RedStarRocket91

UNSC Shotgun, every time. It's not the most powerful, or the longest-ranged, but it's incredibly reliable... and Gods, that firing sound... it's so satisfying.

So basically a variant of Infection where both sides can convert opposing players? Sounds like it could be fun; it's also hypothetically doable in Custom Games, if you don't set a time or kill limit and enable team changing. Still reliant on honour rules, though. Don't know that I'd go out of my way to play it, but it definitely sounds fun enough that I'd like to try it - and I can see it working really well as part of an Action Sack playlist. Except maybe individual scores at the end to determine a winner? Otherwise people might just let the other team kill them if they have friends on that side.

It's just a shame they're all betrayals Best thing to do is either use a 'Power Weapon' (these have to be picked up from the map, you can't spawn with them), Grenades, or just run away. It's very hard to fight two people at once and win.

The best thing to do is try and move WITH your teammates - you can't run around solo nearly as much as you can in Call of Duty as the kill times are longer. The rest depends on what weapons you have and your style of play. If you have a close range weapon get into close, confined spaces with short sightlines. If you have something else, try and stay in the open, though remember you'll need to stay near cover in case you get in trouble.

Haha, lucky you - Merry Christmas! Seriously, I wouldn't worry about it. At some point they might just patch it so that you won't be able to access the maps without actually buying them - until then, think of it as a 'try before you buy'! Also, here is some proof you should be okay!

The timescale is a little forgiving: I'd say maybe three or four minutes? That was if you're in the bathroom or whatever when the game starts (and with matchmaking times being as random as they are, I can understand this happening) you still have time to get back and join in. Maybe you should have to pick a loadout to actually spawn, like in Call of Duty? Or press a button to actually respawn at all? That way you have to actually be sat down and playing to have a character in the game, so if you're afk you literally can't give away kills. And perhaps if you don't spawn within one minute of being able to do so, or whatever, you get autobooted? So that way you can't just hide at the respawn screen to avoid playing.

I really like it - I've played all the maps now and they're not only very well-designed and balanced, but incredibly pretty to look at: seriously, Wreckage might be the single best looking map I've ever seen. As for the cost... yeah, it's overpriced for what you get, but it's in line with the market. Most map packs are around 800MSP so it's not like they're charging way more than average. And if you're willing to wait a bit, I'm sure it'll be on Deal of the Week at some point, so you could save a fair bit of money that way. Plus, you've got to remember that Halo games normally have a 2-3 year lifespan, so you'll get a lot more use out of these than you would from, say, the first Black Ops' map packs, which cost about the same price each and lasted less than a year before the new game came out.

Yeah, they actually made it worth carrying! Seriously though, while it was pretty good in Halo 3 if you used it properly, it was an absolute piece of junk in Reach. Inaccurate at any range, slow firing speed, couldn't headshot, pathetically low damage per round, an appaling magazine size for how many bullets it actually took to kill, very little effect against vehicles... So in short, it's nice to have an Assault Rifle which gets used because it can actually win fights when it's used properly, instead of just because everything else is out of ammunition.

I'm pretty sure they said it would be available in its own playlist at some point, so as far as I know once they've worked out how popular it is they'll decide whether to bring it in as a permanent thing or put it on rotation. But it'll definitely be available without the map packs at some point!

Dictionary.com disagrees.

This is excellent! I'd definitely consider playing with these settings, though I'm not sure I agree with the loadout weapons: surely it would be better to just force everyone to start with a Battle Rifle? That way the left ordnance could be dedicated to a Carbine or Lightrifle, and there'd still be no issues with running out of ammunition?

Yep Yes we can. Custom Games. It won't be exclusive to that forever, and if you don't want early access, don't buy the DLC. No, they're charging you money to play it on DLC maps, same as if you wanted to play them with Slayer or Oddball. Disagreeing =/= not reading your post.

So, one month after its release it's the second most-played game on XBL and that's 'pathetic'? I don't agree at all. And I stand by my claim that 100,000 people online at once is a huge number: that's a minimum, by the way. Once you add up Custom Games and Spartan Ops, you could probably raise that by a good few thousand. And the only reason it isn't in the number one spot for the entirety of XBL is Call of Duty, which is more popular than oxygen these days. And no, doing nothing but complaining isn't going to help, it'll just get you labelled as a troll and ignored. Could Halo 4 be better? Yes, of course it could. But that could be said of any game and I think 343i has done a great job so far: I like the changes and I think it's damn well tested. It's mechanically sound and well-balanced, and aside from a few server hitches and unlock codes being mismanaged there haven't really been any major problems. Calling it a 'beta' is garbage. Do you seriously think they don't have any testers? That they didn't do any testing at all? They tested it WITH THE HELP OF MLG PLAYERS, for goodness' sake. You don't get a higher standard of tester than that!

