Halo 3 Beta

A few of you with sharp eyes have noticed, while playing on XBox Live, that there are a bunch of us playing Halo 3 already. “Hey, the public beta’s not supposed to start yet,” I can hear you shouting. Well, ok, it’s really just that I can read the emails and XBL messages you’re sending me, but what’s a little creative license between friends. