Moonlighters

WARNING: This post is hella long, so if you're not going to read it, at least look at the pretty pictures/videos and read my witty commentary attached to each. It'll make my ego feel better. Thanks in advance.

On May 3, 2010, video game company Bungie unveiled the open Beta test for it's upcoming game, Halo: Reach, to all Xbox Live Gold members who own a copy of Halo 3: ODST.

The final game in the Halo series, Halo: Reach chronicles the adventures of an unnamed super soldier (known only as Noble Six) and the rest of Noble Team; a suicide squad of disposable augmented soldiers (known as SPARTAN-III's) that have a nasty habit of not dying very easily during the battle of Reach, one of the most important battles between humanity and the genocidal alien collective known as the Covenant. Known as one of the biggest ass-kickings humanity receives in the war, the game has the appropriate tagline "In the beginning, you know how it ends," and looks to be a dark prequel to the rest of the series.

An Elite finishes off a downed Spartan.

While all that sounds well and dandy, the Beta focused on a different aspect- multiplayer.

At initial launch, the Beta consisted of three modes:

1. Arena- Team Slayer: The Arena replaces the Ranked mode of Halo 3 multiplayer. Deeming the old ranking system of Halo 3 "too limited," Arena changes things up by dividing ranking by seasons. A person has to play three times on any three days during the season to gain a numerical ranking. If they continue to play and gain enough rankings, they may be placed in different divisions (I managed to end up in Bronze division, Division 3). This places a much more competitive spin on Ranked modes, and gives more ammunition to people who love bragging rights.

As for the Team Slayer mode, it's the same old Team Slayer that we know and love from the previous Halo games: Two teams of four, first one to fifty kills wins. Different variations of this were later introduced, such as Slayer Pro (Motion Tracker is disabled, making it much easier to sneak up on people and plan ambushes), Covie Slayer (Instead of playing as Spartans, players play as Covenant Elites, who are much stronger, faster, and taller than their human counterparts), SvE Slayer (Spartans vs Elites. Humans fight for survival against a much better equipped alien force), and Team SWAT (no shields, no motion tracker, and only being able to use rifles and pistols make this a headshot-heavy gametype).

Just because you can play as a superpowered alien badass does not mean you're suddenly fail-free.

2. Grab Bag: Grab Bag is a team-based mode where two teams of four compete in various game modes from the previous games, such as Team Slayer, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill , Oddball (to make the skull even more obnoxiously easy to see, Bungie has it so it's on fire now), and Territories (now much more like the Territories from Halo 2, instead of the crappy Halo 3 version). New to the gametype list was Stockpile, a game mode where two teams battle for flags placed at certain points around the map. These flags are then brought back to a 'capture point,' and left there. The capture point captures all flags placed on it at specific increments, so it's possible for the enemy team to steal the flags out of the capture point and bring it back to theirs.

The key to success in any team game is teamwork. Watch your buddy's back, and he'll watch yours.

3. Free For All: Free For All is self explanatory- every man/woman/child for themselves. Game types include Slayer, Oddball, King of the Hill, and Juggernaut (the player who is the Juggernaut is now on fire, though. Bungie sure likes flaming things...), as well as a new mode, Headhunter. Headhunter operates like a normal Slayer game, only whenever a player kills another player, a skull flies out of their fallen foe's corpse. Players who have a skull or multiple skulls in their possession become visible to all players, with a number over their head to signify how many skulls they have. If they are killed, their skull and all of the skulls they have collected fly out of their body, free to be collected by anyone else. Players compete to collect as many skulls as possible and to score them at capture points, which move around the map. If a player manages to collect ten skulls at one time and score them, they automatically win the game, no matter what their current score is.

Bungie also changed the graphical style of the game from previous Halo entries, giving it a grittier (and sexier) look.

Later in the Beta, Bungie released two brand-new situational game modes:

4. Invasion: Six Spartans vs six Elites. The Elites attempt to break into a human refinery, deactivate security around a navigational core, and take the captured core back to their ship. The Spartans attempt to hold back the Elites until reinforcements arrive. The match is split up into three sections (deactivating the shields around the refinery, deactivating security around the core, and the stealing of the core), and new loadouts and vehicles are unlocked at each stage. The Spartans win if they manage to hold off the Elites long enough at either three stages, and the Elites win if they manage to capture the core.

There is also an Invasion Slayer variant, where the two teams race to get 100 kills before the other. There are various capture points that pop up around the map, and whoever captures them gains reinforcements in the form of special weapons or vehicles. New loadouts unlock as the match progresses.

