Halo 3 - now coming to Xbox One. MC Collection.

[henofdoom]

Pair one up with a plasma rifle in the other hand and you're away.

Halo 2 ultimate combo, besides Plasma pistol and Magnum (+ some skill of course).

Can't say I've tried that combo in the beta yet... everything seems so range oriented...

[dan_tm]

They've managed to get the weapon balancing absolutely perfected.

Firstly, the AR is really powerful at close range, it's also capable of finishing someone off at medium range if you burst-fire it after getting a good grenade on your target. With the BR being by far the most common weapon (there must be at least 15-20 of them scattered around Valhalla) it makes a perfect partner for the AR for destroying people at medium range and helping to pick off or distract enemies from a distance. With those two being pretty much the default combination they're capable for pretty much any situation - meaning that anyone at any time could be a threat, no one's left wandering around not being able to compete because they can't find a good gun. That's the main thing which makes it so great I find.

Further to those there's other weapons which perfect in other areas; the shotgun for creeping around and taking people's faces off, of course. The SMGs/Spikers For close-combat running and gunning. Snipers for quickly taking people out at long distance, obviously. Etc etc. Every weapon has it's place - except maybe the Brute Shot, which while looking and sounding much more deadly, still seems to lack a bit of power to make it really useful. At the moment it's only really any good if you've got someone trapped in a corner, in any other situation a grenade and a burst of the BR would be better. Even the needler is great, it kills quicker than the AR but because the projectiles don't move as fast as bullets from the AR it can be more tricky to use in certain situations, say if the enemy is running across you rather than towards or away.

The only weapon that I'd say might be slightly over-powered would be the turret you can carry around, if you've got it up to speed it can kill anyone at close to long range in an instant. Even with that it's not always the best weapon to have; the downside of it being the reduced movement and turning speed - if you start getting shot from behind you're pretty much already dead.

I don't really think the laser is overpowered at all. It's completely useless at close range, especially indoors, it takes ages to charge up and it takes ages to cool down before you can shoot again. Plus the fact it's only good for 5 shots. Apart from the rocket pod it's the only weapon capable of taking a vehicle out at medium-long range, now that the rockets have lost their homing ability. I'm yet to try the plasma pistol for disabling vehicles which it is supposed to be able to do, but that's only going to be an option at close range now that the homing ability of it's charged shot has been (rightly) reduced as well.

I've not even mentioned the deployable items yet, but they all too have a place in the game - in both adding to the fun and tactics that can be played out. I'm wanting a formal apology from everyone that said the power drainer would just be annoying, I think it (along with all the other gadgets) add another layer of tactics to the game - which can only be a good thing to keep the game fresh after 2 or 3 years of Halo 2 online.

All in all, AMAZING.

[Phelan]

Things I have learned from Halo 3.

I cannot use the sniper rifle to actually hit anyone who isn't staring at grass.

The longest I can last as VIP is 12mins 13 seconds.

When matchmakers sets you and two others all ranked 1, up against three 9s. You really should crawl up your arse and cry because you will die quicker than your heart beats.

Shotty Snipers isn't fun. At all. Having root canal is more fun than that game.

The beam laser is crap if someone runs by and stickies you.

My reaction time is poo when it comes to smacking someone. They always seem to smack me first.

Americans repeating the same thing over and over again such as 'keel you mofo, keel you mofo' etc etc can become tedious.

[stan]

Things I have learned from Halo 3.

I cannot use the sniper rifle to actually hit anyone who isn't staring at grass.

The longest I can last as VIP is 12mins 13 seconds.

When matchmakers sets you and two others all ranked 1, up against three 9s. You really should crawl up your arse and cry because you will die quicker than your heart beats.

Shotty Snipers isn't fun. At all. Having root canal is more fun than that game.

The beam laser is crap if someone runs by and stickies you.

My reaction time is poo when it comes to smacking someone. They always seem to smack me first.

Americans repeating the same thing over and over again such as 'keel you mofo, keel you mofo' etc etc can become tedious.

Yeah I was completely useless with the sniper rifle. I watched a guy run towards me the entire map, I missed every shot and he didn't fire once. He ran across the entire map towards me in a straight line and meleed me in the face.

[sammy]

Dual wielded Spikers sound magnificent. I finally found a Spartan Laser on Snowbound last night, tucked myself near one of the sentry guns and wreaked merry havoc as people ran out of the base - shame it's only got 5 shots, but probably right for balance.

The Valhalla map is my favourite thing ever.

[moosegrinder]

Dual wielded Spikers sound magnificent.

They'll get nerfed. They're insane.

[Shafto]

They'll get nerfed. They're insane.

I dunno - people don't seem to be using them THAT much.

It seems a personal choice thing - i like them because they require proper aiming and running to use effectively. I'm a 'gun' guy in Halo - all my kills in the stats at the end are predominantly Gun kills (as oppossed to melee, grenade), so these really suit my style. If you're a grenade, or grenade/gun combo style guy, they're useless. This is one of the things i'm loving about Halo 3 - there's a gun for everyone, and they're all pretty well balanced.

