In a fit of boredom, and with little enthusiasm for playing multiplayer I hopped into theater mode again to play around with the screenshot facility to look at the environment art. This entry is nothing more than a half dozen of the screenshots I liked best out of the ones I took, enjoy/discuss/ignore it’s up to you.

My first stop was an old video of Standoff, where eschewing the normal practice of gibbering over the giant antennae I looked in the opposite direction. I love this view over the plains and the river towards the hills in the distance, and looking at it I have to wonder if that hill would be as much fun to hike up as it looks.

From Standoff I wander back to campaign and the level The Covenant, based on this image alone, you could be forgiven for thinking that this level takes place on Earth. The beautiful surroundings and weather show nothing particularly alien or exotic, the only non-human elements are the Covenant forces, and the could easily be invading.

Then you look at this island, wreathed in mist and with quite frankly magnificent cloud formations overhead. However despite this beauty your eye is drawn to the pylon of the Ark. Dominating the skyline this massive construct reminds you that no matter how familiar the environment feels you are on something massive beyond comprehension.

My last visit of the day worth sharing, was to the map Foundry. Where a custom map I was playing used a teleporter to punt me outside the warehouse, and to my immediate death. However the mortal coil uncoiling aside I was able to get these two shots that illustrate how fantastic some of the environment art is, even when there is a 99% chance you will never see it.

The first shows a view across the water to what appears to be some sort of factory complex, maybe where the boxes in the Foundry warehouse come from. The second is a close up of the clouds as they pass by above. Look how real they look, you could be forgiven for thinking that they are a photograph of a real cloud formation.

Towards the end of it all I did a bit of larking about with an old match I had saved the playback for. Behold the fearsome Jaberwocky aka Rob 077 as it attempts to devour it’s prey.

Finally I felt like posting this film clip of my favourite moments in a slayer match to date.

It’s a bit daft, but impressive(ly stupid) none the less. Well that’s my opinion anyway.

I just had an X-Box live experience which highlights exactly what I was talking about in my last post.

I just played for a hair over four hours and nineteen games on a mix of Big Team Social and Social Skirmish matches, with a group of players gathered by bs angel, and it was Fantastic! Easily one of my best experiences on X-Box live in a long while.

The people I was playing with were friendly and welcoming, and did not seem to be taking the game to seriously, they were there to have fun, and we did. The banter was good and the gameplay was frenetic. So I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow players for being such good sports and putting up with my middling skills at the game.

bs angel
TTL Tortacular
soreltehnub
Cunbelin
PinkBulletz14
TT L Burritoh
TTL Quikthnkr
Sup4 Nov4
BrownV
thegreatmoocow

I had a fantastic time, and I hope we can do it again soon.

About a month ago I came back from a four week hiatus from the internet, forced in part by moving home. While the move itself was rapid and problem free, the sluggardly response time for my ISP to connect me to the internet was a nuisance.

However those four weeks had left me unable to play matchmaking in Halo 3 like I would normally, so I ended up popping in a couple of other games I had not touched since before Halo 3 launched in September, and playing a lot of single player campaign.

However now I am online once more and have returned to the world of online multiplayer, and have come to a realisation about myself.

I hate playing multiplayer alone. An oxymoron if ever I saw one, what I mean is I hate going into multiplayer without at least one of my friends list either playing with me, or on a private chat with me. The majority of people I meet online in X-Box live are foul-mouthed little gobshites who more often than not I am forced to mute before the match starts. Most of the time now when I start up Halo 3 I switch on Mute All in the voice communication options.

What are you like on live. Can you tolerate the fools or like me are you fed up with the stupidity and mute them?

I have just spent the past couple of hours playing around on the DLC Slayer playlist, and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised with the maps.

I am a bit of a cynic, and when I see phrases like re-made and re-imagined, I get a chill up my spine. Maybe its nostalgia, or maybe I just do not like change, but I have never listened to a remixed song, or watched a remake of a movie that I have enjoyed more than the original.

However the new maps in the Legendary DLC are fantastic.

Avalanche

Sidewinder was my favourite Halo: CE map. While the rest of the world seemed to love Blood Gulch, there was something about Sidewinder that kept my friends and I spent coming back to spend hours playing slayer with the vehicles enabled.

