More multiplayer maps for Halo: Reach are on the way, Microsoft announced today.
The "Defian Map Pack" will feature three all news maps -- "Condemned," "Highlands," and "Unearthed" -- and will be available this March for 800 MS Points. Fancy Achievements? The collection of maps will pack an additional 150 Gamerscore.
Details on the maps can be found after the jump. Are you one of the 40 million or so Halo: Reach players excited about the new maps? Or do you have your obligatory "Halo hate" comment ready for copying and pasting?
Condemned: Condemned takes place aboard Orbital Station Gamma, a massive space station high in orbit above the planet Reach. Prior to the Covenant’s overwhelming invasion, Orbital Station Gamma provided long range communications for UNSC fleets and a vital lifeline between Reach and Earth. During the Battle of Reach, the station suffered terrible punishment at the hands of the Covenant but a few fortified sections remain intact, fully pressurized, and ready for combat. Condemned supports 6 – 12 players in a variety of action-packed game types, including Team Slayer, Team Objective and Free for All.
Highlands: Highlands takes place on the top-secret Military Wilderness Training Preserve on Reach. The Preserve is a large, wooded area where Spartan super-soldiers trained long before the war with the Covenant began. During the Battle of Reach, the Preserve was the site of key battles between the alien invaders and a group of Spartans who used their familiarity with these UNSC training grounds to significant tactical advantage…but not everyone who enters these woods makes it out alive. Highlands expands the fight with massive-scale engagements for 8 – 16 players in Big Team Battle, Team Slayer and Team Objective.
Unearthed: Unearthed takes the battle for Reach to a large Titanium mine and refinery located in the Viery civilian sector of the planet. This particular mine was built to take advantage of the exposed titanium inside a massive meteor crater. The titanium produced here is used in much of the UNSC hardware, from the chassis of the Warthog to the meters-thick armor plating of capital ships like the UNSC Pillar of Autumn. While this facility was quickly abandoned when the Covenant arrived on Reach, it still has significant tactical (and economic) value and it won’t be long before both humans and Covenant return to battle for control. Unearthed allows up to 4 players to launch a counterassault against the Covenant in Firefight and Firefight modes such as Generator Defense.
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Contest:
9:00 AM on 02.14.2011 | 
None the less I'm excited to play some new maps Halo Desperately needs more!
Bear in mind I only really play Multiplayer, so haven't touched the SP....
It's fucking awful.
It's like playing a 90's FPS game with shiney graphics and terrible physics. It just was not fun in the slightest.
I played a couple of rounds, then turned it off and played that same Killzone 3 map from the beta over and over and over.
I've kept it, for now, but man I can't even bring myself to play it. Now, since playing it, moreso than ever before, i'm completely baffled by it's poularity. Baffled i tell you.
the one thing i will give it, is that the menu's are very pretty... But the game is just not fun, or impressive, or exciting, it's pure wank.
i would literally rather play CoD, and i really don't like CoD.
"It's like playing a 90's FPS game..."
Funny you should mention that since the last two Killzone's MP play like old 90s FPS games like Soldier of Fortune and Tribes. And I say that as a compliment, clearly you were playing some crap games back then.
Also Halo MP is great and I have only played the first one on PC so I do not see a reason to bad mouth Reach.
That's beautiful man, just beautiful.
I'm assuming that must be the case, that the Campaign and FF MUST be fucking awesome, because man the vanilla multiplayer sucks balls.
You didn't play SP, and jumped right into MP? You're probably just raging from the ass raping that was delivered to you.
All that said and done, I am a wee bit hesitant in buying yet more maps. The last Halo3 batch and the first Reach batch just didn't quite 'slot in'. Although you can play DLC only playlists, finding one of those new maps in a standard rotation is pretty rare, and when they do appear, most people seem to skip them in favour of The Cage or Swordbase.
