HALO 4 Black BETA by V & IGN
Okay, first of all, I’m not the best writer, so don’t criticise, I’m just trying to do a brain dump for you all. My head still hurts from the open bar.
So I went to the IGN Black BETA event in Aus last night, I played some FFA Slayer, & some Infinity Slayer on Haven, Exile & Solace (I will only comment on the weapons and AAs I used). Here are my thoughts:
Maps:
Exile
Okay, so Exile was by far my favourite map of the three that I played, Great range of combat scenarios, on foot and vehicle combat felt very balanced, although I felt nearly invincible when i was in the scorpion.
Haven
Nice small map, I found FFA slayer to be better than Team on this one. It’s very easy to navigate - you can go from one side of the map to the other in a matter of seconds. The multiple drop points from the top to the bottom level make for some interesting firefights.
Solace
Only played this map once, FFA slayer with 4 players. I didn’t get much of a feel for Solace, as it wasn’t the best map choice for a 4 player game. Looks nice regardless. Also some great sight lines.
Weapons:
DMR
Still the beast that is the Reach DMR. Easily my favourite primary weapon.
Carbine
Great at long range, the rate of fire is outstanding, and it sounds great. So glad it’s back
Boltshot
So this takes a little getting used to, the reticle is larger than a Magnums due to the charged shot function, which makes headshots a fraction harder. The Charged shot (I’m sure it has a proper name) is extremely useful if you time it right, but it is pretty tough to do… it works differently to the plasma pistol, its more like the spartan laser or railgun, it charges up, and once it reaches capacity, it fires immediately, offloading an entire clip into some unexpecting spartan. It’s a one hit kill if you’re close enough. Safe to say this will be my secondary of choice.
Rocket Launcher
I like the rockets in 4 better than reach, they seemed to be nerfed just the tiniest bit. the rocket trails look awesome too.
Spartan Laser
I’ve never really been a fan of the splaser, save for the odd vehicle kill. This hasn’t changed in 4, in fact i find it even less useful. The projected laser beam is a tad smaller. It seems to be nerfed against on-foot spartans too.
Light Rifle
This was the first primary weapon I used, its probably second to the DMR, it’s pretty powerful, and the single and burst fire functions give you some good options when in the thick of it.
Incineration Cannon
We’re going to have fun with this one, its a single round clip, but oh is it powerful. Just wow.
Sticky Detonator
I hate it. I’m probably just rubbish with it, but i prefer the grenade launcher from reach.
Beam Rifle
This baby makes its return in halo 4, and what a glorious return at that! I actually only fired one beam (?) from this the whole night, naturally it was a headshot.
Scattershot
This has definitely been nerfed since the early builds, its still useful, but as long as the shotgun (I didn’t have a chance to try it) plays like halo 3, which i’ve heard it does, i’ll be sticking to that.
SAW
Watch out for this one, it seriously tears apart anything and everything in its path, its also really accurate for a fully automatic weapon, that paired with the massive clip makes it a killing spree waiting to happen.
Grenades
Okay, so this was the biggest downfall for me, the arc of the grenades has been significantly changed, gone are the days of spamming the other teams spawn in BTB from the other side of the map, you really need to aim much higher to get any distance. I’m sure I’ll get used to it in time, but I only got like 3 grenade kills the whole night, and they were luck.
Pulse
Unless you hit someone when the grenade implodes, I’d only really use these to direct the flow of battle. They hardly do any damage.
Plasma
These have been nerfed, so that they are about what they were in CE and 2, I liked that in halo 3 and reach I could kill 3+ people in an area with a plasma, now you’d be lucky to kill one.
Armour Abilities
Promethean Vision
We’ve seen lot’s of this, so you all know how it plays, but I thought I’d add that it’s awesome.
Thruster Pack
I went in expecting to use this the whole time, I love Evade in reach, so I figured I’d love this, not the case… The switch to third person is very distracting, and you only move a tiny bit in any given direction. I could achieve the same using sprint.
Auto Sentry
So this sounded great to me, a good distraction, something to give you an edge. I only used it a couple of times, and It was average, it seemed really unresponsive, and is destroyed with a few shots of any given weapon.
Other Tidbits
Dexterity (Fast reloading) was great. Unlimited sprint? Who can say no?
Here’s Some gameplay from last night. A few things to watch out for, in the first vid, albeit a bit slow, is the overkill, extermination and running riot medals.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/vUN0iSoa5l4
