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I played 3 games and Powerhouse is already getting on my nerves... What a shitty map

Powerhouse isn't that bad. I didn't like it at first but it's grown on me. Sword Base on the other hand....

I don't really get the "simple" thing, if anything Halo Reach is a lot deeper than Halo 3, despite removing so many items. It's added so much more.

And don't hate on melee. This is the best first person slapper ever.

I posted this on Ars today on my lunch so I hope people don't mind the cross post. Some of my random thoughts on the Halo Reach Beta.

Match Making. The user interface could use some work as it is a little clunky. That said MM works well in Halo 3 and is even better now with an active Que. For example we started with 2 people yesterday and ended with 6. It is fast and effortless. I que’d up yesterday with a friend, saw I had 10 minutes, so I grabbed a quick bite to eat, checked my email, and got ready to play. My only major complaint is Bungie STILL hasn’t addressed the dropped player issues. Over the weekend we had one game where every player on the other side dropped (ugh) and a painful 4v1 encounter where the lone player, in 1 Flag, decided to hide the entire game. So we easily snagged flags but when he was on offense it was very, very boring.

Match Making is one of those things you love to hate but hate to love. As a long time PC gamer I prefer custom game browsers—especially seeing as Halo is VERY feature rich in terms of play balance and map layout modifications. But few console games offer this. On the other hand ranked gaming ROCKS in Halo. After 1 hour of play you will get a decent rank and they will pair you with players of your skill which for noobs is great. Halo Reach appears to be doing more here so kudos.

Player Customization. This is pretty lame IMO. I know a lot of people love it (my friend who came over to test it did) but it seems pretty superficial. I guess it will be cool taking your model into SP Campaign, especially with 4+ player coop.

Net Code. A lot of dropped hosts, it almost seems Bungie is testing this. Also a little more laggy than Halo 3, but very playable. The lack of death cam and last kill (ala MW1/2) doesn’t make it so noticeable to most.

Split Screen. Rock solid. Not super pretty but the framerate was solid. I play on a 1080p 28” monitor and it was serviceable. One of the best things about Halo is 2 and 4 player split screen and Reach doesn’t let you down here. Kudos to Bungie for sticking with this feature. (fyi – when voting only one person on the console votes for the entire group, so if you had 4 players one person would cast all 4 votes).

Theater. Same as Halo 3 although since Halo 3’s launch they now give you 5 minutes render time per month if you buy Bungie Pro. I am doing some user input testing and may spend the $8 to piece together some footage and have Bungie render it on their site seeing as I don’t have video capture hardware. Kind of cool to go back and watch good matches and see your good kills or how other teams did tricks. Last night in our last game there was someone flying over me so I jetted under him and did a nasty melee for the final kill as his body went spinning diagonally and smashed into the AC like shafts near the rocket launcher spawn. Everyone saw it because he was right near our group—very cool.

Death Animations. MUCH improved over Halo 3, they look good even.

Melee & Assassinations. It now take 2 melees to kill someone—one to pop the shields, one to kill. Not sure I like this but the advantage is you rarely get the Halo 3 classic “run at eachother ARs blazing and melee for a both players die draw.” That has happened only 3 times all weekend for me and I have over 60 games in. Assassinations are cool although they need a ton more animations. Tip: they must be from behind and all you do is hold melee. You will start a melee animation and then transition into an assignation. These are a lot of fun and a guaranteed kill as long as no one stops you.

Voting is huge. In Halo 3 you could vote UP or DOWN on a single Map/Mode. Now you have 4 options, one being “None of the Above.” It usually is 2 on one map and 1 on another so the new series will usually dump the 2 map options down to 1. GREAT feature!

Spawning on players. Use the D-pad to switch where you spawn!! If you notice the other team hunting in packs it is because they are spawning together. Halo is all about passively encouraging teamwork. With the radar you rarely go undetected. In MW2 I can flank 4 guys and kill them all before they can react. In Halo if you flank 2 guys when you are alone, unless you get a great nade toss you are probably dead and they both live. The shields prevent easy 1 shot kills so you MUST work together. Halo is great for this and the new spawn system makes it even better. GREAT change from Bungie.