Playing as an Elite in Reach is actually pretty fun.

5. Generator Defense: Known as 'Network Test 1,' Generator Defense pits three Elites against three Spartans at a farmhouse-looking structure. The Spartans have to guard three generators, which the Elites are trying to destroy. The Spartans can lock-down the generators, making them impervious to damage for half a minute, but the generators are vulnerable during a brief cool-down period after being locked down. Elites win by destroying the generators, and Spartans win if they can save at least one generator. After one round, teams flip-flop, so players who were playing as Spartans get a crack at destroying the generators as Elites and vice-versa.

Always watch your back. Always. Photo by Sam Heineman.

As far as gameplay compares to Halo 3, Reach brings plenty to the table. Since you no longer play as the stronger Spartan II's of games past (aka the Master Chief), Bungie has added a few unique abilities to the Spartan III's to make them strong in different ways.

Enter armor abilities, a brand new system to the Halo universe. Replacing the equipment of Halo 3, armor abilities give players unique powers that they can activate to give them an edge in battle. The abilities revealed in the Beta are sprinting (useful for getting from one area to the next extremely quickly), Armor Lock (makes the player invincible for a time, at the cost of losing all mobility), Stealth (the player turns invisible, and activates a local radar jammer to scramble nearby motion trackers to hide their position), and Jetpack (player is equipped with a jetpack that makes flight possible). To counterbalance this, Elites have access to Stealth and Jetpack powers, as well as an evade ability that lets them roll out of the way of danger (as the AI has always been able to do in previous games).

A Spartan activates Armor Lock to survive an explosion. A nearby Elite isn't as lucky.

Since Reach takes place before the first Halo game in the overall timeline, the game reflects this "older" feel in the way it is played. Fall damage, which was removed in Halo 2 and Halo 3, is back with a vengeance, which means players will have to think twice before jumping off of tall buildings and other heights. The Battle Rifle, a fan-favorite ranged weapon from Halo 2 and 3, is absent from the game, and is instead replaced with it's ancestor, the Designated Marksman Rifle (or DMR, for short). The DMR contains 12 rounds per clip, and is a single-shot weapon, which contrasts from the burst-fire 36 round BR. A variation of the pistol from the first Halo returns as well, although it is still not as powerful as the original version (which is probably a good thing, because that was a God-tier weapon).

The main weapon of the Elite ground soldiers is the Plasma Repeater, an earlier variation of the Plasma Rifle from the other Halo games. The gun fires slightly faster than the Rifle, and heats up in a different way. Instead of reaching a certain heat threshold and becoming unusable until it cools off, the Repeater slowly fires slower and slower as it reaches a critical heat level. It can cool down either by not being fired for a time, or manually flushed of heat. It sounds annoying, but I was able to use this feature to my advantage multiple times during the Beta.

My Elite alter-ego displays his zeal in acquiring a Plasma Cannon, one of the new weapons in Halo: Reach.

As far as completely new weapons go, Bungie has introduced a few new toys for people to play with. The human forces now have a grenade launcher with two modes of fire. Players can pull the trigger to launch an automatic detonation grenade that explodes after one bounce, or they can hold down the trigger to fire a grenade that will explode with a small EMP field around it when the trigger is released.

The Covenant possess two new weapons- the Focus Rifle and the Plasma Cannon. The Focus Rifle, presumably a prototype to the Covenant Energy Rifle introduce in Halo 2, functions as a sniper rifle that fires a constant, steady stream of energy into the target. This can kill a completely-healthy Spartan III in a matter of seconds, and overheats extremely easily. The Plasma Cannon (pictured above) can be charged to fire up to four plasma grenades that home in on a target, stick to them, and explode with brutal force. Needless to say, this is my favorite addition to the Halo universe.

"Guess where this is going..."

Another cool little feature Bungie implemented in Reach is a revamp of the assassination system. In previous Halo games, a melee attack to the back of an opponent would instantly kill them (not counting certain campaign-specific enemies, like the Hunters or the Flood). While this feature remains in Halo: Reach, it now comes in two different variations. Simply tapping the melee button while facing someone's backside still results in the spine-snapping instant kill. If a player holds down the melee button, though, they are rewarded with an animation of their character assassinating their opponent in various satisfying ways, such as a knife to the back, snapping the neck, etc. While it's possible to be killed by another player while performing this attack, there's nothing more satisfying than pulling one off.

