Word on the street is that there's this great new game in town. Halo something or other. I hear it is breaking all kinds of sales records, causing rampant truancy at schools across the nation and is also the future of gaming.

What impresses me most, though, about Halo 3 aren't the big things but rather the small things, the niceties, that most people are probably going to ignore.

The Forge? It reminds me of the skate park editors in early Tony Hawk games. I've seen better level editors and, let's face it, most user-created maps are crap. I admit, though, that I am curious to see what the little twist playing games while editing takes place will turn up. Those of you who played SourceForts can probably relate. An 8-player deathmatch with all eight players simultaneously editing the very same map has fascinating potential. A small twist sure to reap rewards.

The replay system, too, has all be done before. There's a long history in the Quake community of making games, Half-Life gurus took it to another level and then, of course, there's the rabid RTS replay-consuming community. (See also the great BattleCast feature we worked with Command & Conquer 3 on earlier this year.) What I love about the replay system in Halo 3 is just how drop-dead easy it is to use. A hallmark of the Halo series is the attention paid to usability. While usability is certainly no "small thing" it definitely is oft overlooked.

Truth be told, I think the matchmaking in Halo 3 is just average. It's fairly easy to find a match but, being the fast-twitch gamer that I am I'm frustrated any time I have to sit and watch my Xbox tell me "Searching for close match." Thankfully there's a gorgeous little map on the matchmaking screen that has little dots on the globe showing me from where online players hail. (We had a similar feature in GameSpy Arcade's lobbies - see "Playing Peer to Peer Games.") I love it! I could stare at this thing all day. It's a tiny little feature, but one that distracts me from the tedium of matchmaking and makes me feel connected to the community.

I haven't seen much hooplah about the player stats shown on Bungie.net perhaps that's because, given what the Battlefield franchise and others have done on the web many find it fairly ho-hum - aside from the slick presentation. What I absolutely think is a small but important feature is the feed available for every player. I can now add a friend's feed to my favorite reader and get hourly updates on his ownage.

All of these little things, along with dozens more, take a game that is "merely great" to all new heights. I hope that more developers take note and start sweating the small stuff. As consumers grow more savvy they're going to expect these niceties and, maybe, start to punish developers for "merely" making a great game.