Halo: Reach launched exclusively for the Xbox 360 on September 14, and before the week was out, Microsoft and Bungie already had a significant win to tout. During its first 24 hours on the market, Halo: Reach logged sales to the tune of $200 million in the US and Europe alone. That figure easily bested Halo 3's $170 million day-one sales, though it also came up well shy of the $310 million high-water mark set by the multiplatform Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.




Today, Bungie has returned to offer a more granular look at the performance of its final entrant in the Halo franchise before shifting focus to its Activision project. Though Bungie didn't offer a specific player count, the Washington-based developer said that Reach's number of online unique users during the first week of availability was equivalent to that of Halo 3's unique online users over the past 45 days.





Halo: Reach's opening week figures easily bested Halo 3's.

As far as concurrent users go, Halo: Reach's first-week numbers surpassed Halo 3's all-time high by more than 65 percent, Bungie said. The studio went on to note that more than 70 million games were played from September 13-20, with more than 2 million files uploaded to the File Shares server. In terms of playtime, gamers have spent more than 5,901 years combined in online games.



Despite the solid performance, Halo: Reach was not the top Xbox Live title for the week of September 13 in terms of unique users. After some confusion, Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 retained its seat atop the play chart, still going strong since its November 2009 launch. Bungie noted today, though, that its "sources" indicate that Halo: Reach has managed to unseat Modern Warfare 2 into week two.

 

Above: Halo Reach! Finish the fight! Oh… wait a minute…



In case you missed the marketing blurb posted up by every single gaming publication on the planet, Halo: Reach introduces a brand new mechanic into the series with armor abilities. Each of these perks adds quite a bit more bang to your run-of-the-mill Halo multiplayer match. While advanced strategies regarding each armor ability are still in their fledgling stages, online play has already demonstrated quite a few “do’s” and “don’ts.”









Sprint



Above: Haul ass in Halo: Reach



What is it?



The Sprint armor ability is exactly as it sounds: you run faster when it’s activated. Halo fans have been begging for a sprint feature since Halo: Combat Evolved. Well, it only took around 9 years to get the coding right, but Bungie has finally delivered.









Do’s

Me First! Me First!!



Sprint affords you a much higher mobility than anyone else on the battlefield (you know; assuming that they aren’t also using Sprint). Take advantage of that to snatch up your favorite startup weapons and vehicles.



Sure, your team of Major League Gaming hopefuls will probably be bitching the entire match about how you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. F#$@ those guys. You’re the one who gets to drive the Scorpion Tank while equipped with the rocket launcher and sniper rifle; not them.



Peace Out





Above: RUN!!!



While fighting to your last breath over and over again is all heroic and whatnot, living looks much better on the scoreboards. Should an enemy get the drop on you and take out half your shields before you even know what’s going on, don’t turn to face your assailant. Show everybody what a skittish little bunny rabbit you are by hauling ass out of there. Seriously. Leg it to somewhere safe to recover and counterattack.



Melee Marathon Man



The Sprint armor ability is a godsend for all of you plasma sword-wielding sociopaths. The technique is simple enough. Run like Hell towards the person you want to plasma shank. Make sure to stop sprinting once you are within close proximity of your prey, as you cannot attack while sprinting.









Don’ts

The One-Man Army



Being the first one to get a kill is awesome; rushing ahead of your team to engage the enemy is not. You’re fast, not invincible. There’s nothing special about being the first to get a bunch of enemy ordinance lodged in your teeth.



Stick with your team, chief.


Above: Halo Reach! Finish the fight! Oh… wait a minute…



In case you missed the marketing blurb posted up by every single gaming publication on the planet, Halo: Reach introduces a brand new mechanic into the series with armor abilities. Each of these perks adds quite a bit more bang to your run-of-the-mill Halo multiplayer match. While advanced strategies regarding each armor ability are still in their fledgling stages, online play has already demonstrated quite a few “do’s” and “don’ts.”









Sprint



Above: Haul ass in Halo: Reach



What is it?



The Sprint armor ability is exactly as it sounds: you run faster when it’s activated. Halo fans have been begging for a sprint feature since Halo: Combat Evolved. Well, it only took around 9 years to get the coding right, but Bungie has finally delivered.









