I can honestly say I’m looking forward what 343 has in store for this game. Based off my 2 days with it here are some of my initial reactions:
- The controls will require a new change in your muscle memory, but once you get used to them they become 2nd nature. From my personal experience I thought the new spartan abilities were very well balanced and there wasn’t anything I saw that seemed game-breaking. I think the hardest part people will have is realizing that you have them. I put realizing in bold because I think what most people should take away from that is you can play matches without ever really using most of the abilities and the outcome of the game doesn’t really hinge upon their use(except maybe sprinting to power weapons). I felt like 343 did a good job of giving you these tools but making sure they weren’t a necessity. (Although ground pounding someone is pretty cool)- Tying in your shields with your movements is probably the best of both worlds. While I would prefer no sprinting in Halo I can respect that audiences these days have become adept to always having this fast-paced navigation (Call of Duty, Titanfall, Battlefield). The best part about this is the punishment you receive for dipping out of battle after making a bad choice to enter it in the first place. Whether it is sprinting or using thruster-packs you will definitely notice the huge impact it makes in the game, and I love this approach. From my experience I would say I sprinted maybe 20% of most games just because of the fact my shields never came back. Which is a huge difference to how it was with Reach and Halo 4. The majority of time I just ran at normal speed and played Halo the classic way, and I never felt at a disadvantage.- I don’t know who does the sound for 343 but “BRAVO”. The sound effects are amazing in this and its the subtle stuff that I love. My all time favorite sound is that subtle popping sound that fires off when you get a headshot. It is so rewarding to hear lol. I also found it really cool to hear the Spartans give off all this battle chatter. It’s pretty surreal to kill a guy and then hear a teammate spartan say “Nice Shot”. It is also really helpful if your playing by-yourself because you can actually get valuable information from them if you pay attention. For example, they call out when your team grabs sniper rifle and if they kill the enemy sniper. This is extremely useful when you don’t have teammates that talk.- Overall the gunplay feels really good. The weapons actually have this good feeling of impact when you hit the enemy, very similar to how H2A feels. Which is something I’m a fan of. I did notice that Halo 5 does appear to be slightly faster paced than previous Halo games, especially if you’ve been getting accustomed to the kill times and pace from MCC, but this isn’t something I’m totally against. The kill times are still significant enough that they allow for interesting battles. If I had to pick something out to change maybe for the sake of change I would say maybe the assault rifle needs to be looked it. I honestly don’t feel like it’s overpowered however I kinda got the feeling that the range was enhanced just a little too much with smart scope. We will have to wait till other players get a feel for it though. To be honest, I used the pistol the entire time and I did quite well for myself.Overall I really enjoyed Halo 5 Beta. You’ll notice I had very little if any complaints about the game from the small sample I got, but that’s because I’m pretty open-minded to Halo being fresh and fun while still maintaining that Halo feel, and the beta seemed to hit all those points for me. I hope when you guys get to play it you enjoy it as well.