Rocket, meet face. Face, meet oblivion.

This blog entry is just more babbling about Halo 3, so if you're not at all interested in the game, you might be in for some disappointment.

Last night I got to try out a few custom gametypes with some friends and SA goons. Overall the night was a success and everyone had fun, but I definitely have some ideas in mind to make custom games more fun in the future. Here's an overview of what we played...

Mongoose Jousting - Teams of two, unlimited rocket launcher ammo, and a huge vehicle yard full of Mongooses (Mongeese?). We played a few rounds last night, and it was a high-speed carnage extravaganza. However, there are a few problems right now:

- The Mongoose respawn timer doesn't start until the previous vehicle's wreck disappears from the map. It can take up to 30 seconds for a Mongoose to respawn after it has been killed. This can probably be remedied by simply adding a few more spawn points on the map. The only problem is a limited amount of space that doesn’t interfere with the main driving paths.

- People cheat like crazy. They'll camp the Mongoose yard and nail a team right as they mount up, or even fire at passing vehicles while still on foot. Not much we can do about this one, other than clarify the rules before each game. It would be nice if the editor had a way to simply spawn teams with (or on) a vehicle. Another idea is to make teams invulnerable for a few seconds after spawning, but we'll have to see how abusable this is.

- There isn't really a great map for the gametype. You need a large open area where teams can get up to speed, with enough terrain that you're not always in the open. Sandtrap is okay, but there are so many dunes and ramps that the vehicles flip over a lot more than I'd like. It would be nice if you could remove the huge-ass Elephant transports from the map, but they seem to be a permanent fixture.

Super Rocketball - A lot like standard RocketBall, in which there's a "ball" (skull) that a player can pick up and score points while carrying it. The differences are lower gravity and automatic skull pickup. I'm going to modify this to remove the low gravity -- on open maps, players can just bounce around and easily avoid rockets (on Isolation, I ran around with the skull for about forty seconds with seven other people chasing me). Normal gravity would fix this. I'm also toying with the idea of making it so the skull-carrier does no damage with melee attacks, to make ball-handling a bit more frantic and desperate. An interesting addition would be the ability to score a point for killing other players, and maybe three points for killing the skull-carrier. It wouldn't be enough to win, but it'd make the game even more violent and reward good rocket skills.

Instagib Last Man Standing - It's a good idea in theory: a free-for-all with one-shot kills, where players only get limited lives. The problem is that the idea of Instagib matches is to promote aggressive play, where Last Man Standing games promote hiding/camping so you don't lose lives while there are still a lot of players on the map. The two rulesets conflict and make for a boring gametype. I think we're going to have to convert it to straight Slayer Instagib and see how things go. Also, the best weapon for this gametype (the Covenant Carbine) can't be selected as the default weapon. I'm not sure why -- you can choose almost anything else. We'll have to experiment with other weapons to see what works (obviously, an automatic weapon like the assault rifle is just ridiculous for one-shot-kill rules).

If there’s anyone reading this who has Halo 3 and wants to try out some of these custom games, please feel free to add me to your friends list (and mention who you are – I get a lot of random invites from people I’ve been in public games with). My gamertag is WhiteH0wler (with a zero) and I’m online most nights, if only for a quick round of Hexic 2 before bed.