Do’s

Me First! Me First!!



Sprint affords you a much higher mobility than anyone else on the battlefield (you know; assuming that they aren’t also using Sprint). Take advantage of that to snatch up your favorite startup weapons and vehicles.



Sure, your team of Major League Gaming hopefuls will probably be bitching the entire match about how you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. F#$@ those guys. You’re the one who gets to drive the Scorpion Tank while equipped with the rocket launcher and sniper rifle; not them.



Peace Out





Above: RUN!!!



While fighting to your last breath over and over again is all heroic and whatnot, living looks much better on the scoreboards. Should an enemy get the drop on you and take out half your shields before you even know what’s going on, don’t turn to face your assailant. Show everybody what a skittish little bunny rabbit you are by hauling ass out of there. Seriously. Leg it to somewhere safe to recover and counterattack.



Melee Marathon Man



The Sprint armor ability is a godsend for all of you plasma sword-wielding sociopaths. The technique is simple enough. Run like Hell towards the person you want to plasma shank. Make sure to stop sprinting once you are within close proximity of your prey, as you cannot attack while sprinting.









Don’ts

The One-Man Army



Being the first one to get a kill is awesome; rushing ahead of your team to engage the enemy is not. You’re fast, not invincible. There’s nothing special about being the first to get a bunch of enemy ordinance lodged in your teeth.



Stick with your team, chief.

The do's and don'ts of Halo: Reach's armor abilities


An online idiot's guide to how not to get murdered in multiplayer with Reach's snazzy new armor abilities

Words: Jordan Baughman, GamesRadar US

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Above: Halo Reach! Finish the fight! Oh… wait a minute…



In case you missed the marketing blurb posted up by every single gaming publication on the planet, Halo: Reach introduces a brand new mechanic into the series with armor abilities. Each of these perks adds quite a bit more bang to your run-of-the-mill Halo multiplayer match. While advanced strategies regarding each armor ability are still in their fledgling stages, online play has already demonstrated quite a few “do’s” and “don’ts.”









Sprint



Above: Haul ass in Halo: Reach



What is it?



The Sprint armor ability is exactly as it sounds: you run faster when it’s activated. Halo fans have been begging for a sprint feature since Halo: Combat Evolved. Well, it only took around 9 years to get the coding right, but Bungie has finally delivered.









Do’s

Me First! Me First!!



Sprint affords you a much higher mobility than anyone else on the battlefield (you know; assuming that they aren’t also using Sprint). Take advantage of that to snatch up your favorite startup weapons and vehicles.



Sure, your team of Major League Gaming hopefuls will probably be bitching the entire match about how you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. F#$@ those guys. You’re the one who gets to drive the Scorpion Tank while equipped with the rocket launcher and sniper rifle; not them.



Peace Out





Above: RUN!!!



While fighting to your last breath over and over again is all heroic and whatnot, living looks much better on the scoreboards. Should an enemy get the drop on you and take out half your shields before you even know what’s going on, don’t turn to face your assailant. Show everybody what a skittish little bunny rabbit you are by hauling ass out of there. Seriously. Leg it to somewhere safe to recover and counterattack.



Melee Marathon Man



The Sprint armor ability is a godsend for all of you plasma sword-wielding sociopaths. The technique is simple enough. Run like Hell towards the person you want to plasma shank. Make sure to stop sprinting once you are within close proximity of your prey, as you cannot attack while sprinting.









Don’ts

The One-Man Army



Being the first one to get a kill is awesome; rushing ahead of your team to engage the enemy is not. You’re fast, not invincible. There’s nothing special about being the first to get a bunch of enemy ordinance lodged in your teeth.



Stick with your team, chief.





Above: Mr. Blue Guy thought he was a badass. Now look at him. LOOK AT HIM!





Another do of JetPack, hijacking an air vehicle, especially an UNSC helicopter and dropping it off a cliff then jetpacking away, but not after hovering away from the battlefield with two helpless enemy Spartans onboard.



