The story of the game is that there is a giant Teddy Bear birthday party…but Naughty Bear wasn’t invited. Naughty Bear decides the right thing to do is to bring Daddles a present anyways, but on his way to deliver it he gets laughed at by the other bears. Naughty then realizes what he should do in light of this.

Go on a Homicidal Rampage, terrorize the other bears, and brutally murder them.

Teach Those Bears a Lesson

The game itself plays like a cross between an adventure and stealth game. The main objective is to complete level objectives, get revenge on the other bears, and collect Naughty Points. Your Naughty Points are what is used to score your efforts, and can be achieved in many different ways.

You get Naughty Points by scaring, and killing the other bears, but outright murder isn’t the best option if you are going for lots of points. The key to the game is the ability to scare the stuffing out of one of the bears, and let him live to tell the others his tale. The more scared you can get the bears, the higher your multiplayer will get, and the more creative you are with how you deal with them, the more points you can get. But you have to be careful, if you let a scared bear go, he could call the cops-or the army. You have to find the balance of where you can still keep Naughty safe while scaring.

You have many different weapons, traps, and environmental hazards you can use to your advantage against the other bears to help you score points. There are conventional weapons like machetes, cricket bats, guns and hammers, but you can also use things like fridges, cake mixers, electrical boxes and BBQ’s. There are also unlockable costumes and hats that will make the bears in the world act differently towards you. Naughty Bear claims to have incredible replay value because of how many different ways you can go through each level.

Naughty Bear has Weapons Galore

The lasting appeal here isn’t just the core game mechanic, its the presentation. Sure there are plenty of games out like Gears of War that are full of gore, but Naughty Bear takes the comical approach. Instead of buckets of blood being sprayed around, the bears explode into clouds of stuffing. Instead of manly grunts and screams, its high pitched wails and shrieks. It’s the overall feel of taking something innocent and twisting it into a horror movie, and it’s hilarious.

But wait there is more! Naughty Bear actually has a multiplayer mode. So after you are done murdering helpless AI Teddy’s, you can hop online and compete against other real people. The modes announced so far are an Oddball like Cake Walk mode, where one bear has to hold onto a cake for as long as possible while avoiding enemy bears. A Scavenge like Jelly mode, where 3 bears have to run into the woods and collect plates of Jelly while a player controlling Naughty Bear lurks in the shadows. There is also Assault, a 2v2 game type where one team is defending a gold statue while the other is trying to destroy it, and Golden Uzi, a game type like Juggernaut where one bear has a golden uzi and the others try to kill him and take that Uzi.

Naughty Bear is the type of game you don’t want to miss. It is going to go under a lot of gamers radars, but the ones who do find it are going to have a rare gem. Naughty Bear comes to the Xbox360 and Playstation 3 June 29^th.

And for horror fans, don’t miss Amazon and Gamestop’s pre-order bonuses, a Freddy Krueger Costume from Amazon and a Jason Vorhees Costume from Gamestop.

Let me start by talking about the single player campaign. The game starts a bit in the past, The Optimus Prime is just beginning his rise to power and putting together the Autobots, while Megatron is himself doing the same. The game uses two separate campaigns that guide you through the story. You can choose to play either the Decepticon or Autobot campaign first, but the Decepticon campaign takes place first in time.

There will be a cast of familiar robots, like Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime), Bumblebee (the original, not the version from the recent films), Grimlock, Ironhide, Jazz, and Kup. On the Decepticon side there is Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Thundercracker and Skywarp. All these names should be familiar to anyone who has seen the original animated series or movie.

The Real Bumblebee is Back

Developer interviews have revealed that the story of the game is going to heavily focus on the start of the conflict between the Decepticons and Autobots, as well as dig a little deeper into the motives and personalities of the Transformers themselves.

So what about the Multiplayer? Honestly, what makes this game perk players ears is not a single player campaign, its the well done multiplayer.

First off we have Escalation mode, a take on the ever so popular horde wave after wave of enemies survival mode. You can choose to play as Autobots or Decepticons, and the goal is to last as long as you can against increasingly difficult waves of enemies. What brings a refreshing twist is the class system in War for Cybertron, which is in effect during Escalation mode.