So, while they may be insanely overpowered to guys who like and use them, the same probably goes for the needler or even BR for guys who are really good with them.

[strawdonkey]

Yeah I was completely useless with the sniper rifle. I watched a guy run towards me the entire map, I missed every shot and he didn't fire once. He ran across the entire map towards me in a straight line and meleed me in the face.

Things I've noticed about Halo 3:

- There seems to be a little bit of Client-Side Hit Detection on the Sniper sometimes - I've shot people, it's appeared that the shot has missed (despite blatantly not) and then half a second later they've fallen down dead and I've got the snipe medal.

- The shotgun still doesn't work against Americans, and hosting duties still generally seem to fall to them, even in a game with seven Brits and one American

- The laser is annoying, but then if you're getting shot with it then you should have been hiding better

- Dual-wield is almost always a viable option for killing

I like it! I'm so glad they made the Assault Rifle not shit too, it was a bag of wank in Halo CE.

[mprice]

Starting to enjoy things a bit more when I'm not lagging all over the place.

Generally I think the weapon balance is much much better, though as a total novice the reduction in the auto-aim is a massive loss for me. I've got the mute everyone setting on, and yet it's not blocking people. I was told earlier that "you just got raped like I raped your mom lol!" and was subsiquently "teabagged" which I couldn't actually believe anyone would really be immature enough to do. Clearly there are still prepubesant americans in need of a painful bollock removing procedure.

But yeah, aside from all the cunts, the game is pretty good.

They just need to introduce a system where you can choose to take people off the list of players that get added to your matches. Like a search filter.

Also there are still people employing the lag technique. Players who run around fine in empry spaces but as soon as they come up against an opponent they start lagging and warp nicely behind the enemy and melee them in the back.

[Rogue Soul]

Yeah I was completely useless with the sniper rifle. I watched a guy run towards me the entire map, I missed every shot and he didn't fire once. He ran across the entire map towards me in a straight line and meleed me in the face.

Sounds like a perfect MontyPython

.

[Hackign]

Had the worst game ever, couldn't kill anything at all and kept on dieing.

Fuck you Valhalla and your shitty snipers/lasers and people that don't fucking die after being hit in the back/grenaded when unshielded.

[Monkeyboy]

This is honestly my first experience of online multiplayer and it scared me a little. Maybe I'm just not competitive enough but other people seem so into it, it's a little bit creepy. Graphics are ace though. Hope the single player is good.

[BeeJay]

the sniper now has a kickback and takes a bit longer between shots. I like

The laser is very powerful but easily avoided. leave it like that I reckon

theyve fucked up the hill on king of the hill. cant see anything. needs changes

theyve fucked up land grab too. Worked better when it was a tug of war for the base.

territories is much better though

the new weapon spawning is better. its no longer a gun rush.

The plasma pistol disables vehicles! Why hasnt this been thought of before? awesome addition. the reduced lock on is better too, takes it back to being a skill weapon

BR takes 5 headshots to kill now. feels about right to me.

Snowblind is wicked no matter what anyone says

Deployables are awesome.

They should put the plasma rifle pause back in. its just a lost weapon now.

Not sure what use the SMG's are either anymore

I'm not sure the sniper really works well any more. There's not enough visual feedback if you've hit or not.

The laser isn't easy to avoid if you use it properly and sweep in to people's position just before it goes.

I'd agree with everything else though.

I think VIP is a superb gametype and snowblind(bound?) is a fecking superb map.

[sweetdaddyg]

The main difference I saw was that it looked just like Halo 2 but didn't do that annoying "texture fill in" thing that halo 2 did. Oh and the water and light effects are nicer.

[tyler]

I'm not sure the sniper really works well any more. There's not enough visual feedback if you've hit or not.

For me it seems to be much more accurate now, no more 'sweep' sniping. And as for visual feedback, they tend to fall over.

[Ketchup]

and was subsiquently "teabagged" which I couldn't actually believe anyone would really be immature enough to do. Clearly there are still prepubesant americans in need of a painful bollock removing procedure.

But yeah, aside from all the cunts, the game is pretty good.

They just need to introduce a system where you can choose to take people off the list of players that get added to your matches. Like a search filter.

Tea bagging is funny when you do it to Mr Benn however. Also there is a search filter of sorts. Using the xbox guide, you can prefer players and rate them. This is meant to make it so you are less or more likely to play against them in games.

Also there are still people employing the lag technique. Players who run around fine in empry spaces but as soon as they come up against an opponent they start lagging and warp nicely behind the enemy and melee them in the back.

Thats probably just the game. When a player is far away it doesn't need accurate data, it can just guess where and what they are doing, but when they are closer, it needs accurate data so you hit each other.

[BeeJay]

For me it seems to be much more accurate now, no more 'sweep' sniping. And as for visual feedback, they tend to fall over.

I think I'm talking more about what someone mentioned earlier. You fire, they'll carry on running then suddenly drop dead. There have been several occasions where I have carried on tracking someone and preparing to shoot before the kill has registered. This ruins the sniper as you are constantly pausing to see if they've gone down or not. And we know that pausing in Halo is a bad idea.

