Halo: Reach blowout at Comic-Con - £250 hardware bundle confirmed, Forge 2.0 and Firefight Versus announced

Boom. Halo: Reach goes big. Literally

Bungie dropped a couple of bombs during its Comic-Con panel in the early hours of this morning.

£250/$400 hardware bundle confirmed

The first thing of note is the new hardware bundle. Rumoured by Ars and HaloTips, the pack was revealed and unboxed in front of the attending audience.

The bundle will contain a 250Gb Xbox 360 Slim, a copy of Halo: Reach, two wireless controllers and the trimmings: cables and stuff.

It's available now for preorder for $400, and releases on September 14: the worldwide launch of the game itself. Microsoft's confirmed it will be exclusive to Game and GameStation in the UK for £249.

You have Covenant in my Firefight

Also shown off in detail at the panel was the return of Firefight, which debuted in Halo 3: ODST last September. The mode, which was announced for a return at E3, does have a few new tricks.

First, it showed a new play type called "Gruntpocalypse". In a gist: All grunts, all the time. Aim for the face."

Also revealed was "Versus Firefight", which lets you play on the Covenant side, as well as be a Spartan against a warm of Covenant soldiers.

All maps from Firefight will be taking from the campaign.

It's worth pointing out here that multiplayer has also gotten a new vehicle in the shape of a forklift.

LittleBigHalo

Undoubtably, though, the big one is Forge 2.0: it's massive.

The mode, an editing tool to create and edit your own maps, debuted in Halo 3 in 2007, but needless to say, it's improved. A lot.

Mind that sighting from what was thought to be the return of Halo 2 map Blood Gulch? It's properly gone beyond that, now.

Basically, in a word, more: more customization options, more tools, more ways to improve your multiplayer experience, more depth, just more.

There's a vidoc from Bungie that explains how Forge 2.0 works. It's below, along with shots of the hardware bundle and a video of an un-boxing of the flavours available for the game.

Bit hard not to be excited for this, eh?

Halo: Reach releases on September 14 for Xbox 360.