I very rarely play single player in any game, I just don't enjoy it much anymore.
i mean, story driven games, sure, but FPS games? Where the story is nothing more than an excuse for you to shoot more and more bigger and badder enemies, that are still controlled by the game and are still designed to be beaten? Nah, I see each game as a different "sport" to be played with and against real people.
so no, I didn't get raped by the kids playing, in fact I managed to find a big fucking hammer, staff, axe, thing, and whooped a few suckers with that before thinking "this is fucking silly".
By 90's i'm talking Quake 3 (1 and 2 were epic, 3 arena went completely wank) you know with people floating around and sliding across the floor. although Quake 3 arena was BETTER than Halo insomuch as it didn't take 2 fucking clips to put an enemy down.
My Halo games went like this...
Run around, find enemy (laugh at stupid floaty physics) be confused by the hype.
Find target
Shoot target
Shoot target again
Target notices you and starts to shoot you.
Circle target shooting each other.
They go down, because i started shooting first
Someone else sees you and your low health and shoots you dead.
Find silly needle?? weapon, rinse repeat exactly the same as above, but with a different gunfire sound...
Seriously, i say 90's shooters meaning Quake 3 arena and shit like that, (you know, super jumpy pads and stupid guns) because personally in the 90's i was playing Counter Strike, so it may be no surprise that the single shot realism of SOCOM is a million times more interesting to me than this Halo bullshit the kids are into these days.
To each their own. I happen to dislike Killzone, I think it plays like ass, but then again, it's my personal preference. I don't waste my time posting about how much I think it sucks, as if I'm going to somehow preach and convert what I see to be as some poor lost soul. I let people have their likes, unobstructed by my naysaying of their franchises of choice.
Do I tell JRPG fans that I think Persona sucks? No.
Do I tell Killzone fans that I think their game just tries to reinvent wheels to no avail? No.
Do I tell Mortal Kombat fans I think their fighting game tastes suck fat donkey balls and that their kind should be sterilized so that their kind can plague my planet no longer? No, no matter how badly I want to, I don't.
Moral of the story: just stop. You're not going to bring more people to your cause by shitting all over the things they like, and nothing says "need for ego boost" like posting a long-winded diatribe about how you hate the game that the story is addressing.
You should play SWAT mode, then. :P
Eh. you're entitled to your opinion.
@Everyday Legend - i come here to discuss video games, not to "convert" people or "bring people to my cause" shit, i don't have a fucking cause, I hang out here until i can go home and play games! Simply to discuss videogames which, often, belive it or not, involves exchange of opinion.
Do you literally come here to spunk all over the stuff you like and ignore everything else? Because man that must get fucking boring.
And what I'm saying is very different to "not being able to reinvent the wheel" or "not my genre" All I'm saying is that I don't understand the global praise and general popularity.
this is a game hailed as AMAZING by an entire generation. I just want to know why. I just can't see it myself and I just don't understand it.
The majority of FPS players dont like that realistic bullshit that Killzone and SOCOM pushes out. maybe we like mindless fun with friends. I, for one, love team based games like SOCOM, TF2, Counter Strike, etc. But, i love just killing each other and talking shit with friends and having fun. Maybe you think you're taking Halo too seriously?
in SWAT, people don't take long to die. one headshot and they're dead.
Still loving the maps
Still failing at getting that killionaire. D:
I'll be picking this pack up.
Try the tank!
I'm thinking my PS3 will start to get regular use once Killzone is out.
"this is a game hailed as AMAZING by an entire generation. I just want to know why."
Come on, man, it really isn't that complicated. People like it for the same reason they like anything else in the world: because they think it's fun.
You obviously don't. So send it back.
Really, though, do you expect that your tastes and the rest of society's will ever match up? The Fight was panned by virtually every game critic in the world as absolute trash and yet you seem to love it. Maybe you're just... unique?
But I won't send it back until I give it a fair go, I want to try Swat mode, and Firefight first.
