What I’ve Been Playing: Halo Reach Multiplayer Beta
So if you haven’t experienced the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta then one of two thing is likely going on. One: you don’t have access to a Halo ODST disc, or Two: you don’t care about Halo at all.
For a long time I was one of those latter people. Halo was some raging, incoherent beast screaming profanity from every one of it’s hundreds of needled toothed maws… I guess it still is. The reality of Halo’s multiplayer is that there is quite a bit of strategy involved in the gameplay. Knowing precisely how many shots with the battle rifle will set up a kill from an indirect grenade hit, goading someone into following you around a corner where you lie in wait to deliver a instant death dealing backsmack, dropping a banshee right out of the air with a well placed plasma pistol overcharge shot… it all comes down to game knowledge and how to use it to your advantage. Now Halo comes with a hefty bad side as well. The majority of one on one encounters boil down to what I refer to as “idiot jousting.” Two Spartans running directly at each other emptying an entire clip into an enemy and the first person to connect with a well timed melee wins… over and over and over. Sure you can mix the formula up with some zig-zaging and the Halo favorite… leaping around like a frog with ADHD. I expected Halo Reach to be more of the same… but at this point I had spent a decent amount of time learning how to survive these encounters, and hell… the beta’s free right?
Little did I expect that Bungie would mix things up so much with such a tiny modification to the game mechanics. Armor abilities have got to be the single best thing to ever be introduced to the halo multiplayer universe! The four new abilities are offered up on a spawn by spawn basis, allowing you to mix and match your team’s loadout on the fly. The jetpack has featured prominently in many reviews of the game, but I really feel like the other three abilities are super useful as well. The Stalker loadout allows you to go invisible for a short amount of time which on its own is not a huge advantage when squaring off against the other abilities, but if you pair up with a teammate with any of the other armor abilities makes you death on swift wings. Picking off an opponent who is not paying attention to you or landing a critical shot that lowers the shields of a member of the opposite team occupied by a frantic battle with one of your teammates is surprisingly satisfying. The Armor lock’s invulnerability is nice, but the real power with that loadout comes from the EMP pulse you send out when the shield finally overloads that drops the shields of every enemy it hits, allowing for potential one shots from your buddies lurking just outside its range. And finally, the sprint ability, seemingly the least useful ability, is one of the most fun to play with. Running up and delivering two quick melee strikes to a player who likes to strafe around you, firing from a distance is an often unexpected tactic, and running around with the gravity hammer has resulted in me racking up more then a couple of Extermination medals.
These little tweaks have made game types like capture the flag my favorite thing to do in halo. The multiple uses for each loadout allow people to cooperate as a team in so many ways, it really makes me excited to see what play will be like a month or two into the final release this fall. The bottom line is that if you’re a Halo fan, you’re gonna like the game. If you used to like Halo, but got bored of it, you’ll probably like the game, and if you’ve been curious about Halo and just never got around to playing… this year’s vintage is a great place to start.
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