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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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13 years later, Halo 3 has a brand new skull

And it's one of the best ever.

Halo 3 has a new skull - and it's one of the best Halo skulls ever.

The new skull, added to Halo 3 on PC and Xbox One this week with the launch of Halo 3 on PC, is called Acrophobia (the fear of heights), and it does a very simple, but very powerful thing: it lets you fly. Real fast.

Yep, you, aka Master Chief, can fly around the game's various levels like a bird (or more like Minecraft creative mode) by holding down the jump button. There are some risks. If you're flying too fast and hit something you could splatter poor Master Chief. And of course enemy fire and objects can kill you. But otherwise, you're free as a bird to roam around Bungie's brilliant shooter.

You have to unlock the Acrophobia skull by completing a challenge, but it's pretty easy: defeat 343 flying enemies in the Halo 3 campaign or campaign playlists on normal difficulty or higher. Flying enemies include Sentinels, Drones, Banshees, and Phantoms. (Best give the Drone swarm on Crow's Nest a shot to complete the challenge as quickly as possible.)

As you'd expect, players are having fun with the Acrophobia skull, using it to explore areas previously inaccessible without mods, to complete levels in different ways than they could when Halo 3 came out on Xbox 360 13 years ago, and just to have a bit of a laugh.

Here, redditor JoeyT500 uses the skull to boot elite after elite out of banshee after banshee. It's pretty funny.

The new skull is pretty fun from r/halo

Remember I mentioned you can easily end up splattering yourself while using the skull? Redditor skittles2519 shows us just how easy.

So I tried out the new skull... from r/halo

And in the following clip, redditor TOEGRABBER uses the skull to try to kill the Brute chieftain who holds Sergeant Johnson captive early on in mission Sierra-117. I always wondered about that.

I've always wondered if it was possible to kill the Chieftain during this cutscene :( from r/halo

Acrophobia has already been called the greatest skull in Halo history purely for its potential. It's likely fans will use it to do even more impressive stuff in the months ahead. And, brilliantly, you can also unlock the Acrophobia skull for use in the Halo 1 and 2 campaigns. Expect shenanigans there, too. In the video below, Generalkidd uses the skull to complete Halo 1's famous Warthog run without a Warthog.

Watch on YouTube

And, just for fun, here's Generalkidd completing Halo 3's Warthog run without a Warthog.

Watch on YouTube