I alo  have to say that active camo is my fav.... another do is sorta camping but its fun for awhile in the beginning, rush a power weapon and leave it there, go camo and just wait, when u get ur first bite kill that sucka


The Don't for the Drop Shield reminds me of a team who was seriously overusing the thing, so I charged into the shield they were hiding in a fired a rocket inside it. Sure, it was a suicide, but I got an Overkill out of it.
 
Halo Reach is awesome in every way and we all know it!! If you haven't witnessed the best game of 2010 Halo Reach yet, buy it below for only $50.00 Dollars:
 
 

Reach For The Halo Newbie

Halo Reach' Campaign Rocked But Was Too Short

Halo Reach Campaign Was Too Easy For Most Gamers

The Sniper Rifle Brings Head-Shot Haven In Halo Reach

Halo's online community is a phenomenon, breaking gameplay records with every new release.


With the enjoyable but problematic Halo: Reach single player campaign behind me, I decided I was ready for Halo’s main event: online multiplayer.


The entire Halo franchise has been responsible for selling millions of Xbox Live gold memberships, as legions of wannabe Spartans swarm online to blow each other away in a variety of game modes. Reach has been no exception, with Halo developer Bungie’s playing statistics for the title including some staggering numbers.


In a news update last Friday, Bungie unveiled such figures as 31 million games played, tallying up to 953 years of automatic matchmaking games if they were played end-to-end. The peak on launch day was 700,000 players logged in and playing Reach simultaneously. Even more incredible is that these figures were released before the game’s first weekend, only three days after its Tuesday release.




Halo: Reach was played by a huge number of fans in its first days of release.

Clearly, this is one seriously popular game online, so I had to get into it.



My first step was to play through part of the story co-operatively with some friends, in this case my GameTaco co-conspirators Smoolander, Wall, and Mr Ak. Despite my lack of confidence, we kicked off in the second-highest difficulty mode, “Heroic”.



Immediately, the game was vastly improved. On higher difficulty and with four human players, the game throws far more enemies at your team, making the battlefield feel far more dynamic and chaotic. We blasted through the first few levels, taking turns driving the Warthog jeeps and operating turrets (except for Smoolander, who walked the whole way in order to get an Xbox achievement).





The cooperative campaign provides some of the chaotic intensity missing from the single-player experience.

We crashed through those levels so quickly that some in the group suggested we crank the difficulty to maximum, the dreaded “Legendary”. Sadly, this was where some very simplistic game design became glaringly obvious. On this difficulty level, rather than becoming smarter or more accurate with their weapons, the alien enemies simply became nearly impervious to damage. While the added challenge was enjoyable, there is something very unsatisfying about sniping a Elite warrior with eight headshots, only to have him shrug off every one of them and kill you with a single returned shot.



This was nothing, though, compared to the experience we had trying to fly helicopters through a city skyline, dogfighting with enemy craft and landing on rooftops to launch raids against hostile infantry. This section was, in a word, broken. Despite the game assuring us that certain checkpoints had been recorded, after our frequent deaths we found ourselves respawning in apparently random positions on the very large map. Far too often one or two players would be stranded at the start of the level with no helicopter to carry them to the action, and at least once a player respawned without having died first. It was extremely frustrating, and cast a momentary dark cloud over our otherwise fun gaming session.



Of course, the Halo experience cannot be considered complete without engaging in some random matchmaking battles with strangers on Xbox Live, so that was to be the final stage in my Halo baptism. Online Halo players have something of a reputation in the wider gaming community, being notorious for obscene trash-talking and poor sportsmanship. I braced myself for sharp questions about my sexual orientation and baseless claims about my mother’s sexual proclivities and logged in.





Sadly, Halo: Reach's customisable matchmaking doesn't always provide the desired results.

As it happened, my worry was groundless. Despite my preconceived notions, I never received a single word of abuse. I was never even called a “noob” (even though that is what I undoubtedly was). In those initial deathmatch rounds, the worst thing that was done to me was to kill me, over and over again. It was humiliating.



