Games Cheats and Reviews

Seeing over a million unique players in only its first day, one might consider the Halo: Reach beta to have been a smashing success.  The program that was bundled as a way to sweeten the pot for Halo: ODST purchasers, has went on to rule Xbox LIVE friends lists for the last two weeks.  Unfortunately for all of the freeloading Halo fans out there (myself completely included) all good things must come to an end, with the beta scheduled to end today.

Luckily for all of us, it looks like Joystiq has got exclusive details on Bungie giving us an extra day of Spartan slaying combat:

“Our official plans as of now are to turn off the Reach beta on Thursday, 5/20 at 10AM PDT.” — Brian Jarrard via Joystiq

So there you have it!  If you plan on getting in on the Halo: Reach action, you better get to it in a hurry. After tomorrow it is going to be a while before you can take the DMR out for another test drive.

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

Alex from GamesOnSmash writes "Just the other day Bungie had released a ViDoc for Halo: Reach titled Carnage Carnivale. The video was an insight on what to expect from the Halo: Reach beta which begins May 3rd. Now the video is full of awesomeness and I couldn’t help to notice that one of the members of Bungie David Candland, Senior UI Artist was wearing a Marthon shirt."

The Lost Gamer writes:

It would seem that Bungie are set to reward those that play the impending Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta with an Avatar Award. Although, lets face it which Xbox 360 owner in their right mind isn’t going to be playing it?!

DualShockers writes, "With the Halo: Reach beta just around the corner, the latest video released by Bungie gets this fan excited. Speaking as a fan and someone who has clocked too many hours on Halo 3 (check the Bungie records yo), I thought I would share some of my concerns based on the information from the Carnàge Carnivàle video…"

MCV: Though upcoming triple-A titles such as Fable III have pledged their support for Microsoft’s motion camera Natal, Bungie has ruled out any possible support for the peripheral in its upcoming FPS Halo Reach.

"Practically speaking, Natal didn’t exist until Reach was already two years into development," Bungie’s community director Brian Jarrard told The Seattle Times.

"That alone creates issues. Secondly, it’s not the type of control experience that we think lends itself to this type of game. We’re comfortable with it; Microsoft is, too.

VGArabia: Bungie has released a new video documentary which shows the devs of the game talking about the upcoming open beta for the hotly anticipated FPS Halo: Reach.

onPause Writes: "Bungie’s last HALO game, Halo Reach is due this fall. Until now that is all we knew but online retailer Amazon.com has just sent us an email updating the release date for September 1st 2010."

Bungie: We’re days away from content complete, which means we’ll be hammering on this game for the next couple of months to make sure it’s the best damn thing any of you have ever put in your xbox.

With the Halo: Reach beta less than two weeks away, Bungie is dispatching some of its 180 staffers to help promote the ambitious online multiplayer test. Community director Brian Jarrard and multiplayer design lead Chris Carney sat down with the Seattle Times to discuss the beta’s May 3 launch and the lead-up to the game’s debut this fall.

On the latest episode of GameTrailers TV (via Joystiq), Bungie gave the first details on the new Invasion multiplayer mode in Halo: Reach, which will also be playable when the Reach beta begins in May.

As it turns out, the new mode sounds a lot like the Rush mode in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It’ll be playable on the Boneyard map in the Reach beta, which is a multi-tiered environment packed with lots of vehicles. But portions of the map will open up in three phases as the match goes on, with new weapon load outs and vehicles becoming accessible with each new opened area of the map.

Also revealed in the footage are two new weapons: the human grenade launcher and plasma launcher (as opposed to the Brute grenade launcher and Covenant plasma launcher previously usable in past Halo games). And in a last little tidbit, Bungie’s Chris Carney is also asked whether Halo 3: ODST’s Firefight mode will return in Reach. Carney hesitated to give a concrete answer, though, saying it won’t be in the beta and he’s “not sure what those guys have planned” for the full release.