My first impression was wow, and my second was WTF!? I' ll elaborate.

I downloaded it at about 2:30 today, and that process went fine. I jumped into my first matchmaking game excited as hell...

and I waited...

and waited...

and waited. So without any luck I rebooted, went to the same page before realising that it wasn' t a glitch of some variety, it was just how long it took to matchmake on the Beta. Not yet thoroughly impressed I tried getting into a match with Mastachef, & it backed me out.

After finally getting into a game, here' s what I have to say.

The Graphics

Traditional Halo fare, but it really did look like Halo 2 with boosted poly & texture count. The water and explosions however were significantly revamped, and looked quite nice.

The Sound

The sound was superb. The environments were quite atmospheric. Most of the returning weapons had significant changes made to the way they sounded, and it really shows. The various machine-pistols actually make you feel like you were shooting something, which brings me to the weapons.

The Weapons

If I had to rave about one part of the Beta it was the weapons. I' ll go over a few:

Spartan Lazer: Ridiculously fun with a gratifying feeling after you knock somebody flat with it, but it' s not the best weapon for small moving targets and is better suited for stationary foot-troops & vehicles.

Battle-Rifle: Almost exactly like Halo 2. If you wanted it back & unchanged, you won' t be disappointed, although now I do notice it takes up a bit more of the screen, obstructing your view on the lower righthand side.

SMG: I can' t tell you how much I hated this weapon in Halo 2, and it' s (for the most part) the same. It' s got a little bit extra kick, but it certainly won' t be your weapon of choice on the battlefield.

Pistol/Magnum: ??? I never saw one the entire time I was playing.

Assault Rifle: I was wary about this weapon (It has no zoom/scope, and they mentioned it' s shallow clip, Halo:CE ' nuff said) but I was pleasantly suprised. I found myself using this more and more in games. The clip is certainly long enough for a skilled person to score a kill at medium range, but it' s far more gratifying to dump half your clip & move in for a meelee.

The Brute Spiker: As of right now, this is my favorite new weapon. It' s what the Magnum wasn' t, what the SMG could have been, and oh yeah, it' s got freakin' bayonettes!!! Versatile, I was killing folks halfway across High-Ground (the one with the gate/choke point), and within touching distance on Snowbound (the snowy one). It' s a well balanced weapon, with a decent sized clip and wonderful meelee applications.

Sniper Rifles: Both exactly the same

Shotty: I belive has been bumped down from eight rounds to six, but maybe it was always that way. I never used the shotty anyway. I am disappointed in it' s design though. The old inch-high bright-blue sights return, making it look cartoony compared to the rest of the weapons.

Turrets: The turrets were a hell of a lot of fun. Mounting them was cool, but I was thrilled to see that when I tried to dismount with B, it backed me out into 3rd person & had me carrying it around! Massive firepower, but you move quite slowly.

The X Button

Useful, yet somewhat overwhelming. You can save footage from your last game without it, and I don' t even remember half of the other strange usages it was though to have, but it' s pretty straightforward. Every time you get some special crap, (I.E. Bubble Sheild, Cloaking, Trip-Mines, Grav-Lift) you deploy it with X. The Bubble-Sheild is quite useless when you' re panicking to find the guy that' s half-way to fragging you, the cloaking is the same old stuff, the trip mines are just as useful as they make them out to be in the vidoc, and the Grav-Lifts are going to keep me busy for ages.


The Maps

Brilliant choice of maps for the Beta. High-Ground is incredibly fast-paced, although the choke-point isn' t as accentuated as it was in the videos. Valhalla was awesome (the one in the Vidoc with the river and the two towers), with weapon placement quite good. We did have a bit of trouble finding the sniper-rifle, but other than that I have no real complaints. Snowbound was my least favorite, as it had a mound in the center that had folks from different teams running right into eachother, and it came across as more annoying than intense. The map was pretty good if you went around said mound though.