Nothing says "Fuck you!" more than a knife in the back.

One final large change of note is a revamping of the ranking system. Since plenty of gamers would eventually hit a rock wall in multiplayer in previous games and become bored at having nowhere else to go, Bungie decided to make Reach's ranking system rely not just on multiplayer, but on single player, as well. Players earn points for their performance in the game, as well as completing various tasks. These points go into an experience gauge, which presents the player with a new rank when it fills up. Points can also be used to buy new armor pieces and upgrades, which serve as ways to further customize the main character and make the player feel as if they are Noble Six.

Since the Spartan you play as is a Spartan III, you have access to different armor types than you did in Halo 3.

There are a few other tweaks with various gameplay elements- the arc of grenade throws is slightly different, vehicles look slightly downgraded compared to what they were in other games (ESPECIALLY the Banshee), vehicles now have their own health, separate from the players (much like the Banshee and Ghost did in the original Halo), and sword lunges can now be parried by other players with good luck and timing, just to name a few. However, Reach still plays like a Halo game, albeit a much different one.

It's called a Beta test for a reason. Seen here is a glitch where the Oddball has fallen into the floor and cannot be retrieved.

The Beta had it's fare share of glitches, such as crazy physics, grenades that never exploded, people getting stuck in walls and ceilings, broken spawns, and other wonky things. And while I experienced my fair share of really weird bugs, the overall process was pretty smooth, as Beta tests normally go.

My one major gripe with the whole game was the fact that certain elements seemed extremely unbalanced. A lot of the vehicles, such as the Scorpion and Wraith tanks, were overpowered in the amount of death and destruction they could deal out, yet underpowered in the fact that they blew up extremely easily. Many Scorpions I went toe-to-toe with had the ability to survive multiple hits from Wraith mortar fire, yet could destroy any vehicle in a single blast. Shouldn't the main tank in an army of aliens with superior technology and firepower be better than that of the humans, who are notably weaker and technologically inferior? And shouldn't the Banshee, the main air to ground fighting vehicle, be able to survive more than three shots from a sniper rifle? Banshees are annoying, and they used to be extremely overpowered in the older Halo games, but Bungie's constant dumbing down of the vehicle is making it more of a moderate annoyance than an actual threat.

The lack of any real health indicator on the vehicles is what makes this worse. Some vehicles give telltale signs that they're about to explode, such as the Warthog's engine catching on fire before it turns into a fireball. But Warthogs caught on fire in older Halo games too, and were still able to function fine. Adding a simple health bar to show what the condition of your vehicle is would improve the game tenfold.

I'd be angry too if my vehicles had a tendency to explode without warning.

The other thing that bugged me about the Beta was Armor Lock. It sounds cool at first- a way to make yourself completely invincible, yet immobile for a few seconds would come in handy if you're pinned down by a tank and you just need to distract it for a few more seconds for your team to blow it up and save you. However, when you give people the power of invincibility, they will needlessly abuse it until it becomes less cool and more aggravating than anything else in the entire game.

I cannot remember how many times I encountered someone abusing this function, but it's pretty safe to say that the sentence "Fucking Armor Lock n00b!" was probably used by me at least once per game. Some people had found a way to use Armor Lock in a such a way that when in close quarters, they could cause their opponent to get stuck between them and the wall. Seeing as Armor Lock emits a small shield-killing EMP burst when it 'unlocks,' many people used this ability to kill lots of people while exerting minimal effort.

I think the main thing that got me was the fact that a person could enter Armor Lock after being stuck by a plasma grenade or plasma cannon blast and survive, despite the fact that the Armor Lock process was just an overcharging of the shields around the body to protect it from damage. If the explosive thing is inside the shields, how can they stop it?

"Armor Lock can't save you now, newbie!"

Nevertheless, Reach looks to be a promising game. As Bungie claims that this is the last game in the Halo series, I couldn't be more excited to see the series go out with such a bang. The game will be arriving on September 14th of this year.

Until then, I'll stick to Halo 3 and impatiently wait for it to arrive.

I know I won't be the only one waiting, either.

MORE MEDIA:

If the final produce looks as good as the Beta, Reach is going to be one beautiful game.

Gangsta Elites: It's more common than you might think.

Craig gets his revenge on me for that embarrassing assassination photo I used earlier in this entry.

I took the red pill.

The ragdoll physics for dead bodies makes me laugh.

My shining moment during the Beta.

This just goes to show that if you never give up, you'll get what you want eventually... or die trying.