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Most Popular. New Releases. Desktop Enhancements. Networking Software. Trending from CNET. Visit Site. This week's flight returns bigger and better, bolstered with more multiplayer content than the previous July trials, and available to all Halo Insiders who registered on time.
Successful applicants score two weekends with Halo Infinite's multiplayer, and for Industries, that means larger player counts to test its online offerings. With playtimes slated for Sept. Big Team Battle, now upgraded with up to 24 player lobbies, arrives one week later, from Oct.
Notably, Arena will also be available alongside Big Team Battle during the second weekend of testing. The first Halo Infinite preview spotlighted its new Training Mode, featuring AI-controlled bots designed to emulate real-world players and sharpen your aim. While Industries has published a strict schedule of Halo Infinite beta times for matchmaking, its bots will remain playable throughout the three-day test windows.
Halo Infinite's battle pass and new customization systems also return in this flight. The second Halo Infinite beta went live on Sept. However, the team has stated "late-breaking issues" could derail the rollout. This already happened once, although the developers were able to resolve the issue quickly and roll back a previously announced delay. The beta is currently rolling out to players worldwide, but be aware that issues may potentially affect access to the game.
The second preview is marginally larger at 20GB, likely due to the additional content in this flight. We may also see an additional update for the Halo Infinite preview later this month ahead of the second week of playtesting. This update would precede the addition of Big Team Battle with various bug-fixing tweaks, not uncommon, given the work-in-progress nature of the project. Previous Halo Infinite flights were tied to Microsoft's Halo Insider Program, allowing applicants to sign-up for future pre-release tests for upcoming Halo projects.
The application process required players to share details on their Xbox console, PC specifications, and other gaming habits, with Industries selecting a diverse pool of participants from the lineup. Halo 2 will pack twice as many vehicles, including troop carriers and more flying machines. It will feature destructible environments and missions set in low gravity. It will deliver full-blown online battles between an army of armor-suited Master Chiefs and alien Elites.
It's sequel with so much more of Jones ceases concentration on the design process for a sec and tries: "I think the game is gonna be And wrapped in bacon. The Bungie guys call it a "shield ship. Squads of space marines march from the main hatch and prep for an alien assault the instant the ship touches down. A few troopers hop on the back of all-terrain four-wheelers--one of Halo 2's many new vehicles --and zip up a hillside.
These guys are snipers, and when they reach the hilltop they dismount and take up positions. Then everything happens at once. Enemy Grunts, Jackals and Elites--the various races of the troublemaking alien alliance known as the Covenant--pour from their bunker and begin blasting at the marines. Some marines dash headlong into the fight.
Others cover their compadres from behind trees and rocks. Explosions erupt. Glowing volleys from rapid-fire energy weapons criss-cross the terrain. The snipers on the hillsides take beads on targets. Everyone works together. It's like a bona-fide military attack force. Don't worry--he'll show up eventually, once the level is fully designed. But anyone who's played the original game's Silent Cartographer beach battle think Saving Private Ryan with rayguns and supersonic troop characters knows that the battleground we just described is Master Chief's ultimate playground.
And it's the kind of big-scale, teamwork-oriented commotion that Bungie plans to evolve for Halo 2's single-player experience. And now I'm not talking about ordering your squad around or anything like that, but you're going to be fighting alongside marines and against organized aliens a lot more than in Halo 2. The shield-ship skirmish we just watched is actually a Bungie test level that'll wind up highly modified in the final Halo 2 product.
We dunno where the battle fits into Halo 2's overall plot. And even if we did, we wouldn't tell you. Why spoil the story of a game that's still more than a year away? But if you've seen Halo 2's wowie-zowie teaser trailer and if you haven't, go to www. That's where Halo 2 kicks off, although the trailer isn't the game's opening cinema. A brief period has passed since Halo i's finale, in which we saw Master Chief obliterate the enigmatic Halo ring-world.
He had just crushed a Covenant force and an army of mushball space mutants known as The Flood. Now he's returned to Earth with Cortana--the chatty female A. The Covenant have wiped out every last human-colony world. Earth is all that's left. Master Chief and Cortana's mission is clear: Hightail it planetside to back up Earth's forces and repel the alien blitz. Sounds like more than enough mission for one game, right?
Well, that ain't the half of it. So far, we've seen concepts for a level set in a hydroponic plant; on an orbiting space outpost; and on a mining station floating in the upper wisps of a gas giant, where hurricane-force gales make it tough just to walk, let alone massacre Covenant bad guys.
One mission's set on a moon we're not sure if it's Earth's or another world's , complete with weak gravity that drops the game's hyper-realistic physics into slow-mo. We watched Master Chief leap three times his height to reach a secret door to the Covenant's moon base. The kick from his rifle even slowed his descent when he fired downward while falling. Bungie is working on moon-buggy-style vehicles, which'll take stratospheric jumps in the low lunar gravity. And just think of all the low-G tricks you'll be able to try in multiplayer But we'll get to network play later.
At some point in Halo 2, the Covenant's assault on our home planet comes to a close. Just don't expect the end-game credits to roll when it happens. Instead, Master Chief and Cortana will zip deep into the heart of Covenant territory, attacking the source of the enemy's power.
The climactic battle that follows will bring a measure of closure to the Halo saga, something that was missing from the first game. Ultimately, humanity was in the same place as when the game started. We do know Halo 2 will reveal a lot more about the aliens and the motives behind their intergalactic assault and battery on humanity. Jones says, "or they just came across as the stupid cliche of an alien race that ruthlessly attacks mankind.
Nobody knew about their social structure or anything, but I had hoped people would give us credit and realize there's more to the Covenant than what we showed. We're really expanding on them in Halo 2. There's a whole bunch of the story we still have left to tell, and that's going to be a lot of fun.
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