Halo 3 Beta: The Highs and Lows

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Similarities were made immediately to Halo 2 favorite Zanzibar, but High Ground really does offer a whole different kind of flow, and we're sure will fit comfortably alongside the Halo 3 remake of the former.

Like most of the beta maps,High Ground offers multiple types of fighting styles. The Spikers and Brute Shot are tactically placed inside the upper base for close-quarters carnage, while the sniper rifle and rocket launcher are down south where the more frantic, rock-hopping carnage goes down.

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This is also probably the Beta's best demonstration of the Mongoose. There's not enough room to stick a Warthog in there, and without a man cannon the nifty Mongoose is your quickest way of jumping into the fight and of course, ferrying the flag right out of the other team's clutches.

Valhalla raises just as few complaints. Even though we only really got to experience it properly once big team battle arrived, Valhalla turned out to be perfect for territories games and mad-dash sessions of Crazy King. Plus if we winded up with quitting opponents we could always amuse ourselves by driving in a man cannon or climbing trees.

With the amount of vetos Snowbound's racked up we wouldn't be surprised if it didn't even make it to the final game. Maybe we're just rubbish snipers, or maybe we really can't drive a Ghost to save our lives, but this map really didn't strike well with the Radar firing squad at all.

Camping with a sniper rifle/combine/laser seemed to be the most popular tactic in all our Snowbound games, that is of course if you're not, like us, permanently in the underground tunnels battling to get your hands on the shotgun.

Our play style seemed to always lumber us inside, with outside battles only resulting in a vulture killing from the other side of the map. We've seen similar moans from other beta players, so perhaps Bungie will mix things around a bit with different weapon placements or maybe even an extra Ghost or two.

And that's our brains raided, really. We could fill this page with a few overly-nitpicky moans for a few more paragraphs (Shotty Snipers modeand that horrible Shotgun lag?!) but we'll let you do that on theforums.

It'll be interesting to hear what Bungie has learned from the beta experience, and we'll sure you'll agree that it's been a big success for Microsoft - we can't wait to get our ranks even higher come September 26.

June 11, 2007