It looks like HALO 3 will ship with some never-before-seen gametype settings that are sure to drastically change the way we can play HALO. Want to run faster? Want to be immune to headshots? Want to tweak the radar sensitivity or have infinite ammo? It's all in there (and a lot more) coming to a custom game near you in September.

The custom screen is built into the HALO 3 beta but getting into takes a bit of luck and (from what I can tell) a network error. It appears that the custom games menu option becomes available when someone tries joining up to a party host with someone how has incompatible NAT settings. Several THX'ers have experienced this.

By the way, you CAN NOT play custom games in the HALO 3 beta via this menu. It's still neat to poke around, though. Some settings in those menus:

• Damage resistance
• Shield multiplier
• Shield recharge rate
• Immune to headshots
• Grenade counts
• Infinite ammo
• Weapon pickup disabled
• Player speed (25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, 100%, 110%, 125%, 150%, 200%, 300%)
• Player gravity (50%, 100%, 200%)
• Vehicle use (passenger only)
• Motion tracker range (10m, 25m, 75m, 100m, 150m)
• Appearance
  • Vis effects (black glow, team glow, white glow)
  • Active camo (good camo that might fool and elite, poor camo that might fool a grunt, invisible)
• Indestructible vehicles (on, off)

Those are some of the more standout settings. Each gametype has several variants and several settings underneath it. Object carriers, VIP's, can have custom settings while the rest of the team can have different settings. It looks like there are a few new gametypes heading our way including Tank Ball and Tank Flag (I always wanted to play a HALO version of Crimson Skies where Banshees could play CTF).

I can say that I'd like to play HALO at a little faster pace. Perhaps the 110 speed WILL work. (Trivia: Gearbox Software wanted to change the running speed of Master Chief in HALO PC to 110% which is why the map Infinity is so large).

Uber special bonus coverage just in from the rumor department: XBOX360faboy is reporting that somebody said that he said that Games Radar is reporting that modders have found new equipment and vehicles that are hidden in the HALO 3 beta. They probably got their information from this thread on HaloMods.com. (Disclosure: Modding your XBOX 360 will get you banned from XBOX Live). Stuff that MAY or MAY NOT be in HALO 3 in September.

New equipment:
Instacover
Smoke (suggested this might be a smoke grenade?)
Jammer

New vehicles:
Chopper
Pelican
Shadow

New weapons:
Flamethrower
Claymore Grenade

New mode:
Infection (described as "Destroy the Flood or become infected. Score points for killing flood or big points for infecting a human. The player with the most points wins.")

New rankings:
The highest rankings are now Killpocalypse and Killionaire, instead of Double Kill and Triple Kill.

What? No Kestrel? I guess it was too slow anyway.