Halo 3 Beta

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2007-05-18 07:03pm

I just played the Halo 3 Beta on XBox live at a friend's house, and I have to say, I'm quite impressed. The graphics and detail are fantastic, and the three given levels, if somewhat small, are intricate and well-designed. The new weapons, like the Spartan laser and spiker grenades, are extremely fun to use, as are the chain guns and rocket pods you can tear off mounts and heft around in third-person mode. I didn't get to play for very long, but the other new weapons class, mines, look like they'll add a whole new dimension to the game (especially the mobile shield generator). On top of all that, nothing can beat loading up one of the two-person Mongoose ATVs, launching it out of a "man-cannon", and running riot through a squad of enemy infantry as rockets go flying overhead.

The sound is also really an improvement over Halo 2; the echo effects of weapons fire, particularly that of the sniper rifle, are great, and the explosions are amazing.

Has anyone else had a chance to play it?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-05-18 08:56pm

Is it still UT-style circlestrafing, bunnyhopping, twitch-shooter stuff? I've always found Halo's pretentions (which are HUGE) a hilarious counterpoint to it's Counterstrike-level of gameplay.

Anyway, I'm honestly interested - I own a 360 and ALL. Is it still a really fast game, at least in multi?

ColonialAdmiral · Post by **ColonialAdmiral** » 2007-05-18 09:10pm

So how are the amounts of Enemies/Allies?
I heard that it can support HUGE battles in single player...
Did you play any single player or just multi?

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2007-05-18 10:04pm

Stark wrote:Is it still UT-style circlestrafing, bunnyhopping, twitch-shooter stuff? I've always found Halo's pretentions (which are HUGE) a hilarious counterpoint to it's Counterstrike-level of gameplay.

Unashamedly yes. As the designers have been quick to point out, Halo 3 does not reinvent the series, it simply aims to improve and streamline it.

Anyway, I'm honestly interested - I own a 360 and ALL. Is it still a really fast game, at least in multi?

The gameplay is very fast, and surprisingly free of lag. Matchmaking, however, takes a bit of time, although that may be remedied as the test progresses.

ColonialAdmiral wrote:So how are the amounts of Enemies/Allies?
I heard that it can support HUGE battles in single player...
Did you play any single player or just multi?

The Beta is strictly mutliplayer, and the matches are limited to around 4v4. I'm not really sure how large the skirmishes in the final game will be.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2007-05-18 10:37pm

It plays quite a bit different than Halo 2 multi-player wise. Weapons are better, but there is a pretty big variety of them. All three maps are great, but High Ground is by far my favorite. It looks like an actual anti-aircraft 'base' would. It's got a big missle-pod in the back, a bunker in the very front, and a very cool base in-between.

Since the beta is multi-player only, we didn't get a chance to really check out the scale of things. I have high hopes for single player though. In a past weekly update, it was stated that the average encounted in Halo 3's campaign would have dozens of bi-peds, lots of land vehicles, and more air vehicles ( http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx ... &cid=12310 ).

JLTucker · Post by **JLTucker** » 2007-05-18 10:56pm

Is a melee attack to the head still more powerful than most of the weapons?

CaptHawkeye · Post by **CaptHawkeye** » 2007-05-18 11:31pm

How do they balance the man portable chain guns and rocket pods? Do they give them limited ammo? Or allow the player to move about as fast as a rock?

I must say from what i've seen, the sounds effects are pretty good. But what's up with the new shotgun. 6 rounds but still pathetically inaccurate?

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2007-05-19 12:09am

JLTucker wrote:Is a melee attack to the head still more powerful than most of the weapons?

Yes.

CaptHawkeye wrote:How do they balance the man portable chain guns and rocket pods? Do they give them limited ammo? Or allow the player to move about as fast as a rock?

It's the slow as a rock part. Inifite ammo on the chain gun with no cool down limits like the Spartan Laser.

CaptHawkeye wrote:I must say from what i've seen, the sounds effects are pretty good. But what's up with the new shotgun. 6 rounds but still pathetically inaccurate?

Everything looks and sounds better and certainly plays better. Halo 3 is, in most ways, better than Halo 2. Which, I suppose, is all that it was shooting to be.

