Halo 3 Trilogy

In appreciation of Guitar Hero and Halo fans alike, Neversoft, Bungie, Activision/RedOctane, and Microsoft have all joined forces to bring players the iconic Halo theme (MJOLNIR Mix) as a free playable song for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, exclusively for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. The theme will be available from Xbox LIVE Marketplace on Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 22nd.

The Halo theme was written, composed, and performed by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori; and the MJOLNIR Mix features guitars performed by the Grammy Award winning guitar hero, Steve Vai.

“It’s a real pleasure to hear one of the best loved and most iconic themes from Bungie’s Halo Universe in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock,” said Marty O’Donnell, Composer and Audio Director for Bungie Studios. “As longtime fans of the Guitar Hero® franchise, it was great to collaborate with Neversoft and Activision/RedOctane to offer this exciting free download to our fans.”

  December 11th Bungie is releasing new maps for Halo 3, and they will cost you 800 MSpoints. Standoff, Rat’s Nest, and Foundry are the map names, and they should be implemented into matchmaking as they are launched.

When Halo 2’s downloadable content joined the Internet, it effectively split the Matchmaking population into the “haves” and the “have-nots,” Bungie was readily aware of the problem that caused, and has rectified it in Halo 3″…..”Simultaneously all of the DLC maps will be rolled in to the regular Matchmaking playlists as well and then as folks are getting matched up, the game will take into account who has what maps in the matchmaking process.”

Lets hope for us “have nots” that this doesn’t make our lobby wait times any worse. Have not I say? Yes, I don’t plan on downloading the maps, even though I play way too much Halo for my own good. They plan on making the maps free to download in the spring, just when they are ready to unleash a few more maps. Do YOU think 3 maps are worth 800 points?? Compared to other recent DLC offerings this isn’t exactly a super value, so I’m waiting till the spring. You could argue that with the Forge capabilities the new maps are totally worth the price, but I still don’t have a custom games search, so I won’t be making that argument

No, we’re not talking about the Halo 3 Xbox 360 console. Microsoft has announced a new promotion that will get you a copy of Halo 3 absolutely free. All you have to do is purchase an Xbox 360 console by December 21st. Once you do that, visit this website and register using the promotional code XBX7777 along with the serial number on your Xbox 360. All that remains is you waiting for your copy of Halo 3 to arrive in the mail. With the majority of retailers now bundling Xbox 360 consoles with games, it’s really just icing on the cake. Adding a free copy of Halo 3 only makes things sweeter.

                                                                                                                                                                                            The full soundtrack for Halo 3 will be in shops later this month, which is about as surprising as doing your teeth.

Officially the US will get it on 20th November, while retailer Amazon believes we will have it on 26th November. Microsoft Europe was unavailable to comment, helpfully.

The two-hour soundtrack contains some really rather impressive music from Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, which has been recorded by a full orchestra and voices of real people who can sing.

It is one of the most memorable scores from one of this year’s biggest games, and we had a chance to talk to O’Donnell about it at the Videogames Live concert held recently as a part of the London Games Festival.

Pop over to our Halo 3: Music To Watch Armageddon By article to find out more

Heatmaps have been welcomed into the Bungie.net architecture and are now supported in Halo 3. Although we’ve turned this feature on, we’re still treating it like a beta, because we’re not entirely sure how it will affect the database and load balancing for our current server system. Additionally, we’re still trying to prioritize all actions in-game that require processing for the Web site (things like statistics, file share data) ahead accoutrements like Heatmaps in the database. If introducing Heatmaps slows things down, we’ll probably take them offline while we work out the kinks in the interest of preserving the end user experience.

What’s a Heatmap?

Heatmaps are the Doppler Radar System of Death in Halo 3. We’re tracking encounters, weapons used and their results in a given game, collecting that data and sharing it with players visually. The key here is “the darker the red, the more frequent the deaths (or kills, depending on the parameters).

We’ve taken that tracking system and adapted it to your own statistics. By visiting your Career Stats page, you’ll see a new tab labeled Heatmaps. Once you click that, you’ll be able to click each of Halo 3’s maps on the left side and see all manner of statistics, what weapons you’ve killed (and where you’ve used them) with on a given map, where you’ve died to a certain weapon on a given map all via sortable dropdown menus. These heatmaps, however, aren’t a collection of your lifetime statistics, we’re only processing roughly half of the information right now, but we’ll be turning it up to full power once the feature leaves this beta phase.

In addition to your own stats, there’s now a Global page displaying Heatmap results (it’s found under the ‘Bungie Online’ tab of the main site navigation bar). Here, you’ll be able to look through each map in (both Social and Ranked playlists) and see where shenanigans are beget. Like the Career Stats page, the Global Heatmap page uses dropdown menus to display on what the tools of destruction are on a given map. Are more folks camping the canals of Snowbound, while your Heatmaps show you atop low base with a Carbine?

The below images show the heatmaps in action. These are global heatmaps tracking the kills (top) and deaths (bottom) from the Sniper Rifle on Jub-Jub Guardian.

