Review 1: Halo: Reach Multiplayer

No Honey...this IS work. Trust me!

First let me say I'm a huge fan of the Halo franchise. Bungie has taken a simple first person shooter that was among the original release of the Xbox in 2001 and went George Lucas on it. While the sheer amount of revenue doesn't equate to what Lucas brought in Bungie has done a great job merchandising their product and coming out with new story lines to keep the franchise "fresh". Case in point, they release a Beta test of the Multiplayer levels of Halo: Reach basically free to the masses. I say basically because you at least have to own a copy of Halo: ODST to gain access.

The game is a huge file, 1.15 GB so prepare for a LONG download time. On the first day it took me about 45 minutes before I finished the download and another 20 minutes trying to find a match to play. Bungie said that the long load times was due to over 600,000 players trying to get onto the servers all at once. Since then the load times are closer to what they should be, 30 seconds or less to find a match.

Bungie didn't change much of how Halo multiplayer works, there are Slayer, Headhunter, Oddball and the classic capture the flag matches. Slayer is a basic team match where the first team to 50 kills wins. Simple and to the point. I wasn't a big fan of Headhunter at first, but it is strangely addicting. In this game every time you get a kill you can collect the skull of your victim like you're hunting Arnold through the jungles of Panama. You then have to make it to a collection point to score the skulls. If someone kills you before that you lose the skulls. Oh and the points move. Trust me there's nothing more frustrating than when you have 8 skulls only to have the point move right before you reach it and then get killed. Oddball is my least favorite of the group. There's one skull and all you have to do is hold it for 150 seconds. Sounds easy? WRONG. Everyone on the map knows where you are so don't expect to hold the skull for more than a few seconds at a time. Oh and you can't fight back unless someone is stupid enough to get close so you can crack them in the skull with your....you get the point. And anytime someone picks up the skull or drops the skull there's an announcement that gets really old, really fast.

There are a few new weapons, but nothing drastically different than what you've seen before. There's a Needle Rifle that's basically the Covenant Carbine from the previous games but it shoot needles instead. I was a little disappointed that Bungie didn't add some cool new guns or at least the ability to customize and upgrade existing weaponry similar to other FPS allow you to do. I played for several hours on the two available maps and didn't run into any vehicles yet. The maps are pretty small so far and wouldn't support vehicles anyway, but that's to be expected in a Beta. By the end of the week there should be four maps open, so I may update after that.

There are new armor abilities as well. Scout armor gives you a temporary burst of speed, great for Headhunter when you need to get to a collection point fast or need to charge headlong at someone with a shotgun. Guard armor allows you to crouch down and be invincible for a short time but you can't fight back, good for Slayer matches. Airborne armor gives you a jet pack, it doesn't last long and its hard to hit people with a battle rifle when you're airborne, it's mostly useless. Finally, there is an armor that gives you active Camouflage. It doesn't make you completely invincible, more like the Predator. It does scramble everyone's radar, but that includes your own radar. It's probably the second most useful after Scout armor.

In conclusion, I'm pretty happy with the way Bungie has done things. We get to play a test version of the new Halo....FOR FREE until March 19th. So no complaints from me. Are there things that need improvement in graphics and game play? Of course! It's a prototype, not the end product. But in the end you Bungie will turn out a great Halo game and sell millions of units. When was the last time they didn't?