You will have the choice of playing 4 different classes in the multiplayer modes:

Scout- A small, quick, stealthy wielder of shotguns, pistols and sniper rifles.

Soldier- The Heavy Weapons Robot, wielding Rocket launchers, machine guns and gatling guns, as well as devastating melee attacks.

Leader- The Leader is exactly what he sounds like, a big robot who INSPIRES Buffs his teammates.

Scientist- Every game needs a medic, and the scientist is just that.

Expect Numerous Gritty Battles

The Escalation mode has also taken a few ideas from other popular Wave based survival games. By killing enemies, you earn credits, and at the end of each round, these credits are used to buy health, weapons, and ammo. Weapons and ammo are self explanatory, but the reason for buying health packs is because of the way health is handled. You have regenerating health, but your total health is divided into sections, and you can only regenerate enough to fill the section you are currently at. So for example, if you are shot down to 46% of your health, you will only regenerate to the 50% mark.

When you run out of health, you are knocked into the down-but-not-out stage, where you are crippled on the ground, but can still shoot, and still be revived, and as an added bonus, if you don’t get revived, you can activate a personal self destruct.

The actual head to head multiplayer has a few different game types such as Team Deathmatch, Free for all, and a Domination node like game type.

War for Cybertron is also using the character progression model that has worked so well for the Modern Warfare series, allowing players to level up each class, customize weapons, armor abilities and Perk like bonuses…as well as Kill Streaks. All of these upgrades are unlocked by leveling through playing each class. The upgrades and abilities give you the option to play each class in numerous different ways.

And by far the coolest multiplayer aspect: When you click in the left stick to sprint, you transform into a car, or plane…awesome.

Transformers: War for Cybertron has all the ingredients of a great game, add in the nostalga factor for Transformers fans, and it turns into a must have. Transformers: War for Cybertron hits stores June 22^nd for the Xbox360 and Playstion 3, and don’t miss the Gamestop pre-order bonus to get Shockwave as a playable character.

Don't Miss Your Chance to Play as Shockwave

The game itself follows the storyline of the first 4 Harry Potter books, bridging together the story with cutscenes where lego characters pantomime key scenes from the story, usually in a more comical way than originally written. After these cutscenes you are tossed into a level that corresponds with that part of the story, and that’s where the fun begins. While playing through these levels, there are multitudes of set pieces you can interact with. By casting the spell Wingardium Leviosa (levitation charm), you can shake, rattle and explode studs, the lego currency, out of candlesticks, tables, plants, and sometimes even people. The studs act as a strong game mechanic, because they unlock things from clothing options to secret characters, and there are thousands of them to collect each level.

Scenes from the game, performed by LEGOs

Aside from the basic game mechanic, each of the over 100 playable characters have slightly different abilities they can use. Throughout the game our wizardly characters like Harry, Ron, and Hermione, will learn spells taken straight from the novels which they can use to manipulate the world. There are also characters who have different abilities, like Hagrids brute strength, Fangs ability to dig, and Ron’s pet rat Scabbers ability to fit into small places. The first time you play through a level, you will be provided with characters who have apt abilities to allow you to finish, but once you unlock the free play mode, you can bring in whatever characters you want, allowing you to access parts of the map that were impossible to reach before.

Play as a wide cast of characters

The game may sound like a stroll through the park because of unlimited continues and generally docile enemies, but its not really a game that focuses too hard on combat, it’s about exploration, and puzzles. There are now moments in this lego world where you will have to find and then re-arrange lego blocks to form staircases, as well as using specific magical spells on the environment to summon up ladders, bridges, or completely reform the terrain. There was even a moment in the demo when I got stuck because I didn’t know I had to destroy the vines that were wrapped around a large block that ended up being a switch to operate a bridge. There are also hidden items strewn about the levels, as well as the reward of collecting a threshold number of studs per level.

Last but not least, there will be a builder mode. Once unlocked by collecting enough golden bricks (from completing levels), you will have the opportunity to create and play inside your own Harry Potter themed lego worlds. A nice added bonus that I have not seen in the other Lego games.