                                                                                                                                   Bungie has added a new feature and stat tracker to Halo 3. This one in the form of blood red “Heatmaps.” Heatmaps are used to track “encounters, weapons used and their results in a given game, collecting that data and sharing it with players visually.” As shown in the Snowbound snapshot below, the darker red areas are places where more deaths happen, while the cooler blue areas are places where less deaths occur.Bungie noted in it’s weekly update that the Heatmap tracking is in a “beta” right now, tracking 1/2 the stats. They’re monitoring the public performance of this form of stat tracking, previously used internally at Bungie. In other words, they don’t want processing power taken up on crunching Heatmaps by sacrificing some of the more critical pieces of data to Halo 3.

See the death signatures on the Global Heatmaps here. You can also look on your own Career Stats page on Bungie.net. Will this change the way we play Halo 3? Cooler areas are probably going to require more sniping action and likely won’t get as much kills.

Check out the latest weekly update report from Bungie, which also discusses upcoming downloadable content, bug fixes and the two disc Halo 3 Original Soundtrack.

From Bungie.net

                                    In a thought-provoking article, Wired’s Clive Thompson discusses how his lack of skill in Halo 3 has caused him to adopt a kamikaze kill method, musing on how the act is strangely parallel to real life suicide bombing.

Gamers learn quickly to compensate for their weaknesses. If they’re no good at targeting an enemy while running around out in the open, perhaps they adopt the hide and sneak method, avoiding opposition fire until a time when they can pop out and strike. Don’t like a certain gun? Switch to grenades. But what do you do when you just plain suck?

Wired’s Clive Thompson has an interesting take on this precise dilemma in regards to Halo 3 Multiplayer. His solution? Go suicide bomber.

In this intriguing yet fairly succinct read, Thompson details how, when going up against a player in Halo 3 who considerably outmatches him in skill, instead of exhausting his usual fruitless and frustratingly weak defensive tactics, he’s adopted the kamikaze pilot method of racing head on at his opponent with a sticky plasma grenade in hand. While this strategy invariably kills him, the sticky grenade will also kill his opponent.

Thompson goes on to call this tactic “an act of revenge” spurred on by “ritual humiliation” and parallels it to the mentality of a suicide bomber. Why does he justify killing himself in order to take out his enemy? Thompson explains:

I know I’m the underdog; I know I’m probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I’m poor.Specifically, I’m poor in time. The best players have dozens of free hours a week to hone their talents, and I don’t have that luxury. This changes the relative meaning of death for the two of us. For me, dying will not penalize me in the way it penalizes them, because I have almost no chance of improving my state. I might as well take people down with me.

While he places careful caveats to assure that he is not over-simplifying or trivializing the “horrific impact of real-life suicide bombing,” his analysis of the class systems in Halo 3, those who have the resources (time) to perfect their skills and those who don’t, is at the least thought-provoking and relevant:

Or to put it another way: The structure of Xbox Live creates a world composed of two classes — haves and have-nots. And, just as in the real world, some of the disgruntled have-nots are all too willing to toss their lives away — just for the satisfaction of momentarily halting the progress of the haves. Since the game instantly resurrects me, I have no real dread of death in Halo 3.

In short, it’s certainly worth a read below.

                                                                                                                                                                    It’s not too late to enter to win a Halo 3 Legendary Edition at 2Old2Play.com

For those of you that already own the regular Halo 3 or don’t know what the Legendary Edition is, I can sum it up as a Halo Geek’s dream. Better yet, just look at the feature below:

1. Includes storyboard art that depicts key moments and scenes
2. Comes with an audio-visualization tool custom-designed to enhance high-definition home theaters for the ultimate in Halo 3 audio and visual performance
3. Legendary Edition includes two bonus discs of extra content and a collectible replica of a Spartan Mjolnir Mark VI helmet with display stand
4. Bonus discs include behind-the-scenes features, a making-of documentary, remastered cinematic content from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 with director commentaries and more

So What Is The Contest?

We basically want to see how funny, witty, and/or shocking the community can be with a randomly selected screenshot from the Bungie Active Community Files. So all you have to do is give us a quote for the image below and email it to contest@2old2play.com with Halo 3 Contest in the subject line. Try to give us something that expresses the image best and makes us laugh while we go through the countless emails. The winner will be selected by our admins, mods, and writers from both sites on November 5th.

What Are the Rules?

The rules are simple. All you have to do is send one email with your quote for the picture to contest@2old2play.com in order to enter. You can only send one quote per email and only one email per person is allowed. Emails without Halo 3 Contest in the subject line will not be read. The contest is only valid in the United States and Canada so please keep this in mind when entering as the prizes will NOT be shipped elsewhere. The contest will end November 5th, 2007 but all entries must be in by November 2 to be counted in the contest. By entering this contest you agree to the contest rules provided here.

What do i Win?

• First Place: Halo 3 Legendary Edition
• Second Place: Halo 3 Regular Edition

You may think that Halo 3 is a great game or you may not. Either way, you’ve got to recognise the hype surrounding the game as being something powerfully attractive to young kids. Especially hell-bound young kids.

You wouldn’t be the only ones to notice either and a recent New York Times article has picked up the story of a Colorado Community Church which is using the game to try and attract newcomers to the Christian faith.

“Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.” Said the original article.

I have to confess, as somebody who spent countless summers at ‘Christian Camp’ and attended Sunday School every single week, i’m a little miffed that these kids get to play Halo 3 between their psalms. The most we ever got was word games based around the Book of Proverbs.

HaloGameWorld.com