Last night I waited for Halo Reach beta to download. A long wait but I already had my friends online and I felt really left out. Eventually along with 'MyCatTequila' and 'AxelF1986' and a missing 4th member, I started my learning curve. After spending half an hour sorting out my Spartan and emblem and then the servers finally sorting itself out I was able to finally play my first match on Reach. Well the other 4 Halo games meant from the word go I was playing like a pro.



I'm guessing everyone will have their own very defined moment for their first game. I just thank the gaming gods my first game ended in a victory and my Kill spread was +9. No more man of the match anymore but instead a scoring system. I'm just glad my score was top ;)

The new and revamped weapons took time to ease into and learn. After a few minutes it's easy to see whats to use for short or long range and to remember the right bumper is for CQC and not the B button. My first match I was able to experience most of the new aspects of the game from weapons to the new additions such as the new stealth kill.

A COD multiplayer styled addition to the game is the new 'loadout' start to each match where you can pick between possible sets of starting weapons along with using the new Spartan powers. Some of the Spartan powers include: being able to sprint, use camo, use a jet pack, and to also power lock your armour. At the start of the match and each respawn you can pick what loadout you want so you can mix up your game on the go. These new varibles has added a new dimension to the Halo Multiplayer



Each new Spartan power has the obvious benifit but using them in combat and utilising them effectively is now a new concern for players. The sprint ability well says what it does. You can run up ahead, run away and basically have a lil dash here and there for a little edge but this is more or less the most basic of the new abilities. The Camo is similar to the Arbiters from Halo 2. This power is handy when your trying to avoid being seen and a radar scrambler effect is added to help if your the type who isn't radar savvy, but the draw back is when someone sees a lot of blips then it's a give away that close by is a sneaky Spartan. The jet pack is again obvious. You can just boost up to hard to reach ledges, hover over pits and soften a drop so you don't lose any of that shield for battle. The disadvantage could be the easy flying target to spot and maybe a corridor wouldn't be an ideal place to be lugging a pack around but I've seen some pretty handy spots to reach and been dished some crafty high above grenades which seem to help balance this ability out. Last but not least my favourite right now is the amour lock. You just see your Spartan punch the ground and a super overshield effect occurs. Your be invicible for a small perriod but the only drawback is your a sitting duck. I find my favourite as no more sloppy granades will irritate me as often.



So far only 2 levels; 'Powerhouse' and 'Sword Base' has been open for beta testing. Similar to Last Resorts and Boarding Action the new levels were easy to adjust to. Losing the veto system, bungie has decided to instead make each player vote for the match they want to play. Usually between 3 choices or even a none of the above. I've mainly played team slayer and flag games with the one off Oddball match.

You can custom your Spartan just like in Halo 3. I'm guessing Bungie has only released a fraction of the avialiable selection for the beta game but there should hopefully be more in stock on final release. Obvious Elite varients will be open on final release as seeing the Bungie team use them in press snippets. Hopefully more interesting options will out shine Halo 3's list (and yes I hope hayabusa isn't in it, because I've unlocked it doesn't mean I should wear the stupid thing).

Weapon wise Bungie has obviously spent time thinking this through. The original pistol with a reduced magazine is back along with many new weapons such as my new favourite the plasma repeater. Guns now have more recoil (well the human guns mainly) and new modifications. This means good old friends have to be switched up till you find something comfortable to wield.

Well anyway I hope you all enjoy the new addition to the series and have fun playing.

I thought I'd think back to my childhood classics. A few games were on my head for which to name such as Lemmings and Flash back. Everyone who played during the Mega Drive era can always recall the classics and boast about how they loved thoses games like the main stream ones like: Sonic, Mortal Kombat and SFII.

Well growing up on the Mega Drive I spent most my time sitting like a zombie playing game after game. Ecco the dolphin came out when I was about 4 turning 5 years old. I prob played it as it entered my house when I was 6 years old. Playing it back then, it wasn't a hard game. I would spend a good half hour just jumping out of water just to see if I could take a shortcut on some level and then going back to finishing the levels. This never helped because I really never actually finished the game.



