The much-talked-about high definition remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved was recently removed from the category of ‘rumour’ and placed squarely in the ‘fact’ bucket, as Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was formally announced at Microsoft’s E3 2011 press event.

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As Halo players already know, Halo: Reach is one of the most complete first-person shooters ever created and includes an amazing singleplayer campaign and a multiplayer experience crammed to the gills (the gills!) with features that make other offerings from similar games seem shallow in comparison. Not to mention it’s great fun!

With the release of the second multiplayer map pack for Halo: Reach, Defiant, Microsoft has extended the range of online playgrounds available to multiplayer gamers with three new arenas – two for competitive play and one for the round-based, enemy-wave-destroying Firefight mode.

Not only is the Defiant map pack important for Halo fans in order to freshen up gameplay a bit and provide new levels to sink their teeth into, but it’s also a significant piece of content because it is, in effect, a ‘passing of the torch’ from previous franchise stewards Bungie to the new Halo custodians, 343 Industries, as well as that company’s development partner, Certain Affinity.

While Certain Affinity has played in this sandbox before with the creation of sets of Halo remake maps for Halo 2 (and the fact that the team comprises former members of Bungie), this is the first time (to my knowledge) that an original piece of playable Halo content has been created by anyone other than Bungie.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of the Halo: Reach Defiant Map Pack.

It’s been announced that three developers from mega-developers Bungie (they made something called ‘Halo’) have left the safety and sanctity of the venerable development house and formed their own studio, Moonshot Games.

Moonshot, headquartered in Seattle and with engineering support in Boston, will focus on creating smaller, downloadable titles as opposed to monoliths such as Halo.

The principles of Moonshot are Michel Bastien who will act as managing director (formerly a producer on Halo 2 and 3), Rob Stokes as creative director (who was a writer and mission director on Halo 2 and 3) and Damian Isla as technology director (who used to be an engineer back at Bungie).

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