UI. Needs serious work. Changing spawn locations isn’t very obvious. Finding flags can be a PITA. It is always confusing when you are RED team but your return icon is BLUE in stockpile—I saw people returning flags to OUR base all the time! The cross hairs are too faint and it makes scoped pistol shooting difficult. The match making interface, while VERY nice, is cluttered. There is little feedback in regards to indications you are hitting players. E.g. in BF or MW you get a “pck” sound and a small visual indicator and when you get a kill you are told immediately you scored a K. Bungie really needs to address this because it really gives the player good feedback. Right now it seems disconnected.

Weapons. Lets start with the AR. The range is horrible—don’t bother firing until the cross hairs are RED. Further it is weak. A lot of us have emptied entire clips without getting a K. A horrible starting weapon as you race to find ANY other gun to use. Halo 3 fixed this by making a functional AR that was very good at close to medium range, now they have regressed to bullet sponges. The DMR is nice although it either a) needs to be 3body + 1head shot or the bloom needs to be faster. Ditto the Needler Rifle. They are just too weak and/or slow. The lack of dual wielding doesn’t feel lost as the game adds a lot. Some complained that nades were too strong but I think they are just right; I have had an issue of plasma nades passing through players. Frags don’t bounce as much so you can now aim for feet.

Armor Abilities. Amazing.

These displace the orbed power ups that spawned randomly in fields in previous Halos—good move Bungie. Yes, they aren’t “new” ideas. What they are is fun and balanced. They make old play modes feel fresh and inventive. Note: in the beta if you have a flag you CANNOT use your Armor Ability. So no sprinting or flying with flags.

- Sprint. This should have been added a long time ago. Spartans are kind of slow so this is much needed. I wish it was STANDARD but I digress. That said it can really change how the game is played. Sprint is the only ability that I think needs a longer use OR faster recharge.

- Lock. You have to be tactical with this because if not you will have a nade or two at your feet explode right after your lock disables (it would be great if the EMP blasted all the nades away forcefully). The EMP blast will take off careless players’ shields and allow an easy melee or quick head shot kill. Where it works best is with teams: rush in first and lock. Everyone focuses on YOU. Your team can then lob nades over you and pick them off because they tend to focus on the locked player due to the EMP and, well, you glow. Also the lock reflects hammer smashes and rockets ;)

- Active Camo. This also comes with a radar jammer—which I don’t like as it is a dead give away that someone is cloaked. I also HATE that it shows your name tag over your head if someone thinks they saw you. Boo! That said if you don’t move the camo lasts a VERY long time and you are essentially invisible. When you move it doesn’t work as well so the key is to move slowly or, better, get around a corner, stop, hit camo, let the enemies go by and toss a nade and/or do an easy assassination.

- Jet Pack. Wow is this fun! Very well balanced and effective. A great way to cut across the map and/or quickly jump into a battle. It is too useful to complain about. E.g. King of the hill? Fly over, drop your nades so your sprinting/invisible players below can sneak in and get easy kills. Someone got your flag? Fly over and intercept. The other team have too many flags in stock pile? Swoop in and grab one. Flying does make you an easy target, but it is a blast to fly over and pick people off.

None are over powered and all are fun. They really shine in two ways. The first is they make a map more open. Imagine a flag point where your 4 player team all converges together with different abilities. The enemy hears the roar of a jet pack but cannot see him on the radar because the Camo dude sneaks in with the radar jammer so the other team doesn’t know where ANYONE is. This allows the jet pack Spartan to lob in a few nades and start picking at people—so everyone’s eyes are in the sky. Then a Spartan with armor lock drops right into the group and locks his armor drawing attention and fire—allowing the camo dude to toss a couple nades and sneak behind for an assassination and allowing the jet pack Spartan to pick off more guys. As this goes on some Spartan flashes by sprinting in and making for a dizzing little scene.

Used right in the context of teamwork the armor abilities are totally devastating.