Beta Stability

Meh, at best. It took me ages to get into a game, there was a server-wide " game-over" glitch that brought users down from the 10,000s to about 500 of us, and everything was incredibly slow. Growing pains? Maybe. Standard Beta fare? Definately, but you' d think they' d hammer a little bit of that stuff out on their intranet.

Conclusion

Despite the tech-flaws in the Beta, it' s the most fun I' ve had on my 360 since I first got it, and I' ll be giving Bungie my $63 when September rolls around.

What' d y' all think?

I haven' t even had time to download it yet. I recieved a better offer

I' ll likely be playing at some point over the weekend, probably with Quez, although i' ve been itching for another match up with Mass for a short while now.

ORIGINAL: Eddie_the_Hated



Beta Stability

Meh, at best. It took me ages to get into a game, there was a server-wide " game-over" glitch that brought users down from the 10,000s to about 500 of us, and everything was incredibly slow. Growing pains? Maybe. Standard Beta fare? Definately, but you' d think they' d hammer a little bit of that stuff out on their intranet.

Hah! Those two words " Beta" and " Stability" do not work together - on any levels. Have you ever played/tested a beta version of a game? I' ve tested quite a few betas in my time, MMORPG' s in particular and the all suffer at least those symptoms, usually much worse. They' re not letting you play the game to specifically have fun (although if you do so much the better), but they' re using you to figure out all the game crippling/annoying bugs so they can fix them. You' re all guinea pigs basically.

Expect more of these annoying bugs/glitches in the future.

I only had one match which never finished loading up last night, but I only played five or six total.

I played 23 matches in total.

My impressions are exactly the same as Eddie' s....
















































FINE, FINE I' M LAZY!!!!

I' m extremely excited they toned down the auto-aim.

I tried getting into a match with Mastachef, & it backed me out.

Yeah, earlier i was having issues and i couldnt get matchmaking to work at all, but then i cleared the caches and its been working fine and finding a match isnt difficult at all. Maybe we can actually get a chance to play a few rounds some time

The only real issue I have, is that they really should try and clamp down on the bunny hopping(continually pressing the " A" button.) This pissed me off in MoHAA and CoD on the PC. Also I think there is a glitch with the " invisible" Camo, I was moving to perform a kill when I was killed from the side and I was still in Camo. Other than that I am pleased with what they have so far, but I hope they will " clean" it up a bit before final is released.

This is more like Halo 2.5 for me and MC (again) plays/moves soo dam Slooooooow.

30fps WTF (yes i knows its a beta but FFS)

They should try and push the multi-player forward, do these guys have any imagination?

I can come up with a gameplay mechanic which would take the Halo franchise astep forward than the rest but also take advantage of the Halo world / universe:

differential gravity levels.. Depending what map / world your playing, they would have differential gravity levels, the slowest being the default of this Beta.. the fastest / least would be more like quake speeds.. That would be a ground-breaking feature and make the gameplay even more varied and suited to different types of players..

i thought this was the kinda of thing these so called next generation machines were supposed to offer, over the last gen consoles..

Maybe im thinking too far forward.

Ive got a feeling we' ll be seeing this idea in the future..

AS for Halo 3 Beta / Multi-player.. Nahh, it' s not for me in the slightest but the Single player game i can not wait for

Awww, don' t worry, I' m suuuuuuuuure Shigeru Miyamoto will make your " online-differential-gravity-levels-game for the Wii any moment now

I had an easy time connecting, took me a bit to figur eout what menu options were there. Like how to change the gametype and how to change your character look and emblem. I usually play more Tom Clancy stuff then anything so Halo has always been a nice alternative. Thing is tho It' s one of thos egames I can only play with people I know. I could not stand going online in Halo 2 unless I knew a few friends were on.

Some things I' d like to see is a bit more cleaning up wiht the playback feature. Maybe I didnt explore it enough but can you replay only select parts of the match instead of the whole damn session? And I was really hoping theyd get rid of that animated death fall thign where he' s up in the air flailing his arms about. It just looks so damn lame, especially if he gets hit midfligth by another explosion. When that happens it just skips a few frames tunrs him 45 degrees and retsarts the animation.