I'm glad they have removed the sweep snipe. It feels much more like Halo's sniper but they need to sort out the delay.

[XBOKS]

I still tea bag the odd annoying player And I'm not sure what a Sweep Snipe is...

Anyway this is pretty damn good. Dual spikers is very powerful too. Agree with what Kerraig said about King of the Hill, they need to make the bounary markers more transparent.

Also the game seems to go for High Ground 8 times out of ten and Snowbound for the remaining 2. I haven't played Valhalla yet!

But, really enjoying it right now

[tyler]

I can't say I've particularly noticed any delay myself (certainly not to the extent mentioned) and I've done a lot of sniping. I may well have just adjusted to it though as I tend to find a headshot counts 99% of the time now so I might just move on once I've fired.

Just to add I agree with most of Kerraig and YaWdiBs points as they're mostly comments we've discussed whilst playing the game. Especially Yaws 'it's AMAZING' statement.

[dan_tm]

I was told earlier that "you just got raped like I raped your mom lol!" and was subsiquently "teabagged" which I couldn't actually believe anyone would really be immature enough to do. Clearly there are still prepubesant americans in need of a painful bollock removing procedure.

Hmm, apart from Krypt and a few others here that got on the F&F scheme a few days before the official launch of the beta I've probably played as many games as anyone but so far I've only been 'teabagged' twice. That's probably out of over 500+ deaths so from what I've seen there have been fewer idiots than the ones that ran riot on Halo 2.

We did get 2 or 3 comedy geniuses last night though, using the legendary "go and eat some crumpets you English bastards" line. Still seemingly much rarer than Halo 2 so far though, we seem to get matched up with other Europeans much more regurlarly now as well.

They just need to introduce a system where you can choose to take people off the list of players that get added to your matches. Like a search filter.

You pretty much can, send someone negative feedback and you're less likely to meet up with them again. If there's two games you could possibly join in matchmaking it would join the one that didn't have anyone you had sent negative feedback to.

[Secondspace]

We did get 2 or 3 comedy geniuses last night though, using the legendary "go and eat some crumpets you English bastards" line.

I actually heard somebody say that to a little kid yesterday. Couldn't believe it.

[Mike1812]

I'm loving this. Finding it much easier than Halo2 for some reason. I was crap at that.

[Ketchup]

Two things. Has anyone noticed the improved bandwidth on the voice comms? Its much clearer than any other 360 game, although not as good as on the original Xbox. Secondly if you can choose by language, maybe it'd be worth setting your default language to something like French so you get matched up with europeans a lot more...of course this would probably make all your in game text french too.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Still seemingly much rarer than Halo 2 so far though, we seem to get matched up with other Europeans much more regurlarly now as well.

I noticed that too, I always filter for "good connection" and almost all of the games I've played have been against Europeans.

[geldra]

The split screen on this is spot on too. They've abondoned the vertical split from H2 in favour of having two screens on top of each other with the correct aspect ratio (so the screens are slightly bordered). Played it for 6 hours straight last night in split screen. I didn't notice any real loss of quality in the gfx just an obvious slight drop in the resolution or something.

[Raff]

I just found myself in a position where I couldn't help myself.

3 french kids, all huddled in a small cave in Valhalla. I had in my possession a power drainer and a selection of grenades.

Needlers to say I got booted.

[pledge]

I really like the intro sequence. Quite haunting and soothing, just waiting for the piano chords. The sound throughout is great, especially the under water effect.

Few niggles.

On snowbound with odd ball you can just stand in the tunnels next to the shields and move between it when when you see on your radar. Then just punch them in the face when they try and pass through. By the time you try and get some team mates to help the time is up.

Veto is great, except more often than not it just does the same game type on a new map, which when everyone vetoed to avoid the gametype is very annoying. I hate territories as well.

[LittleJoe]

Got a killing frenzy on Valhalla last night using the Warthog turret nice that they've turned it into a more offensive weapon again like it was in Halo 1. Rather than just a group transport with a gun on it, also the rockets no longer lock on? If thats the case vechiles should be worth using more in this one.

I played with some people off of here yesterday for a while, just like to say thanks for the games I was Little Joe II.

I agree with what was said earlier about the sniper, It does appear to have some sort of 'splash' or bullet delay kind of thing, well I hope its not splash damage, I used the sniper a lot on Halo 2 used to be quite handy with it and I haven't really noticed the recoil or longer reload times on it it seems just as power as ever for me.

Great so far.

[strawdonkey]

For me it seems to be much more accurate now, no more 'sweep' sniping. And as for visual feedback, they tend to fall over.

If only I could reliably pull off headshots. I'm a fucking rubbish sniper.

As for the delay - the way I mentioned it made it sound worse than it is. It's under half a second, but enough to make you wonder what's going on.

[POWER LEVEL 9000]

Can someone explain to me how the voice coms actually work? (I didn't play Halo2) From what I understand team members can't hear me unless I'm close range OR I hit the d-pad where I hear a blip! and when I finish my message a bloop!

Theres no way to have team speak always active? Seems kind of annoying imo.