I'm just not willing to take the gamble on Reach as going by the Beta it is absolute crap, sorry.

Halo 1 > Halo 2 > Halo 3 > every other shooter I've played > Reach

Beta was still buggy....but i guess im gonna take a risk with reach

Sorry I can't agree with you there.

I think you may be suffering from something that only get's worse at you get older. "Not liking when things change"

Whilst I will always admit change is not always for the better. I think that when someone invest a lot of time into something and then there are changes which negatively impact performance or the ease of which you were able to use it (purely due to familiarity) there is a knee-jerk reaction to dislike it.

My initial reaction to Reach Beta was very similar to yours, but after familiarising myself with it, I have to say that the multiplayer experience has been improved. Sure, skirmishes are longer, there are defininte flaws (which I have reported), but the depth is still there. And from the limited time I saw you spend on the Beta, i don't think you can fairly judge it.

Though us die-hard Halo fans won't like to admit it, the franchise needs the revamp to stop things from going stale., But look at it this way, each Halo sequel had a main focus point to differentiate it from the last.

CE -> 2 : Dual weilding - The ability to increase your fire rate drastically. This almost ruined Halo for me. didn't like the idea of being forced to dual wield to survive from spawn.
2 -> 3 : Equipment - This added an additional chaos element to the game. When & if an item of equipment was deployed it had the potential to change the outcome of a skirmish or the game.
3 -> Reach : Loadouts - This is an elaboration on the equipment option. Less chaotic, everyone is guaranteed a loadout. More thought, more strategy and more teamwork required to utilise effectively.

If you were looking for Halo multiplayer v3.5, you defintiely won't find it. This is V4.0d and it is more indepth and requires more than just scratching at the surface of the Beta, this one than any other Halo game. Some may say that is a negative, but considering the amount of hours people will dedicate to playing this online, the extra depth will add to the life of the game, and given that the majority of Xbox 360 owners have played a Halo game at some point they really don't have that large a group who aren't goint to 'get it'.

I for one am looking forward to the new challengs and innovative plays that should come from this. The franchises multiplayer is definitely not getting stale for me.

Yeah I didn't initially like the replacement for the BR but now I love it. Also the armor abilities make the gameplay a richer and more varied experience.

Best of all I like the new system which doesn't give permanent rewards to boosters. Your Arena rank - the only one hardcore Halo guys can even brag about is something you need to upkeep yourself on a daily basis. Hence no buying a leveled up account as it will decrease by itself rapidly as your rank won't have been maintained. There goes the money maker for guys who wanna force host just to level up new accounts to sell later.

Considering there is already a Halo 3 which is an improvement on the very buggy and flawed matchmaking network of Halo 2 there was no real point in Bungie releasing something which would have been like a Halo 3.5 as Greg said.

Halo Reach is a massive enough change whilst retaining enough similarities that it deserves to be treated as, and judged as, a MP game in its own right. Not a Halo 3 upgrade. Out of the hundreds of games of the beta I played I can think of only a handful that were not right and of those only one that was unfair due to that poor host allocation. The new system is superior in terms of shot registration, packet efficiency and host allocation.

Being able to headshot guys across the biggest map with a needle rifle or DMR off host is awesome beyond words. Finally a game which doesn't screw accuracy weapon loving players over due to lag. The sniper rifle is not required to kill enemies at very long range... just a steady aim and spaced out shots to compensate for recoil / reticule bloom.

Bungie always seem to improve their network coding noticeably with every new online game. So really enjoying that part.

Haha so true!!!!!!!!!!!

i dont have many people added to my friends list from WaxLan

plus september is ages away

Well the problem with that above statement is that Halo CE (ie Halo 1) was not an Xbox Live enabled game so Nicholas can only possibly have been referring to the single player campaign of offline MP or the system link or split screen MP of Halo CE.

If comparing system link Multiplayer options and gameplay side and features (forge, theatre etc added) I'd go more like this. Halo 3 > Halo 2 > Halo CE. (As we all know Halo CE was MP online on PC or Mac only and I personally hate keyboard and mouse multiplayer after switching to console and sitting in the comfort of my theatre rather than slouched over a computer desk.)