See if I can bring myself to play single player without feeling like I'm wasting my LIVE subscription ;)
x
People like halo because it's fun. It's a simple game, with a simple story. It's simple even in it's game design. What made it stand out back in the day was the fact that it wasn't just a standard corridor shooter (which so many shooters were back then) and it had fun vehicle levels.
Like the man says: If you don't like it, send it back. It's just not the game for you.
I'll propose a counter argument. You like Killzone right? you'll be buying Killzone 3 right? It can be argued that Killzone is merely a clone of COD, even some of the guns look like copy-paste versions of different modern guns/scopes. It can also be said that Killzone exists only to counterpoint halo which it's never really done. What's so special about Killzone to you?
The question "why is this game even liked" is kind of silly. You certainly like games that by other people's standards... are quite shit. Like mrandydixon said.
If you don't like it, fine, nobody has a gun to your head.
But what gets REALLY tiresome is hearing somebody drone on and on in every single halo post about how Halo is "nothing special" the point of a videogame isn't to be "special" or "original" or even "revolutionary" the entire point of the damn thing is to be fun. If you can't have fun with it, you're doing something wrong.
A skilled halo player doesn't need 2 assault rifle mags to take one person down and furthermore knows that there are better weapons easily available to you that are 'easier to win with'
halo actually has recoil management, sc. try feathering the trigger the way you would in any other FPS. watch the reticle, it bounces out of the circle. Keep it within the circle.
Hell, even the so-called "Halo killer", Killzone, isn't really competition to Halo... not because Killzone games aren't good, but because they don't really do what Halo does. If anything, they're much closer to CoD games than to Halo games, as Dreamscape pointed out.
Does that make sense?
Halo is one of the only franchises currently on the market not to strive for realism in its settings, physics, weapons... it's just different than most of what's out there, which is why it's so highly regarded. As soon as someone else comes along and tries to do the things Halo does, only better, Halo will no doubt be knocked off its pedestal. Until then, the CoDs, Killzones, Medal of Honors, MAGs, etc. are only competing with each other.
@Sexualchocolate
If you don't like the multiplayer, I promise that you won't like the single player either. Nothing changes other than the fact that you'll get tea-bagged less and have to watch space marines try to act.
Halo is (to me, at least) a 90% multiplayer experience. Its strengths lie in its infinitely customizable settings, unrivaled map editor (for a console), match recording options, etc. The single-player is fun, but nothing special. (Though that changes slightly if you play through on four-player co-op.)
We should play a few rounds sometime soon.
One last thing: I think your Quake 3 vs Counter-Strike argument actually hits the nail on the head here (and also strengthens my own points). Both games did what they did better than any other games on the market at the time, but both games also did things VERY differently from each other, so they weren't necessarily meant for the same audience.
Unless you're like me, who played and loved both back in the day, just as I play and love the Halos and the Battlefields today :)
I suggest Grifball...
"I played a couple of rounds, then turned it off and played that same Killzone 3 map from the beta over and over and over. "
Nuff Said.
Cant wait though, always love me some more Halo maps
I always seem to improve my skills every so often depending on what kind of game I'm playing. I've recently got the Killonaire I wanted on Firefight mode, and I unlocked the final avatar award inadvertantly on Grifball (a Killtrocity on multiplayer matchmaking is hard to come by, believe me). I also like the way new modes are introduced too.
That said, after buying the Noble map pack, I only seem to have played on Anchor 9 (aka Unanchored) with others atm. And that is not very often. Maybe I have to get a little more use out of the other maps before I can make any comments about whether these map packs are worth it...
Good catch!
Though Certain Affinity IS made up of ex-Bungie peeps, and they made a map pack for Halo 2 as well, so they're a pretty safe bet...
What makes you bet they're helping out while Bungie is building the next big franchise?
Halo breathed new life into the fps genre and most of the things you enjoy in your shooters as the norm are because of halo. Everyone's entitled to their opinions but unless you were there back on the day, you dont get to have one.
Halo i love ya!