Okay, got that out of the way, now how did my two weeks of Halo 3 Multiplayer go? I had a blast suckas! There are some criticisms and that is always going to happen, especially in a beta build. We will get to those later. Let me just say that those who know me know that I am not the most knowledgeable Halo expert out there. I never had an Xbox so I couldn’t tell you where the Needler is on the Hang ‘em High map, but for someone who never owned the games I can confidently say that I have played my share of Halo. Longtime friend and fellow video game lover The Mike and I played Co-op through Halo during Christmas Break ’01 on his brother’s Xbox. Oh yeah, we beat it in one day. Throw in some GTA III on my PS2, some Super Monkey Ball (as I recall) on The Mike’s GameCube, some bomb ass Christmas dinner leftovers, and you have a recipe for one of the greatest days I have ever experienced. My skills improved with Halo 2 along side another old school homie that goes by the gamertag “Loves2Cyber”. You may have seen us on Xbox Live dominating. Little did you know that we were drinking 40 oz.’s of Budweiser each night and still cleaning up shop.
Sorry for that little diversion, the memories were just flowing through the old noodle for a second there. So Halo 3. What’s new, what’s different, what’s good, and what’s bad? Keep in mind that this is all from the Beta build and not the final Halo 3 build so changes will most likely be made. Let me start with the weapons. Weapon balancing has always been an issue for Halo players and there were changes between Halo and Halo 2 that turned some players off to the sequel. Well get ready for more new weapons and tweaks in Halo 3.
The new weapon that won a place in my black heart is the Brute Spiker. This little handgun is an adequate number at close range, though there are better weapons. However duel wielding the Spiker vastly increases the effectiveness, and enemies in your close proximity will turn into Swiss cheese (my favorite). These are no joke, just make sure to not attempt a Spiker attack on somebody half way across the map because of their limited range.
The other major addition is the Spartan Laser. This bad boy produces instant kills and will annihilate vehicles. The price you pay for raining down laser death is a long charge time between shots so make them count.
And oh yeah, how could I forget to mention that players can now grab mounted machine guns and rocket launching turrets from their positions and lug them around as a normal weapon! This vastly decreases mobility but the firepower is tremendous. Great idea.
Some special equipment types have also been introduced to mix up gameplay. The Bubble Shield grants a protective barrier for players to hide in. It is great to see this deployed as a grenade is coming in only to see the shield raise and have the damn thing bounce right off! But remember kids, if the enemy enters inside your shield it is game on again. The Power Drain lowers player’s shields allowing for some quick kills, the Grav Lift sets up a jump-pad wherever deployed, and the Tripmine allows for some nasty traps to be set.
We had one taste of a new vehicle called the Mongoose. This 4-wheeler could hold a buddy on the rear and was a quick and agile alternative to the Warthog. The tradeoff was almost no protection so don’t think that you and a friend are gonna be racking up kills with this vehicle. The Mongoose calls for a strictly in and out operation.
Three maps were available in the Beta and are known as Snowbound, Highground, and Valhalla. Highground and Valhalla vastly overshadowed Snowbound in both level design and fun factor. Highground runs from a beach up the hill to a base with some caves on the sides. Having the high ground in this level is key and both defending the base and attempting to attack it was a blast. Valhalla was the largest map of the three and played a lot like one of my favorite old maps Blood Gulch. Bases on each end, a river, hilly terrain, and a handful of vehicles led to an anything goes match every time. Snowbound had force fields at all the underground entrances which switched up gameplay, but nothing else really grabbed my attention in this level.
So now it’s time for some of the bad. Surprisingly the graphics in the Beta build of Halo 3 weren’t that much different from Halo 2. I didn’t really mind this because I would rather have solid gameplay over eye candy, but it still remains a fact that graphics are a large factor for people when they formulate their opinion on a game. I would like everyone to remember that this is not the final product so I wouldn’t freak out about it yet.
Weapon balancing tweaks were also still needed, but that is the whole point of having a beta so that problems can be noticed and addressed for such things. The beta ended on Sunday so players are just gonna have to wait until September 25th to play Halo 3 again. Until then check out the box art that just recently got released and I will see you all online in a few months.
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