Minor Details

Yeah, I know I fed you a bunch of information on Halo 3 last week, but do you really think I told you everything? I don't. We left some stuff out and we want everyone to get more excited as it gets closer to September 25th. Of course I told you about multiplayer, 4-player co-op, and more, but I didn't share with you the important small changes within these subjects that should have you squealing like a girl at 11:58 on Sept. 24 while standing in line at a GameStop or EbGames.

Now, I'm not saying Halo 2 didn't offer a great Xbox Live multiplayer experience. However, it doesn't do what Halo 3 will. In Halo 2, you'll notice a problem that occurs with every Xbox Live match, especially if you aren't partying up with friends: you get new people in your team. Crazy-named people with crazy icons. Even when you are among friends and you decide to have the same icon with slightly different colors, it's quite easy to forget who is what color. So instead of having to say, "Dude with the ninja turtle icon, yeah, whatever your name is," Bungie has given us the 'call sign' feature. You choose your own ID number starting with a letter followed by two numbers ("M17"). That gives you a possible 2,600 combinations, minus the Bungie call signs. Some of them are apparently designated for Bungie staff. We found this out in the Halo 3 Beta, so you may not get exactly what you want. Though there will be more than 2,600 people playing Halo 3, it would be extremely rare for you to match up in a team of 4-8 with someone using the same call sign. If such a case happens, you can easily change your call sign at any time.

What about all those horrible times in which my team-mates would quit? Will this still happen? Well, hopefully not as much. Bungie now has a two sided ranking system. One that takes skill into account while the other sees experience. You get your normal number ranking, but now you have a military ranking (Sergeant, Captain). When quiting out of a match, you lose experience points which will directly keep you from gaining rank. So hopefully this will keep people from quitting, and even cheating.

Ever find yourself wanting to play a custom match, but friends wouldn't join? Well, Bungie has another solution called XBL Public. "If you build it, they will come." What about that awesome custom game you made? Well, you can share it. If Bungie likes what you created, they'll put it on "Bungie Recommends."

Bungie has added a metagame that scores how well you do in the campaign missions when you're playing single player or online in co-op. Campaign scoring looks at a lot, too. It depends on what difficulty you're playing, if you're alone or in co-op, how many people are playing, and more. Remember the skulls from Halo 2? Those are back, and after collection, you can turn them on or off. Halo 3 even scores on how well you did with a skull on.

Of course you get color customization, icon customization, your own call sign, but did you hear about the new armor and helmet customizations? Yep, you get all these new armor and helmet models. This won't change your damage immunity at all, but if you want to stick out as an individual, you can. You can choose your helmet and certain aspects of armor, such as individual shoulder pieces.

Customization

Elite in Multiplayer

I told you about Forge in Pre-Release Briefing, but I didn't tell you some of the details of how you work with it. In layman's terms, each map has a certain set amount that can be spent on it. So if you can only spend 40 (whatever) on a map and a fusion core costs 4 (whatever), then you can put 10 fusion cores on the map. I really don't know how much you can spend on a certain map, but according to the picture, a fusion core is 4 of whatever they're going to call it.

Forge

Weird things you can do in Forge

Playing a match in Forge

Toggling in Forge

Well, that's about it, but if you're that kind of person who needs more info, then go to 1up.com.

--Grogulus