FAQ:
Q: Hey! I saw the golden Septagon. Where can I find the yellow text and what did the Bungie employee say?
A: Page 14 of this thread:
Posted by: urk
Sweet! Feel free to keep posting impressions. In fact, it would be helpful for all the fine folks who read good to post their own early thoughts in this thread.
:)
Q: Wait a sec, remind me again EXACTLY what this thread is for?
A: This is the official thread for reviews of the Beta that give general overall impressions, opinions, and critiques. This is not a thread for specific feedback, bug reporting, glitches, errors, or other similar issues. Please keep all reviews here! Thanks :-)
Q: Should I send you my reviews in a private message?
A: Nope. Go ahead and post 'em right here as a reply to this thread so that everybody, including Bungie, can see them :-)
First, let me state that despite the orange text, those of you not already familiar with these forums might be unaware that I am NOT a Bungie employee and do NOT have any inside information not available to the rest of the community.
Anyway, to do my own little part in keeping down the number of threads in this forum, I intend to only create two detailed/in-depth reviews encompassing all of my feedback on the Reach Beta. This one -- after 35 games -- to give "initial impressions," and one near the end of the Beta to give my thoughts after many more games. I would encourage you guys to do the same thing.
Anyway, here we go:
Overall Initial Impressions
The game is fun. Really fun. Even with the limited gametypes/maps we've seen, I feel that one-sided objective gametypes are going to make a triumphant return to glory in this game, following Halo 3's more dominating symmetrical objective gametypes. Stockpile is a crazy-fun gametype and a very clever twist on CTF.
I am thrilled with many of the additions to the game, but have a few concerns as well. I will voice both here.
Core Gameplay Mechanics
Player Movement
Despite thoughts pre-Beta that the reduction in speed would not be noticeable, it is noticeable not only when walking around, but also in the reactions of players who have a few games under their belt. Except for players who turn on "sprint," movement around maps has become seriously restricted. Players seem to go to power weapon spawns, grab the weapon, then go back to their base or look for high ground from which to camp for kills. Without sprint on, movement feels sluggish. Strafing is near-useless, and I have easily been able to snipe and DMR/Needle Rifle players who are strafing with zero or very few missed shots.
The reduction in jump height is not particularly great or bad, but given the choice I'd set jump heights to be higher once again. So much more is added to player movement, individual battles, map flow, and even (thinking way ahead) things like "jump videos" when the jump heights are set high.
Overall, and I hate to say it, but player movement feels like it has been made to imitate more "realistic" FPS games such as COD, where humans move slowly and do not jump very high. The net result is more camping, less Halo-style run-and-gun -- and Halo's gameplay style has really been, in my opinion, a huge contributor to its success. Halo's player movement has always separated it not just in terms of being faster and more fun, but also in terms of being able to execute more complicated moves in terms of player movement, rather than focusing solely on weapon skill. While some Halo-style movement and jumping is retained, this almost feels like some sort of hybrid or transition between Halo-style gameplay and COD-style gameplay.
Weapons, Melees, and Kills
I am a huge fan of the new weapons in this game. Clearly, a TON of work was put into balancing and role-assignment. I have absolutely zero complaints. Reticle bloom is a fantastic addition and allows better and more patient players to win individual battles. Every weapon seems to have a different role to play, and these roles are extraordinarily well-balanced.
My only issue with weapons has to do with the Sniper Rifle, and is far more of an issue with player movement than the sniper itself. With reduced player speed, I have found it far easier to snipe enemy players. In fact, the sniper is my number 3 most-used weapon and it only appears on one map. I think that reduced player speed, inability to strafe or jump effectively, and a relatively quick reticle-bloom-reduction on the sniper rifle has the overall effect of making the weapon unbalanced. But again, this is not a complaint about the sniper rifle itself, but rather focuses more on player movement.
I am pleased to see that 3 of my top 4 most-used weapons so far are precision-aiming weapons, as I would have hoped.
I am a fan of the new melee system as well. While close quarters combat will never go away in any FPS, in Reach, the "AR CHAAAAARGE!!! MELEE!!" battles seem to be greatly reduced in number. Most of my melee kills are the result of sneaking up on already-weakened players or melee weapons such as the grav hammer, sword, or flag.
Grenades
Frag grenades are extremely overpowered. There is no way to say it differently. They move too quickly to dodge out of the blast radius, a Spartan can throw them clear across the map, and the blast radius is huge. I suspect you will see frag grenades in the top-3 tools of destruction for nearly every player in the Beta. This will frustrate players. In my experience (and in my own opinion), players are much less frustrated to lose a DMR battle than to be killed by a frag grenade that comes out of nowhere and cannot be dodged.
Armor Abilities and Loadouts
Note: The FOLLOWING section is irrelevant, as I have discovered that Bungie already took care of this -- just me took a while to find it, and I should have seen it before :-) I have left it in place solely for informational purposes.
Please remember when reading the following section that there are visible indicators that tell you ahead of time what AA a person is using. The only issue is that it is only visible from the back. Regardless, though, these indicators are great and now that I know they're there, should provide for even more competitive battles.
Sprint
Jetpack
Armor Lock
Camo
woohoo!To put it bluntly, I think that armor abilities need the most tweaking in the game. One of the things I like the least about armor abilities is their randomness. When looking at a player, you never know what armor ability they have. Not even late in the game, since they can easily change their AA while respawning. This can often result in players getting themselves into a battle they cannot win, even if they are the superior player and have made what is objectively a good decision.
As a real-life example, yesterday, I had a rocket launcher on Powerhouse. While moving around the map, I saw two players running right next to each other just before they saw me. I fired a rocket at them in a perfect position to get a double kill. In this instance, I objectively made a good decision, knowing that I had the superior weapon and going in for the kill, while they made an objectively poor decision, running right next to each other and not being aware of me. Nevertheless, they saw me with the rocket launcher just in time to enter "Armor Lock." After the rocket exploded (it was the last rocket I had), they exited armor lock and proceeded to team-DMR me to death.
I fear that these kinds of frustrating experiences will be more common with armor abilities such as armor lock, evade, or camo. As I've said many times before, any FPS must finely balance predictability (which benefits players who are "good" at the game) with randomness (which benefits players who are "not so good" at the game) to avoid frustration from both sides. I would not remove armor abilities entirely, since they are undoubtedly an improvement over equipment, but they should be extremely carefully tested and tweaked where necessary to reduce randomness. Perhaps a simple indicator of what Armor Ability a player currently has available, (much like the visible jetpack) or differently colored armor piece, could reduce this randomness and result in more informed decisions.
AA/Weapon Combinations
Melee weapons become extremely powerful when paired with sprint or roll. A couple of those ultra-powerful grenades can usually do the trick on a player who is doing this, though if the frag grenade strength is reduced as it should be, these combinations might become near-unstoppable (and extremely annoying) on some maps.
On both maps, I find myself using almost entirely sprint combined with a precision weapon such as the sniper, DMR or Needle Rifle. I suspect that, throughout the Beta, this is the AA/weapon combination you'll see from more competitive players, while more casual players will most often use armor lock and rely on grenades or explosive-ammo weapons (rocket launcher, grenade launchers, etc). Not saying anything good or bad about either one, just an observation and prediction.
[Edited on 05.06.2010 10:29 AM PDT by urk]