a cardboard mockup at ToyFair 08) – swing by Big Bad Toy Store to see it.(Louis Wu 13:28:33 UTC)

  • COD4 DLC Map Pack is on the way!

    Finally! Infinity Ward is pumping out four new maps, in new locations and environments, for our CODing pleasure! They are set to come out in the next couple of months. I can’t wait! Check out the article from Gamespot!

    I don’t know about you guys, but I am ready for this. I love COD4, and I would play with or without them, but these new maps are definitely going to boost my CODing this spring or summer! The TV station environment is going to be especially different from what we have been experiencing. i’m really excited about this!

    Source = http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/callofduty4modernwarfare/news.html?sid=6187656&tag=topslot;title;1&om_act=convert&om_clk=topslot

    Call of Duty 4 DLC Map Pack Hands-On

    If you’re tired of Middle Eastern villages and Russian forests, take heart: Infinity Ward has some shiny new battlefields on the way soon.

    By Brad Shoemaker, GameSpot

    Posted Mar 12, 2008 5:39 pm PT

    Last year was exceptionally strong for first-person shooters. Yet despite being one of the latest genre releases in the year, Call of Duty 4 towered over its competition. There are so many shooters released these days that it’s hard to stick with an online community for more than a few weeks, but even months later, we’re still obsessively playing COD4’s addictive online mode with no end in sight. So we counted ourselves among the incredibly fortunate when we headed down to developer Infinity Ward’s Southern California offices recently to check out the game’s first downloadable map pack, which is coming later this spring.


    Broadcast is taken from and expanded upon the Iraqi TV station mission in COD4’s single-player campaign.

    We got a chance to chat with IW community relations manager Robert Bowling–better known to COD4 diehards by his online handle, “fourzerotwo”–about the pending downloadable maps. The first thing he told us was the first thing we wanted to hear about this pack: The Middle Eastern and Russian environments will no longer comprise the entirety of the retail game’s lineup. Now that the team has moved on from the single-player campaign (and has time to work up some new art assets), we can expect to see new Call of Duty 4 maps set in entirely new locations separate from the original game.

    Well, except one of the maps in this pack. It’s called Broadcast and is lifted from the Iraqi campaign “Charlie Don’t Surf,” in which you assault a television station where the enemy is holed up. Don’t think the team just copied and pasted the campaign map into this multiplayer pack, though. It does contain the iconic, cavernous main room with its dozens of computer monitors and TV screens, as well as a big map of the world on the wall. We can tell you from experience that that’s a great place for multiplayer firefights, with all those cubicles to duck down behind and all that equipment just waiting to get shot up by you or your opponents. A large-scale multiplayer match concentrated in that room is going to be serious calamity.

    But Broadcast has been expanded significantly throughout its incarnation in the campaign. There are multiple routes into and out of that main room. Some routes lead up to the building’s second floor, replete with smaller rooms and hallways. The map is mostly indoors, so air strikes and helicopters will be largely ineffectual–except up on the roof, which you can access from the second floor, as well as in the expanded parking lot area outside the main building. On the other side of that parking lot is another new, smaller building that you can hide out in as well.

    The second map we played is entirely new, and it’s named Creek. But there’s a lot more to it than a simple babbling brook. This is a very large-scale outdoor map with a small cluster of houses on one side of it. In the middle, there’s a huge ravine circling the perimeter with multiple levels of pathways up its side. Down below, the trail leads along the eponymous creek bed to a waterfall. Elsewhere along the base of the ravine, there’s a lengthy and winding cave that cuts underneath the hill then out to the other side. As big as it is, there are a lot of places to go on this map; from prone sniping atop the cliff face to hiding out behind a rock in the tunnel, you never know where an opponent will be attacking you.


    Creek is a massive original map with a high ravine, cliffside pathways, and a tunnel through the base of the hill.

    Broadcast naturally looks exactly like COD4’s campaign, but Infinity Ward’s artists have done a nice pass on Creek to give it a distinctive look, with rocky terrain and various sorts of foliage that are more verdant than what you’ve seen in the previous Russian maps. It all feels a little sunnier and more pleasant than the game’s other forested maps, too–at least until you catch a slug between your teeth. Because there’s so much underbrush and shrubbery on top of the cliffs here, Bowling pointed out that it’s a great map for you to use the sniper’s ghillie suit for blending in while going for some sneaky kills.

