[...] I warned you about arts new post at http://geeksofdoom.com/2007/06/11/game-review- halo-3-multiplayer-beta/ about [...]…

The only disagreement I have is on the subject of the trip mine. Dropping it on the enemy man cannon landing point is guaranteed hilarity. If they don’t look like landing on it toss a grenade there and the double explosion will almost certainly take them out.

September is far too long to wait…

“The Brute Shot is more powerful”

Have you actually tried using it? I swear it takes at least 3 DIRECT hits to kill somebody. And since nobody is going to get all direct hits on a jumping body, it’s usually around 4-5 shots to kill somebody with the new brute shot. Seriously, the brute shot is horrible compared to Halo 2.

“The grenades aren’t drastically changed, but do seem to do a bit more damage” – Clearly the frag grenade AND the plasma grenade do LESS damage not more. Their blast radius’s have also been reduced.

Apart from those two things a good, well-balanced review…

Joker961:
Of course there is a small percentage of players who cheat the system so they can pwn newbs, but compare that to something like CounterStrike where there isn’t even an attempt to match player skills. In Halo you might get one or two players in a match who are much better than their rank, but in CounterStrike you get a match full of people so much better than you that you can hardly spawn without dying. Plus, using the prefer/avoid player system in Xbox Live, you can make it less likely that you’ll be matched with a player if he’s too good.

I’m also not sure that you’re right about being able to cheat the system by playing social matches. Social matches track your rank, but not your skill number, and it’s the skill number that the matchmaking system primarily uses to match you with similarly skilled players. You can, of course, go into matchmaking and intentionally suck to drive your skill number down, so there are still ways of lowering your score.

And I think a ridiculous number of people would completely disagree with you that Halo is not an exceptional FPS. I’m not even sure that comment merits further comment, it’s rather silly.

Seth:
Thanks for correcting me about the Missile Pod alarm. I haven’t noticed people using the Carbine any more often than the Battle Rifle, but you’re right that they are both excellent for mid-range fights. And while I agree that the Needler was pretty much useless in Halo 1, I completely disagree that dual Needlers were useless in Halo 2. And Bungie agrees with me, so nya!

As for High Ground, in the dozens of matches I played there I hardly ever hung out on the beach. For one thing, you wouldn’t want to stay there for long because there are hardly any good weapons down there. You could push your way up the hill to get some good weapons and then fall back, but as you say it’s open ground so why would you? Yes, you often have to contend with a sniper up in a tree or on the ledge where the invisibility orb spawns, but you can’t expect a map with a sniper rifle to not have any decent sniping spots, can you? At least half the map is indoors or behind the wall and completely unreachable by a beach-bound sniper. Snipers are a nuisance, but no moreso than in any outdoor map, and, in fact, less so than on Valhalla.

In that sense I think you actually have it backwards because in objective-based games you have to leave the safety of indoors and that makes you vulnerable to the sniper. If there’s a pesky sniper in Slayer you can just stay behind the wall and completely bypass him.

That being said, I look forward to the release in September.

At least in UT or CS, folks can’t cheat a ranking system by letting their friends beat them 50 times in custom matches so they can play against lower-ranked players. UT and CS let you select your server by ping, and the servers are dedicated, not peer to peer. And don’t get me started on mods, bot support and UMODs.

Don’t get me wrong. Halo is a great game franchise. But it succeeds due to the party system on Xbox Live delivering a social experience, not because it’s inherently better as an FPS.

That said I agree the graphics are tight… I suppose I was expecting more… but considering the amount of lag I’ve regularly experienced on Halo2… and almost ZERO lag on Halo 3 beta (my reason everyone should love it), on top of the MP option of choosing “good connection” as a matchmaking option… it’s seriously impressive. The actual fighting is back to Halo 1 speeds, so no spazzy “getting jiggy” dodge moves Halo2 always had that frustrates me… it’s Halo 1 on Halo 2 graphic steroids. And it’s only the beta… it will be better.

@Randy
Allow me to one up you:
My lion is a jump rope champion and mailman imitator. His superhero cousin often beats him in Sudoku.

If wielding two weapons at the same time still catches you as the *silliest* thing you’ve seen after that, then I can’t help you.

An alarm does not sound when the laser is on a vehicle either. Thats the missile pod.