Then again this was more of a test of gameplay, so as for that, well it' s still the same halo deal with a keener eye to balance and level design. I wanted to see the newest iteration of Blood Gulch honestly but the 3 maps shwon were pretty cool cept the snow bound one. Tho that one had the cool off limits turrets on it which made it fun to puch people out to the edges.

...hmm well honestly I have no real opinion on it at all...I still pretty mixed...I' ll get it since everyone else will have it. But im not sure if i truly really enjoy it. I dont hate it one bit. but we' ll see after a few more matches

The only real issue I have, is that they really should try and clamp down on the bunny hopping(continually pressing the " A" button.) This pissed me off in MoHAA and CoD on the PC. Also I think there is a glitch with the " invisible" Camo, I was moving to perform a kill when I was killed from the side and I was still in Camo.

How do you suggest they " clamp down" on jumping? Have a meter which depletes as Master Chief' s thighs get tired? Jumping as an evasive tactic has its own weaknesses. You can easily predict where your opponent will land and lead them with your shots.

Also, you know the active camo isn' t supposed to be completely invisible, right? It makes you hard to see if you remain still but if you' re moving around you can be seen clearly as it distorts the background through you.

It' s not the clamping down on single jumps it' s the multiple jumping that they should clamp down on, it is a very very childish tactic. They were able to prevent this in MoHAA and CoD, why not in this.

Thanks for the tip on the active camo, I was going round thinking I was invisible and could sneek up on people.

If I had any say in Halo3' s development I would have made sure the Covenant, Flood and normal human soldiers were all in the online play instead of the Spartans. Leave the Spartans for the campaign mode. Even the Online Multiplayer could fit in with the story. I would also make sure to support offline multiplayer with bots along with tons of difficulty settings

I' d have a point system that adds up after every match. On the side of the Covenants only Grunts are available in the beginning and as you advance you unlock more races like the Jackals,Drones, Elites, Brutes and Hunters.

For the Human team you simply have a customizable human you might have three or four classes and you spend points to buy new weapons,armor and maybe vehicles if the level permitted. Almost like a Battlefield lite.

The Flood would be NPC. They would just show up in certain occassions just to scare the shit out of everyone.

I think it would be fun as hell to play CTF as a Hunter.

ORIGINAL: alijay034

It' s not the clamping down on single jumps it' s the multiple jumping that they should clamp down on, it is a very very childish tactic. They were able to prevent this in MoHAA and CoD, why not in this.

Thanks for the tip on the active camo, I was going round thinking I was invisible and could sneek up on people.

You just aren' t good enough at the game yet to realize it. Constantly jumping in Halo is bad for the person doing it. Good players can easily shoot people who are in the air. People strafing side to side are a 100 times harder to hit.

Fuck off MB you total fucking cock, I have been gaming for longer than you have been trying to grow hair one on your nutsack. It is fucking annoying when twats (and I would take you as being one.) are jumping around for no reason.

*** off MB you total ***ing cock, I have been gaming for longer than you have been trying to grow hair one on your nutsack. It is ***ing annoying when twats (and I would take you as being one.) are jumping around for no reason.

Actually he' s quite good, at Quake at least. I knowzez, I gotz proof.

Woohoo got to play alongside majik...tho I dunno if he was there or not since he didnt say anything. But I saved 2 clips. One for the memories and 2 for that ass kickory I delt out on the opposing teams.

MB is a rockstar.

ORIGINAL: alijay034

*** off MB you total ***ing cock, I have been gaming for longer than you have been trying to grow hair one on your nutsack. It is ***ing annoying when twats (and I would take you as being one.) are jumping around for no reason.

It is annoying how you assume everyone is a whiny 12 year old just because they are better than you.

I' ve played professional Halo CE.