Anyway before the days of save and load with memory cards and before I tried playing emulations with savestate (which ruined Road Rash 3 for me) I had to deal with passcodes. Well compared to most games passcodes was a blessing to a 6 year old. Well when the last level's code appeared in an old copy of a CVG magazine I obviously just had to test it out.

It's a great sandbox exploration and puzzles game which was nice. With eating fish and splashing around chatting to the aquatic life it was a clever game but then later on the game really changes. The last level completely goes of the rail with the usual gameplay. You lose the free roaming and enter a race to stay on the screen as the level is pushed around you and on top of this the 'Vortex' creatures are drawn towards you.



A nice change but when I kept dying I didn't enjoy the game. After trying to evade and failing, I then tried to attack and spear these creatures only to find that resulted more frustration as I just died again. The icing on the cake was I accidently used Ecco's sonar and killed one of James Cameron's Xenomorph's... I meant vortex creature. Well I kinda just then had to memorise the path and I was home free untill the final boss where really I kinda of just ruined the game for myself.

Over a decade and a half later I thought; 'yeah that game was great'. I tried to get my 3 year old neice to play it. I was reminded of all the cool things about it. I then started to play it later myself. Honest opinion now is it's only great to play as a semi-sand box game. I enjoy splashing around but when I thought about starting to play it, well I ended up switching over to see how fast I could do the first level on Sonic (27 seconds is my record).

Well maybe its a little late to post this but I wrote it out but never got around to posting it sooner. Well might as well, don't want to waste. Well my choice for Love/Hate is the Dynasty Warriors games. Koei's Dynasty Warriors series first caught my attention with number 2 on the PS2. I purchased the PS2 the day it came out but the choice of games were small and I only could get 3 at the time which were: 'Tekken Tag', 'Orphan: Scion of sorcery' and 'Dynasty Warriors 2'.

Dynasty Warriors 2 lasted me a good few weeks while I took my time playing the game and finishing it with each and every character since Tekken Tag was only worth playing against my brother really. My semi OCD thought I had to complete DW2 with every character. Wasn't untill Dynasty Warriors 3 where I managed to enjoy the game more passionately. The 2 player co-op is when I really got into it and did't put it down. Me and one of my closest friends (Mikey) sat down and played the game again and again trying every scenario and getting into it on an over healthy level.



The war room chats we had before starting the battle got us all pumped up and then we just blissfully bashed our way to victory. We never even thought about how easy the game was and even had to knocked the difficulty setting up eventually. We both sat down more often playing as our favourites: Me as Zhang Fei and Mikey as Guan Yu. We famously battled all over China and role playing out many historic fights like against Lu Bu (the only character my brother can name) who is the toughest enemy to appear. This meant that I tried to call dibs for a one on one so that then I could then feel good after defeating the boss and then enjoy stealing his special Steed the 'Red Hare'.



I found that before I had a part time job that I always seemed to have the smallest stack of games on my shelf which meant DW3 had to last a while longer than usual untill I got a new game. I ended up maxing out every character (well not all, just the cool ones), I even read the games encyclepedia and got into the games back story and where it derived from as I seemed to have nothing better to do. I found that about 1% of people I knew liked the game. I got reactions when I paid for the sequal.... and the the Empires version and then the next sequal and so on. Well I was glad to see you could use old memory data to carry on to the new updated versions which saved me some time but the realisation that I've paid full price for a game I've more or less already played didn't ever dawn on me.


Well although my days of co-op campaning around China has passed and the realisation of how tidious the game really was, I still look back and enjoy the small things that I've enjoyed from the game. The game wasn't the best but I wouldn't deny that I enjoyed it. The cultural and aesthetic look to the game stylised it enough to get my attention and the actual history did grab my attention. Well anyone who hasn't played DW should give it a go but I'd suggest not to jump in and play the Samurai Warriors cross over versions which would just be an overload.



Anyway speaking of Koei's DW series. The company also did a Gundam spin off which used the same engine and was just DW and Samurai warriors dressed up in a new shell for those mech suit fans..... and now I can gladly say they are on board with the new 'Fist of the North Star' game. I'll assume it will play the same but never the less I will prob try get a copy on it's realease.

