The Unlikely Origins of Team Death Warthog for Cutie
A couple of interesting things about the new Halo 3 beta, in no particular order:
There’s some very interesting integration with the guide that I haven’t seen before. If you bring up the menu for a friend who is also in Halo 3, you will see some specific H3 listings at the very top above the options for sending a message, inviting to your game, etc. The options themselves aren’t particularly interesting — one options lets you view their Halo 3 service record; the other lets you see their uploaded movies — but the fact that this is the first time it’s been seen makes me wonder if the hooks for these sorts of things have been in there all along, or if it’s something recently added in perhaps the 360 spring update. It’s the sort of pleasant surprise one wishes would crop up more often.
Speaking of movies, there are movies. That is to say that you can save records of matches you’ve just played and then upload them to an integrated online file share, and from there you can share them with anyone you please. At this point it looks like users are limited to 25mb and six slots; though presumably that’s subject to change. The inclusion of even the very modest implementation shown in the beta begs a host of questions about the final product. I am hoping that there’s going to be an included video editor allowing you to crop and even combine videos; that one seems likely at this point because an average match record takes up just under half your allotted online space. Besides, the ability to share videos is going to be almost completely wasted if users aren’t allowed to trim down and produce highlight reels. There is also the inclusion of a “theater” lobby that at this point does almost nothing, but the way in which it is structured in the menus suggests that it may be intended for entire parties of players to enter the theater and view films together. As the upcoming producer of “Safety Monkey’s Greatest Warthog Moments, Vol. 4,” I wholly endorse this idea.
Interesting technical aspects aside, the beta itself is great, much as most would assume. Three maps are available with a variety of different game types, and the overall experience does not disappoint. It feels in many ways like a streamlined version of the Halo 2 multiplayer, and that is mostly a complement. The party system allows you to stick with the same group throughout your session, and the experience is so easy and robust that it actually made me feel a little embarrassed on behalf of Gears and Rainbow Six. If there’s a single nit that really must be picked, it’s (still) the “hopper” method of game selection. I respect the kind of frustration that Bungie is trying to avoid by eliminating the server browser list, but dumbing the process down has some unpleasant side effects when you can’t properly filter your disinterests. For example, I’m not particularly interested in playing another game of VIP on Snowbound for as long as I live, and it’s aggravating that I can’t steer my game thusly.
During an extended session last night with my buddies Longman and Lantius, we were fortunate enough to be repeatedly steered back towards the one map that contains a Warthog, and a great deal of time was spent tearing around the countryside whooping, hollering, shooting, and just generally making life unpleasant for the opposing team. I had joked at the end that our group had probably been around long enough to warrant our own MySpace page, and so… well, it would seem I have a lot of free time. Too much, some would say.
On an utterly non-Halo-related item: Did you catch that footage of the upcoming Prince of Persia Classic for XBLA? Fuck. Yes. This is the kind of tampering with my childhood memories that I can really get behind.