The shotgun also takes two shots to kill someone at point plant range, unless you get shot from behind. I never understood what they were thinking with the shotgun. At least they changed the sniper pistol from the first Halo.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2007-05-19 12:33pm

The bunnyhopping scum are what can spoil a game for me, the game I played last night was full of them. Personally, I'd like to see an FPS bring in some way of penalising it. BF2 was also notorious for it.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2007-05-19 01:39pm

Jade Falcon wrote:The bunnyhopping scum are what can spoil a game for me, the game I played last night was full of them. Personally, I'd like to see an FPS bring in some way of penalising it. BF2 was also notorious for it.

Oh, plenty of shooters have anti-bunnyhopping measures in place. Problem is, they generally cater to more niche crowds (i.e., realism-oriented tactical types). CounterStrike, and nowadays Halo nublets will throw a bitch fit if they can't have their stupid nonsensical maneuvers. Day of Defeat, Project Reality, America's Army, etc. all heavily discourage bunny hopping, and it's pretty damned ineffective in all the examples listed.

CaptHawkeye · Post by **CaptHawkeye** » 2007-05-19 01:54pm

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:
Jade Falcon wrote:The bunnyhopping scum are what can spoil a game for me, the game I played last night was full of them. Personally, I'd like to see an FPS bring in some way of penalising it. BF2 was also notorious for it.
Oh, plenty of shooters have anti-bunnyhopping measures in place. Problem is, they generally cater to more niche crowds (i.e., realism-oriented tactical types). CounterStrike, and nowadays Halo nublets will throw a bitch fit if they can't have their stupid nonsensical maneuvers. Day of Defeat, Project Reality, America's Army, etc. all heavily discourage bunny hopping, and it's pretty damned ineffective in all the examples listed.

Another thing that bugs me in many "realism" shooters is how weak supression fire is. It's really hard to "supress" people when the don't really have to fear death. That's why machine gun nests suck in games like CoD. And in most games, LMGs are little more than bigger assault rifles. AA took this into account, and implimented their "supression meter" in the game. A feature I wish more "realism" or "pseudo realism" games would use.

Although I don't expect a straight action game like Halo to incorporate it.

JLTucker · Post by **JLTucker** » 2007-05-19 03:15pm

Erik von Nein wrote:
JLTucker wrote:Is a melee attack to the head still more powerful than most of the weapons?
Yes.
.

Damn. I never understood why that is.

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2007-05-19 05:36pm

JLTucker wrote:Damn. I never understood why that is.

I suppose Bungi assumed it would be hard to do and fairly rare when it happened. In reality, though, it isn't. Everyone can do it with a fairly high amount of success-to-failure ratio.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2007-05-19 05:52pm

CaptHawkeye wrote: I must say from what i've seen, the sounds effects are pretty good. But what's up with the new shotgun. 6 rounds but still pathetically inaccurate?

I was raping people with it in a shotty/sniper match, no complaints here.

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2007-05-19 08:06pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:
CaptHawkeye wrote: I must say from what i've seen, the sounds effects are pretty good. But what's up with the new shotgun. 6 rounds but still pathetically inaccurate?
I was raping people with it in a shotty/sniper match, no complaints here.

It closer to how it was in Halo compared to Halo 2? I loved the shotgun, but when Halo 2 rolled around, it fell from grace, because it was completely lame.

CaptHawkeye · Post by **CaptHawkeye** » 2007-05-19 09:01pm

Ford Prefect wrote:
Sea Skimmer wrote:
CaptHawkeye wrote: I must say from what i've seen, the sounds effects are pretty good. But what's up with the new shotgun. 6 rounds but still pathetically inaccurate?
I was raping people with it in a shotty/sniper match, no complaints here.
It closer to how it was in Halo compared to Halo 2? I loved the shotgun, but when Halo 2 rolled around, it fell from grace, because it was completely lame.

Yeah. I'm sorry, but any gun that is only usefull at point blank range is the very definition of "redundant".

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-05-19 09:06pm

CaptHawkeye wrote:Yeah. I'm sorry, but any gun that is only usefull at point blank range is the very definition of "redundant".

