Nintendo may've opened the floodgates for non-traditional button-mashers, but Microsoft’s bread is still buttered by the hardcore contingent and these decidedly non-casual gamers have been holding their breath for months to enter the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, which finally went live Wednesday after oh so many problem-fraught hours.
Like the Star Wars fanatics who, in 1998, paid full-price to see the Episode One trailer before screenings of the execrable Meet Joe Black, countless Halo vets had purchased Crackdown last winter exclusively for its beta code (luckily the game was a fun lark, at least after you got powerful enough to toss cars and leap tall buildings in a single bound).
The Halo hype has recently gone into overdrive with H2 hitting its 5 millionth player and 700 millionth game on May 9th, a multiplayer launch party in Hollywood attended by, um, Paris Hilton (do they have 360s in jail?) and the long-awaited announcement that Master Chief’s trilogy-ender will hit the racks on September 25th.
Then, as tens of thousands who decided to play hooky from work and school booted up their Xbox 360s Wednesday morning and, well, nothing happened. The sheer number of downloaders broke the interweb. D’oh! After a dozen or so tense hours at Bungie HQ, they finally got the system unjammed and are making up for it by extending the beta test from June 6 to June 10th.
So is it worth the wait? Well, I actually scored an advance “Friends and Family” code and had the opportunity to be slaughtered all weekend long by players impossibly better than me. I’d run about the Tatooine-reminiscent Snowbound map (one of three on offer, along with High Ground and Valhalla) where I would get killed, resurrected and re-killed.
Whee!
Of course, there weren’t enough players at first for the new ranking system to kick in, a revamp intended to match gamers of equal skill to avoid the frustration of being hopelessly overmatched. They’ve also added a so-called “A-Hole Button” to quiet the potty-mouthed teenage boys hellbent on adding audio insult to virtual injury.
The other bummer was the graphics, which are fine enough don‘t offer the jaw-dropping imagery that the post-Gears of War nation now expects from its now-gen multiplayer throw downs (expect plenty of "Halo 2.5" gripes).
Still, it is Halo 3 for frak's sake and now that the masses are onboard, I might actually stand a chance against them. For the next three weeks I plan on honing my grenade-launching and rifle-shooting skills so I can start taking down some a-holes with more than a mute button.