A Master Chief Approaches

The text of the spoiler is safe, but the curiosity that may result from reading it may be dangerous.The Ending is up on YouTube.

So next week, the Megaton game that is Halo 3 will be officially released to the general public. Microsoft is hyping this thing up way way more than it needs to be--I mean Halo 3 was already going to be a huge success. I must admit that their most recent commercials for the games have been really good. You wouldn't even know they were for a game if you didn't know what the '3' logo was about as they're in live-action form.

Aside from the obvious singleplayer/multiplayer experience, I'm really looking forward to tinkering with "Forge". Forge is kind of a map editor, where you're not making the maps, but you can put whatever you want *on* the maps. I can't really explain it because I'm not 100% sure what it is myself, but recently some Journalists got to play it and it was reported that they were able to replicate Baseball using Rocket Launchers and the Gravity hammers. Bases and all. It's "Multiplayer" as well, so you can have folks join you over Live and make stuff. Then, when you're done with it, you can upload it and have it available to other folks. Apparently Bungie will be featuring some of the better ones and drawing attention to them in some way.

Anyhow. Halo 3, more than just a shooter. I'm really excited for Forge. With this and Little Big Planet on PS3, I have two games that I could potentially play indefinitely.

Unfortunately you can't put in the Elephant (giant big moving base thingie) because it simply won't fit on most maps, I guess, but overall Forge is going to be awesome. I really wish it came with a fully-fledged map editor, too--I know it would clash with how tightly Bungie controls the Matchmaking service, but it would keep us from having to wait forever for new maps.

The coolest thing about Forge is that you can actually have up to 8 people playing a map as it's being modified. A common example is two teams, each with three Spartans and one Monitor, which is the form you take when editing: this would allow one person on each team to constantly supply their allies with weapons, vehicles, cover, or whatever, or allow them to smurf with the opponent's stuff by deleting their objects.

I'm sure I'll get the hang of it when I start using it, but right now Forge seems so good that I feel like I won't be able to adequately take advantage of it.