It’s only seven weeks now until the eager beavers that Halo fans are will finally be able to get their hands on the third installment of Bungie’s much-loved franchise. Bungie have let people have a go at the game in its multiplayer form via their beta and much information in the form of video footage, maps and suchlike have been flowing round the net like a binary dam hit with a virtual nuke. But very little so far has been seen of the single-player campaign.
While we have had a brief look at the campaign before, we still haven’t been given the opportunity to actually get our Halo-thirsty fingers and thumbs on it. Thankfully, all this has changed, and we were able to grab a very brief stint on a section of the main campaign’s third level at a press event in Amsterdam.
Oh yeah. As a side-note…Bungie just confirmed there is indeed four-player-co-op.
Anyway. On with the info. What you’ll be pleased to know is that we won’t just be recounting a tale of us having a go at the same bit we’ve detailed before. Instead we were able to have a blast at traveling across the Tsavo Highway, a point near the Kenyan coast on the way to New Mombasa.
We begin inside a massive garage of some sort, controlling Shirley Bassey accompanied by a gang of marines all jumping into a Warthog. Oh okay, you’re not Shirley Bassey, it’s some dude called Master Chef, Chief, sorry. It would be good though no?
Anyway, we storm off out into a landscape filled with craggy rocks and hills all cheering and stuff, whoop! This is one of those Halo vehicley set-pieces following a pretty linear path with plenty of opportunity for fun stunts along the way.
The terrain is sparsely populated in terms of both enemies and flora, with the odd dense cluster of Covenant crew gathered round guard outposts ready to be mowed down and/or shot at. It’s worth taking note that these guys can sometimes be ignored and simply driven past but that might not apply in harder difficulties.
As pointed out in the beta playthrough, it feels massively like Halo should, with changes mainly based in enemy behavior and aiming to make access to equipment easier. The left button cycles between items to toss to the ground while X is used to deploy them.
This time round we meet brutes with jetpacks (the little blighters). They’ll shoot into the air before landing a few feet away, which can be quite tricky as they’ll do it without much warning and suddenly you’ll find yourself unprepared in a close-range gunfight.
A little further on and you’ll face a set of Wraith tanks, which you’re able to grab onto and plant grenades to blast them into lovely smithereens. Something new here is the Brute Chopper, a fantastic bit of kit that’s a kind of crazy motorbike with a massive disc for a wheel. It looks lethal and is loads of fun to ride when bikejacked. It boasts some pretty impressive maneuverability and boasts impressive equally notable shielding on its front.
Going on on foot we reached a series of tunnels and barricades protected by angry Covenant. We progressed further, after a series of small fights before reaching more and more enemies, including a ton of pesky Yanme’e (the flying insect-like creatures previously seen in Halo 2) that seemed to just keep coming.
Alas, we had to stop, but judging by what we’ve seen so far Halo fans should certainly be excited, and it isn’t too long now: September 25th in fact.
