Halo 3 Extras

Usually a game developer's idea of a community surrounding its title is limited to putting up a web site with message board forums and that's about it. The folks at Bungie, however, have created a user interface inside of Halo 3 that allows for pretty seamless transfers of files like screenshots, in-game films, new gameplay modes and map variants using the included Forge editor (more on that later). Never before has a console game added such support from inside the game itself.

You’ll start by logging in with your Xbox 360 gamertag onto Bungie.net's web site. Once logged in you will find a custom web page just for you with stats on your game matches, your awards and achievements and what files you have to share. Files, you say? Yep.

Halo 3 allows gamers to share a ton of stuff with other players without having to leave the game. The game stores replays of both single player and multiplayer games (as in game data, not movie files) onto the Xbox 360 hard drive which you can replay anytime you want. You can switch the camera from your perspective to a free roaming camera or to other players in multiplayer movies. You can pause the game in single player movies and pause and go back in multiplayer movie matches.


You can even take a piece of the movie and record and save it if you just want to see a particularly spectacular moment without having to go back and run through the whole movie. In short, the film tool allows you to make your own Halo movie and watch it pretty much however you want.


But that's not all. Halo 3 allows you to upload films and screenshots from the game (the screenshots must be taken while watching a movie, not while you are actually playing the game) so that others who check out your gamertag can download and check them out. Screenshots that you take can also be downloaded from your Bungie.net web page. All of the screenshots in this article were taken using these features. (The multiplayer shots are actually taken from a movie that someone else uploaded to the file share portion of the game which we then downloaded and played.) Of course since the movies use in-game data you will still have to find a way to use a video capture device to capture a film and then show it on, say, YouTube.