[url]http://www.gametrailers.com/game/fist-of-the-north-star-warriors/12209[url]

As predicted a whole new team of spartans is going to be our new protagonists for REACH. I'm guessing Bungie wanted to fool every Halo universe fan with a very misleading poster. This worked and spiked up many topics of the mysterious 5 spartans which lead to many ideas and hopes for their identities.

The comman idea that it was going to be: Sam, Kelly, John, Fred, and Linda has obviously been blown out the window. My own 3 ideas showed: 1st my imagination of a possible beyond just spartans idea which failed, my 2nd idea was from the decieving posters possible intended design and me guessing the usual suspects (minus Sam where I guessed James instead), and my 3rd and most logical idea that bungie would release a new team was infact correct.



The new game supposedly will be hosting series III (class 2) spartans. A mention of a survivor from Pegasi should also add more to discussions. Ghost of Onyx' introduces the claimed 2 out of 300 survivors from Pegasi delta's operation TORPEDO. This new protagonist is supposed to be another survivor besides Tom and Lucy. The trailers mention of his 'record' suggest maybe a possible tale of his survival of what was supposed to be a high risk mission (suicide missions).

The few new Spartans shown has raised many interest. One of which infact is an unnamed Spartan who my brother has fallen in love with. The HellSpartan is another of a few addition to the games team. Known as Noble Team the new Spartans show many unique characteristics. From the new Giant Jorge in Yellow armour to Kat who has a cybernetic arm and from the typicall team sniper to the team Rookie. So we have the team and now a place for which the game is set (No giant ring to recycle here Bungie?) to wonder out and shoot some covenant bad guys. Speaking of which back to the Elites as the bad guy and no longer the brutes. Going to be strange to have to revert back to the old enemy and even lose the flood altogether. This should be interesting.



Discussing with my brother (again) the topic of ODST being a beta of Reach was something that was brought up. The 6th member of Team Noble is obviously our main character who we start with. Anyway I'm more concerned of how the game will differ between Spartans. Im hoping maybe customisation will perk up this time. Besides Halo 3's small selection I felt the game did lack in this department. Halo could definatly use more varients with armour. I'd even like to see if SPI armour would even be selectable.

Im actually hoping for maybe a more stat customisation side to the game. I'm sure a character like Jorge who is a bigger target might have more endurance or having a smaller character means lower health but maybe faster speed to traverse with. Maybe this is all wishfull thinking but hopefully Bungie has finally decided to take the game a further step with customisation and done what I hoped was going to be introduced Halo 3 before being let down. Hopefully I'll actually have something I can look forward to when Reach is released.



On another note, in an interview with Brian Jarrard it was confirmed that Halo: Reach is a prequal to Halo: Combat evolved which is set moments after Nylunds Fall of Reach. This suggest that events of the Fall of Reach should hopefully cross over. I'm hoping Fred and Kelly would pop up but that is just me and my doomed wishfull thinking again on my part.

Well hopefully some of the new story will leak into the halo universe that appropriately compliments my stone set Halo cannon view from Eric nylund and co's work. Well along with Halo Evolutions I have alot which I'm eagerly waiting to unfold and conclude the many open ended Halo universe stories.

Check this cool HellSpartan blog from TreyUK
http://www.dtoid.com/blogs/TreyUK

While on Bungie.net I was reading the topic 'Proof, that I know all of the spartans in the Banner.'

I know it's stretching it but there are so many possibilities for what they could be. Funny enough the same day I saw the poster I came up with the same idea in seconds while sitting next to my brother (TreyUK).

After the suggestive Sam, Kelly, John, Fred, and Linda for the characters in the poster we started to think about who it could really be.



Keeping to the Cannon of the book (and thinking a little wildly) we began to think about the first person shown on the far left. Halo: Fall of reach Chapter 8 tells of the spartans on a capture the flag drill where marines are using Exoskeleton suits for their own protection. These are Mk 1's so marine Mk2 or even Mk3 could be what that person is. So a possibility that Far left could be a regular marine in a exo suit which explains the massive frame. Kelly and Fred for the 2 and 4 silhouettes. 3 and 5 could be many others such as spartans from Kurt and any of the mentioned Spartans to an unknown, or someone new as spartan 320.

