XBox 360 Rally

The latest one of Bungie’s weekly updates has gone up on their site, and this one isn’t short on the info regarding both Halo 2, and Halo 3. That image you see above this being amongst that info, but I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, let’s get the Halo 2 news out of the way so we can get to the meat and ‘taters that is Halo 3.

Basically, because so many people are having problems downloading “Blastacular”, the new Halo 2 map, they’ve pushed back the ranking reset and the new matchmaking options until next week.

…there’s your Halo 2 news. Now, ON TO HALO 3!

First thing first — the internal Beta Testing at Microsoft is to determine the scaling for Halo 3, or in simple man speak, they want to make sure Halo 3 runs well with a lot of people on it. While they are testing to make sure Halo 3 is scaled properly for a large user base, don’t go thinking that this somehow confirms the absurdly wild rumors of 128-player matches. In short, games are still 16-on-16. Period. End of line.

Now, you may be wondering what exactly they’re doing with the Beta that’s taking so long. Well, to answer that, they’re testing a new feature. What new feature, you ask? Why, “Saved Films”, of course! That’s right, people. You’re gonna be able to save game footage of your awesome escapades. I don’t think this’ll effect the gameplay much (unless you find the one Speilberg-wanna be bastard on the server), but it sounds like a pretty fun addition.

Now to the Public Beta. Since Bungie is testing their new matchmaker, you won’t be able to have all the control over a custom match as you’re used to. Boo hoo. But they promise that your favorite game type, whatever it may be, will be in the Beta in one form or another. Which is good for people who like variety, unlike me who usually just gets down in Capture the Flag.

There’s also split-screen, so you and a friend who was not fortunate enough to cough up the money for Crackdown (which we’re giving away for FREE, I might add) can throw down against each other. One of the cool features they’re wanting to show off involves you lucky schmucks with HDTVs. Instead of the image being stretched to fill the screen either vertically or horizontally, they’ve gone and windowed the action, thus giving both of you a smaller, but more clear and proportionate image to focus on, instead of some horribly stretched view.

There’s the controller layout. Shut up about it.

What else, what else… um, a couple of updates on maps that they don’t name (outside the code-name “Jub-Jub) that let us know they’re coming along smashingly, and… oh, yeah, the picture.

That picture you see in the banner, which you can see in full resolution HERE (I warn you, it’s freakin’ big), is from their new line of marketing called “Emotion”. Simple. True. Powerful… and it makes me want my girlfriend to dress up as Cortana only that much more. But that’s neither here or there.

So there you go, the Bungie weekly update rolled up into one slightly-shorter package. Enjoy.

[Bungie]

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