To me, this highlighted one of the issues with an entrenched gaming community like the one that has formed around Halo. Many of these players have been Halo fans for years, some of them going right back to the inaugural Halo: Combat Evolved, released on the original Xbox in 2001. When a large core of the playing community is extremely good at the online game, newcomers can feel locked out, because they keep dying before they can learn anything. How can you develop skills and learn the map layouts when you’re always being killed within seconds of spawning?



Thankfully, Bungie took that into account, building a “similar skill level” filter into Reach’s matchmaking. I switched it on and set the game looking for someone for me to play against. It timed out, returning no matches. Oh well, I thought, the game has only been out for a bit over a week, so there must be some other newbies online. I told the game to search again, and a minute or so later I got the same result: no matches.



As a beginning player wanting to learn the ropes of the competitive online game modes, this frustrated the hell out of me. I know there must be other new players out there, but for some reason the game could not find any of them for me, at least on that occasion.



Disillusioned by deathmatch, I decided to try some random matchmaking on a cooperative game mode. Reach’s Firefight mode is similar to Gears of War’s Horde mode, with wave after wave of increasingly tough enemies mobbing the players’ defensive position. The difference in Firefight is that you can win: only a particular number of enemies will attack, and killing all of them within the time limit will win the game for the human team and award a score bonus.



It was in Firefight that I found my online Halo home. I was lucky enough to be matched with some pleasant and cooperative fellow players who were happy to chat with me as we fought, giving me pointers and sympathising with my many deaths. Perhaps I am just not psychological made up for deathmatch, as I found playing the campaign with my friends or engaging in co-op firefights with random strangers on Xbox Live far more enjoyable.



That was my epic Halo: Reach experience. I still prefer my keyboard and mouse, with the twin analogue sticks being most irritating to me when trying to use a zoomed-in sniper rifle, but I got reasonably good with the controls eventually and had quite a lot of fun.



Even so, my overall goal was to try to find out what all the fuss is about. Halo: Reach had one of the biggest launches in entertainment history, earning $us200 million in its first day of sales, three times the first day box office of cinematic record-holder The Dark Knight. Bungie must be doing something right to capture and retain such a massive audience.



Halo: Reach, online and off, struck me as a good shooter with some clever design features, but never outstanding in any way. Perhaps I am just too much of an outsider to understand its enduing appeal; maybe I am just a noob after all.

Which Halo Campaign Toughest



Halo Reach Had Some Interesting Foes

 

Halo Reach Didn't Have Much Of A Plot For Their Campaign




There Was Some Overpowered Lasers In The Campaign



The Campaign Was Not Even Close To The Difficulty Of Halo 2's

  
With Halo: Reach being Bungie's swan song for the series, it seemed the right time for a group of Halo experts to figure out which Halo game is the hardest. Among the committee that spent dozens of hours debating (and by hours, I mean minutes) are Halo aficionados Hilary Goldstein (that's me!), Will Tuttle, David Clayman, Erik Brudvig, Arthur Gies, and Nate Ahearn.

We judged the overall campaign difficulty for each game, considering both the single-player experience and the co-op experience. And always with a mind on the Legendary difficulty, since that's the true measure of each Halo experience. Co-op difficulty was a major influencing factor in the overall rankings, since many of the single-player experiences are fairly comparable for most of the games in the series.

Here are our picks from easiest to hardest.

Halo: Combat Evolved

Difficulty:
Scared Little Grunt It might have seemed tough nine years ago, but give Halo: CE a try now and you'll likely find yourself giggling at how easy it is to take down the Covenant. Despite the lack of cool moves like vehicle jacking, the weapons hold a ton of ammo, you can stock up on grenades, and the assault rifle is a beast. All the years of playing Halo make the original a cake walk. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The series should continually get tougher.

Halo 3
Difficulty:Really Hard
Non-Sniping Jackal Even Bungie admits that Master Chief had turned into a super hero by Halo 3. Though the single-player may be comparable in difficulty to some of the other games (Flood snipers, really?!), the challenge is negated the minute your friends join in. Halo 3's co-op campaign doesn't scale. That means the challenge is three times less when you have three friends playing with you. Not an exaggeration: We beat Halo 3 on Legendary with four players in just a couple of hours at the review event.

