I was fortunate enough to get a code for the early access to the Halo 5 Guardians Beta.

Below is a graphic that was contained within the e-mail that I got for early access.I had to enter TWO codes for this. The first was to download the beta, the next granted me early access. 

It took about 45 minutes to download the beta. The access was just seconds.Not sure how big the download itself was.

For these two days, we only have Truth (Midship remake and Empire (the city map) to play on. And that’s plenty enough for two days!

I’ll go through some screen shots here, explaining them as needed and talk about my reaction/opinion of the beta so far.

Here we have the start-up screen for the beta. It’s animated, with flashes in the clouds and space itself. The music is a chorus of trumpet playing in the background. Sounds very regal.You get the message below regarding the beta.
I have no issues with any glitches thus far. There really weren’t any, other than match lobbies being aborted before the game started once in awhile. This being a real beta, I’m fine if things don’t work 100%.

Here is the main menu screen. In the background various crew mill about. It looks like Dr/ Glassman, from Halo 4’s Spartan Ops is there. Not sure though. As you can see you have 4 options to choose from. Matchmaking, Halo Channel, Spartan Hub, and Message of the day. Before we get into the Matchmaking section, let’s look at some of the menus.
The message of the day!

Here we have the Spartan Hub. You can choose from your service record, controller settings, various Spartan Armor/color menus, your service tag and gender.The Controller settings. There are several to choose from. I picked Recon. Though that’s not the setting shown below.
In the armor menus, you can pick what helmet you want (providing you’ve been rewarded more than default Recruit helmet). Why your Spartan shows up in, what I referring to affectionately as ‘Pepto Bismol Pink’, I don’t know. LOL.You also get to choose your armor. In the beta it looks like we can only pick helmet and main armor. Hopefully we’ll have more to choose from in the full game, but this is enough for the beta, IMO.Once you’ve selected your armor, colors (which for now don’t matter as we’re only playing team games), service tag and gender, you can go to matchmaking. Mind you, this isn’t required and you can go straight into matchmaking form the get-go. I prefer to add a little personalization to my Spartan first.

Below is the game lobby screen. Nothing fancy for now. To the left is your team and the right the opposing team.
When the game starts, it goes right into one of the two maps offered during this early access. The next few screens are of Truth. What I like about this, is that it is animated. You get a nice CLEAR camera pan of the map.
We’ve already seen a lot of gameplay screens, and that’s hard to just write about with only screen shots. So for now, let me say visually, the maps look A-MAZ-ING!

Regarding matchmaking.

One thing I’ll say is that the game moves FAST. I mean REALLY fast. In the dozen or so games I’ve played thus far, only 2 of those had any slow moments in them.

Weapons

The weapons I’ve used so far are the BR, AR, SMG, Magnum and Sniper. And you also get Frags to start and can pick up stickies on the map.

The BR handles pretty good. Not sure about the ADS (Aim Down Sights) just yet. I’m used to it in other games, not so much Halo. It wasn’t a big deterrent though. Honestly, with how fast the game moves, scoping in tight isn’t much of an option. Scope to long and you’re definitely going to get pinged by bullets.

The AR is pretty fun to use again. Close in it takes out enemies pretty quick. At mid range you can land some shots, though don’t expect to take anyone out quick.

The Magnum is FAST. It seemed like as fast as I could pull the trigger it was shooting. It has minimal ADS to it, which is fine. These two maps are small enough, so really, no-scoping is the rule of thumb here.

Moving on to the SMG….oh my the SMG…It is BEAST! I swear it takes out Spartans faster than the AR. I found myself using it more than the AR when I had both to choose from. It fires rapidly and at close range is accurate and deadly!

I only got to use the sniper a little. I’m not a sniper much anyway. Not on small maps to be sure. But it felt powerful. Again, for how fast the matches were moving, I didn’t scope in too long. There’s so much cover on Empire that while the site lines are there, you have to be a pretty crack shot at nailing someone across the map.

Frags and Stickies behave as they should. With how fast the game moves, I found myself constantly picking up frags from dead enemies and the respawn for stickies was quick. So I never felt like I was in need of ‘nades.

Maps

As I mentioned, we only have Truth and Empire to play on. Truth is a FANTASTIC remake of Midship. Some things have changed slightly. There is a little jump up at the bottom of each base to get you to top. You use the clamber attribute for that. (I’ll get to attributes in a little bit.) Visually, Truth is amazing, as I said before. I really wanted to take some time to look around and see everything, but the matches were just too fast to enjoy it all. I did here the occasional Elite voice com gin from a hologram. How does this map compare gameplay wise with previous iterations of Midship? VERY well. The few added things don’t at all take away from it. Bottom mid has a jump up to top mid. That provides cover. Something I had always wanted on this map. (Extra cover at bottom mid that is) Due to the more organic look of the map, a couple of place may ‘feel’ a little different, but they play mostly the same.

