Looks like a pretty staggering upgrade from Halo 3/ODST in terms of visuals and animation detail. And you can run!



Beta launches this May.

Looks like Halo.

Holy shit, that was awesome! 5 Stars will watch again.

Spartan CQC moves! Jetpacks! I NEED IT!

Beta starts May 3rd, everyone who has ODST can play.

Anyone have an early access key and playing it right now?

Beta download is LIVE for ODST owners. Downloading mine now!

The lovely Aisha Tyler gives us the DL on what to expect:

So the Beta got off to a rough start today with trouble connecting to games. But after a diagnoses from Dr. House and Jack Bauer performing the operation, The Beta is now running pretty damn smooth. Crush, Donkey and myself partied up and had a hell of a good time even though we lost most of the rounds it was hella exciting. GOTY confirmed.

This is what happens when you land the final shot with the new needle rifle.


Sneaking behind some dude and giving him a surprise piggyback ride... TO HELL!


Shh...shh... this is why we're here... don't fight it...


Going in for the kill, doing it for the thrill.


This game is fuck awesome

About to melee a guy in the face. I was coming down from a hover lol.

Only AC will understand this but...

"It's already over."

Alright, so Invasion mode is basically the best thing since sliced bread. Its always Spartans vs Elites, and you get split up into "squads" of two, and each team has 6-8 players. When you die you can choose to spawn at checkpoints on the map, or on your squad made, provided they aren't in heavy combat. If they're driving a vehicle, you will spawn in the passenger seat. Very battlefield-esque!

AC and I put in about 3 hours of this mode last night, its just ridiculously fun! From what we saw there's just 2 play types so far, Invasion, and Invasion slayer.

In regular invasion there's tiered objectives that the Elites have to destroy/steal, and the Spartans have a time limit to defend these objectives from being taken. As the match proceeds and more objectives are taken, both team's loadouts change and your firepower increases tremendously. At the start you'll only have basic AR/DMR type classes, but the final push you have 4 super-specialized loadouts AND beast weapons and vehicles out the ass. Scorpions, Wraiths, Spartan Lasers, you name it. It get INSANE during the final round.

In the "Invasion Slayer" variant, instead of having set objectives, theres a "capture point" that spawns randomly on the map, and each team tries to capture it while, of course, killing the enemy team. Game goes to 100 points, but i'm not sure if capturing the objectives also gets you points. What i AM sure of is that when your team captures a point, you get a supply drop, and that can vary from anything like shotguns and grenades, to heavy weapons like RLs and Grenade launchers, or even vehicles! I think the supply drops get bigger as the game progresses. In this mode you only start with one really basic loadout, but as you rack up more kills, you kind of "level up" and gain access to additional loadouts for the match.

Space combat stages! Shit looks so cash, like Colony Wars or freespace or something!

EDIT: Full gameplay vid:

Firefight in Reach! Artillery strikes!

BEAST MODE

After playing Halo Wars for one day then returning it, I had lost some faith in the series and didn't pick up ODST, But wow, I'm really looking forward to Reach.

Yeah, Halo Wars was pretty disappointing. But it also wasn't developed by Bungie, and although Ensemble is (was) a talented team with RTS, a console just isn't the best platform for a game like that.

ODST was actually really great though, a good throwback to more of a Halo: CE feel, and the atmosphere was really unique in the series. The campaign was a bit short compared to the usual Halo fare, but the firefight mode was fantastic.

The good news is, Reach seems to have culled all the good parts of ODST and then added more in spades. Campaign, Firefight, VS firefight, Invasion, multiplayer, Forge World, space combat! Its going to be one hell of a ride

Hot fiyah. Spire looks SICK for invasion, and the outer space combat on Zealot is going to be insane.

27 days!

WE SHALL NEVER FORGET! SPARTANS LEAD THE FUCKING WAY!

Got my game on reserve. I better see some AT folks come midnight. It's going down like syndrome. Maybe we should make this an AT gameday.

It MUST be an gameday.

Getting it at the midnight launch, and I'm going to beast the campaign in co-op. ENDURANCE RUN. I know AC is down, who else is in?

Man I've been so hyped for this game lately. I think it's because it's so close to release. I'm down the day of, but seriously, eff midnight launches haha. I also support this being an AT gameday. We're almost at a year without one.

Lets make it happen!

T-minus 7 days till REACH FALLS!