I know, another Halo 3 post. What can I say, it's a major driving force in my life right now. Multiplayer has me firmly in its glovéd grip, consuming me in a fire of delicious deathmatches, captivating Capture the Flag, and some-adjective-that-begins-with-o Oddball.

Consonance aside, I'm enjoy it.

In Halo 3 they added a "Theater" feature--the ability to record and playback any of your multiplayer matches. This isn't particularly new to the FPS genre--PC first-person-shooters have had this for years--but it's a first for its console bretheren. It's not without its flaws (No rewind button? Srsly?) but being able to go back and watch great displays of gaming prowess from an online match is pretty damn cool. In addition, you can save sections of a replay and share them with others to show off. But if you're not in the mood to suck up all that bandwidth, you can take a screenshot of any moment from a game, from any perspective you desire.

Like, for instance, this moment here, where my girlfriend proves that the sometimes the only way to break up a 24 to 24 tie is with a well placed rocket.


Incidentally, for those that might be interested in such things, I have started collecting my more interesting captures in my Halo 3 Screenshots flickr set.

Not only are these screenshots available on Xbox Live, but they can also be downloaded in full resolution from a section of Bungie.net, which allows me to share them with wonderful folks like yourselves who might not own an Xbox. Personally, I think this is really cool, and a long time coming. Halo 3 isn't the first console game to allow this (Forza Motorsport 2 may have that distinction, or perhaps an earlier title) but it's a nice extra to have.

Despite what some politicians and whack-job lawyers might want you to believe, videogaming is quite a social culture. If we're not playing games, we're sitting around talking about them. Telling your buddy, "Man, last night I flipped my Warthog ten times and landed upright, splattering a guy!" is one thing, but actually being able to show him is even better. I always thought that the 360 should have just had the "Take a screenshot" capability built in--it is, after all, essentially a PC, and it's not a big deal to write the frame-buffer to a file. That way you could share with your friends the cool things you've seen and done without it having to be built into every game. (As a long parenthetical aside, this very issue came up when I was playing Saints Row. I was pimping out all these rides and my character was looking fly as can be, but I was frustrated that I had no way to show my friends short of taking a photograph of the screen or invited them over to see it in person. And man was I looking P-I-M-P!)

So, kudos to Bungie for making this happen, and maybe this will catch the attention of other game companies as well: we want to show our friends how cool your game is! Also, let me take this moment to chide 2K Sports: Bungie lets me share game clips with my friends for free and you want to charge me, what, like five dollars to do that? Get outta here!