Dirtbag said:
My hype has been reset, and will take time to build up again.
I'm looking forward to the campaign.
Yeah. From what I've played in the Beta, I'm really not that excited for MP anymore. I holding out hope that the campaign will be absolutely awesomely memorable.
GhaleonEB said:
Ground vehicles are hopelessly outclassed by the avalanche of anti-vehicle measures. Rockets, lasers, plasma grenades, plasma pistols, armor lock, the plasma launcher and worst of all, the grenade launcher which can be chosen as part of a load out. Grenades and EMP bursts for all! And to compensate, the vehicles are nerfed with an overheating turret.
Agreed. Vehicle combat has been severely gimped, and vehicle combat was one of my most anticipated aspects of Invasion. It's like Bungie is trying to make vehicles a deathtrap.
Bungie, you need to get rid of the spartan laser, grenade-launcher starts, and remove the plasma launcher's guidance system (as in, it can't lock on to
anything).
The new health system for the vehicles doesn't work at all either. The Halo 2/3 system of linking vehicle health and player health was a lot more fun and was easier to understand. Bungie, you got to go back to that, or tell us in clearer terms how damaged our vehicles are - like in Halo 1.
Invasion Slayer's weapon drops are kind of comical: they've gifts to the opposing team. The pattern throughout the games seems to be the team that gets a territory does so by the skin of their teeth, barely surviving the hail of grenades that comes down on the territory. And then the other team cleans up the stragglers, the fallen dudes spawn a long ways away, and the other team get away from the goods. It's a preferential strategy not to go for them until the other team does. That is, unless one is so far away you can't get to them. I tried to head off a drop from the moment it went active, but it took over 25 seconds - and three sprints - to get there a moment too late.
There's also the problem of the vehicles spawning in all this mess and and barely having any chance to survive it. Most, if not the majority of the time, the vehicles are destroyed right off the bat.
The idea of weapon and vehicle drops don't work at all, in its current form, in Invasion slayer.
The new system of dumping all the power weapons in one area - the rack with two rockets, two lasers, two snipers - only encourages randoms to grab two of each and head off with them as soon as they can. Play with a disciplined party, or they'll go to waste. I know it's a bug in the Beta, but since the party splits, that means the rack gets cleaned out and wasted before the third round every time. A method of spawning a few in each round would really help out.
And the starting round of Invasion really is unfair to the Elites. Spartans spawn with pistols and DMRs, they get needlers and plasma pistols over very long range; can't even engage the Spartans with either starting load out. Sure there's a few needle rifles scattered around, but they're less effective and too few; plus, they've got to be hunted down and you're exposed doing so.
One last thing. There are some weapons that just shouldn't be part of a load out. Off hand, swords, shotguns and grenade launchers. Especially on the last round of Invasion, it's easy for the Spartans to all be rocking shotguns or swords, and grenade launchers. When defending a tight indoors area with what have traditionally been close quarters power weapons in the hands of everyone on the team, the attackers are at a distinct disadvantage. Good grief we destroyed the Elites, a symphony of exploding grenades and shotgun blasts as they came through the doors. Got some nice double kills, myself.
Agreed with all of this.
And Firefight. Don't forget about Firefight. <3
There's bound to be a subset of Reach's MP that I latch on to and enjoy, as I did with Halo 3's BTB. It's just not in the Beta.
Indeed.
Monocle said:
Same here. I feel like in Reach I'm witnessing Halo's death by degrees. Bungie is monkeying with things that didn't need changingjump height, movement speed, weapon and melee behaviorfundamental aspects of Halo's gameplay. I'm totally on board with additions like armor abilities, the gameplay differences between Spartans and Elites, and the fantastic new weapons (the Pro Pipe is rapturous). I can accept tweaks like the grenades' new damage scheme (if not the amount of damage they inflict), the loss of dual wielding, and the omission of weapons that were redundant or ineffective in Halo 3. None of this changes my opinion that Reach very nearly feels like a game from a different series.
I don't understand how anyone could go from Halo 3 to Reach and say, "Yep, this all feels just right." Was the Halo 3 beta such a radical departure from Halo 2?
Eh. I wouldn't go that far, but it does seem like, in a lot of aspects of Reach, Bungie isn't even trying.
I don't want anyone to get me wrong, I realize Reach isn't Halo 3 - I like the idea of what Bungie is trying to do with loadouts and armor abilities and Invasion, but it seems like, in trying to do all of this, Bungie's focus on what makes Halo
Halo has suffered.