I finished this game last night on Legendary with a couple of my friends. Shit was a lot easier with 4 people than just on your own. It's an amazing game but I still consider ODST to be the best game in the series. About the one gripe I had with the game were the Sabre dogfighting stages. They were ridiculously intense battles but lacked an epic soundtrack to make them FEEL climactic. It was pretty nostalgic overall, really. Covenant ship interiors look straight up AMAZING on the 360 hardware and the sound design is as good, if not better than Dead Space. (a game which I consider to have some of the best sound design in this generation of games) The game totally didn't end like I thought it would either but it was consistently white knuckle for us. I'm gonna go through it by myself on Normal just to unlock leftover achievements.

I also spent a good chunk of time playing multiplayer with a couple of my coworkers. Firefight is, by far, our favorite mode. I can easily see us spending as much, if not more, time as we did on ODST's mode and this one is just chock full of a great variety of game modes, not to mention all the stuff you can customize on your own. Does anyone know if we can play Forge-made maps in that? Because that would be RAD~

I like SWAT too but, man, that's a game type that's best kept in tight corridors or small maps and I fucking HATE being dropped into, say, Hemorrhage for that. I agree with Toku; that shit is criminally oversized. I really did miss that map as it was my favorite in the first Halo but it's just way too big in this game.

Did anyone else get the Limited Edition?

And to Encephalon, I got the Legendary Edition.

Cleaned up the OP some, added how to get the Halo Waypoint-required Armors, and added links to the very top of the OP that take you to the current Daily/Weekly Challenges and Playlists.

The flag is now along the corridor and up a ramp from the objective, a very short distance and capture the flag is a lot more balanced now. You can either try to get it there direct and have to fight every step of the way or be a tricksy hobbit and take it one of several long way rounds while your team distracts the enemy. I think it's a great map personally.
Jacking a falcon is even easier than jacking a Banshee using a jetpack, especially if you jump off the spire to do it. Then you can either fly off and face the gunner in to a cliff to annoy him (There's never two gunners, Halo players don't cooperate that well) or just jump out and jetpack safely to the ground while the thing crahses with no pilot. Spire is too big though, as is Haemmorage. I can't understand why when most games put a lot of effort into keeping people together and the action intense, Halo seems determined to place you in big, open, empty expanses. I mean, even Ghost Recon, a game all about precision headshots and sneaking around the joint has multiplayer maps no bigger than Zealot and those are designed for 16 people.

The only lag/connection issues I've had have been occasional waits while we stare at a black screen but if anything those are less frequent than in previous Halo games.

Nah, we continue to have major matchmaking issues with people. Omangus gets dropped frequently, as does Roflfox, Goodhand, and two of my other friends. Last night I think we spent over 10 minutes actually trying to get everyone into a lobby then a game without dropping.

I don't know what it is with you guys getting dropped. A group of 7 friends and myself were playing for 4 hours straight last night and Devo even showed up late after the party was dwindling down to the last three of us. We had a bit of lag here and there but none of us got dropped once or had a server pause.

No idea either. It happens with my friends in multiple groups across different area/continents, and everyone is always green across the board on the Network Status screen. Looking online there's a TON of people bitching about this, so it doesn't seem to be just us or anything. Sometimes we can have a group of 8 players fine no problem, but other times it's a nightmare.

Actually last night was the first time I've had issues where I was getting dropped, but I've definitely been in parties with people and there's been regular issues with at least one person. Hopefully don't run into issues like that again as it was really annoying and in the end I just gave up.

I think that might be to do with Harvey's router, it does seem to be him that suffers from lag and dropouts when we're playing as a group. I've had no problems playing with Phong and other Americans and certainly none when playing with other Brits. Like I said, if anything my connection suffers fewer problems with Reach than it ever did with H3 or ODST. The one problem I have noticed though is that sometimes after matches it'll drop someone out of the party which is a bit annoying if you're reviewing the post-match stats and don't notice they've gone until you've already rolled into a new game.

Yeah, it's not just Harvey or his router.

The game has been really problematic for a lot of people.

I guess my online experience has been limited to fewer people than most of you and for me to be the one without any connection issues is incredibly rare. I swear my housemate has got some kind of bandwidth limiter on my Xbox when he's uploading websites.

I shall count myself lucky to be thus far free from such issues in Reach.

Just a heads up: From now on the Needle Rifle shall be known as the Elite DMR.

I swear to god, Shake's buddies are a riot.

finally found a use for armor lock

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/Sc...61&size=medium
http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/Sc...78&size=medium

Speaking of things that can fuck off, 1 Flag on Boardwalk is pretty hilarious, for those of you who remember this game. Literally the easiest flag cap ever. Guest appearance by Daravon holla

Tails, I am ranked silver in Arena so far. Look forward to seeing your gold star!

P.S. Where are you? I want to play Arena.

My favourite thing about Rocketfight is waiting till there's only one bad guy left and running as close as possible, waiting to get betrayed by a random firing rockets in then booting them so they don't get any credits after the match. I've only had one match of Firefight where lag was an issue and bizarrely I came out top in that. I think Firefight is my favourite game type so far. You've got to love it when your first two shots in a sniper game result in a killamanjaro and first strike medal.

SUP SILVER BUDDY. ;____;

I would be on now but I had kind of a long day and had to run errands early in the morning, plus I have work tonight so I had to bounce to get some sleep. I'm off tomorrow though, so after I get back from the Dentist (ugh) and taking a short trip to the hospital to see my Grandmother I'll probably be on early afternoonish.

Also they still get all the credits they've earned except for the Game Complete bonus, and maybe the performance bonus (not sure on that one).

Aside from Shin's douchery, there is supposedly some sort of Matchmaking update coming on Friday. Thank fucking God.

YOU HAVE STARTED DOWN A DARK BUT GLORIOUS PATH RR

Roflfox, we have been downgraded to Bronze in the Arena. Apparently we suck some balls at Halo.

Damn, already? I didn't even play yesterday after getting rated.

Oh well, we'll just have to turn up the heat today. Those two bad days probably got us pretty good. :(