Create Your Own Map In Halo 3 With Forge.

With Halo 3's release imminent, there has been well, a flood, of new information lately. From 4 player online co-op, to fire related weapons, to the newest news of what is, in the simplest terms, a map editor.

Now to call Forge, just a map editor is not entirely accurate and not fair either. First off it's not a map editor in the traditional sense, you can't edit the terrain for one. So no putting water here, moving a base there, making a valley here, and a hill here. So what can you do? You can only manipulate objects in the game that you can interact with: crates, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and even spawn points. After placing said item you can then customize it's properties such as: respawn time, ammo count, or it's health destructobilityness (Yeah, I just made that up). While in creation mode, you take the form of a Monitor (think 343 Guilty Spark) flying around dropping crates and Warthogs down as you please, but then with the press on a button (currently up on the d-pad) you change right into your customized Master Chief to run around in your newly remodeled level.

Sounds boring right? Well what if I told you that 7 of your closest (Xbox Live) friends could help you edit your map with you, over Live. Now what if I told you that while you're busy placing items around the level your friends can be screwing around in it, in real-time. Drop a box on their head, steal a Mongoose from under them, drop 'em a rocket launcher... All this while everyone still has the ability to switch from "play" mode to "edit" mode with the press of a button. Forge will even keep score for you to make this the ultimate custom game. Also remember that you can customize environmental effect too like: gravity, speed, and shields strength.

But wait, there's more! Aside from sharing videos and screenshots of your games with your friends, you can also save your custom levels designs. The best part is your friends don't even have to be on a 360 to see what your sharing. By going through Bungie.net you can access your friends list, or look up anyone for that matter, and see all the files that they are sharing. Then right from B.net you can flag a file you want to download, and the next time you boot into H3 your 360 will automatically download the files.

Bungie internally even has a Forge game they made up that is very "Jenga-esque". Two of Bungie employee's decided to pile up crates and fusion cores and the first one that made the tower tip over, and subsequently explode, lost.

I wonder if there's a Drinking Jenga version?