The international award-winning Halo 3 gets even better as the Heroic Map Pack launches on Xbox Live Marketplace. Halo 3 players worldwide can now enjoy a package of three all new multiplayer maps. The Heroic Map Pack is the first in a series of downloadable content from Bungie Studios.

Available for 800 Microsoft Points, each map offers a unique experience. Standoff’s symmetrical valley, with its entrenched bases and fields of boulders is ideal for mid-sized objective and Slayer game types, while Rat’s Nest’s vast, labyrinthine passages bring something new to the Halo multiplayer experience: an indoor vehicle paradise, strongly influenced by the Campaign mode, ideal for big team battles. Finally, Foundry is the ultimate Forge map – players can edit every single object in this voluminous industrial warehouse, place stairways, walls, bridges and tunnels to create an entirely new play space and build almost any kind of map they can think of.

Forge also allows players to edit and customise all three maps. In addition, ongoing updates to matchmaking playlists ensure that ranked and social gameplay remains dynamic and competitive.

The maps of the Heroic Pack are available in matchmaking now to those who have purchased the download. All three maps will become available as a free download in Autumn 2008, just prior to the next wave of all new multiplayer maps.