Halo 3: ODST
Difficulty:Normal
Angry Brute Putting you in the shoes of an ODST meant your character's abilities had to be stifled. No more super-human Master Chief stuff. You get one weapon to wield and, in the spirit of the first Halo, you have health that doesn't automatically regenerate but requires health packs. ODST is actually toughest at the outset, because it's hard to accept that, as a lone wolf ODST, you just shouldn't try and stand toe-to-toe with every enemy you encounter. It takes some time to acclimate, and once you do, caution is often the smarter choice over the usual Halo bravado.

Halo 2
Difficulty:Almost Too Hard
Sword-Wielding Elite Those God damned Jackal snipers, am I right? Anyone who played Halo 2 on Legendary can attest to how incredibly annoying those snipers could be. They could snipe the pixel off a gnat. But where Halo 2 gets really tough is when you play co-op. When one person dies, you're both sent back to the last checkpoint. When you have some truly tough (and unfairly accurate enemies) this can make progression through the campaign with a buddy close to impossible at times.

Halo: Reach
Difficulty:Easy
Many, Many Hunters Bungie promised that Halo: Reach was the hardest Halo game and that was no lie, due to scaling cooperative play. The campaign has some tough difficulty spikes towards the end, but nothing a seasoned vet can't fight their way through. It's hard, don't get me wrong, but it's not impossible on your own. However, the difficulty scales in co-op, meaning that if you have three friends in tow, the game is basically three times as hard. Considering that Halo: Reach is already a pretty hard game to beat, upping the difficulty provides, well, a legendary challenge that only the best group of Halo players can hope to overcome. Halo Reach had a very good campaign but I put all of the skulls on and beat it with a bud in just one night [my night being 18 hours]!! This is astonishing compared to Halo 3 which took atleast three days on legendary. I think all of the weapons and the fact that by now Halo fans have become consummate at the halo campaigns are contributing factors to why it seemed so easy to beat Halo Reach campaign even on the toughest of difficulty settings. Halo Reach indeed has a few more challenges to come just not with the easy campaign. Overall, my opinion is that Halo 2 had the hardest campaign because they were parts with overpowered elites and vehicles with no effective artillery to combat them. Of course maybe the real fact is disappointment in Halo Reach Campiogn because the ending with the covenant ships attacking the tower and you having to destroy the halo or whatever that red thing was, was not too impressive of a bang to go out on. The previous halos had a special combo of bosses or left the toughest part for last, but in this campaign in Reach; I didn't die once barely on the last level [well, maybe twice to the spikers]. Point being that Halo Reach has it all when it comes to matchmaking but maybe one year is not enough time to create a challenging enough campaign.



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Which Halo game did you think was the toughest? Give us your thoughts in the comment section below.

Halo Reach Has Changed From The Beta

When you bring 3 million people into a multiplayer beta, you expect to get some good info out of it. In this case, that holds true. We already saw the beta help Bungie sort out some server issues, and convince them that they could handle the load of a Firefight Versus mode. Further, we've already seen some preliminary gameplay tweaks that came about from beta feedback.

But that was many weeks ago, and a lot has changed in Halo Reach since then. In addition to the obvious additions like new maps and new game modes, Bungie has made another round of gameplay tweaks based on feedback from the beta.

Here's a list of some of the changes. Some of them are a few weeks old, and some of them are brand spanking new.

* Increased run speed
* Increased jump height
* Grenades nerfed; smaller damage, smaller radius, smaller visual impact
* Spamming of armor lock removed
* Armor lock will no longer drain an opponents shield when they melee you
* Shield recharge time lengthened
* Encounter time increased
* Head shot characteristics of weapons altered
* Elites were overpowered; their shield recharge time has been increased.
* Invasion mode is now two rounds, one as Spartan and one as Elite


Thank god for the mitigation of the power of the grenade. Seriously, one grenade could kill you in the Beta with full shields. As for the run speed, diggs to that. In the Beta the Spartans were too slow and the Elites were like Zombies with swords flying everywhere. Overall, these changes were made to make the game more fair and more genuine of a playing experience and I think these were the right moves to make. If you haven't salvaged your copy Of Halo Reach yet do so below and receive a $20.00 Amazon Gift Card:

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