You might say using shotshells in a game entirely composed of armoured enemies is somewhat retarded. But hey, shotguns in twitch shooters are ALWAYS retarded, so you get what you expect.

CaptHawkeye · Post by **CaptHawkeye** » 2007-05-19 09:16pm

Stark wrote:
CaptHawkeye wrote:Yeah. I'm sorry, but any gun that is only usefull at point blank range is the very definition of "redundant".
You might say using shotshells in a game entirely composed of armoured enemies is somewhat retarded. But hey, shotguns in twitch shooters are ALWAYS retarded, so you get what you expect.

According to Halo's gameplay, I might as well ditch the Shotgun for an English Longsword. At least I don't have to reload the sword.

On the subject of game shotguns in general, I found it kind of funny that Half Life's 2's shotgun had a surprisingly realistic spread. Of course, we're talking about the same shotgun that can magically fire two shells at once out of the same barrel .

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-05-19 09:24pm

Isn't that the one that looks like a semi-auto but is pump all the time? I think that's the HL1 shotgun.

I honestly don't get the fascination with pump-action shotguns. Sure, semis apparently have problems with odd shell types or low-charge stuff, but most have a pump anyway. It has always struck me as clumsy balancing - ie, shotguns are teh ubber but they have zero range and require pumping, neither of which is necessarily true.

CaptHawkeye · Post by **CaptHawkeye** » 2007-05-19 09:29pm

Stark wrote:Isn't that the one that looks like a semi-auto but is pump all the time? I think that's the HL1 shotgun.

I honestly don't get the fascination with pump-action shotguns. Sure, semis apparently have problems with odd shell types or low-charge stuff, but most have a pump anyway. It has always struck me as clumsy balancing - ie, shotguns are teh ubber but they have zero range and require pumping, neither of which is necessarily true.

It's quite often because most video game maps are designed to be absurdly small. Call of Duty would have you believing that every firefight of WW2 occured at spitting distance. If shotguns were realistically accurate, players could kill eachother from across these small maps, and that wouldn't be "fair".

It also has to do with the fact that most players are crappy shots, and need to get really close so they can spray and pray.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-05-19 09:32pm

I guess that is it - shotguns have become the 'lol three-way shot' gun of the shooter generation. I've played some games with decent shotguns, with both slugs and shotshells AND a semi-realistic spread cone and they're far more useful than FPS-standards.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2007-05-20 04:18am

I've been having fun with it. Stuck someone with a spike grenade and got a big laugh because of the angle it stuck at meant there was a spartan running around with a stick poking up from his head.. looked damn silly right up until it blew up.

The Spartan Laser is a nasty piece of work, especially if you can conceal the charge up so they don't see it coming.

Laughing Mechanicus · Post by **Laughing Mechanicus** » 2007-05-20 05:17am

I just bought a 360 last week along which came with Crackdown so I've been playing with the Beta too. This is actually my first time playing a console FPS online, as I never bothered to hook my original XBox up to the internet.

I must say I'm pretty impressed at how well it plays, although the bunny hopping is annoying as fuck (especially as PC gaming did a fairly good job at killing it in most games years ago). That it auto-aims like crazy is hilarious but took some getting used to. I think the most impressive part of it are all the matchmaking and player party gubbins though - no other FPS has anything like that so far as I know. Not much use to me of course; as I only bought my 360 last week I don't have any special Xbox friends

And yeah, the Spartan laser is wicked - shame the UNSC didn't think to put an automatic lense cap on it to block the totally useless "holy fuck im over here dodge me" beams.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-05-20 05:20am

I've heard that in the cross-platform windows/xbox live games, they will somehow penalise PCs to make the game 'fair' and give the Xbox players autoaim and stuff. I find the autoaim in console shooters more irritating than anything.

Laughing Mechanicus · Post by **Laughing Mechanicus** » 2007-05-20 05:32am

Stark wrote:I've heard that in the cross-platform windows/xbox live games, they will somehow penalise PCs to make the game 'fair' and give the Xbox players autoaim and stuff.

Awesome - especially considering there are a hardcore of console gamers (almost 100% Halo'ers I'm sure) who still insist that 'controllers are better' and even 'more realistic'.