What you liked
- The game itself. Issues aside, it's fantastic.
- Movement. It's very fast and fluid. Thrusters are great to help you out in a pinch. Clambering is useful. Sprint is still sprint, but I can live with it.
- Gunplay. It's good. Apart from some kinks that need fixing, it feels like Halo.
- The maps. Truth, while a remake, is fantastic. Lots of neat little touches too, which I wouldn't have expected to see in a beta. Empire makes pretty good use of the new movement abilities.
What you disliked
- The Spartans parading around. These guys are Spartans, not jocks who just beat their rival high school. They should be stoic, not taunting the other team.
- Zooming on automatic weapons.
- Flinching (even the little amount of it there is).
- Lack of a controller setting I truly liked, even after two days of playing.
- Killcam. It needs to go. I tend to throw grenades before I die, so I'd like to see what happens after I do. The Killcam only shows like a split second before your death anyway, so even if you want to find out how some guy got the drop on you, it's utterly useless.
- Ground pound. I don't know why you insist on keeping it in, I've rarely ever seen it used and have never been killed by one.
What you would change
- If you're intent on keeping the post-game celebration in, let us choose an emote for our Spartan. Let us be who we want to be. On a related tangent: I may dislike their bro-acting now, but if you get me a dancing animation like in Destiny I'd pick it Day 1.
- The range on some of the automatic weapons is way too long. At mid-range an AR should never beat a BR, and yet I've seen several instances of that happening, with me on both giving and receiving end. I'd get rid of the "zoom benefits" on the AR altogether.
- I'm honestly fine with the ADS-like zooming, but on Recon controls the delay between pressing the zoom button and your weapon actually zooming in is very noticeable. This needs to be instantaneous, like in previous Halo games. That split second of peering down your scope can mean the difference between life and death.
- Speaking of Recon controls, I'd switch around Thruster and Sprint. Having Sprint on a shoulder button and Thrusters on X makes a lot more sense, at least for me. At least give us the option of choosing between the two. Call them 'Ninja' controls if you have to. :lol
- Grenades are a bit too powerful right now: they remind me of the mini-nukes from the early days of Reach. They could probably use some toning down.
- If you intend to keep the Killcam, make it optional. "Press X to watch KillCam" And fix the time it shows: showing only the moment the guy fired the killing shot is absolutely useless.
Gameplay bugs
- I'd occasionally lose health out of nowhere. Running around with full shields, one shot from an AR or DMR should not be able to do that.
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This happened yesterday. Not a big glitch, but might as well show it.
Beta rating
It's a lot better than what I expected. If 343 listens to our suggestions and improves the game accordingly, this could be the glorious return of Halo. I'm not giving any numbers, but I'm impressed.
