Back in the Saddle

Has it really been two months since our last update? For shame! We’ll have to get back into the swing of things and correct that. Expect a Late to the Party review of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood soon (TM), as well as the eventual return of Week in Miscellanea and the other stuff you love.

In the meantime, here’s some interesting Halo: Reach news. As we discussed a while back, Bungie won’t be making any more Halo games for the foreseeable future, moving on as they are to a new IP with their new publishing pal, Activision. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t planning to support their swan-song to the Halo series, however – and they’re turning to the community to help them.

First up, the recently-concluded Forgetacular contest, in which players were invited to create maps and submit them for inclusion in Reach‘s official playlists: 3,000 entries later, the winners have been announced and they (along with the top-tier runners-up) will soon be available in matchmaking. A couple of the top entries are below, and you can see all the winners here.

Atonement (CTF)

Abridged (BTB)

On top of that, several of the more involved and active community members have been empowered to seek out new maps and bring them to the attention of Bungie for possible inclusion in future playlist updates. Personally, I think it’s enormously clever of Bungie to leverage the the player base in this way. Forge is a very powerful tool and giving people this kind of incentive is sure to generate all sorts of exciting results.

In related news, the Bungie.net player viewer has finally updated. No longer is your in-game persona represented by a default Noble Six – your individual style is now reflected for all to see. Check out the in-game avatars of some of our O514 regulars:

Tanith 6227

 

Moxidas

  

Dakalos

Molotov 00

 

Aww yeah – we make this look good.

(If you haven’t logged in for a while, do so to update your Bungie.net profile.)