Halo Reach Beta Review

By Harry Smith Staff Writer

The Halo Reach Beta took place from May 3rd to May 19th and was pretty cool, to say the least. The beta presented several new and exciting features, games, and a few new weapons to the Halo world arsenal. Lets start with the maps; there were four maps used in the beta. The maps featured in the Beta are Sword Base, Powerhouse, Boneyard, and Overlook. Bungie also added a new feature to Halo Reach: Loadouts. You will find that Loadouts are very similar to classes, found in Modern Warfare 2 and other first person shooter games, but Bungie pioneered the “class” system. They include one perk, such as the jetpack(my favorite), sprint, armor lock, and invisibility. They also upgraded the way you wear your armor; they have provided a lot more detail with all of the different permutations, and even a new system, where you purchase your armor using credit. There are several new game modes in Halo Reach, Invasion, Generator Defense, which is similar to Search and Destroy, Covy Slayer, Spartans vs. Elites, and many more. Finally, there are the new guns in the game. These include the all new Designated Marksman Rifle(DMR), Needler Rifle, Focus Rifle, and some new upgrades on some old guns.

There are four maps featured in the Halo Reach Beta. First, there is Sword Base, which is a giant ONI(Office of Naval Intelligence) office building. This map is basically built to tribute the jet pack. Its a very slim map, but it is very tall. The map consists of several office rooms and puzzling corridors if its your first time on the map. There are many different weapons featured on the map, such as the new plasma launcher, essentially an Elite’s homing missile, and the Sniper Rifle. There are also several assault weapons found on this map, such as the DMR and the Needle Rifle. Next, there is Powerhouse, a giant complex that produces hydroelectricity for the planet of Reach. This map has a few buildings, but for the most part, is an outside map. It features the all new “pro pipe”, or grenade launcher, the rocket launcher, and the all new focus rifle.The third map, and the largest map featured on the beta is Boneyard. This map is the BIGGEST map that Bungie has ever made. The map was exclusively made for the gametype invasion and contains a variety of vehicles and weapons. The final map on the beta was Overlook, which is exclusive to the game type Generator Defense. This map contains the rocket launcher and the sniper rifle as power weapons.

The new features that were shown to the public during the Halo Reach Beta were all awesome. They had a new way of earning armor, an all new class system, and new guns. The new armor permutations are pretty cool, but there are only a few because it is still just a Beta. They even added a new way to earn your favorite armor pieces: credit. The way that credit works is that every time you play a game in the beta, you earn experience (whether you win or loose) and credit. The credit system all depends on how much you participated, how well you did, and it does give you extra points for winning. This credit adds to your total credit before you played the match (unless you it was your first game. Then that is all the credit you will have so far.) and it counts towards what armor pieces you can buy. The new class system is definitely a good feature for Halo Reach. Although you can’t spawn with power weapons, Bungie made up for it with a perk system. There are four basic perks in the Beta: Jet Pack, Sprint (yes, sprint is a perk, so you can only run if you have that class.), Active Camo, and Armor Lock Down. Most of these perks are pretty self-explanatory: jet pack = you can fly, sprint = you can sprint, active camo= means you are invisible, but armor lock down is a little more complex. Armor lock down makes you invincible for a few seconds. I would not recommend this though, because the enemy will just crowd around you until it runs out and then shoot you to death, or give you a face full of frag grenade. I only went with that perk on Generator Defense because it came with a shotgun.  There are also several new guns, usually a Spartan version and an Elite version. The guns are very good in the game, but may need a little tweeking before the game comes out.