Petty Annoyance #2: No rewind feature in the Theater. No, seriously, there's no rewind feature. You can skip backwards through vast chunks of time and you can fast-forward (watching things in a sped-up way that kind of resembles old films converted to video), but you cannot rewind. How does that even happen? I mean, seriously, those of you that have played the game and then watched a video of said game know how painfully annoying it is to see something really cool and have no way to rewind a couple seconds to see it again.

Petty Annoyance #3: I'm already bored of Snowbound and Highground and will veto those two maps every single time I enter a game featuring them because I played those in the beta. Also, I know that many of you have played them to death as well, so don't think you're fooling anybody by trying to stack the deck in your favor by choosing a map that you already know. Yet, when I have ventured into Lone Wolves territory for some quick multiplayer matchmaking, it seems like those two maps are all that is going on (okay, not really, but I've seen them with alarming frequency).

Let's try something new and different people! Can we please? Epitaph, Guardian, Construct, Isolation, Narrows, The Pit and Sandtrap are all valid maps available right now for play. Don't be scared of them, because they are every bit as fun as the maps you have already memorized. Plus, these maps come with an added bonuses that your old maps don't offer: surprises.


I am not joking. If you want to play old crap that you've already mastered years ago, just load up Last Resort so that I can jump out of the match immediately. Although, I must admit that I find the remastered Last Resort preferable to playing oddball on Snowbound and having some joker run the ball past the turbolaser turrets so that nobody can get to it... what a cheap, cheating jackass. Please don't be that guy, ladies and gentlemen.

Forge Fantasy

I haven't yet spent much time monkeying around in The Forge since Halo 3's retail release (cut me some slack, it came out yesterday), but a friend of mine (whom I will refer to as Chachee to maintain his anonymity) had a great idea that I want to try out as soon as humanly possible. This idea is so good that I am simply going to paste his message into the column verbatim. Here it is:

Chachee: The Elephant is awesome. I'm going to need to come up with some sort of crazy self-created map that uses the Elephant in a siege capacity. Or maybe like pirates raiding from one ship to another with territories set on each Elephant. Brilliant!

It could be a tug of war type situation where you win if you get the Elephant all the way to your side. That would be epic, but can you control what the victory conditions are? I doubt they have anything that would work there, but ideas are helpful. Maybe we just have to set up a player rule, where you aren't allowed to move the flag till you get the elephant all the way to your base.

I see awesome gameplay opportunities here, with people jumping onto the elephant from above, or shooting rockets down onto it as it slowly rumbles back and forth through the valley.

This, in my opinion, is an excellent idea... but I'm not sure if it's possible. You can do a lot of things with The Forge, but I don't think you can pin values to objects (like making an Elephant a flag). Of course, I'm going to investigate this myself to see if we can actually pull it off. Similarly, if any Master Chiefs out there have cool videos or gametypes you'd like to share, feel free to email me here or hit me up on Xbox Live (gamertag = GabeSpy).

I'd also like to try creating a custom gametype using the custom pick-ups. I'm thinking of a 'Spy-Hunter themed game (that we'll test out next week, don't forget!) where the pick-ups do things like change the color of your armor so that you appear to be a member of the opposite team. It's kind of a melding of Halo 3 and the Spy from Team Fortress 2, so be sure to join in the 'Spy-Hunting fun next Wednesday!