New Halo 2 maps April 17th ...

The new Halo 2 maps are coming April 17th -- two of 'em.

You can get info and screenshots from Bungie.net, but in essence, the two maps are good-looking remakes of previous maps Hang 'Em High and Derelict -- and I'm a big fan of the original Halo's Hang 'Em High map.

Not to disparage anyone's work, but though the maps are touted (via the press release) as "a perfect way to thank fans for their support", we have to pay $4 for our two thank-you maps. And there are just two of them. I was expecting more.

But they will be available on the Xbox and on the 360, which is a nice improvement (originally, it was suspected they would be 360-only). The tradeoff is these will be credit card purchases, not MS Points, since the original Xbox doesn't recognize the difference between Xbox 360 Silver and Gold accounts, or MS Points. Maybe that will lessen the 12-year-old idiocy on these maps?

And again, not to disparage anyone's work, but I think there's some work that could be done to make these maps purchase-able via points on the 360. I'm a development and services guy, so I really think there's some work that could be done to make these purchase-able via points on the 360.

But they'll likely be great maps, give us more Red versus Blue fodder, and (like previous Halo maps) may eventually become free.

And they're being created by Austin game company Certain Affinity. I want these to be off Certain Affinity's plate so we can finally find out what else they're working on...