Halo 3 Beta

The Halo 3 Beta started yesterday at 8am EDT. Unfortunately, due to an unknown bug, anyone who entered the beta program through Crackdown was not able to download the game until around 10:30pm EDT. It's sad to say, but such delays have become the norm for anything released by Bungie, the rule of 3 website fiasco, halo 2 map launch the other week, halo 2 itself for that matter. Let's just face it, Bungie can't get things out on time, but neither can I so who cares.

After leaving the download going overnight, I finally played my first games this morning. Waking up a early and going to work later, I managed to squeeze my first 10 games in this morning and I have to say I was very happy with the game so far. The game has much more of Halo 1 feel, which is a very good thing. The controls take a little getting used to. While hitting RB to pick up weapons is pretty easy to pick up and is soon second nature, not hitting X to reload is a much more difficult habit to break. There were definitely many times that I threw a trip mine or energy drainer by accident.

Weapons are the most obvious change made in Halo 3. The Assault Rifle has been brought back from Halo 1, plus the addition of the brute spiker, laser, maybe others, I'm doing this from the top of my head. The AR is definitely more powerful than it was from Halo 1 and is actually a useful weapon in some close range situations. I have not had a chance to determine how big of a difference there is between the AR and SMG. It seams that the with the introduction of the AR, the SMG will see much less use. That being said, dual SMG's do tear people up in close spaces so it remains to be seen. Since the 3 maps released with the beta are all open terrain, there is little opportunity to truly assess the abilities/usefulness of any of the dual-wieldable weapons. The shotgun has received an overhaul in the beta, doing more damage than the halo 2 version but with a much smaller magazine, which is a trade-off I really like since it's pretty rare to run out of ammo on a halo 2 shotgun.

One of the biggest changes to the weapons is to the rifles. The auto-aim on all of them has been significantly reduced, returning the feel of actually needing skill to use them like the Halo 1 pistol. Using all of them has a much more satisfying feel to it (people who aren't good at aiming may disagree...). I have heard that the battle rifle has been toned down and that the carbine is a little bit more powerful now. While this may be true, I am not completely convinced. My impression is more that the battle rifle seems harder to use because of the lower auto-aim. It may have a lower rate of fire than the Halo 2 version as has been claimed, I can't say for sure but I still prefer it over the carbine. Maybe I just need to play more for that to change though.

As of yet, I have not touched the laser so can not comment too much on it. However, I have been on the receiving end of a laser shot and while it is a threat, it does not seem like it is overpowered. With practice, it shouldn't bee too difficult to learn how to dodge the shot more effectively so without skill it's by no means a guaranteed kill. There have also been changes to the rocket launcher, the ability to carry turrets around and more but I'll leave those to another time when I've used them more.

Halo 3 introduces various items including the energy drainer, bubble shield, portable lift and trip mine. Many of these items seem like they are much more useful in objective games than in team slayer. The exception to this may be the bubble shield, which has some practical uses in TS. The only games I have played so far have been TS, so the bubble shield is really the only item I have seen used effectively and it can really be a pain in the ass. The bubble shield does exactly what you would probably expect from the name. You drop in on the ground and it shields the area around it with a protective bubble. The effect that shows this bubble is a transparent active-camo like effect, which can be very difficult to see from a distance. One change that I would like to see would be maybe to add a color tint or some other indicator to make it a little bit easier to identify the shield. I will need to experiment more with the other items later tonight when I play some team skirmish. I can think of some good uses for the energy drainer and bubble shield in king of the hill and trip mines could be useful to cover exists in CTF.

Among other changes to the game, the shield indicator has been moved to a bar across the upper-center of the screen, which is hidden when full. I'm much more ambivalent to this change than other people seem to be. Wherever the shield indicator is, I'll be able to see it when I need to so doesn't seem to matter. One change to the HUD that can be somewhat annoying is what I call the red blotch. I noticed it the most in a game of team snipers, but it likely happens in other circumstances. When hit by a sniper shot, I assume that since your shields are now low/gone, there is a red blotchy rectangle obscuring the top half of the screen. This was extremely annoying in snipers since it basically meant that if you got hit you couldn't see the person who was shooting at you because they would likely be in the distance and thus in the top part of your screen. Also, the effect itself is kinda pathetic, it looks like a red rectangle flashing across your screen. The edges could be softened up a little bit to make it a little better looking.

Of course there are many other changes which I haven't mentioned. Perhaps after playing all night tonight I'll say more about them. Overall, the beta shows great promise for Halo3. Hopefully things will only change for the better between now and the final release in "September."