    There will actually be four maps in the final pack, though we can only really tell you about these two. The other two will be Chinatown, which is pretty self-explanatory, and Killhouse, which is a “bonus” map that we didn’t get any hard details on (though we were told to think of the single-player campaign’s initial training level as a reference). The map pack will be available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the coming months for an unspecified price. But interestingly, Infinity Ward hasn’t decided how the maps will be distributed on the PC, where players are much more expectant of postrelease bonus content being released for free. Realistically, Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer is so absurdly good that would have gladly handed over cash for whatever maps the designers could have phoned in–so we’re especially glad to see them putting so much time and care into this first release.


  • Chief vs Cortana

    Cortana4ever let us know that sometimes the rivalry between Cortana and the Chief gets a little… competitive. Check it out – it’s fun!(Louis Wu 21:32:56 UTC)

  • MLG Playlist – coming soon

    Tyger was the first (but not, by a long shot, the only) person to point out that the Team Hardcore playlist will be replaced in a few weeks with a new MLG playlist. Details are at MLGPro.com.(Louis Wu 21:11:53 UTC)

  • Leprechauns

    Bzerker01 pointed out ‘Leprechauns‘, a machinima short created by Treeskunk Productions for the GamingTV ‘Laughs for Cash‘ contest. He said that it “goes further than anything we have released before into the land of weird.” After watching it, I can’t disagree. Available in a lot of formats, from a lot of places.(Louis Wu 18:07:31 UTC)

  • Thank goodness Bungie wasn’t around in 1901.

    The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 tonight and tomorrow at Roy Thomson Hall. This tidbit of information is on a Halo news page because the conductor, Peter Oundjian, and a journalist, John Keillor, suggest that Mahler’s impetus for the 4th and our enjoyment of the carnage of the Halo 3 battlefield are facets of the same thing – a cry against “society’s rage for order”. I’ve seen some interesting pitches for classical concerts in my time… but this one’s definitely up there.(Louis Wu 17:45:41 UTC)

  • Getting ready to open the casket

    It’s a day for comics, I guess – Dan Baker has posted Page 3 of his Halo Comic – it’s just a little one… but it sets up a pretty critical scene. Go see!(Louis Wu 16:58:51 UTC)

  • Making Movies

    Psychophan7 noticed a new job offering at Bungie – Cinematic Animator. It’s not Halo-related (well, probably not) – but it’s of interest to a significant chunk of our reader base, so here you go. (I wish Bungie would date these…)(Louis Wu 16:55:18 UTC)

  • Everyone Out of the Pool

    Dennis Powers wrote to say that the second episode of the Halo CE Chronicles Comic, ‘Everyone Out of the Pool‘, is now online. He’s also posted a comic tribute to Stuntmutt. (We miss him too, Dennis.) (Louis Wu 16:53:19 UTC)


  • Extraction

    TTL Demag0gue pointed out that Reclaimer Chapter Three, Part Eleven has been posted – are you starting to get an idea about Archimedes? (Louis Wu 13:50:40 UTC)

  • More Concept Art from Ensemble

    Omega noticed that there’s another Forerunner structure (as concept art) posted over at the Halo Wars website. This one looks pretty cool – I love the ground work!(Louis Wu 13:46:19 UTC)

  • Gotta love those multisticks!

    Hawty McBloggy ran across a fun series on machinima.com – check out ‘Confirmed Kills’ for some great Xbox LIVE plays.(Louis Wu 13:32:05 UTC)

  • No Fred Savage Here

    The Calgary Herald has a piece on the recent Pro Gaming League tournament in Alberta, Canada – it’s a view of the tournament scene from someone who really isn’t part of it. Short and sweet.(Louis Wu 12:32:01 UTC)

  • Halo 3 File Search

    oriol let us know that Grunts R Us have put together a search function for Bungie.net’s Community Files collection. It uses Google’s search engine, with some custom tweaks; you can search by keyword, author, filetype, and more. Go try it out!(Louis Wu 12:30:04 UTC)

  • Orbital Defense – needs your help

    spesalfred is working on a Halo-based flash game in which you use MAC guns to protect Earth from the invading Covenant fleet. It’s coming along – but he really needs help with some artwork. He’s got a playable game you can try out; it’s rough, but it should show you where he’s going. If you’d like to help him with the artwork, drop him a line – he’d love to hear from you.(Louis Wu 12:26:07 UTC)

  • HaloKing343 is gonna be gone for 2 weeks… but he’s back no!!

    HaloKing343 will be gone for 2 weeks he told me.He is on vacationand will be gone for 2 weeks… but he’s back now!!

  • Return to Sender – in 720p

    Apologies for the delay – we’ve fallen behind on the release of the Halo 2 Hi-Def cutscenes, but the next one (Return to Sender) is now available. Once again, the link will give you a random selection from the mirror lists – hosts include ClanInfectionist, bungie.org, and Wraith-Ops. Thanks, all!(Louis Wu 20:45:32 UTC)