The other cool thing is they change up how a map is played. How do you want to get to the focus point? Run? Sprint? How about cut across the map and fly in? Or sneak in invisibly? In Halo 3 Crazy Hill was a process of let others get a little ahead of you, lob nades to clear the zone, and then hold and pick off incomers. Now there are a LOT of strategies and approachs.

Elites. Ok they are bigger, but so what. Guns are weak and their health fully regens. Oh, and they run almost as fast as a Spartan sprints and the Evade ability is the best in the game. THESE are what Elites were meant to be—fast, agile, strong, and ferocious. Very twitchy. It is a blast to roll on up to someone around a corner, toss a plasma, and roll back only to see utter shock and horror as they realize you just nailed them. I pitty the Spartans who have to face THESE Elites.

Modes. Not a lot available right now and almost all 4v4. That said great classics like Crazy Hill have had a breath of fresh air pumped in and are now a BLAST. I cannot wait for the new modes!! Crazy King is straight up the fun. Very well done and worthy of being in the full time rotation. Team Oddball was also a lot of fun. Stock pile is a lot of fun on Powerhouse. 1 Flag still stinks. 3 Pole is a BLAST. It felt like a TF or BF Conquest game—we were hootin’ and hollerin’ as we had a number of CLOSE games.

Trifecta Balance. Halo for the uninitiated did a couple things in one package. In many ways it was just a Quake clone. But it had a lot of subtle design choices that worked really, really well. Rebounding shields. Indoor-Outdoor seemless levels. Active Radar. Vehicles. 2 weapon limit. A full story mode with coop. 4 player split screen and a TON of out of the box game modes and gameplay modifiers. Slow moving but high jumping & fast looking soldiers. But what really set it apart was the Trifecta: Melee, Nades, and Ranged Weapons. Important note #1: melee and nades are instant access. No changing weapons to access. In the ol’ days you would have to switch to nades or switch to a knife. Not in Halo. Rule #2: use the right tool for the range. Up close melee and short range weapons rule. Short-medium range things like the AR did amazingly well. Medium range the BR dominates. And long range the sniping rifle. Toss in the passive teamplay design (players together almost always have a better chance to win even when surprised—unless you soften them up with nades) and you have an EXTREMELY rich MP design. Hate Halo all you want but few games have this much depth. I love BF and MW because their reward deftly flanking and taking out surprised opponents. Halo requires a lot more tactical cat and mouse play. With shields you essentially always have cover and when shields are low finding real cover allows a quick recharge.

The balance is now different. It will take time to see how it ends up but weapons appear much weaker, nades bounce differently, melee interacts differently due to the shield changes, etc. The shields now “pop” and transfer no damage. So if I have 1% shields and someone melees me they STILL have to melee me again because the first melee would only pop the shields. So if I blast in with the AR and take you down to 1% and try to melee it is 2 melees. If you shields pop it is 1 melee. This is a HUGE game changer. This makes the rear assassination important because it locks you into the engagement.

Maps. I never want to see Sword Base again. Too much running and confusing. I found it fun only in Swat. Power House is great. Quite large, great use of space. Nice elevation changes and a great layout. It works well with almost every mode, even 1 Flag.

Graphics. I like the changes. Look, it is still Halo. It still accommodates a technical design that allows for their levels and 4 player split screen. But we gained a bit of resolution (1152x720 iirc), some texture filtering (YES!!), some very good motion blur, better texturing, Ambient Occlusion, more detailed models, great looking tessellated water, GREAT particle effects, a lot of lights, nice HDR, etc. It just looks a ton better. But it is still Halo. Colorful. “Clean” design bordering on boring at times. Foliage is mainly 2D and the lack of high quality AA makes them look only ok. The lack of true MSAA is still sad and LOD seems to cut into IQ a lot on player models. The temporal AA is ok while playing, but in screen shots looks nasty. I wish they had gone with a post process AA. Anyhow the framerate is nice—I am missing the 60Hz from MW2, but Halo Reach is smooth and looks polished. Hard to complain when you get 4 player split screen with a solid framerate. The art style may turn people off but the game looks good this time around.

