Many of us that still stick with Halo 4 remember the glory days of its prequels. Actually mostly just Halo 3. But one of the things that made Halo 3 so good, along with campaign and traditional multiplayer, was the emergence of the community’s creativity through amazing custom games. Long after I got to the rank I still am today, I played hours of custom games every night with all of my friends, many of which have now abandoned the franchise.
So, what did 343 do to mess up custom games so badly?
- VERY limited zombie traits. The vast majority of H3 custom games revolved around an alpha zombie attacking with special abilities, and the resulting zombies having either no lives or lesser/varied capabilities. The obliteration of custom game zombie variation has killed most of the custom games possible.
- It’s hard to believe anything other than that 343 assumed that custom games would be only used for linear slayer. Many other miscellaneous characteristics have been taken out. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if they just copied the Halo 3 customization for custom games into Halo 5.
- Most of the maps have too many obstacles for making cool games. Sure there’s forge world, but I would like to see a couple of more open maps with friendly driving courses and the like.
- File share issues were inexcusable
The elimination of these custom game options (along with the elimination of modding in H3 custom games, but that’s a different matter) have taken away our favorite games like “fat kid on death maze,” “[racial groups] run on border patrol,” and “ducks on duck hunt.” I understand with the general falling Halo population that there won’t be as big of a creative community, but with more custom game options we might be able to bring some back.