After seeing many posts on the 5 unknowns. We began to think more reasonable and simply decided that the planet shows where they are and not that they are on it just yet.

So in order of the silhouettes from left to right we decided on: James, Kelly, John, Fred, and Linda. We looked carefully at silhouette No.1 and thought about the frame and choice of pose. The left arm which James lost during a hunter encounter could explain the positioning of his prosthetic arm. Spartan 320 also should be taken into account. But the obvious signature to each popular spartan is easily highlighted. Kelly's small frame. John the leader central to the group, Fred and his combat knife, and Linda with her sniper rifle.



The poster does make the hardcore fans more suggestive to wild ideas and what they hope to see, but simply we decided that the poster shows reach and most likely to show James, Linda and John on their orbital mission to complete the purge for the Cole Protocol, while Fred and Kelly are on planet with the rest of the spartans fighting the Covenant.

From the trailer we can only assume the obvious and that the game takes place after Reach has fallen so might carry on the book but the poster can idicate it takes off from The Fall of Reach around Chapter 35. To sum it up: Sam shouldn't be in the line up and although I may not be correct myself if James or infact the rest is what I'm guessing, it is just speculations anyway. Well only one way to find out.

Hey guys and girls. Well it's been a weird week for me. I was peer-pressured in to buying Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which has taken up most of my time. Having missed the last two COD games I wasn't sure I would be able to get into it as I thought I would. Ended up getting a copy of MW1 to catch up. Well I enjoyed it and even repeated a few levels with my brother as we couldn't put it down.

After my week nearly finished I decided to pop back to Halo for the double experience weekend. This got me back into the Halo mood. After enjoying a few fun games I spent a while on Xtival and browsing about which lead to me checking out on some Halo DLC's.

Anyway I'm enjoying the new Halo: Waypoint feature. After adding guilty spark to my Avatar and looking see what achievments I have left to do, I then looked at some of Waypoints videos. I loved the sneak peak at Production IG's work on 'Halo: The Duel'. As a Production IG fan with one of my fav's such as 'Ghost in the Shell' (Which I'm mental for, Motoko!) I'm very curious to see what unfolds with the spin off as well as how the new artistic medium used will give the added Japanese flavor to the piece.



So after a taste of what's to come I was happy to share the new feature with my brother who in return treated me to watch an advance copy of 'The Babysitter' from the Halo Legends collection, which he got from his friend over seas in Japan.

As big Manga and Anime fans we loved the action and even decided to forgive the small J'pop-esqe persona with the ODST's. As we are Halo universe fans we preferred the view of the hard core ODST's pictured from 'The Flood' and 'Cole Protocol'. Halo 3 ODST's weren't what we expected but the 'Firefly' themed team gave a nice nostalgic mood for us to enjoy the game.

Studio 4°C's The Babysitter Originally sparked questions with the up to date Halo universe fans about Linda-058. After the start we quickly discover a new Spartan; Cal-141 who is the commander of the mission. We quickly meet a small ODST team and learn a few of their specialties. We meet a familiar face as Dutch Makes an appearance. After meeting our well known heavy weapon specialist we meet a few new faces such as O'Brian the team sniper, Cortez the squad sergeant and Checkman the final member.



The team is sent on an important mission to assassinate a prophet who is controlling a weapons factory nexus. We see Cal-141 lead the team into a mission. For those who have seen the trailer will see the traditional 'Hell jump' deployment which then leads to a bit of CQC Spartan action against a brute.

Well I'll leave the conclusion of this feature a surprise for everyone to see for themselves. While I'm looking forward to the other Halo: Legends feature shorts, Prototype has gained the most anticipation from me and I can't wait to watch it. Here is a link for a preview of the first 5 minutes of the feature 'The Babysitter'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6lojxvmy4

Hope you enjoyed my 1st of many blogs to come. If your up a spot of Halo sometime, send an invite. You can find me on Xbox live under 'KEVIN B104'.[img][/img][img]