Avalanche despite having a similar basic design to Sidewinder, feels like it is a very different map. Everything that was great about Sidewinder is their, but it is just slightly off in comparison to the original. Despite this I find that it plays so much like its inspiration that I find myself getting all nostalgic for the old days. I cannot get enough of this map.

Blackout

Blackout is Bungie throwing a bone to the die-hard Halo 2 players who have been crying out for this map since September 25th. In the event that you have not heard of Blackout, it is a direct port of Lockout from Halo 2, re-skinned to look like a Human oilrig in the Antarctic.

According to my regular Halo 3 teammate Rob 077, a man who considered Lockout his second home in Halo 2 says that it plays really similar to Lockout. He felt that the detailing on the walls were distracting at first compared to the crisp, clean environment of Lockout. Though he soon got back into the swing of things, and proceeded to make me look mediocre in comparison. Though despite Rob’s deep love for Lockout, and his appreciation for it’s dizygotic twin, my favourite thing about this map is not the map at all. What I appreciate the most about this map is the Skybox.

That moon, an eldritch orb of silver ringed ethereal with light foreboding. Those dancing colours of the aurorae polares, entrancing me like the na fir-chlis of Gaelic lore. It is so beautifully distracting during gameplay that I sometimes forget about those Spartans and Elites looking to kill me, sorry team, my bad.

Ghost Town

Ghost Town is Bungie’s newest map, and if you will pardon my enthusiasm, it is fraking fantastic! It’s small and in slayer plays fast and chaotic. The enemy can come at you from any direction but can easily be overcome if you keep your head together and work with your teammate. I have not been in the Objective DLC hopper yet; I’m saving that for the weekend. If it is anywhere near as good in Assault and CTF as it is in Team Slayer that will be sufficient to cement this map as my favourite Halo map ever.

My only grouch with these maps is the release day. Tuesday some of us have to go to work tomorrow and cannot stay up to all hours enjoying this feast of content. Damn you I say for making me choose between being awake for work tomorrow or enjoying myself online.

To close here are a couple of screenshots from Avalanche for your enjoyment.

Rob meet Rocket, Rocket meet ROB! Krakaboom!

I love how the Security helmet makes me look like a Marine pilot.

I hope to hit the theatre mode in the next few days and should have a few more screenshots up by the weekend if you would like to see them feel free to return at that point. Though for now I bid thee farewell.

For the first time in a while I went into the theatre mode on Halo 3 purely on a whim.

You see normally I only go in when I have done something spectacular, well spectacular for me anyway, and I wish to create a clip of that particular moment. Though today I had a different purpose in mind, inspired by this screenshot, I was going to wander aimlessly around the map as the game played and see what I could see.

I find that with the frenetic pace of some of the fire-fights you sometimes fail to notice the beauty that can be seen in some of the, quite frankly, epic vistas that the environment artists at Bungie have created. We get so caught up in the kill or be killed gameplay that we forget that there is a vast world created for our viewing pleasure.

Sierra 117 is the training level of Halo 3 and much of it takes place in the jungle. The environment is absolutely amazing as these five screenshots show.

While playing through the video a grenade happened to explode where I had the camera positioned, the effect was astounding so I couldn’t help but tear myself away from the landscapes I was taking, and instead take a couple of arty combat shots of Mr 117 himself.

While swinging the camera here and there I came across this shot from right at the start of the level.

Now I am sure that this marine is only turning to face the Chief due to an AI command, but that is a bit soulless for me. I would rather pretend that this is the action of a marine, who in the presence of the living legend that is any Spartan cannot help but stare, as she begins to entertain the hope that with the Chief on their side, Humanity might just survive this war. Maybe I am just reading to much into this image but still it sounds good does it not?

After playing around with Sierra 117 in theatre mode I fired up the saved game of one of my recent Rumble Pit matches while running through this in camera mode I noticed something I had not seen before on Epitaph.

The outside of this map shows that the building in which you are fighting has this fantastic blue stained glass windows that dwarf the Spartan and Elite combatants such is their size. Now according to Halo3.Junk.ws I have played 41 matches on Epitath and while you cannot miss these windows from inside the structure, not once have I noticed this site while outside on one of the walkways. It makes me wonder what sights I am missing in the other multiplayer maps.

One final screenshot for you, while in Epitaph I couldn’t resist attempting a dramatic/arty screenshot.

Not to shabby in my humble opinion.