The Halo 3 Beta: My Impressions

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!!!!

There are two rules to success:

1. Never tell all you know.

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

Currently playing:
Korg DS 10 (ds) /  Metal Slug 7 (ds)
Rhythm Heaven (ds) /  Fire Emblem (ds)
Super Stardust HD (psn) /  Virtua Fighter 5 (360)
FSX (P

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.

Oh really, I am so sorry I bow down to your greater gaming prowess.

got to play with Eddie...he saw my bad gaming skills...but regardless I still have ass kickory footage form the matches prior proving my ability.

Halo 3 is good craic but I don' t think its the best thing since sliced bread like alot of people do. I know its only the beta but still, give me Gears online any day.

got to play with Eddie...he saw my bad gaming skills...but regardless I still have ass kickory footage form the matches prior proving my ability.

Yeah dude it was fun. Glad I finally got to play with you.







You mean what I know.

I played with Mass yesterday. I sucked. He left, laughing probably, ...Quez came online an joined my game, i played better, we kicked muchos ass, we tried the video sharing thingy, i saw how badass Quez was compared to me, i left crying...

Snipers and people wielding the Spartan Laser are evil. The grenades and physics are as cool as ever though and plasma grenade + idiot on a mongoose = airs spinning kickass death!

It' s good, and there' s nowhere near the kind of aliasing seen in the screenshots, ...but i' d be lying if i said it was a massive jump over Halo 2. I fully expect UT3 and Huxley to take over my online gaming life, but for the rest of the beta i' ll try and brush up my skills.

I will be on Tuesday night if anybody wants a game?

Expect HL2 pack' s: Team Fortress to totally take you by suprize!!!

Currently playing:
Korg DS 10 (ds) /  Metal Slug 7 (ds)
Rhythm Heaven (ds) /  Fire Emblem (ds)
Super Stardust HD (psn) /  Virtua Fighter 5 (360)
FSX (P

The only thing I hate about Team Fortress 2 is that a single map will play only one type of game mode. And from what I read isn' t there only like 6 maps? Sure its free practically and all coming with the bundle, but I don' t think I' ll like that much. Hell it pissed people off in Saints Row

" Many of the 300,000 users that are currently playing the Halo 3 beta are skillful modders who over the last few days have been examining the beta' s code. They have found references to unannounced weapons, new vehicles and game types but probably their most precious finding is the fact that Halo 3 will support up to four players co-op on Xbox Live and System Link.

Scrolling through the list of on-screen text for party menus, one sentence revealed the following:

The game cannot start because all players are set to observer. Too many players for splitscreen. Only 2 players may play splitscreen coop on the same Xbox 360 console. The party size is too large to start the game. Up to 4 players may play coop on Xbox Live or System Link. Loading information from Xbox Live…

Weapons


Assault Rifle
Battle Rifle
Beam Rifle
Brute Shot
Carbine
Excavator
Gravity Hammer
Flamethrower
Magnum
Missile Launcher
Needler
Plasma Pistol
Plasma Rifle
Fuel Rod Cannon
Rocket Launcher
Shotgun
SMG
Sniper Rifle
Spartan Laser
Spiker
Sword

Vehicles


Mongoose
Warthog
Hornet
Pelican
Scorpion
Ghost
Brute Chopper
Spectre
Shadow
Banshee
Phantom
Wraith

Game Types


Capture the Flag
Invade your opponent’s stronghold, heist their flag, and bring it back to your base to score.
Slayer
Kill as many of your opponents as you can. The player with the most points wins.
Oddball
Find the ball and hold on to it to earn time. The player with the most time wins.
King of the Hill
Gain control of the hill to earn time. Keep your opponents off and earn the most time to win.
Juggernaut
Work together to take down the Juggernaut. Beware, you kill the Juggernaut, you become the Juggernaut, and only the Juggernaut can win.
Territories
Find and control the territories on the map. The more territories you control, the faster you earn time.
Infection
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.
Assault
Da bomb!
V.I.P.
Protect the V.I.P. from dying at the hands of your opponents. If you are the V.I.P., you must stay alive or your opponents score a point.

