So above is a pretty interesting new video for Halo 3: ODST. The video talks about some of the new tech in the game, and manages to show off a few new features if you’re paying attention.

Bungie today released a pretty great video narrated by Buck, leader of the motley group of troopers starring in Halo 3: ODST. Buck (voiced by the always amazing Nathan Fillion) introduces the members of your squad, details the mission taking them to New Mombassa, and talks about some of the deadly hardware you’ll get to shoot aliens with.

Happy Bungie Day.

Via Major Nelson’s blog, the gaming world is made aware of Bungie’s extended peek at the Halo 3 maps set to be included with this October’s release of Halo 3: ODST.

Amounting to not much more than some screenshots… but diehard fans of the sticky grenade will no doubt begin salivating for the new maps and the hope of finally completing out those darned achievements.

Here’s the link to Bungie’s post on the matter.

Major Nelson today released the pricing and dates for the new maps for Gears of War 2 and Halo 3.

The Snowblind map pack for Gears of War 2 will be out March 31st for 800 MS points.

The Mythic Map pack for Halo 3, previously only available to those who bought the limited edition of Halo Wars, will be released on April 9th for 800 MS points.

1UP.com has a decent preview of the new maps coming to Halo 3. They include video as well as descriptions of the new maps and tips from Bungie developers. The map pack will be bundled with the limited edition of Halo Wars, but has no other release date.

Moving Pixels has an interesting analysis of the reasons why Halo 3‘s multiplayer allows players of many different skill levels and play styles to all play together, as opposed to Call of Duty‘s multiplayer, which is all about pure skill.

The article analyzes how the weapons work over different ranges and how many situations allow for instant kills depending on the weapon you wield versus your adversary. A contest of players with similar weapons comes down to pure skill, while an unskilled player may be able to get the drop on a skilled player depending on the situation.

It’s an interesting look at some of the magic that goes into making a multiplayer game that so many people enjoy. Do the hardcore Halo players here agree with the author’s assessment (make sure you read the whole article, not just my summar)?

I’m not exactly the world’s biggest Halo fan. The trailers for Halo 3 were for more interesting and epic than the game itself. However, I am a pretty big fan of the game’s soundtrack. For many people it’s as iconic as the score from Indiana Jones, Star Wars, or Back to the Future.

The soundtracks for each of the games has been available before, but now they are being bundled into a five disc set featuring one disc for Halo: Combat Evolved, one for Halo 2, two discs for Halo 3, and one disc featuring four tracks from the upcoming RTS Halo Wars. The Halo Wars disc will also include other bonus features about the recording of the tracks and the opening cinematic from the game.

The boxed set is available at retailers today, and is also available for download from Sumthing Digital.

Hot on the heals of the Black Friday sale on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Major Nelson has announced the first Holday Deal of the Week. There will be a new deal each week of December.

For this week, the Halo 3 Legendary map pack has been discounted from 600 MS points down to 400. The deal starts today, and a new deal will be announced next Monday and start the following day.

If you’ve been putting off the purchase of the map packs, now’s your chance. We’ll keep you posted on the following weeks’ deals as well.

Wanna play Halo 3 with HCG?  Tonight at 8pm Central send a message or friends request to SOG Froobin or Twispby and tell them you want to play.  The games are invite only so please make sure you give the guys a heads up so they can get you in the room.

A few days ago we posted the results of a Eurogamer test that showed installing Halo 3 to the hard drive with the new NXE actually caused load times to increase. Bungie has posted an update on their site explaining the reasons for this. It’s fairly technical, but the short answer is that Halo 3 already copies data to the hard drive, so when you install the game to the hard drive, the hard drive is doing twice as much work to read information from the cached data and to also read information from the installed game. A hard drive can’t read data from two places at once.

The full explanation is over at Bungie’s site. They also don’t seem optimistic that a fix for the issue will be forthcoming.