Halo 3 is cool and all, and pretty damn fun, but I'd like to say one thing. I hate matchmaking. Matchmaking is so friggin' stupid. If you don't know what matchmaking is, it's a system in Halo that ...makes matches. Except those matches will be randomly chosen. And by that, I don't just mean that the people you play against will the random. I mean everything is random. The map is random, the gametype is random, the weapon sets are random... Well, not really random. There's probably a lists of games that can be played, but really, if you want to just play Slayer (deathmatch) in a social setting, you have a chance of getting into an Oddball or King of the Hill game with swords only instead. -_-

PC online gaming got it right. Players create servers with their own customized gametypes. Those servers were advertised in a server browser, and other players would search for games that they'd like, and then join that server. Now, you can make your own custom games in Halo 3. In fact, it was advertised as a major feature...however, no one will be able to find your custom game. No, you've got to invite other people to join you. Now, what if you friends don't like playing Infection? What if some random stranger you just met in matchmaking doesn't wanna try out your new game with at 300% movement speed with 50% gravity with hammers and mongooses only? Too bad. You're playing by yourself.

It just takes so much effort to get a seemingly simple 16 player free-for-all deathmatch game going, because Matchmaking only allows 6 player free-for-alls. -_- You have to manually find 15 other people to play with. Sooooo LAME.

Bungie says its not possible for them to implement a custom game search. They use excuses like, "It'll take away from matchmaking." Well, GOOD, 'cause I hate matchmaking. Though I'm sure most people would still go through matchmaking instead of searching for some niche custom gametype. God forbid Bungie let us play games we want to play.

But seriously, how hard would it be just to make a server browser that display games that other people are hosting? Every other 360 game in the world seems to have a system like this!

It also pisses me off that custom game searching was announced as a feature before the game was released. But no mention of the feature being taken out was made until after the game was released. That just irks me 'cause I'm sure many gamers bought the game under the false pretense that we could play custom games with little hassle. Hell, I thought I'd be able to get into a 16-player free-for-all deathmatch ever since I decided to get the game. That's one reason I bought this game. Turns out you can't do that unless you've got 15 other friends that happen to have 360s and happen to own Halo and happen to be in the mood for a 16-player free-for-all deathmatch. Booo.

If anything, what Bungie should do is at least make maybe a separate forum on their site for planning out custom games. Or perhaps make different matchmaking playlists for awesome games like Infection and that damn 16-player free-for-all deathmatch. >=[ Also a Forge playlist to make that thing actually useful.

So yeah...maybe I have to wait for UT3 to get my 16-player free-for-all deathmatches going...