Forgers have been making race tracks since Halo 3. I don’t think Bungie ever expected the community to create such intricate and crazy tracks. It was fun to race against friends in customs, but keeping track of laps to manually end the game was a chore.
Bungie took notice and created a fully dedicated Race gametype in Halo Reach. The settings they provided was a dream come true. So many ways to customize and optimize Race for any particular track. Halo Tracks, a community dedicated to creating and sharing race tracks and gametypes became a bustling niche group. Similar to Forge Hub, or Griffball hub (I’m pretty sure the Griffball community has a different name than that, but it escapes me right now) Halo Tracks was another branch of the community that made the overall Halo experience more fun.
Unfortunately, Halo 4 neglected to reintroduce the Race gametype in customs. This was widely seen as a step backwards to fans of racing maps, and it really put a damper on the Halo Tracks community. You could still make and share tracks, but again it felt very DIY when it came to making gametypes to play on. Halo 2A reintroduced Race, but seeing at how difficult it was to share maps in the MCC, and the overall forge scene was fairly neglected in matchmaking, race still didn’t feel quite right.
Seeing the return of Forge Hub and Grifball gives me hope that Halo Tracks can make a large comeback. I strongly urge fans to ask for a dedicated race game type to return. It will be the day when a dedicated race playlist is added to matchmaking, a dream like that in Halo 5 doesn’t seem to far. Who else wants to see a dedicated race gametpye comeback?
