Let's talk about how Sterling saved this iteration of 'Spy-Hunter, because I'm still a little dazed by the whole episode. As you already know, our trusty video team is a frantic human machine consisting of many parts, all of which are not any more or less prone to failure than any other machine. Sadly, this last 'Spy-Hunter's meticulously captured footage was subject to one such failure.
After capturing a little over an hour's worth of heated contests in Halo 3, the video was somehow tagged for deletion. Thus, all of our hard work and good times were eradicated in the blink of an eye. Tragic? Most certainly, but this misadventure has lead to some valuable lessons and a new system for tagging video that won't allow the same snafu in the future.
Enter the McGarvey (Sterling hates being called that)! See, Sterling, for all of his brusque tough guy exterior, actually doesn't like first-person shooters that much (a surprising revelation for anyone that has read his excellent review of The Orange Box). Still, Halo 3 saves videos of the last 25 times you played it, and with Sterling shunning the game in favor of doing actual work that he's been assigned, he hadn't played since our 'Spy-Hunter matches.
Lo and behold, upon inspection of his match history, all of the 'Spy-Hunter matches still survived on Sterling's hard drive, pristine as the day they were played (well, almost, because you'll notice there are some slight hiccups in the video where Sterling's machine apparently couldn't record all of the data fast enough and so some players appear to warp around the maps).
So that's how Sterling saved our bacon this time as opposed to being the kill-magnet albatross he typically is (or maybe "while still being the kill-magnet albatross" would be more accurate). I guess it would be truly off-sides to give him the most shamefully craven award this time out (but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to do it anyway, ha ha!).
Elephantiasis of the Game Type
Participants in the last 'Spy-Hunter matches were also treated to an exclusive look at my friend Chachee's new game type which I cannot refer to by name (because it's a little too dirty and I hate age-gating content). This game type focuses on the infinitely awesome Elephant, similar to the giant Jawa Sand Crawlers from Star Wars in most respects (including the fact that neither contain droids capable of speaking Bocce). These hulking behemoths slowly ply the sands of the Sandtrap map and in Chachee's game are the spawn locations for both teams' bombs and also the place where the opposing team must plant their bomb. This means that both teams are simultaneously trying to take a bomb from their Elephant to the other team's Elephant while still defending their own Elephant from the bomb-carrying member of the other team.
The results were a bit mixed, and, as frequently occurred during our initial testing of this game type, there were moments where the game devolved into primitive deathmatch status. Still, with some further tweaking (like removing that annoying and woefully overpowered Hornet -- just putting it on top of a giant spire is clearly not enough) it could be insanely fun. Many props go to Chachee for spending so much time in the pursuit of providing our readers with only the best in custom multiplayer maps. Thanks, man!
Another benefit of Chachee's Elephant map was that it lead to a bizarre occurrence that even Bungie seemed a little unprepared for. Now, I should mention that you could have done this on any version of Sandtrap, but this was the first time any of us had seen what I am about to describe. DefiantOne actually flipped an Elephant onto its side! By slowly driving one of the massive vehicle's treads onto an inclined chunk of the ruins scattered about Sandtrap, Defiant One rendered one of these monolithic transports totally inoperable and tactically impervious to attack (we couldn't jump up to the place where you need to plant the bomb!). Check it out for yourself at the end of the embedded video because it is amazingly hot.
One thing we weren't able to capture was the text presented in the upper-right corner of the screen, which typically gives the instruction, "Press RB to flip [vehicle name here]." In the case of the inverted Elephant, however, this instruction read, "Press RB to flip... wait, how did you?" Simply beautiful!
