Halo Reach Beta

[b0mb3r]

As some of you guys know I do not have any console. Luckily a housemate does (with hd tv and all) so I can only play as a guest. So what are the changes:

Well you get to choose armors for your avatar but they don't do anything (yet) except for aesthetic awesome looks

Okay so far there has been two maps only. One close indoors and one outdoors. the third won't open until may 7 (because of a new "Invasion" gameplay. simply elites vs spartans. both sides started out weak weapons and vehicles but over time both gets more powerful.)

Health is back so you got to know where your health packs are

Weapons has been decent. Assault rifle still kicks mid-range ass and the battle rifle weaker but still very useful. pistol is back. more powerful than the past three installments but still can't beat the three shots skill in the 1st one. elite rifles is usual and the new needler rifle is awesome. needler still cool. plasma grenade is weaker but normal nades are more powerful (like COD:MW powerful) no spike nades. no duel wield. covenant has a weapon similar to sentinel beam rifle.

Okay so the most important parts. What are the "perks"?

This part is similar to COD:MW where you choose which perks and weapons you get at the beginning of the matches:

The energy meter (is a circle actually) is very small and the upper left corner of your radar (which is bottom left on the whole screen) so it can be distracting to check if it runs out or not

For Spartans you all start with Assault Rifles and pistol. the perks are:

Scout
Guard
Stalker
Airborne

Scout: I find the most useless one or rather least favorite. Is like COD, you run rather fast. If you are skilled with shotgun you can be deadly but right now not so cool

Guard: Wow pretty awesome. Your avatar knells down and hit the ground as it generates a barrier until the meter runs out. Is useful to defend yourself when you are in a pinch as it protects you. You can do quick ones but that takes more energy (in order not to be cheap). Also if you hold it down till it runs out any enemies near you will lose their shield granting you a chance to kill them. Downside. If you are hurt and you put it on, your shield won't be fully charge. Rather it just freeze your health stats. So when you have people waiting for you to be done they will kill you without that shield. Also there is going to be a bit of strategy as you compete guards with your enemies. For example I put on guard but shortly my enemy did too. So if i let go first he lets go and i lose my shield first and gets me kill:

Stalker: Is a double edge sword. It has two ability. The 1st is invisibility. the 2nd is more important as it automatically acts as a scrambler. Meaning it will spawn dozens of red dots on your radar. The point being is both you and your enemy won't know whose where. If you got a good memory and actually remember which is the real red dots than that is useful. but yeah it puts everyone into a short state of panic.

Airborne: As I make fun of halo copying tribes it does a decent tribes. Tribes is more focus on the whole jetpack thing but Halo used it for gameplays. It is very useful to get to places especially during capture the flags game.

Guard and Airborne are my favorite so far.

Elites starts our with either the typical energy rifle or the mid range needler rifle but both have the same perks

Evade: If you been playing Halo as long as me then you know in the game Elites always god damn roll. Now you can too! Each roll takes 50% of your meter so you can do it twice. I say is god damn useful. Really. It got me out of so many tight pinch. Also is a great offensive as I roll to the enemy and stab them with my energy sword.

One last major different. Assassination.

To do the assassination you have to be behind the enemies and HOLD the melee button. It gives you this short 3rd person animation. This is basically just a cooler and official version of teabagging. The downside is that it takes like a bit over a second to do it but that much time leaves you very vulnerable to be assassinated yourself. I think that if you have different weapons you get different assassination animation.

So far is been very difficult for me to get an assassination since people know you're on the radar to watch out for. Is only within the mayhem of chaos that i can do one luckily. I've seen four people assassinating each other in a row so is a bit scary.

so gameplay. well I god damn want to play other gametypes but the most popular one right now that people are voting is Stockpiles

Stockpiles is basically capturing random flags that spawns around the map and bring it back to your bases. So everyone races to get the flag or kill the enemy who has the flag to steal from them. You can also go to the enemies base and steal their flags before the flag disappear to respawn and counts as a point in the enemies so is fun trying to steal their flags.

so that's the jist of it. I'm off to play some more. cya.

[TheGiftedMonkey]

I played it for a few days, meh. I'm anticipating the campaign mode way more. In the mean-time I'll stick to playing the Starcraft 2 beta.

[b0mb3r]

I played it for a few days, meh. I'm anticipating the campaign mode way more. In the mean-time I'll stick to playing the Starcraft 2 beta.

yeah the cool value is diminishing a bit but hopefully invasion tomorrow will be a blast.