So if you are a Lego fan, Harry Potter fan, or just looking to try something new, look for Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 coming July 29^th, for the 360, ps3, Wii, PSP, and Nintendo DS.

The main objective of a Hack and Slash game is to kill the swarms of enemies filling up the screen, and as is expected, N3II handles this nicely. The game crams enemies from wall to wall for you to fight against, and gives you the opportunity to send dozens of them flying with melee and magical attacks. But as soon as you feel like you are slicing through butter with a warm knife, more powerful enemies are strategically placed to up the challenge. It takes a lot of willpower to not just start flailing at a large rock throwing ogre after seeing how successful that tactic proved on the now deceased horde of fodder.

Watch out for the big guy

So you may be thinking, I’ve played this type of a game before, whats new? Well a few things. First up is the 5 different playable characters, each with different weapon load outs and specialties. Next we have the customizable weapons and magical spells. 4 spells can be equipped at a time, and have varying effects. By holding the left bumper and pressing a face button, you can launch into a large sweeping attack, massive thrust, or a 360 degree blast. All of these magical techniques prove extremely useful when you start feeling overwhelmed.

Surprisingly enough, there are also going to be puzzle and platforming elements. I am eager to see how this truly plays out in the retail version of the game, because I keep asking myself if the break from insane combat will be refreshing or irritating.

Now for the big one, Two Player Online Coop. In N3II you will have to chance to link up with a friend online and play through special Coop missions, as well as a Survival Mode where you fight endless waves of bad guys, all with online leaderboards. All I know is that from playing hours upon hours of Gauntlet: Legends, its always more fun to go in with a friend.

There are plenty of people to kill

The presentation of the game itself isn’t remarkably stunning. The graphics do little in trying to make you stare in awe, the enemies are seemingly bland, but this is balanced by the fact that there are so many of them. Time spent detailing the lesser monsters would have been completely wasted by how clumped together they get. I am not saying by any means that the game looks bad, it lives up to the standard to how current gen game should look and feel.

All in all if you are a big fan of the Hack and Slash genre, or have ever had some hours of fun playing a game like Dynasty Warriors, N3II will not disappoint. If you have never tried the Hack and Slash genre, or consider yourself too hardcore to play something so “mindless”, swallow your pride and give it a shot. I don’t know a single gamer who doesn’t enjoy these games, even if just for a short amount of time. The Release Date is set at June 29th, which is a day that is piling up with new releases.

The only “new” aspect to the game is the harmonized vocals, exclusive to the Green Day set list, similar to what we saw in Beatles Rock Band. If you are not familiar with this new feature, it works like this, 3 mics get hooked up at once, the singer chooses harmonies instead of solo, and from now on 3 different lines will show up. Any of the singers can sing any of the parts, and they all count as one player. As you can see, this adds greatly to the party elemental of Rock Band.

Custom created character models

The game takes place across 3 venues, that capture 3 distinct eras of Green Day. The first venue is a fictional warehouse, a venue created by the collective spirit of Green Day’s early punk days. The second venue is Milton Keynes, the UK Bowl made famous by the 2005 Green Day film, “Bullet in a Bible”. The third is the Fox Theater in Oakland, where the band performed a small show for their newest album.

Worth noting is the fact that the albums Dookie and American Idiot will be available in their entirety, while 21^st Century Breakdown is fully available if you download 6 of the tracks from the Rock Band Music Store. And speaking of the Music Store, all the tracks from Green Day Rock Band are backwards compatible with Rock Band and Rock Band 2.

Get your Green Day rock on

The game will also support all previous Rock Band Instruments, and most Guitar Hero and 3rd party peripherals.

So if you are a Green Day fan, and a Rock Band fan, this game is everything you ever wanted. If you don’t really care about Green Day, then you will most likely pass this one over. If you are the former, check out the demo on Xbox Live and Playstation Network, and look for the game in stores June 8^th.

505’s Backbreaker sits somewhere in the middle ground.

