Halo 4 update: Team Doubles, Team Throwdown, Infinity CTF to join matchmaking

Time for your weekly dose of Halo 4 playlist-related news, in which grown men and women get implausibly excited about stuff like armour mods and flag reset times. 343 has announced that the Team Doubles playlist will enter regular matchmaking next week, adding a brace of more "intimate" competitive modes.

First of these is Infinity Doubles, which is Infinity Slayer for two teams of two. The mode allows instant respawns and radar, along with Ordnance Drops at the 70 point mark. First team to 300 points, wins.

Doubles Pro is for the masochists and/or survivalists amongst you. It obliges players to pick from preset loadouts, strips out radar and Ordnance Drops, and cancels instant respawn. The loadouts in question are below:

Loadout 1:

Starting Weapon - DMR

Secondary Weapon - Magnum

Armor Abilities - None

Tactical Mod - Resupply

Support Mod - Dexterity

Loadout 2:

Starting Weapon - BR

Secondary Weapon - Magnum

Armor Abilities - None

Tactical Mod - Resupply

Support Mod - Dexterity

Loadout 3:

Starting Weapon - LightRifle

Secondary Weapon - Magnum

Armor Abilities - None

Tactical Mod - Resupply

Support Mod - Dexterity

Loadout 4:

Starting Weapon - Carbine

Secondary Weapon - Magnum

Armor Abilities - None

Tactical Mod - Resupply

Support Mod - Dexterity

CTF Doubles, finally, is pretty much what it sounds like. You're allowed custom loadouts and radar, and respawns take 10 seconds. Bagging five flags equals a win, and your flag doesn't have to be back at home to score, making it very much a game of offence. Flags take three seconds to return and 15 seconds to reset.

The Team Doubles playlist includes slightly modified versions of Haven, Abandon and Solace along with a selection of the best Halo 4 Forge mode maps. In other news, Relay and Exile have been added to CTF playlist, and 343 has tweaked how CTF pans out on Adrift, Abandon, Solace and Relay - flags now take 15 seconds to reset, reflecting the smaller map size. There's also a new CTF mode, Infinity CTF, which allows for Ordnance Drops.

Halo 4's Community Forge test playlist will take a break next week, but isn't gone for good. A new playlist, Team Throwdown, is in the works, and 343 is happy to announce that the in-game fileshare is now "fully functional" (guide here). I'll let you people be the judge of that.

Your new Specialisations this week are Rogue and Tracker, detailed below:

New specialisations:

Rogue: Spartan optimization for single-operative missions which require a lone Spartan to be deployed on their own for incredibly long durations of time, even years if required. The Stability armor mod allows users to increase their aiming stability when being fired upon.

Tracker: Spartan optimization for long-range target tracking (trans-continent and off-world), particularly in scenarios where conventional tracking has failed or such a substantial time has passed that the trail has gone cold. The Requisition armor mod allows users the ability to recall their own ordnance requests in order to acquire more helpful weapons in the field.