Variations
Apparently, you' ll be able to share these with other users much in the same way you do with movies


Team Slayer
Team Swords
Team Rockets
Team Shotguns
Team Fiesta
Team Phantoms
Slayer Duel
Sword Duel
Rifle Duel
Rumble Slayer
Rumble Swords
Rumble Rockets
Rumble Shotguns
Oddball
Fiesta Ball
Team Ball King
Phantom King
Crazy King
Team Crazy King
Multi Flag CTF
CTF Wraiths
CTF Classic
Shotgun CTF
1 Flag CTF
1 Flag CTF Fast
Multi Bomb Assault
Rapid Assault
Neutral Bomb
Neut. Bomb Fast
3 Plots Land Grab


Then, a glitch in the beta allowed some users to access the custom games menu option, which revealed the following settings (you can see pictures of these settings here):
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)"

-Team Xbox http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/13539/Halo-3-Beta-Code-Confirms-4-Player-CoOp-Over-Xbox-Live/

And heres how its done.

One other thing..heheh you guys remember when VF5 said this:

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.

And then like that custome list came out and have a feature in which you can adjust gravity and speed?

Aw good times good times.

*** 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 was right. Only nubcakes jump around in halo, sure it was good for about a week... until people realized that all you have to do is aim the gun up and down. Same thing goes for people who crouch in upclose battle, it used to be good because people didnt expect it, but then they realized that melees to the head hurt worse than a regular melee

plasma grenade + idiot on a mongoose = airs spinning kickass death!

My favorite is dropping a trip mine 10 feet in front of you and just waiting for a mongoose to try to plow you and then they hit it and feel like a retard

I will be on Tuesday night if anybody wants a game?

I' ll probably be on every night this week

So the weapon list is what we will see in the full game? If so, there is no mention of a sentinel beam, and as sentinels were primarily designed to control the Flood, does that mean we won' t be seeing the Flood in the single payer game and it will just be a straight fight between humans and covenant?

So the weapon list is what we will see in the full game? If so, there is no mention of a sentinel beam, and as sentinels were primarily designed to control the Flood, does that mean we won' t be seeing the Flood in the single payer game and it will just be a straight fight between humans and covenant?

It probably just means that the sentinels will be back instead of having a sentinel beam, just like halo 1. I personally hated it. IMO the only thing it was good for was in backwash on MP with a plasma pistol.

And heres how its done.

One other thing..heheh you guys remember when VF5 said this:
quote:

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.



And then like that custome list came out and have a feature in which you can adjust gravity and speed?

Aw good times good times.

Hahaha Yeah..!

Currently playing:
Korg DS 10 (ds) /  Metal Slug 7 (ds)
Rhythm Heaven (ds) /  Fire Emblem (ds)
Super Stardust HD (psn) /  Virtua Fighter 5 (360)
FSX (P

thing is is that just a debug list or are they actually gonna include all this?

That stuff sounds great. With just a few months away, I would guess it has to be pretty well implemented by this point. Of course they had to know that all those lists would be found in short order.

You can crouch fast again!

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

I' m loving the Beta and have been playing every day since it came out. It still feels very like Halo 2, but I havn;t played in ages and Halo2 is probably my favourite game, so it' s not a bad thing. I recon the graphics need upped a bit for final release, although Bungie have said the single player will look nicer.

It' s annoying you can' t join a lobby with friends who are in a game. Otherwise, the party system works very well and we regularly return to lobbies to pick up more players. We ended up with 9 in the room last night and played a couple of big team battles on Valhalla. A great laugh, although it suffered from lag.

Weapon descriptions etc have been covered well already, personally I hate being not too shabby at Slayer but rubbish with the sniper. I get popped all the time. The bubble shield isn' t the best for Slayer, but it' s really invaluable for territories/CTF and other scenario matches. I' d say the same for the Power drainer, it' s tricky to use effectively in Slayer matches but against the MVP you' re guaranteed a kill!

I' m going to be gutted when this goes offline, but for all the MP is cool, I really want Halo 3 so I can finish the fight!

Anyone played Tiz yet? I' m sure he kicked ass at Halo 2.

***flyingsaucersdisguisedasmushrooms***
***mushroomsinvadingfromouterspace***

I' m up for a game or two Duffman.

H3 ist teh pwn. The weapons are actually balanced and take skill to use. It looks like bungie learned a lesson from Epic. Skill based multiplayer is fun!

I would say GoW is a more skill based game, but Halo 3 is very skill based as well, just a different type of game.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."