Judging by the title and the games presentation, Backbreaker appears to be a game that will have over the top tackles, people running around on fire, and fireworks going off as receptions are made. Instead we have a realistic attempt at an over the top gameplay style.

Confused? So I am.

The first thing you will notice when you play Backbreaker is the camera. Backbreaker uses a close 3^rd person camera to try and simulate the feeling of being on the field. The only problem with this is that the camera is not realistic to what it is like to be on the field, and because it is locked 3^rd person, makes just running around quite tricky. In real life, even with a helmet and face mask, you still have about 160 degrees of vision, no TV can emulate your peripheral vision, and because of that a more wide angle camera is always a better compromise. The problem with the fixed 3^rd person is that when you try to do a simple loop around another player, the camera shifts completely.

So for example, in real life, if you were running to a person who was in front of you, but there was an obstacle in the way, you would loop around the obstacle, but keep your head facing your target. In Backbreaker, your neck cannot move. So as you run around that obstacle, you are now looking into the stands, and have no idea if the thing you are running towards has moved.

So does a fixed 3^rd person camera seem more realistic, no. And not to mention, this already troublesome camera proves to be nearly impossible to handle when you are switching players. Because you are so close to the action, and everything is so hectic, when you switch players, you have absolutely no idea who, or where you are. It’s not like in most football games where a birds eye camera just moves over to another player, keeping a similar perspective of the field. Instead, its like you are swapping positions with another person.

Example number 2, imagine if you were standing in a room with 21 other people, all mingling around doing different things, and you suddenly swapped places with a random person. You are completely discombobulated for a few seconds, and in that time the play is already over.

I actually found that if I missed a tackle as my “primary” player, that it was more effective to just let my AI do the rest on their own.

The game also boasts for its realistic physics engine that makes every tackle unique. This would be very interesting if this game actually had Backbreaking tackles. I’m sure that every once and a while you will score a good hit that will send someone flying, but most of the time you just watch two rag dolls tumble to the ground on top of each other. Not very exciting. Also, given how mundane most of the tackles are, I really don’t see the need for a replay video to come up after every hit.

The Euphoria engine boasts Realistic Tackles

You literally have to watch skip a replay after every down.

The game does take a unique approach on how you control your player. The right stick functions similar to the right stick in the Skate series, meaning that specific flicks, half and quarters circles will make your player perform their actions. In addition to this there is the right triggers “Aggressive” Mode, in which your player can perform more aggressive as opposed to evasive maneuvers. There is also focus mode (left trigger), which helps the QB focus in on his receivers while passing.

This mechanic is interesting, but at the same doesn’t doesn’t pack enough punch to really hook you in and make you want to keep playing.

Although, the two most interest peeking aspects of this game are Tackle Alley, and create a team.

Because the Madden Franchise has bought out the licenses for the official NFL rosters, competing games have been forced into creating fake teams and players for their Football universes. If you are the type of player who is looking for this kind of customization, Backbreaker promises a “powerful” logo editor, uniform editor, custom player and team names, with the added bonus of being able to bring these custom teams online.

I cannot vouch for how “powerful these editors will be, but unless you are hardcore into customization, this is probably something you are just going to fool around with once or twice.

Tackle Alley is a lot like this

The Tackle Alley is a mini game where you start off holding the ball, and you try to run down the field and evade defenders. Each time you get by, you are respawned on a more difficult wave, which changes the number of defenders, where they spawn on the field, and how they act towards you. The game promises 100 waves of Tackle Alley. This mode will definitely serve as a great time killer when you aren’t in the mood to play regulation matches.

Aside from flashy music and visual style, Backbreaker offers nothing groundbreaking to the football genre. Most hardcore fans are going to stick with Madden, and I feel this is because football games are more about being the commander of a team. Football as a sport is played more through choosing the right plays, subbing in and out players, and controlling draft picks. Backbreaker attempts to go for the more personal experience, stressing the control of the actual players on the field.

Backbreaker hits the stores June 1^st, and I can say I would be glad to see it compete well against the tyrant Madden series.

