GODHAMMER
It's essentially Infection reversed, combined with SWAT and high speed melee.

I've been keeping an eye on Reach's minigame scene for a while now, always trying to find the next best thing to pass the time. There's been a lot of good ones, and a lot of bad ones, and it got me to thinking why. I figured the best minigames are going to feature some of the most fun elements of Halo, and then transforming them into something new. Thus GodHammer was born.

GodHammer consists of three of my favourite elements of Halo. We have Infection, SWAT and melee combat.

How it works is as follows...

RULES

At the beginning of the round, one soldier must face the wrath of several awakened Gods of Steel with the objective to convert them to mortality. He is armed with a DMR and Grenade Launcher, both with unlimited ammo. Stats for the soldier are default, except for no shields and unlimited sprint.

The God’s objective is equally simple; crush the pathetic humans that dared to wake you from your slumber! The Gods are armed either with a Gravity Hammer or an Energy Sword and that is the only difference between the two classes. Both Gods can run at 300% speed (with unlimited sprint also) and have 75% gravity so they can jump slightly higher while soaring through the air and can survive any fall. They have no shields either, but their health regenerates quickly should it not fall too low. Their only weakness is a well-placed headshot, or 6-8 DMR shots in succession to the body.

Unfortunately for the Gods, they are out-manned , out-gunned and will inevitably fall in time. When there is only one God remaining, he will enrage. His armor turns white and he becomes immune to headshots and gains slightly higher damage resistance (8-10 body shots). This gives him that little extra chance to punish the humans insolence before returning to the earth.

The default score to win is either best of five rounds, or first to 25 points.

Points are awarded ONLY for kills, nothing fancy. If you'd prefer to tweak this, feel free.

Although I've tried to give this a thorough testing, it may not be to everyones standard. Hopefully it gives fair opportunities to those who are good at headshots, or those who are good at landing hammer slams from an opponents flank. The risk of headshots actively encourages the gods to run around like madmen, which in turn makes the soldiers panic and shoot wildly and miss. It's an impressive sight to see two highly skilled players, one either side, failing to kill eachother because they're so absorbed in the sitations risks and pumped with adrenaline.

I hope you find the same enjoyment I did in playing this. I encourage people to try this on any maps that support infection as it can lead to some interesting results. Ideally, you need a lot of open space to accomodate the 300% run speed, but small maps can be very crazy and equally as fun.

One more note - Vehicles are enabled on 'Light Ground' only and are full use for the soldiers. You can turn this off in settings, but with 300% runspeed and insta-kill melee weapons, it's not too much of a challenge. ;D

SCREENSHOTS

The default GodHammer map. Not Essential, any map with infection compatability works!

The gods have awoken!

The gods are angry!

But the humans are cunning and skilled.

The god's cannot succeed against ever-surmounting odds.

Only one remains.

CRUSH!!

RESPONSE

I've played this in games ranging from 4 players, up to 16 and it's always been one of the most popular minigames we ran. I believe this is entirely down to the simplicity, choice and satisfaction of weapons and having a very large and diverse map to play on.

As I stated earlier, this has an included map, but will work equally well on any infection enabled map. We've had great fun playing this on the two invasion maps, Boneyard and Spire as they offer plenty of size for the Gods to sprint about and plenty of highground for the soldiers to shoot from.

The key element to this gametype is that you never feel like you're losing. Getting a DMR headshot or a lucky slam with the hammer is an incredibly satisfying feeling and since the scoring is based on kills only, you're pretty much guaranteed to do fairly well whatever your playstyle preference is.

A typical game will last around the same amount of time as a usual Infection map, but generally avoids the typical (and annoying) last man standing with a pistol situation. In fact, since the rules are reversed, it's actually a hell of a lot more enjoyable. The last man standing being a crazed and overpowered god with a hammer makes for some hilarious last stands. Usually the soldiers tend to group up on high ground and hold position, but they're just as susceptible to a flying hammer slam as ever. The LMS will die though, and the next round starts and everyone is psyched to play again.

Please offer any great experiences you've had with this gametype! :)