Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack - an Earlyish Look

Submitted by that adorable ragamuffin KP

This past week I took a trip down to Bungie Studios to take a look at the new maps. The entry to the studio has become a Halo fan's paradise, lined with scale models of weapons and armor from the Neil Blomkamp short films. I noticed Tied the Leader's L Askan calculating their net worth on ebay - Jerome kept a sharp eye on him. After signing our obligatory non-disclosure agreements they led us into the multiplayer lab, where we'd spend the next five hours.

Over the course of the day, we were given tours of each map from their respective design and art leads, hands-on time with the maps and a generous serving of Chicago style pizza. There was even a little bit of a mini-humpday at the end. On a Friday. That wasn't even a full game. Oh but it was good...

Ghost Town

Flaming head not included.

Ghost Town is a deceptively small, asymmetric map based off of Sierra 117. Believed to be a forgotten water processing facility, it's now in a state of disrepair from years of neglect and bears the scars of a battlezone. It looks absolutely stunning, Bungie's robust HDR lighting engine shows off its muscle while the foliage, dilapidated concrete and even the rebar jutting out of the structures (which Cunbelin so eagerly claims as his own) all look fantastic. They outdid themselves.

After our formal introduction to the map, we were set loose to play a few different gametypes. Territories, Assault and of course your standard Slayer deathmatch were the most fun of the games we had the chance to try out. Territories was perhaps the most fun, because it's a rather tidy map, much smaller than it looks in the pictures, and there was ample opportunity for offensive and defensive stands to be made on short notice. Because it was so small, you're almost forced to leave one man capturing while others fend off attacks dozens of feet away, otherwise you'll all be killed by one or two grenades.

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Assault also worked really well on Ghost Town, which has several entrances to each room in the map, most of which are missing giant pieces of wall to boot. Using that, it seems like there's an endless number of routes you could choose to infiltrate the enemy base with a bomb. The bomb plant area is almost impossible to defend with about six entrances (that I can remember), though there are some clever hiding spots. Our team suffered a mighty defeat as a result of a very well place bubble shield in the final round which protected the bomb planters from our grenades long enough to guard the bomb until it armed.

Blackout

OMG 1V1 LOCKOUT FGT.

This is a remake of Lockout, the token Halo 2 map which quickly became a community favorite. Lockout's "spiritual successor" of sorts was Guardian, in Halo 3, but while it's certainly one of the more popular maps of Halo 3, fans still yearned for an exact replica.

Blackout will certainly fill the void left in the heart of Halo 2 enthusiasts who've been missing Lockout. The designers have maintained the level in almost every detail. The changes they've made are mostly in widening the ramps, particularly where the sword spawns and in the room above that. Aesthetically, they've made some improvements but I was unimpressed. It's more active than Lockout, there's a lot more activity on the walls, but it lacks color. You'll find yourself having issues knowing which room you've spawned in because they all look so similar.

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We played a bunch of Team Slayer here and a couple matches of One Flag, a great gametype for smaller, asymmetric maps. With the flag spawning on the elbow we used the old standby strategy of controlling the two structures attached to the elbow. This is pretty effective but after one of these falls, it can be hard to stop them from extracting the flag via that route. The jump up the front of the Battle Rifle tower is slightly harder, or I might be slightly stupider than before, as I failed to make this jump a couple of times to stop a flag carrier.

Avalanche

Global warming my ass.

Another remake, Avalanche is a reimagining of Halo 1's Sidewinder and unlike Blackout, has completely changed. Sidewinder was one of Halo 1's most graphically impressive maps, one that proved that a valley can play host to both a beautiful winter wonderland and a carnage zone. In that department, Avalanche pales in comparison to its predecessor. Again, there's just so little color. Everything is either white, grey or blue and while that's a reality of cold environments, I still expected more.

The map's biggest departure from its roots is in its design. The map has been almost completely retooled, sharing practically nothing with its predecessor but the U shape and the environment. Gone are the teleporters, ladders and tunnel portions from Sidewinder. Most areas, however, have been added to or revamped for the better. For example, the outside edge of the map is still there but has been mutated to accommodate the mancannons. Others have undergone drastic changes, for instance the bases are completely different, as is the center of the map which now has vastly different routes to and from. There are also completely new additions, with a new "ninja" route into the base and a new cavern in the center of the map which lets you go to and from the apex of the map's U shape via mancannons.

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All of these changes have greatly benefited the map. The flow has changed from its Sidewinder roots; it seems like the focus of the map has shifted to the originally less-trafficked center area, with tighter and more gratifying gameplay than Sidewinder provided there. You're able to get around on foot quickly and effectively, which was Sidewinder's main weakness. Capture the Flag was incredible on this map, everything you'd expect. Heavy vehicle action mixed with frenzied fighting over control of the center area led to one of the most exciting games of the trip.

Forge

The Cole Train's a comin' baby! WOO WOO!

As with the Heroic Map Pack release, there are new goodies added to Halo 3's Forge mode. New, level-specific doors, bridges and platforms have been created specifically for each of the levels, to fit their door frames and mesh with the environment, visually. They took it a step further on Avalanche where you can even spawn your own mini-bases, in mid air if you'd like.

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While that's all well and good, the true headliners of the new Forge items are the visual effects that Bungie has introduced. Having seen the ways people were creating screenshots with explosions and other effects to cast their subjects in various artistic-looking lights, Bungie has made this a much simpler process by giving us the power, in the new maps, to cast seven different visual effect filters with the press of a button.

Humpity-Hump-Hump Look at Bungie Go!

As the event was drawing to a close, TTL L Askan and I were joined by Luke Smith and Joseph Tung. Without a doubt, these are Bungie's biggest trash talkers. After shooting the breeze for a few minutes we decided to play a friendly 2v2 match on, as Tung said, "Blackout, obviously." They requested BR spawns, we politely obliged.

The Bungie guys jumped out to a quick lead after seizing control of the sniper tower and all nearby power weapons, like some kind of black hole of cheap bitchery. Somewhere around 5-1 Tung began to scream out "SIT" like he was a special guest on Sally Jesse's Tourette's Syndrome special while Luke made condescending references to God knows which internet meme. Having had enough of this, L Askan and I stepped up our play and turned the tide, taking over the lead at about the 10 kill mark, where we traded kills for a while.

A dramatic re-enactment of that fateful night.

Once we had our rhythm, we absolutely laid waste to them. It's weird, cuz like, they made the game and Joe Tung's job even focuses on multiplayer, you know? You'd think they'd be good. And yet, we ruined them like a small child wandering into an impromptu break-dancing session at Times Square. I very nearly outscored them by myself, while L Askan mirrored their top score. With no mislabeled films or screens to corrupt this outcome and a handful of trusted media outlets to support the story, they'll just have to accept once and for all HBO's complete domination of their little world.