Dude, that's actually brilliant. I mean seriously, that's brilliant. And I don't say that often! Presumably in Halo 5 Chief will be looking for some way to turn the Prometheans back into humans - you know, digital bodies into physical bodies. Well, Cortana is an actual digitised human (made from a living brain, not a dead one) so maybe she could actually be transformed into a human being?

...you do realise it's been on the disc since launch day, right? You don't need to pay for anything... or download anything... all that's changed is now they actually have a playlist for it in Matchmaking instead of just Custom Games...

I'm incredibly surprised Spec Ops: The Line didn't win anything, that's easily my favourite game of the year!

Unique users =/= population. If you only get 100 people a day playing a game, then in one year's time provided they're different people you'll have 365,000 unique users. Also, 'only' 100,000 unique users per day? Are you seriously suggesting that having the population of a small city is something to be embarrassed about? Halo 2 regularly dropped below 10,000 players at a time, and that was without any other major competitors, and that was nothing to be ashamed of.

Are you sure about that? I mean, I've seen the option to disable them in gametype options, but nothing that just encompasses them in general.

Fully agreed, it's especially bad when fighting against players on Red Team.

Minor spoilers, as the thread isn't titled to warn of it.

In terms of power weapons, everything works pretty well: the most common ones you have access to are the Scattershot and the Railgun, as I remember, and they're both devastating, especially if followed up with melees or precision weaponry. As for the stuff you're likely to be carrying, the absolute best you can do is the Boltshot: its overcharge is devastating and you still have headshot capabilities to deal with the Crawlers who're likely to be swarming around. I've found precision weapons are often too weak to be worth using, as on Legendary it's often around a full clip to down one Knight, and considering how little ammunition you get they just aren't cost-effective: and while an Assault Rifle has something like seven spare magazines, a Battle Rifle gets three, so using up an entire magazine on one opponent is a lot more worrying for precision weapons. Plus, Knights have very little health under their shields, so the time saved getting a headshot isn't worth the extra time needed to lower them in the first place. So overall, I guess I'd recommend people grab a Boltshot as fast as they can, and then either the Suppressor or the Lightrifle based on personal preference: Suppressor if you want an extra punch against Knights, Lightrifle if you want it against the other Prometheans.

Not necessarily, Call of Duty's final killcams always work okay even when the matches themselves are really laggy. I wonder if it's maybe one of the limitations of the engine, trying to show us things from our own perspectives rather than using the data directly from the perspective of the person who got the kill? It works fine in Local and LAN matches, after all. I fully agree. Game ends, a second or two of gameplay to finish whatever fight you're engaged in, final killcam, fade out.

Good video, though I think it could benefit from doing a little more repetition: the Scattershot gets WAY more action than either the Boltshot or the Shotgun there, and I'd be interested to see those two tested a little more heavily: they're naturally quite random weapons, after all. Plus the other thing you've got to account for is that the other guy isn't firing back: with the Shotgun or the Scattershot, if the first round doesn't kill you then you can just keep firing. The Boltshot absolutely HAS to kill in one shot, or due to the cooldown and charge time you're pretty much guaranteed to get killed while waiting for your second shot. Plus, even if the Boltshot is used perfectly, you only get two kills and then you have to reload - while the Shotgun can mow down an entire enemy team and will still have one shot left over before you need to reload. The rate of fire and amount of rounds really can make a big difference when fighting in groups. Overall though, it's a great video (if a little short) and I'm excited to see future ones!

Well, it's very useful if you don't know how you died, or if you want to find someone who's camping, or for discovering how bad your lag is (emptying a clip from the SAW into someone and not even damaging them, for example). Personally I'm not a fan of it: I don't think it's 'bad' or anything, I just don't like it. The ability to toggle it on and off by default would be nice, as while I'm not interested in watching them it wouldn't be fair to get rid of them altogether for those who are. I think that was a glitch: there was something about correcting killcams not displaying properly in one of the recent patches. At the time I just thought it meant fixing the desynchronisation between actions and damage that a lot of people were upset about, but maybe it was just that they weren't displaying?

As SweatyBagels said, just be tactical about it and you'll win every time. Stay out of the open, fight at close ranges and you're pretty much sorted.