I guess I’ll break this down change by change:
-Bloom:
Zero Bloom is great, but I feel like with the default movement speed in Reach, something feels off. In the ZB games I played, people drop like flies; I don’t know if that’s just terrible players, but I don’t remember people on both sides getting a kill per life nearly as often in previous installments where the movement speed was faster. The Needle Rifle without bloom isn’t necessarily overpowered, thanks to the slower kill time than the DMR, but it’s definitely more powerful than it was with 100% bloom. Maybe less of them on maps is a good idea? Both Zero and 85% Bloom have a place in the future of Reach Matchmaking, in my opinion, if certain things like movement speed were tweaked. This might be my own weird perception, but it feels like I have a harder time strafing/all-around getting to cover in ZB games of Reach than in the previous installments, since most people’s shots are more accurate. (bar one of my friends that got into Halo on Vanilla Reach. He got worse.)
…on a side note, 85 Bloom feels like nothing; does that mean 100 was that extreme for 15% less to be that much of a difference?
-Armor Lock:
First, removal of sticky shedding; funderful, though I’ll miss the hilarious fails that came with that. That’s all.
Moving on, damage-to-timer. I feel like the amount that damage drains from the AA energy is REALLY low as it is in the beta. When I first heard about it, I thought, “oh, I can shoot at one of these Armor Lockers and they’ll come out of it faster with low hassle,” not expecting “Well, I just wasted an entire clip and a grenade and he’s STILL not out. Poop.” Personally, I’d say that the damage that comes out of the timer should be higher.
-Active Camo nerfing:
I never personally encountered too many abusers of active camo in Vanilla Reach, but the few times I did, I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle the namby-pamby sword/shotgun campers. That said, I haven’t really encountered Camo users in the beta, oddly enough. So there isn’t a whole lot I can say on this. Maybe it means the change is good?
-Sword Block
Something that I felt awesome when I pulled off, but frustrated when it was used on me. Never made much sense either way; shouldn’t that blade of superheated plasma slice through my gun like a hot knife through butter? Unless the guns are coated with Forerunner glass, Sword Block can go away. This will be a much needed change in many of the “for fun” playlists, like Grifball and Living Dead.
-Bleedthrough:
DAH, I for got this one! I enjoy this a lot because it encourages people to THINK before they run at an enemy. Which is how it should be, not “I’ll be fine because they can’t melee kill me without breaking my shields.”
Overall, this Title Update, while flawed in very small ways, is a pretty big step in the right direction. Halo Reach should feel like HALO Reach, but at the same time, its own game. Before, it just felt too much like its own game. A good game by itself, but kind of a weird Halo experience. This update looks to bring Reach into a decent Halo experience as well. And I don’t mean puritan “Armor abilities shouldn’t exist and this game should be just like Halo 2” Halo experience, but doing what Halo has been doing with each game in the past decade: keeping the core gameplay the same while stil bringing something new to the table.