Halo 3 Beta sneak peek

By Mike Bantick
Monday, 14 May 2007 16:47

Opinion and Analysis

Some lucky journalists have had a chance to get a peek at the upcoming Beta from of Halo 3.  Will this flagship Xbox 360 title live up to expectations?

Giving the original Xbox a foothold in the competitive world of console gaming was an important step for Microsoft, and the achieved breaking into the ironclad Sony fortress with the original Halo game.

Developer Bungie had originally touted the game for the PC platform, but was happy to drop the PC development in favour of becoming "the" must have title in 2001.

Since then a PC version of Halo as well as the Xbox straining Halo 2 have been released.  On the 16th of this month, in a move that is somewhat unusual for a console game, the general public (well those with an invite from the Crackdown release) will get a chance to participate in the public Beta test of Halo 3.

Already there are a couple of sneak peeks hovering around the Internet.  Over at 411mania they give a rundown of the New York City journalist release. 

On the surface it seems not much has changed. There are some new tricks, gadgets and weapons including the bubble shield that can be deployed around Master Chief.  The Spartan Lazer packs a punch, as does the new missile pod weapon.

As per the first games, the view will switch to third person when manning a turret of similar weapon, but know Master Chief can move around in this mode whilst toting larger weapons.

Multiplayer games will still consist of up to a maximum of 16 players.

Bungie are remaining mum about the single player campaign, but it does seem that the cliff-hanging end to Halo 2 upon Earth will be the obvious starting point for this episode.  It also seems that the main enemy once again will be the Covenent along with the pulse-increasing Flood.

"I definitely believe that 'Halo 3' is going to be bigger than 'Halo 2'. Retailers know what 'Halo 2' did and they are not going to want to be caught out of stock," Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Game Studios, told Reuters.

How much tweaking Bungie do as a result of the Beta testing is unknown, already there have been mutterings about the multiplayer game, but mostly around simple things like spawn points on particular maps.  But there might also be some major alterations required; "The graphics can use some work...They're not much different than the previous Halo," said Nicholas Puleo, editor of gaming news Web site Evilavatar.com.

So soon it will be time to don the Master Chief helmet and take Halo out for a spin on the Xbox 360.