Halo 3 Beta experience

The Halo 3 beta was finally released on May 16th with a little delay to the dismay of some of the Crackdown users. The demo was due for release in the early hours of the morning although it arrived after 10pm (CST), which caused large backlash on the bungie.net forums, where threats of suicide and lawsuits were thrown around like monkeys with feces. Now all the drama has past it’s time to take a look at this BETA demo and see if it lives up to the hype.

Firstly, the game runs really well, the frame rate is steady, the graphics are greatly improved and the matchmaking is easy, making it a good pick up and play demo. Load times are great also which is something with often hasn’t been tuned yet in a beta. In all it does feel more like a retail demo rather than beta, as everything down to typical Halo esque music has been included, Bungie clearly took their time on getting this ready and it shows.

Gameplay has not been adjusted in any major way since Halo 2, the winning formula and style is still in place. It’s still the Red Vs Blue Spartans dukeng it out across a series of 3 maps (Snowbound, High Ground, and Valhalla) with a handful of game modes:
Rumble pit: Everyone is your enemy in a fast paced death match.
Team slayer: Red Vs Blue, 4 on 4 action
Team skirmish: Capture the flag/base style game mode for teams

The major new weapon I experienced was the Spartan laser, this weapon deals out quick and hit death after a short charging time. I’m wondering if this weapon is overpowered or if it’s just that other people haven’t yet become accustomed to avoiding it, but it seems you are guaranteed several kills if you manage to stumble across one of these beauties

The biggest change to the way the game plays is through the equipment button X. Using this you can throw down a quick bubble shield, that rather than just granting temporary invincibility only keeps you safe in certain ways adding to the technical element to the game. You are complexly safe from all incoming fire and grenade as long as they originate from outside the shell, anyone can walk inside and lay the smack down on you as well as drive straight through the shield and deliver some four-wheeled justice. This modifies the controls slightly as now you can press the triggers to fire the left and right weapons and the bumpers to reload left and right. This adds a useful feature of reloading one weapon while firing another, which takes a little getting used to.

Besides from being a part of the carnage you also have the option of viewing the replays and saving them. One awesome feature is saving the replay and going back to it even when you are in the matchmaking menus and the match is over. Sadly you can only view the replay from your own first person view, which is a real shame as something more akin to the photo and video modes in some driving games would be ace, imagine being able to get that moody close-up view of you and your team saved and uploaded to the interwebs.

Halo 3 makes a great free demo, although I’d highly advise buying Crackdown to get it as you’ll likely find Crackdown gets as much Gameplay from you as the beta, especially after June 10th when the beta expires and thousands of copies of Crackdown appear on eBay and Craigslist.

The final version of Halo 3 is currently due on September 25th, look for it!