Halo Reach takes place shortly before the events of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, on the planet Reach, a military hub that also houses over 70,000 civilians. You play as Noble 6, a spartan 3. Spartan 3’s are a line of mass produced soldiers who lack the expert training and combat prowess that Master Chief and the other spartan 2’s had. Because of your weaker armor variant, the Spartan 3’s are scavengers who take what armor and upgrades they can from fallen soldiers on the field, and this explains why the armor sets have so many Permutations this time around.

You fight as part of fire team Noble, which consists of 5 other Spartans, Carter, Kat, Jun, Emile, and the Spartan 2 George. Bungie is again following the trend of the main Hero being a nameless, faceless entity, because supposedly that helps the player feel more immersed in the game, like they are actually there. Your objective is to protect the planet of Reach, which being the main military hub, if lost would prove devastating for the UNSC forces. That is it would be devastating if Master Chief wasn’t a One Man Army who could take on the entire universe, but in line with the story, we don’t even know he exists yet.

The Noble Team

The blessing comes most obviously in the form of the games multiplayer. Its obvious through Reach’s Open multiplayer beta that they are trying to create a near perfect specimen that can not only be enjoyable through Reach, but also used as the footwork for possible future titles to experiment with.

After spending hours inside the Beta, it has become obvious that Bungie is doing it right. They have taken a step back and analyzed other popular FPS titles, and incorporated parts of their success into their own game, but at the same time kept the multiplayer pure to what Halo fans would expect. The new weapons are fun and addicting to use, and provide a more streamlined feeling while playing the game. Gone are the dual wieldable weapons, and in there place are more situation specific replacements. So lets jump right in and talk about these weapons in depth.

Headshot Weapons

The Pistol, DMR (Designated Marksman Rifle), and Needle Rifle are the bread and butter of Halo reach. Each of these guns can Kill an opponent with 4 shots to the body and one to the head, or a single headshot if your enemies shield is down. And don’t forget, the sniper rifle is back.

Pistol- The Pistol comes standard in almost every load out. I have found through playing the beta that the Pistol is a must have weapon. With a bit of practice and skill, you can quickly learn how to bring the pistol into a fight against an assault rifle, and win nearly every time. It’s fast rate of fire allows for quick close range head shots, and even though it looks small, it packs a big punch.

DMR/Needle Rifle-Both these weapons act nearly the same, it’s all about aiming for the head and managing your recoil. Use this weapon from long range and pick people off as they try to cross the middle ground. The only thing to note is the cool effect of the Needle Rifles needles exploding as an enemy dies.

Sniper Rifle-The Sniper Rifle behaves a little differently than in previous Halo’s. Because of the new recoil system, you can’t pump out 4 shoots in a row like you could in the past. Instead, you have to time up a nice head shot, or else its going to be a few seconds before you can take another accurate shot.

Medium/Close Range Weapons

This time around our medium weapons are the Assault Rifle, Plasma Repeater, and the Needler. The Shotgun returns as the up close and personal weapon of choice.

Assault Rifle/Plasma Repeater- Both these weapons function like the Halo 3 Assault Rifle. The only difference is that now the AR has recoil, so slight burst fire is needed, but you should have been bursting in Halo 3 anyway. The Plasma Repeater is the big brother version of the Plasma Rifle, because of the removal of dual wielding, it was a needed buff. The Plasma Repeater functions like the Assault Rifle, only it overheats instead of running out of ammo.

Needler- The Needler comes back with all its Glory. Same basic strategy as always, unload a clip, watch people explode in Pink mist.

Shotgun-Also virtually unchanged. Get up close, shoot, and if they don’t die, punch.

Melee Weapons

Coming back is the Sword, Gravity Hammer, and the good old elbow. The big difference in this game is how the Melee mechanic has changed. If you Melee a player who still has shield left, the damage of the melee attack will only break their shield. A single Melee attack will kill someone without a shield, but not if they have any amount of shield left at all.

Sword- Same as Halo 3, right trigger for a big lunge, right bumper for a quick swipe. And of course, its still a 1 hit kill. The big difference this time around, a well timed melee attack can cause a clash, similar to when 2 swords hit each other in Halo 3.