The Reach Beta shows they need a LOT of tweaking.

The Reach Beta shows this will be one of the best MP games, as is, this generation. It has the potential with good tools (custom game browser, Forge, 4+ player coop, Fire Fight, insanse game modifications) and tweaks to the excellent foundation laid to be an amazing game. And we haven’t even played Invasion yet.

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Something I didn't mention is Bungie has added a lot of little details. e.g. When you get hit by a grenade the screen gets distorted and you get a ringing in your ears. When shot you not only get a directional indicator but a small grid appears for your shields that is illuminated. Shields "sizzles" when hit and "pop" when taken down. Active Camo products a low ringing as you actively "reflect" all noise, hence you are almost deaf. There is a lot of fine texturework and details all over the place. I don't like all their UI choices but it seems well integrated, simple, not overly in your face, and seem well thought out in terms of the big picture. The sound isn't in your face loud but seems to be more relevant to the theme of 'more' realistic.

EDIT: Oh, and in general, the game is super frantic. Between map design (lots of branching routes and vertical drops), armor abilities, and the spawn system you really never are out of the game. This isn't something usually weighed as a feature/compelling in terms of a game but it makes a big difference. This is well done here.

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Regarding the network connection:

I have yet to be booted out of a game.

While host changes are frequent (hosts quitting a lot + other?) I have yet to be dumped out of a game.

Match making is pretty fast. Faster than Halo 3. Makes Gears of War 2 and MW2 look like snails racing up a wall plastered with sandpaper.

Overall the net code is solid. There may be some hit detection issues or just plain lag. Saw a couple issues of teleporting. I thought they were using hit scan this time but a number of times I had to lead to get a red cross hairs and quite a few head shots with the DMR didn't register in SWAT.

I wouldn't say it is perfect. I would say it is playable as it is, better than most with room for improvement. I don't think most people will notice to be quite honest. MW2 plays great for me but the kill cam and last kill show how peer hosting can really be hit or miss as is the "I was behind that wall when I died!" only for the kill cam to show you were not. Since Halo doesn't lean on the brutal one shot kills often and has no kill cam you won't notice it as much. In this sense the gameplay does try to blunt the latency issue.

Obviously not Halo fans or interested in detailed feedback :P

Acert, this a forum. The email for Bungie is on their website :P.

Team Slayer Pro Rules. 2 of my last games were 19+ and 18+. 8)

1 nade = little spam.
Rifle Start = no running for your life in hopes of finding a gun that can hit someone.
Sprint = really simple, balanced gameplay.

We were all spawning together at the end of the map and forcing them to come to us and it was a slaughter. Good times!

I also love Slayer Pro. I heard the one they added to the Arena is DMR only? The FFA Slayer Pro playlist lets you start with a NR and plasma grenade and i really dig that.

I mostly agree with the points you make in your essay up there too Ace. I think one of the potentially amazing things that Reach has to offer is a huge variety of experiences. I feel like Halo 3 already provided that with an awesome package. Forge, and the amount of perimeters they allow you to set within custom games makes for some awesome possibilities. What I consider a massive leap forward for Reach is the potential to make our own loadouts within that already awesome framework. That also allows Bungie (and MLG!) to get really creative with the experiences they offer on their playlists, which they've always been on the ball with in Halo 2 and Halo 3 too. They will make full use of the possibilities they're also providing us, and potentially more. It's shaping up to be quite awesome.

Weapons do need tweaking, but I always feel a little conflicted with the results. I'm getting pretty used to what we have. Melee is still outrageously ahead of my other weapons, but the magnum is catching up. I've also been abusing the Hammer at every opertunity I get! It's in fourth place for me right now. It goes: Melee, Magnum, Frag, Hammer. My NR kills are growing too though, but more slowly. The reality still is that I got almost 120 kills with the pistol today and 10 with the DMR. But honestly that's more personal preference than balance. The DMR is still a better long range weapon. I may lean on it more in Invasion because of that too.

But yeah, I'm addicted.