InsaneBear

Our Adventures: Halo: Reach beta impressions

As some of you may know, the beta for one of this fall’s most anticipated releases, Halo: Reach opened to the masses (at least the masses who bought Halo 3: ODST and received a code for the beta) a little over a week ago. I’ve been playing a decent amount of the beta since then and thought I’d fill you in on some of the new features and how they work.

The first thing I noticed when playing the beta is how great it looks and sounds. The explosion of gun powder is easy on the ears, to say the least. But those superficial touches wear off pretty quickly once you’re in the heat of battle. It’s things like level design and weapon balance that really matter when it comes to making a good competitive shooter, and my experience with Reach has been a bit uneven so far.

First, the good. Of the three levels available in the beta, all of them seem balanced and fun to play. Every level could use a few tweaks here and there, but for the most part these arenas feel a lot better than the majority of Halo 3 maps. That said, I’m getting a little sick of playing the same three maps all the time.

But at least I can play each of those maps in a different style depending on what class load-out I choose in between respawns. The special abilities that come with each of the four classes (Sprint, Armor Lock, Cloaking, and Jet Pack) are a little bit hard to get used to at first, but before too long they’ll be second nature as you realize how integral they are to success. Some take more getting used to than others, but they all have a use and cater to different play styles.

Personally, I’ve grown fond of the Jet Pack, as it’s ideal for quickly closing ground over any terrain and suits my assaulting style well. It’s also great for escaping hammer or sword-wielding foes below. But I’ve also found the Armor Lock ability to be incredibly useful in negating power weapons or buying that extra second before the cavalry rides in. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Armor Lock, while not the sexiest ability, is probably the most practical for skilled players. But that doesn’t stop me from loving my Jet Pack. The Cloaking ability sounds cool at first, and it actually does work well when defending an objective since you’re standing still, but it generally isn’t that great considering any movement clearly shows your outline to other players. Plus, it automatically scrambles radar when activated, so your enemies will always know that you’re lurking somewhere nearby. Last and definitely least is the Sprint ability, which is really only good if you’re trying to run across large open spaces or close distance for a more personal fight.

The different classes of Reach really give it a unique feel from other Halo games, but they don’t always feel totally balanced and many players will likely fail to realize their potential. It also would have been nice if class selection had some bearing on weapon load-out, but it typically doesn’t, with the exception of the Invasion game type.

Hey, speaking of Invasion, Reach has a few new and interesting game modes to offer. Invasion pits Spartans vs. Elites, with an actual difference in abilities this time around, in a tiered defense game somewhat similar to one-bomb assault from the old days. Instead of a bomb, though, the Elites have to attack three check points, which open up one at a time. The Spartans must defend these check points at all costs. And in the process, more weapon load-outs and vehicles are made available with every stage progression. It’s a pretty cool game-type, but it just feels like something’s missing. It also doesn’t help that the Elites aren’t entirely fun to play as and that the rules are hardly explained. I still don’t understand why each team of six is split into three smaller teams of two…one sub-team’s performance has no effect on the outcome–it just comes down to whether or not the Spartans can stop the Elites, or in the case of Invasion Slayer, which team gets 100 kills first while capturing check points that reward more weapon load-outs. So yeah…still not sure why teams are split into sub-teams. Maybe Bungie should do a better job of explaining every game’s rules.

But back to me not liking the Elites. I think it’s mainly because their weapons sort of suck compared to human firearms. Elite weapons have never been great to begin with, but Bungie has made them even worse. The Covenant Carbine has been replaced with some Needle Rifle that doesn’t feel quite as powerful, and the Beam Rifle is nixed in favor of some funky sniper rifle that fires a continuous stream of plasma, not unlike the Sentinel Beam. I find it hard to see how anybody could prefer such a thing to the crisp shots of energy delivered with the Beam Rifle. But hey, at least the Needler’s still cool. Rounding out the Covie weapons are the Elite Sword, the Brute Hammer (still don’t know why it’s there when Brutes haven’t arrived in the universe yet), a better version of the Plasma Rifle, a crappier version of the Plasma Pistol, and some weird gun that shoots plasma grenades at foes. As awesome as that sounds, it’s actually sort of hard to use and I wouldn’t recommend it.