Hammer- The big hammer is also virtually unchanged. Right trigger for the big slam, right bumper for a quick pommel strike. Try striking out of a Sprint, its devastating.

Basic Melee- Other than the new mechanic regarding shields, everything here should be familiar. You can still hit someone from behind for an instant kill, or you can hold down the button and perform a flourished assassination, with special animation.

Grenades

The Frag and Plasma grenade are back. Nothing special here.

Power Weapons

The power weapons we get in Reach are impressive. My personal new favorite is the Plasma Launcher. We also have the Rocket Launcher, Beam Rifle, and Grenade Launcher.

Plasma Launcher- This weapon is a Plasma Grenade launcher, and it has homing projectiles, and it is awesome. Charge it up, lock on and release a barrage of 1-4 grenades at the target (and yes it can lock onto players, not just vehicles). This weapon is nearly guaranteed to get a kill streak going.

Focus Rifle- This weapon could more easily be understood if it was called the Laser Gun. While holding down the trigger, the gun shoots a Laser, and that beam of Laser keeps going until you release the trigger or overheat. A great weapon to burn those ants…I mean enemies running across no mans land.

Rocket Launcher- The classic Rocket Launcher. Pull the trigger, make a big explosion, get points, and become the most feared and hated player on the battlefield.

Grenade Launcher- Another new weapon with two firing modes. Pull the right trigger to fire a frag grenade that explodes on a set timer, hold the right trigger and fire a grenade that explodes when the right trigger is released. An impressive weapon for trying to shoot around corners, and other hard to reach places where the enemy might be hiding.

The Jet Pack will take you to new height

Load outs

Load outs are the newest feature of Halo Reach that dramatically change the pace of battle. The load outs consist of a primary weapon, sometimes secondary weapon, grenade type, and Armor Ability. How they work is every time you spawn, you choose a load out. These load outs are all pre determined, and cannot be customized like in the Modern Warfare series that they are so commonly compared to. These preset load outs are geared toward a specific play style, and are not all available in all game types.

The armor abilities also require you to have some “Juice”, or energy to use them, and they consume this energy while you use them. Now lets talk about the Armor Abilities.

Sprint- Sprint allows your character to…well…Sprint, for a limited amount of time. This can be extremely useful when you are trying to run away from a fight, or run towards a fight without getting picked off, or running for a power weapon, health pack, to jump, in circles….it lets you run fast, which is always useful.

Jetpack- With the Jet Pack you can fly, for a limited amount of time. This allows you to attack a base and traverse a level in new ways. Use this vertical advantage to surprise your enemies, just be careful on the way down. If you fall from too high, your going to hurt your knees when you hit the ground, unless you crouch right as you land.

Armor Lock- With Armor Lock, your Spartan will punch the ground, and a bubble of energy will surround him, granting temporary invulnerability, as well as dropping the shields of any enemies standing too close as the bubble forms. There are many ways to use the armor lock, if you are stuck by a grenade, Armor Lock removes it, stops rockets or hammers or swords, and if you slam the ground next to an enemy, you have a perfect opportunity to get a quick headshot while his shield is down. Don’t underestimate this one.

Active Camo- Active Camo grants you that weird predator cloaking ability from previous games, as well as scrambling the enemies radar. The slower you move, the most invisible you are, and with the ability to cloak weapons like a hammer or sword, the Active Camo allows you to set up some mean ambushes and sneak attacks.

Evade- This is an Elite only Armor Ability. The Elites in the Beta only had Evade to utilize, but that does not mean its a bad ability. If you have ever seen an Elite in single player dive out of the way of a grenade, you have seen Evade. This ability is similar to sprint in the way it allows you to travel more quickly, but is slightly more effective in how you move at such a fast speed from a dead stop.

The Armor Permutations really show off some Style

Player Investment

So I’ve told you about the weapons and Loadouts, now lets talk about player investment. In Halo reach Bungie is allowing you to build a character that, through player investment, you can truly make your own. The player investment system exists in the form of credits, the more credits you have, the higher rank you will achieve. With higher ranks, there are more armor permutations you can unlock through the new Armory.

