Halo Reach Beta Preview Pt. 2

Ok, there's some new stuff that I learned. Juggernaut mode has changed to be fuckin awesome. Before, the goal of the game was to kill the juggernaut to be the new juggernaut, then kill as the juggernaut. Kill the juggernaut will earn you a point, and every kill you get as the juggernaut earns you a point. First to 10 wins. As the juggernaut, you got an overshield. Now that's Halo 3. In Halo Reach, you get a strong ass overshield and a gravity hammer. Every kill earns you 10 points. What makes this version awesome and the Halo 3 version weak is that with a strong shield and a grav hammer, all the other players learn REALLY quickly that shooting each other is pointless and everyone aims directly at the juggernaut. Before you would kill the person next to you before he or she had a chance to kill the juggernaut, but that won't work this time because the superpowered juggernaut will own you all.

Funny story: while playing juggernaut, one of the other guys had managed to chip away at his health. Then I came in and stole his juggernaut kill. Hey, it was every man for himself (no teams). Right after I took his kill, I heard him scream "OH you got to be kidding me!" as I turned around and smacked him in the face with the hammer. Because everyone was just having a ball killing each other and not paying too much mind at the juggernaut, I went on a fuckin tear! Everyone tried the lone wolf routine, and all promptly ate hammer. It became apparent to everyone that maybe they should stop fuckin with each other and aim directly at me. After dominating for so long, it was now time for me to haul ass. I spent the last part of the match running from the large group of angry spartans. One guy tried to cut me off at the pass, but as they should have learned by now that's a really stupid fuckin idea. Every once in a while, I would catch someone by themselves and make 'em eat it, and when I finally got back full health and shield, I turned around and told the remaining people who were chasing me to Bring It! I crushed them all for the win. Good times.

One of the new game modes I got to play was called Headhunter. The goal is to collect skulls by either killing someone or picking them up from the ground and returning them to the base where they will be counted. If you die, you lose all the skulls you were carrying and they will fall on the ground for scavengers like me to pick up. This game is a hellava lot harder when someone is packing a rocket launcher I can tell you that. My new favorite weapon is the needler rifle which shoots exploding needles at enemies from sniper distance. It doesn't go BOOM like the regular needler gun, but damn this thing is potent. That's it for my preview of the Halo Reach Beta. I suggest you all play it for yourself and see what the fuss is about. Of course, you would need a copy of ODST, and if you don't have ODST you probably won't be interested in the beta....hmmmm....why did I do this preview again?  

Halo Reach Beta Preview

I'm still trying to figure everything out, but this is what I know so far. Apparently, Bungie decided to takes the Battlefield approach and have 4 different classes. This doesn't affect your starting weapons, but it does change your abilities, and yes you now have special abilities. The stalker class allows you to cloak, airborne has a jetpack, guard has a shield with protects you like the bubble shield except you can't move, and the scout class allows you to do what every other shooter does...sprint. About fuckin time Bungie. There are a couple of new weapons and it seems like they changed the battle rifle into a one-shot gun instead of a 3 shot burst. Still good though. There's also been a change in controls, but other than that it's Halo. I'm gonna play a few more games (a few more hundred), and I'll come back with more info tomorrow as well as some stories from some of my games.

Blur Multiplayer Beta Preview

Well I'll be damned. I actually get to preview a game for once. I feel so official now. Anyway, after spending some time with Blur and playing over an hour (that's an hour total playing time, not hour as in real time) I can honestly say that we are in for....yet another ripoff. Mario Kart mixed in with Full Auto pretty much sums up my experience, and yet somehow this mix kicks ass, as long as you have a large group of racers to frag with.

Like Full Auto, you use realistic cars (or in this case actual real life cars) to race to the finish line and shoot others. Like Mario Kart, you can pick up weapons via item box. Like Full Auto, your car can completely wreck, putting you in deep shit. Like Mario Kart, learning how to drift is really important. You see where I'm going with this? As far as the beta goes, you get 8 items to choose from:

Shunt - homing missile
Nitro - take a fuckin guess
Barge - a shockwave taking out anyone near you
Shield - take another guess
Bolt - 3 energy blasts that'll mess with drivers (like green shells)
Repair - ........
Shock - fires 3 EMP fields in front of the race leader
Mine - acts as a landmine; spins racers out

The thing I like about these weapons is that when you get hit, it other feel like the end of the world. They do just enough damage to give the attacker the advantage needed without being too much of a hindrance to the victim. I hope there are more items in the full version, but the ones here are well balanced. The thing I like about item pickups is that they are labeled so you know what you are picking up as oppose to some random drawing decided by the game. Need a shunt? Grab that item box if it shows up. You can hold up to 3 items at once, and you can cycle between them by pressing the X button. If you don't want an item or see something better, you can drop the item you're holding. Wherever you drop it though, other racers can pick it up. This can play into strategy a little bit. If you drop a good item, you can place a mine in front of it. Anybody going for that item, will have to avoid your mine. I've done it twice; it works.

The controls are simple enough. If you played a kart racing game before, you've played this. In terms of driving, I'm not entirely happy with the drifting. I'm not expecting to drift like say Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, but you slow down so much when you do in this game. Speaking of slow-downs, unless someones connection is shitty, the game runs pretty smoothly. Not bad for a beta, especially with up to 20 people racing at once. Like Call of Duty (all of things), you rank up to earn new cars and abilities. In the beta, it caps at 15, but the full version it's said you can reach level 50. I wonder if their will be a prestige mode. Probably called transmission mode or some shit. There's also an arena mode where you can beat the holy hell out of each other. Think of it as a light-hearted Twisted Metal.

It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out, especially in the single-player department. I haven't seen everything in this beta yet, so when I have new info I'll update this post.

[Update]: turns out the rank cap is actually level 10, not 15. Damn; really wanted that Corvette.