Empire, the city veranda map that we’ve seen is chock full of cover and plenty of venues to hunt your enemies down. There’s basically 4 main callout for this map. Red and Blue bases, front (or outside) snipe and back snipe. There are more of course, but those 4 will do in most cases. The look of the map is fantastic. It’s MUCH more than Skyline is. It’s nt a remake of that map. Like I said, MUCH better. This is the map were there were the two lulls. Again, those weren’t long though. It’s just that you have more rooms to take cover in.

Power Weapons

For now, the only power weapons we have is the Sniper Rifle on Empire, and the Sword (Prophet’s Bane) on Truth. In both case, the in-game Spartan voices callout when they are about to spawn. You also get a visual cue as to where the power weapon is. I’m SO very happy about this. No more Infinity drops. No more not knowing what an opponent has. This along makes the beta feel SO MUCH more like Halo than Halo 4 ever did.

Spartan Attributes

As we’ve seen in previous footage from 343, each spartan has the SAME attributes. Sprint, Thrust, Groundpound, Clamber, Charge. Again, something I VERY happy about. With EVERYONE having the same attribute, none can complain about someone getting the upper hand on them for having something special (that they don’t have). I used Sprint a LOT! One thing to note, you’re shields do NOT respawn while sprinting. So if you think you’re just going to sprint away from being killed, you’re dead wrong! I know a lot of people are going to be happy about that. I know I am. I made liberal use of Thrust. Both as an engaging tactic as well as to temporarily can cover or dart away from incoming fire. Saved my butt a few time for sure.

In conjunction with thrust you get to use the ground pound attribute. While thrusting in the air, look down, target an enemy, once locked on, you GP them. This doesn’t always kill, but can definitely take out shields. The one draw back? You’re exposed in mid-air for a few seconds while you target an enemy. That’s a fair trade-off I think.

As for charging someone, once you’ve sprinted toward an enemy for a couple of seconds you can charge them. I didn’t use this much at all as I’m not a traditional melee person. But I was able to kill people trying to charge me! A simple trust to th side at just the right moment then back smacking them, takes them down pretty quick. As well, they can just be shot to death, if you’re fast and good enough. (And yes, I was able to do that several times).

Clamber is by far my most favorite of the new attributes. I use it a LOT! How many times have you JUST missed a jump in Halo? Even when crouch jumping? Well now, so long as you’re close to the edge, all you need do is hold the jump button down and your Spartan will ‘clamber’ up the obstacle to get onto/over it. This just feels like such a natural progression for Spartans. Looking back now, I’m surprised it wasn’t added sooner. You will definitely enjoy using this attribute folks!

Moving on to some more screenshots. Below are both eh blue team and Red team WIN screens. These are animated with the team members congratulating one another. If anything, this is one thing I think needs to be changed. I don’t mind showing the winning team, but some of the gestures are just not very Spartan like. More like pro-football players when they score a touchdown. A bit too much show-boating for my tastes. But that’s me.Once the match is complete you get this screen.I mentioned earlier about getting an abort screen. This is it below. If for some reason, the game can’t connect to another team, you’ll get this screen and be taken back to the main lobby.After the game you can check stats. Here we see the Experience tab. You get points for various things. Completing matches, winning and your personal performance all factor into how many points you get. So FINISH those games folks! As you can see by the bar near the top in the screen below, +14 points were awarded. You CAN get negative points. This by losing games, doing poorly performance wise, etc. Will this derank you? It doesn’t look like it. Rather you stay at the rank you are and it just take longer to rank up.Periodcially, you’ll earn something in the game. This screen is were you would see that. In the beta, this is were you’ll see armor begin awarded to you. You then go to the Spartan Hub to change armor, if you choose.Here is the stats page. Quick, easy and simple to read. During the beta, once you’ve clicked away from this screen, you can’t go back and check the previous match stats. SO don’t leave it until you’re sure you don’t want to look at it anymore.You can check your service record at anytime, while not in a game. Here you can see your rank, overall kills/deaths/assists.You can also see what your weapon of choice is and how accurate you are with it. That’s something I didn’t expect in the beta. More than needed, and much appreciated at this stage.

 

So, I guess the main question is, do I like the beta so far? My answer?

A RESOUNDING YES! This feels SO MUCH more like Halo that Halo 4 and Reach ever did. Even with the new attributes, I never felt like anyone was more powerful than me or had the upper hand. Games do move fast and for me that will take a little getting used to. But then, I’ve been doing that with each Halo for how long now??? LOL

I’m sure there is more I could have written about here and some things I’ve likely forgotten to write about. So please , if you have ANY questions about the beta, let me know. Either reply below or e-mail me at [email protected].

Okay folks, I’m loosing valuable beta play time here…so I’m out for now!

-Sal