The Armory is similar to the armor customization in Halo 3, only now you can buy parts for your suit. When you first delve into the armory, you notice that its not going to be an easy trip to unlock some of the high rank permutations, basically, things get expensive.

Now you can earn credits a few ways, the first being the most basic, multiplayer matches. Since this is assumed, I will skip over that. The second way is through challenges. There will be Daily, Weekly, and Monthly challenges. These challenges will also take place in both single player and multiplayer, and could range from killing a certain amount of players to a part of the campaign in a strange fashion.

Now for the more hardcore style of distinguishing yourself. The Arena

The Arena

The Arena is pretty basic at heart, play matches, get a rating. The matches consist of certain team sizes and game types per season, seasons being a set amount of time such as a month or 2 weeks. Every day if you play at least 3 matches, you will get a rating. From there, you can play as many more matches in that same day to get a better rating. Since the Arena only factors in your 3 BEST scores from a single day, there is no reason not to play as many as possible. Your rating is determined by factors such as Kill to Death ratio, assists, average life team, and betrayals. In the Arena, you are being encouraged to play as a good teammate, not as a crazy lone wolf. Now after you get a few daily ratings, you will be put in a division, these divisions spawn from Steel, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and finally Onyx.

Key point of information here, the HIGHER your Arena score, the better. So if you get your first rating and it says 300, don’t get too excited. You aren’t ranked 300^th in the world, you are actually quite low.

Game Types

So now you know about the Arena, there is one more thing left to talk about, New game types. Slayer, capture the flag, oddball…most of the classics are back, so I will talk about the ones we haven’t seen before.

Head Hunter- This game type quickly became a personal favorite. The objective of the game is to kill an enemy, run over and pick up the skulls that flew out of his dead body, then bring those skulls to a collection circle and get points. Sounds easy, but it gets hectic. After a few minutes of playing the game, the amount of skulls on the field gets insane, and everyone is trying to hoard them all. To make matters worse, the collection circle keeps moving.

Stockpile- An interesting twist on capture the flag. Each team has a capture circle, and there are numerous flags scattered around the map. The objective is to bring as many flags as possible back to your collection circle, and hold them until the circle pings and collects all the flags. Because the collection of the flags is on a timer, it allows for you to sneakily snag flags out of the enemy circle and drop them right a the circle pings, allowing for those flags not to count towards their score.

Invasion- Invasion is a game type that needs some work. On its first day in the Beta, it was obvious that the Spartans had an advantage over the Elites. Invasion works similar to Conquest mode in Battlefield Bad Company 2, where one team, the Elites, are attack and the other, the Spartans, are defending. The objective here is to capture control points and advance down the map towards a Phantom. With each control point that is captured, a new area of the map is unlocked, new load outs are made available, and power weapons and vehicles are dropped into the mix. The game type has potential, but needs some serious fine tuning before it goes live.

The biggest problem so far is the spawning system. You have the ability to spawn on teammates, but only if they are out of combat. For some reason, the game is extremely sensitive in regards to the terms of what out of combat means. Because of this you can get stuck in painfully long respawn times, or you can be forced to spawn extremely far away from the objective, and given the time limit, spawning far away can be fatal for your teams success. Hopefully these issues will be worked out by this Fall.

Generator Defense- In this game type 3 Spartans have to protect 3 generators against 3 Elites. The Spartans have the ability to activate a shield on the generators that lasts for 30 seconds, and the Elites can use any means necessary to destroy the generators when they are vulnerable.

Generator Defense is another game type that just doesn’t seem to have the balance right. Since the Spartans can spawn with DMR’s, they have the ability to pick off the Elites as they try to cross the middle ground, a problem also apparent in Invasion. But all in all Generator Defense doesn’t feel like a Halo game type, and seeing as it’s name in house at Bungie is “Network Test 1”, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see this game type in the live launch of the game.

So thats all I have to say about Halo Reach, the Beta was fun, but sadly is now officially closed. So keep playing Halo 3 and ODST until Halo Reach comes out September 14th, 2010.