As for Human weapons, it feels like Bungie went out of their way to replace every gun from Halo 3 with an inferior version of itself. Instead of our beloved burst-fire Battle Rifle, we get some slow, single-shot DMR gun that feels quite similar to the fabled pistol of Halo: Combat Evolved. That said, the pistol in Reach zooms in, but it has so much recoil and such a small clip, not to mention the fact that it takes a clip plus one round to kill anybody with it, that it’s no better than an emergency back-up. Well, let me correct myself there–it should be an emergency back-up, but because starting weapons are generally an Assault Rifle (which feels about the same as Halo 3‘s) and the pistol, you’re forced to use the pistol if you want any kind of mid-range offense. Why the DMR has become the equivalent of a power-weapon, I do not know. Oh, and those power weapons? Well, the Rocket Launcher is totally destructive, but in a game-breaking way. And I have yet to find a Sniper Rifle that I haven’t taken off of a corpse…how about making power-weapons a little easier to find, Bungie?

I think part of the reason why I’m having some issues with the new weapons is because Bungie went the opposite direction of what most modern shooters are doing today when it comes to damage. Games like Modern Warfare 2 feature guns that do so much damage that fights come down to situational awareness and who gets in the first shot. And personally, I’ve always preferred the more relaxed damage of Halo games, which allow a player ample time to locate his assailant and dispatch of him given one has the skill to do so. But it’s taken to an extreme in Reach. You can pump shot after shot into enemies with no satisfaction, which really just makes the game feel unresponsive or broken. Even if you’re nailing head shots, it still takes like five DMR rounds to put a dog down. Wasn’t that way in any previous Halo games, so I don’t know why Bungie felt the need to make guns feel even less powerful.

While I’m on the topic, let me just say that SWAT is the supreme game mode available to Halo players. In the rare instances I’ve gotten into a SWAT game in Reach, my precision head-shots have dominated the competition. In regular game-types, if a victim doesn’t run away before I can get five shots off then one of his friends will take me out from behind first. Gay.

While we’re on the topic of game modes, let me just say that the new voting system that’s been integrated into match-making is terrible. Instead of merely being able to veto the selected game in hopes of a better choice next time, now players can pick between four options and majority wins. You know that that means? That means all Slayer, all the time. Say goodbye to King of the Hill, Juggernaut, and Oddball. Occasionally you’ll get a new game-type like Headhunter or Stockpile, probably out of your mook teammates’ curiosity, but I wouldn’t expect that to last long once the novelty wears off. Get used to Team Slayer, because it’s all you’ll be playing in Reach unless you find specific playlists.

The last thing I’d like to tear apart about the Halo: Reach beta is its new Call of Duty-ish progression system. Players now earn credits with every game which can be spent on armor upgrades. Before I talk about the upgrades, let me just say that the difference between winning and losing a match is generally under ten credits. Considering every game nets at least 100 credits if you have two opposable thumbs, then I don’t really see much of a reward for winning. But anyways, those armor upgrades I mentioned…well, you can buy them, and there’s a bunch to buy, but I still can’t tell if they actually have tangible effects on the battlefield. Their descriptions are very vague and don’t necessarily indicate any performance enhancement and I haven’t noticed any game-play differences from the ones I’ve bought. What the hell is up with that? Can Bungie please explain to me what’s going on? While they’re at it can they explain why they’ve dumbed down the Post Game Carnage Report so we can no longer see how many of each medal we got or our killed/killed by for each individual player?

So far my impressions on the Halo: Reach beta aren’t great, in case you haven’t derived that by now. I’m still having fun playing it, because at its core it plays like a Halo game, which means it’s good. But there are so many small issues that don’t make any sense to me and they all add up to bog the experience down. I have to wonder if Bungie just put this crap in the beta so they could say they bothered to fix something when the full game comes out. Jesus, at least I hope they fix this stuff. Hey, maybe they can just remake Halo 2‘s multiplayer for the 360? Anybody else on board with me there?

Author: Cody

Tags: bungie, halo reach, microsoft, Our Adventures, xbox 360