Easter treats for Halo 3

By Robert Purchese Published 6 March, 2008

Double experience for two weekends.

Bungie is treating us to two weekends of double experience and promoting two fresh Halo 3 game-types.

Beginning this evening at 8pm GMT and ending at the same time on Monday, you will be able to enjoy popular mod Grifball in an unranked "social playlist".

Grifball is similar to rugby; two teams of four grab a ball from the middle of the pitch and try to run it into the opposing goal. There's no passing allowed and everyone will have gravity hammers and energy swords to stop you scoring.

Bungie has altered the rules a bit, although it assures us the core of the original is still there. The developer is offering tournament prizes too. Charge over to the official Grifball site to find out how to play.

Then, on 20th March at 8pm GMT, you will see the return of Team SWAT from Halo 2. Once again, this is unranked and earns you double experience. You'll be battling with no shields and no radar but your health will be increased. This will end on 23rd March at 8pm GMT.

Bungie has also made a few alterations to the Heroic DLC hopper, which has been split into DLC Slayer (4v4) and DLC Objective (6v6).

Each will have a number of game-type variations: Team Snipers, Team Rockets, Team BRs, Team Duel and Team Duals for Slayer; and Multi Flag CTF, Multi Flag BR, One Flag, Assault, Neutral Bomb Assault and Team King for Objective.

Matchmaking and various maps have been fiddled with, too.

The biggest alteration is reducing the size of a "Large Party" in Ranked Big Team Battles from seven or more down to six or more. "Mixed Skill" parties - those with a level spread of 10 or more between best and worst - can now face off against non-mixed groups.

This should decrease waiting times when searching for games. But Bungie will be keeping a close eye on it going forward to ensure it doesn't descend into organised groups routinely steam-rolling rabbles of solo players.

Call of Duty 4 has pushed Halo 3 down to second place in the Live activity charts recently, but Bungie will fight back.

"We have a lot of awesome new content coming up We're not walking away from Halo 3," Bungie's community lead Brian Jarrard told Eurogamer at GDC.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • LetsGo #1 4 years ago

    Bungie may not be walking away from Halo3 but I walked away from Halo3 a week after COD4 came out....

  • Physically_Insane #2 4 years ago

    When are the maps free!?!?!?!?!?!?

  • GitSomE_UK #3 4 years ago

    Halo 3 multiplayer just isn't doing it for me, it just seems all soft and spongy compared to the speed and grittiness that is COD4 maybe it's because COD4's set in the present rather than some far off universe I can relate to it more.

    I'm trying to like H3 but I still keep on going back to the COD4 joy, having to pay for the extra content isn't helping either.
    Edited by GitSomE_UK at 06/03/08 @ 11:29

  • Yossarian #4 4 years ago

    I was going to predict all the posts in this thread but you could just copy-paste the first three a few times to get the idea.

  • peteb #5 4 years ago

    COD4 is coffee, Halo 3 is tea,
    sometimes i take one or the other,
    but both are fine for me!

  • agparrot #6 4 years ago

    Stop Press: Bungie "Breaking apart families" by offering gamers incentives to spend time away from them at Easter.

  • Xerx3s #7 4 years ago

    "I was going to predict all the posts in this thread but you could just copy-paste the first three a few times to get the idea."

    Are there any bets I can I can make on this?

  • BadBoyBonner #8 4 years ago

    If Bungie really want to get people playing away from CoD4 - instead of introducing some ultra dodgy first person "sports game" why don't they just replicate the CoD 4 control scheme and get rid of shields?

    Effectively giving us CoD 8 (which will probably be set in the future after looking at past trends) and then we wont have to wait 4 years for it to come out - everyones a winner.

    EDIT - well apart from Infinity Ward of course! lol
    Edited by BadBoyBonner at 06/03/08 @ 12:05

  • syphaa #9 4 years ago

    Boooooost!
    To be honest I am a lot more interested in COD4 updates.
    The recent patch tweaking a few bits rocks...love the grenade cam :)

    Will prob get back into H3 when maps are made free and everyone stops playing COD4... :)

  • BadBoyBonner #10 4 years ago

    Only thing I find painful in COD 4 is playing against all the 4 bar Yanks with my 3 to 2 bar ping rating - if they only knew how many times I have really taken them out - instead of watching the replay where instead apparently I haven't even fired a single shot 8-(

  • WiseNail #11 4 years ago

    Call of Duty 4 is over rated and an average FPS as best...

    There hasn't been a good Call of Duty since the first one...

    The score from Eurogamer should have been at least 2 points lower...

    How it ever got a 9 from Edge Magazine is beyond me...


    Actually, it's a very good and enjoyable game. I'm just waiting for some stupid arse to start quoting the above non stop about Halo 3, and then in the next breath go on about how much they love First Person Shooters.
    Edited by WiseNail at 06/03/08 @ 12:27

  • Skooch #12 4 years ago

    Variety is the spice of life; which is precisely why I prefer Halo 3 to COD4.

  • gingerlink #13 4 years ago

    "COD4 is coffee, Halo 3 is tea"
    That may explain a lot, I'm someone who prefers tea a lot more though, although I still need to borrow COD4 off my flatmate to try it. Still enjoying halo though, actually, that's a lie, I've been enjoying grifball.

    so hooray for it being on the social playlists this weekend!

    yes, I just want to point out that grifball is in fact, completely awesome, the rugby analogy is a really dodgy one though, it's difficult to see why it's so fun until you play it.
    Edited by gingerlink at 06/03/08 @ 12:55

  • Lebowski #14 4 years ago

    It's actually against the law to play and like both Halo3 and CoD4. Looking forward to playing Grifball in playlist.

  • Benno #15 4 years ago

    i like and play halo 3 and cod 4

    infact i am a big halo fan, but when i look at it from the outside at a technical point of view i really dont understand how it got such good reviews

  • bushwod #16 4 years ago

    looking forward to trying grifball, but will I have to pay for the new maps in order to play it?

  • CreepinJesus #17 4 years ago

    "Call of Duty 4 is over rated and an average FPS as best... "

    I'd agree with that, WiseNail. I found it even more average than Fear. Mind you, Halo 3 feels pretty average now, thanks to the success of the first two Halo games...

  • DefdumBlindkid #18 4 years ago

    I'd rather play a playlist with zero exp on account of being a noob and unable to reach skill level 30. Too much exp and I'll be a 'Staff Captain' soon. Cue 12yo laughter.
    :-{

  • MightyMouse #19 4 years ago

    European matchmaking you say? Oh wait, not that committed.

    Actually the weird thing about halo is that sometimes it's unplayable due to bad connections, maybe I'm just lucky in other games but it really does seem to be worse in halo.

  • Feanor #20 4 years ago

    "COD4 is coffee, Halo 3 is tea,
    sometimes i take one or the other,
    but both are fine for me!"

    There must be a tea vs. coffee fanboy war raging somewhere on the internet.