Players | Splitscreen_2 | Live/LAN_4
Difficulty | As with Campaign, Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary, each of which will scale based on the number of players.
Matchmaking | Feature parity with Multiplayer.
Firefight Summary | Firefight is a scored cooperative (or competitive) mode for up to four players, who are pitted against an onslaught of Covenant AI opponents in Multiplayer-style arenas.
Game Structure | Firefight takes place in a series of Waves, Rounds and Sets. Between Rounds, difficulty multipliers called Skulls activate to change aspects of the game.
Wave
Up to five Squads of Covenant forces attacking at once. Waves will overlap slightly - pauses are granted between Rounds.
Round
A round is made up of five Waves: The Initial Wave (3 Squads), three Main Waves (5 Squads), and a Boss Wave (3 Squads). One Round is the length of a standard game of Firefight in Matchmaking.
Set
A Set is a grouping of three Rounds. After each set is a Bonus Round.
Bonus Round
These occur at the conclusion of each Set, when all Skulls activate for a brief round of chaos (Grunts galore) and the chance to rack up extra lives. Everyone gets one life, which does not cut into the pool of lives remaining. The Bonus Round ends when everyone is dead, or the time limit is reached.
Lives
Lives are pooled on the team by default, but may be allocated individually in custom games. One additional life is awarded per player after each Round. If no lives remain and a player dies, they will respawn at the start of the next Wave (assuming at least one player survives). Additional lives can be earned in the Bonus Round.
Ordnance Drops
At the start of each Round, heavy weapons are air-dropped or otherwise inserted into the level.
Skulls
The same skulls as Campaign, in addition to custom skulls created in the custom game options. Skulls will toggle on and off between Rounds.
Scoring
Bonus points are awarded in Firefight for skilled play: killing sprees, killing clusters of enemies, landing headshots and more all add large bonuses to the points a kill is worth. Players can choose to track only a single team score, their own individual score, or pair off into two sets of two fire teams to compete for the highest score.
Custom Settings
Bungie essentially opened up the variables in their tool set from which Firefight was built for the custom options. Each element of the game can be altered: the game options, who you fight, for how long, with what, etc. Custom skulls can be created along side the build in variations and assigned to Waves. Custom Firefight game types can be saved and published to the community via File Share.
Gametypes | Firefight has three core game types, and then a set of additional variations which were built from the custom options described above, and which serve as examples of what is possible in custom games. The three top-level game types are Firefight, Generator Defense, and Versus.
Firefight
The basic Firefight mode, consisting of one Round (five Waves).
Firefight Versus
A round-based mode where teams alternate playing Spartans (defense) and as Elites (offense) alongside the rest of the Covenant. Elites try to exhaust the Spartan's lives, while the Spartans are trying to score points; they gain a life every time they kill an Elite. Which ever team scores more points as Spartans, wins.
Generator Defense
Spartans must defend a number of generators from being destroyed by the invading Covenant. Generators can be "locked down" to protect them for brief periods of time, and must be protected for victory.
Firefight Classic
The survival gametype featured in Halo 3: ODST: last as long as possible against an endless and increasingly difficult enemy.
Gruntpocolypse
All Grunts, all Skulls on, all the time. Aim for the face.
Rocket Fight
You have an infinite supply of rockets and pistol ammo. They don't.
Score Attack
A single-player mode with a fixed progression of enemies to combat for one Round or 12 minutes, which ever happens first. This mode has a separate playlist (though it's a single-player mode), the scores for which are kept on a global leaderboard.
Custom Game Options
Essentially Halo 3++, Bungie has build in options to alter pretty much every variable in the game: player traits, weapons, vehicles, load outs, game options, etc.
Returning Game Types
Every gametype from past Halo games returns, except for Halo 3's VIP. I suspect everyone is okay with that. In general, all but the round-based variants support both FFA and teams. Support for multiple (2+) teams is universal for all applicable game types.
Assault | Capture the Flag | Infection | Juggernaut | King of the Hill | Oddball | Slayer | Territories |
New Game Types
The Arena
A set of Slayer-only playlists set within their own seasonal rating system.
Click here for details on The Arena.
Invasion
A multi-stage, turn-based objective game type, Elites vs. Spartans.
Click here for details on Invasion.
Variants:
Invasion, Invasion Slayer
Stockpile
A variation on CTF, teams work to gather up a number of neutral flags and return them to their stockpile.
Click here for details.
Race
Returning for the first time since Halo 1, Race is what you'd expect it to be. The UI is updated to provide pertinent information such as speed, distance to next checkpoint, etc. Also, there are landmines.
Variants:
Race, Rally
Headhunter
A Slayer and objective hybrid in which slain players drop a flaming skull which must be collected and deposited into drop zones to score.
Click here click here for details.
Variants:
Headhunter, Headhunter Pro
Maps |
Click here.
Forge World
Forge World is less a MP map and more a canvas to
create MP maps; five of the maps above are built from it.
Forge is used on Multiplayer maps only, to edit weapon, spawn, objective and object placement, either alone or with a total of eight players. Players can move in and out of playing a Spartan (or Elite), or as a Monitor in editing mode seamlessly. Reach ships with an enormous map designed to facilitate the creation of custom maps, called Forge World.
For a video overview on the new Forge, and Forge World,
watch this vidoc.
Players: Splitscreen: 4 | Live/LAN: 8
Forge World
Similar to Halo 3's Sandbox in concept, Forge World is a large, multi-part map designed with custom maps in mind. The object palette is expanded to over 150 items, mostly chunks of geometry to be used in map creation. Bungie broke up geometry from several classic maps, including Ascension, Blood Gulch (bases) and Lockout, for some of the structures. Forge World was conceived of as five separate maps but the environmental artist working on it, Steve Cotton, stitched them together as a single environment. Below are the five distinct areas of the map, though note that players can build anywhere they choose.
HaloGAF
Custom Content
If you are working on maps or gametypes, tag them with the "HaloGAF" key word. We should be able to search for and find all of our community content this way.
There is a separate thread for Forge sharing and testing,
here.
Customs
Online Forum Meetup Thread
GAFers regularly start up customs Saturdays at around 5:00pm Pacific time. For other meet ups, use the Online forum to coordinate events.
Halo Community Sites | The Halo community is vast. Here are a few highlights.
HBO
The oldest and biggest Halo fan site on the web, run by one of the nicest (and oldest) people on the internet. If there's news about Halo, HBO will cover it.
Bungie.net forums
A vast community of upstanding and thoughtful commentators.
Tied The Leader
A community, clan and site dedicated to fair play and thoughtful commentary on Halo.
rampancy.net
Another long time Halo fan site, dedicated to unusually in-depth commentary and analysis of the series, as well as news and community creations.
Forward Unto Dawn
In the spirit of Ascendant Justice, FUD is devoted to analysis and commentary on various aspects of the Halo games and universe.
Major League Gaming
An organized league of professional gamers, in which Halo plays a starring role. Forums, league schedules, rules and live streams are available from their site.
Forge Hub
A large community devoted to creating custom maps in Forge. Tutorials, guides and an active forum to provide feedback and testing, as well as an excellent resource for well crafted maps.
Special Thanks to Louis Wu for web hosting.
