I haven't had time to play it yet, but my friends are really disappointed so far. For reworking things from the ground up, supposedly the graphics aren't that impressive, and the gameplay seems either hit or miss. Some say it's decent, some don't like it.

Way to throw the peasants a bone, or an advert.

Either way.

LIVE, yeah, gotta love paying for those big timed exclusive payments. Was that 30 days with the MW2 maps worth the last years LIVE subscription for you?

Well, it is nice but it's being done to get people on Gold.

@ Sexual Chocolate
I did calculations on my ZUNE and $11 a map sounds very reasonable.

Who cares that you have a "ZUNE"...

wtf is a zune, wasn't that a movie in the 80's

Dispute what the haters may say. The halo beta is awesome. Everything from the new stealth kills better weapons and different classes make this one of the best multiplayer death matches that I have ever played.

Also, lol Tom Morello.

Wow, 3 days! Microsoft, you are SOOOOO generous! (I'm gold, but I just wanted to point out how silly this is... seriously, 3 days, I mean come on...)

If only I had a Silver Membership instead of Gold!! :'( anyways, yup I'm sad.. I hate Halo more now. The people at my school are now talking about Halo Reach beta every single hour!!!! One of my friends even called it "better than life!!!" People are even being hypocrites because they said they hated Halo before but now loves it!! Screw you, FPS!!

I was getting my butt handed to me and I had loads of fun. You can even choose if you want to play with trash talkers or guiet people. The graphics are great. You want to see some bad deathmatch graphics play Resistance 2. Worst multiplayer ever.

It had slow matchmaking the first several hours but they fixed it, so it got waaaay more fun to play now that you dont have to wait 10+ minutes for a game. Of course it does have numerous other problems, but so far, they havent ruined my experience :) hope it stays that way.

@: Neroisonfire:
It's a Beta the graphics are never perfected until it's ready for release.

@Sexualchocolate

"Was that 30 days with the MW2 maps worth the last years LIVE subscription for you?"

I don't play MW2, but Gears of War 2 online is easily worth the $36 I paid for my subscription.

Just keep pretending like you wouldn't pay $3 a month for MAG if they started charging for it...

The beta, so far, is fantastic. The changes add additional layers to the combat without ever feeling tacked on. The loadouts are all custom tailored to the gametypes and really do add a lot. The armor customization is a fun way to add to the sense of progression. SOMEHOW everything feels balanced. The revamped party system is almost perfect (though I wish I could be in a party of friends larger than 4, but I can understand why for balancing reasons). The visuals are pretty impressive to start with, then you see those same visuals still running at a super smooth framerate in 4 player split screen while still in network play. That's impressive no matter how you look at it.

Network performance has been great. I've yet to experience any lag at all, and that's not hyperbole. After some periods of muck on the first day, the matchmaking has been the best I've ever experienced in an online FPS. Filtering matches by tone and chattiness has worked thus far too.

TOM MORELLO.

@Gestault Gets up and starts clapping hands.

I agree with Gestault.

The only issue I've had so far is that the fucking melee button was remapped from B to RB. That's just a training issue, though.

@ mrandydixon and Gestault

Go to controller settings and change the controller layout to recon. Its pretty much the exact same as the default halo 3 layout. Works for me

@CormactheMac87

I'll try that. I looked through a few of the defaults but didn't see anything that fit my tastes perfectly, but I may have glossed over that one.

When will console developers start letting us customize our control scheme? It really isn't that hard.

@mrandydixon

Apparently people say that if you have a completely customizable control scheme that it makes it easier to mod and cheat, so I hear

I wish they could filter out the Microsoft employees from commenting here.

@Cormac yeah I asked the guys I was playing with the first game we played and they told me right away to put Recon.

@CormactheMac87

Interesting, I didn't know that about the modding. I don't play too many competitive multiplayer games (I'm mostly a couch co-op and single player guy), so thankfully I don't have much experience dealing with hackers and modders.

I've only played the beta twice, and my friend and I were pretty rusty from not having played Halo 3 in like a year. But I liked what I saw in my brief time with it. Seems pretty balanced, and the match filters are like a present from Jesus himself.

@mrandydixon
Definitely go with recon. We actually quit out of our first match, because we absolutely had to change the controls ASAP.

Shouldn't have to pay for multiplayer anyway. So Fk you microsoft.

@HEL105

Consider it done!

Hahaha, Tom Morello. It is hilarious and I have no idea why. I remember seeing it a few times before from Brad's Halo postings. What's the story?

...I shall use this weekend for EVIL.

@StepTangent

It's from a while ago, some guy posted shots of Reach in progress and added his "watermark" on all the images, via the magic of MS Paint. No relation to the Rage Against the Machine guitarist.

And hurrah on the Recon setting, only got to play a few matches, but it was wonderful finding that option. Too used to Gears 2 Horde, but I was still smacking air when I wanted to reload and missed assassinations argh.

But boy do I love that stealth camo.

Bwahaha

@doewnskitty

Thanks, bro!