The first AutoUpdate for Halo 3 was just released last night (or morning, depending on where you are and what you consider ‘night’) and addressed a few issues people were having with Halo 3. The largest and most noticeable change has to do with the melee system. The short answer says that, in Halo 3 v1.0, if 2 people both tried to melee within 100ms of each other, whoever had the most health would survive and the other person would die. Some cases would seem partially random because if one player took even 1 extra bullet, he would lose the melee contest and the other would walk away. In v1.1, there’s some lea-way that says if you have considerably more health than your opponent, you survive and they die. If the health is too close to call, you both die. I was able to notice this in the first couple of games I played but it really didn’t change much as far as how I play or anything. It’s a good fix. Other than that, not much will be noticed.

Since this update is out of the way, all we can do now is look forward. What still needs to be fixed for the next update? I’ll start my saying that some of these things I was hoping would be resolved in this first update, but I won’t be too picky about that. Bungie does good work and I’ll patiently await v1.2. Please note, these probabilities are just my own little estimates and really have no weight to them at all.

1. Spawning! First and foremost! This is one of the things that should have been resolved in 1.1. One of my biggest pet peaves about Halo 3 in general is how random and stupid the respawn system seems to work. I’ll say that it’s not always flawed. A good job is done to try and get you to respawn near your teammates and away from battle, but this isn’t always the case. There has never been a playing session where I can remember not being spawned right in the middle of a battle surrounded by 2 enemies who instantly pick off my sorry, unprepared and startled ass. This is annoying. A system has to be developed that goes through some variables before spawning you. A system that will check to find the best place to respawn you based on where a majority of your team is already and where your not going to end up right in the line of fire. The second (and to me, even more annoying) problem with spawning doesn’t involve spawning in the middle of a battle, but has to do with not being able to hold certain areas as your own. Specifically in High Ground, the beach is a good spot to snipe. It SHOULD be able to be held down by just your sniper. The problem is, that it’s impossible to do this because your enemies will eventually just spawn behind you and have an easy job at taking you out. If bungie fixes ANYTHING for v1.2, it has to be spawning!

Probability: 90%. This is one of the larger complaints out there so I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best here.

2. Theatre. The theatre is a great tool. It lets you review what went well and what went wrong in a particular match. You can save clips and screenshots to share with your friends. The current problems I want to see aren’t necessarily problems as they are limitations that I’m pretty sure were designed to be there. A couple things I would love to see improved are as follows.

- First Person mode. You start out viewing the game through the eyes of yourself (or whoever’s film it is). You can either keep this view, or hit Y to exit your body and view things from a 3rd person perspective. This is cool and all for taking pictures and stuff, but what if I want to study someone’s movements and see what they saw while something was happening? What if I wanted to study how that guy sniped me and all of my teammates in the head with 4 bullets? You can’t do this because once you leave your own first person mode, there’s no way to get back to it. I would love to see first-person added to the Y rotation. So rotate from First-person, to free camera, to 3rd person camera, back to first person again.

Probability: 70%. I can’t see this as being all that hard to impliment or ‘fix’. So we’ll file this in ‘why not?’.

- Editing mode. Saving clips is cool and all but is very limited. You can move the camera around a little while recording but that’s the extend of what you can do to set a mood. Anything else you want to do as far as editing is concerned requires your own editing software on your computer and a way to get the footage from the game to your computer. A mode that would allow you to pause recording and readjust the camera would be great. Or maybe just a timeline that would let you take multiple clips and piece them together into a little mini-movie without requiring editing software on your computer. Maybe one more option would be the ability to transcode your film straight to youtube or something so you can share them easier without needing to load up Halo 3.

Probability: 10%. As much as I’d love to see it, I can’t see it being included in the next update. A guy can dream though, can’t he?

3. Skill/EXP cheating. It’s not very common any more. Cheating seems to be quite reduced since the likes of Halo 2, but there are still ways to game the system and it just annoys me when I see a guy at level 47 with 0 EXP.

Probability: 100%. Bungie always works on cheating the cheaters. So I fully expect them to continue to take measures to ensure their rating systems stay pure and un-gamed.

4. DLC Maps. I’m not sure how this would work. I like the first pack of DLC maps. The problem is, right now they cost money and the only way they get picked in ranked games is when everyone matched has purchased the maps. This happens.. pretty much never in any games with more than 4 total players. I don’t know if it’s possible to push the DLC maps through with an auto-update or if all users would have to download them for free through Xbox Live when they are finally made free. I sure hope so though. It will be nice when everyone HAS to have the maps so they are in regular rotation.

Probability: 80%. This all depends on how the Xbox Live system works. I have no idea, but I’m sure if it’s possible to push the maps through an auto-update, it’ll probably be done once they maps are set free.

That’s all I got for now. All in all, the first update is pretty decent and Halo 3 is still an awesome game. I don’t care how many people talk about how awesome CoD4 is, I just can’t get into it. Halo 3 always pulls me back. I can’t wait to see what Bungie has in store for the future and hope to see at least a couple of these things in the next update. fingers crossed