In terms of campaign comparison my view is:

Halo CE > Halo 2 and Halo 3

This is mainly because I felt like the narrative was best told though Cortana and the Chief - leaving the enemy as foreign and more foreboding as such. By introducing the Arbiter as a playable character in Halo 2 and revealing the covenant in-fighting the series took an unnecessary jump into complexity and at the same time made a joke out of the enemy. They were not a fearsome opponent at all. I posted many times on Bungie's forums about how I viewed that single change in storytelling as the most dramatic downfall in the single player campaign. They screwed the atmosphere of the unknown and wonder that the first game had achieved wonderfully. Think about this: If in Halo 2+3 you had played the chief from the start all the way through and you and Cortana had found out everything via combination of exploration, UNSC military transmissions, conversations and her hacking into covenant and forerunner terminals it would have retained the best parts of the originals story telling. Its a choice they made and they were stuck with the consequences afterwards.

As for the last two games single player campaign comparison I'd go:

Halo 3 > Halo 2

However based on the commentary I've seen for the campaign of Reach it already has a far greater chance of being Halo Reach > Halo 2 and 3.

If it can beat Halo CE's campaign it deserves a GOTY nomination as the story telling and pacing of the original was IMO near perfect for it's genre.

Though Nicholas did also say every other shooter he's played is greater than Halo Reach (which he's only played MP beta online). So if comparing online games and online performance and features I'd personally go:

Halo Reach (unknown due to it only being a beta) = not applicable

Halo 3 > Halo 2

Halo CE not applicable

If anyone wants to make a Halo XBL multiplayer game comparison topic I'd be happy to post the hundreds of reasons why Halo 3 is better than Halo 2.

Nicholas may also have been purely referring to the gameplay mechanic. If so despite Halo Reach having armor abilities it is actually more of a return to Halo CE's gameplay physics and mechanic. You take fall damage, jump height is decreased, shield is more like Halo CE, Health packs are back and you can only single wield weaponry. If it were a gameplay mechanic comparison I would say Halo Reach is a very pleasing return to what Halo CE fans liked. Also I have wanted fall damage back in the game for ages.

A true comparison of game mechanic would be Halo CE vs Halo Reach as they are closer to each other. Halo 2 and 3 are more like each other. However without XBL ability the former comparison a true "online" game mechanic and network performance comparison can and will never be made.

Also, Nick, 7 games is not a fair assessment of the Reach Beta. I didn't appreciate how complex it could be until 15-20 games in.

The weapons were unblanaced with some downright cheap and thanks to the loadouts very cheap strategies are effective which just make the game more random and less skill-based.Garbage is garbage, I don't need to spend 100's of hours playing a game to realise it is unbalanced, unskillful and very random.Dual wielding was only very effective on lockout and I didn't have much of a problem with it in Halo 2, the very high grenade damage and large spash area made them far more annoying in Halo 2.

The equipment promoted camping and defensive play, it was over powered especially if you were off-host where it is very slow to deploy and often does nothing, I'm so sick of a regen doing f-all yet making other people on bad connection survive multiple grenades and whole BR clips.

The loadouts could have been good but are terribly balanced, Armour Lock slowed down the game, Camo was used by everyone in CTF games and sprint opened up cheap melee opportunities were there was little left but to go for a double KO via sticks or beatdowns.It is not more in-depth than the other Halos, you have more choices but at the end of the day it's less consistent and more random than any Halo game to come before.

If the final game plays anything like the Beta the default gametypes won't make for a good competitive game at all and contrary to what some people think it rewards conservative play more then any Halo game before, so camping, power weapon controlling and spawn killing will be even more effective than before.

The medals and points system isn't going to start getting all the slayers to become objective players, they will continue to beat up on objective players and unless something drastic is changed it will be very difficult for one "pro" team to score vs another at CTF due to camping with camo being so effective and the large splash radius of grenades.

I've watched plenty of pros play Halo Reach and even they can't make the game look very skillful, it is simply very random and very generous with hit detection which just makes for a worse game period.Maybe some of us are just quicker learners?

lol some good points nic, but i guess unless this game is a flop it will take over from halo3 as the game played at lans.

And on that day i will no longer attend any more LANs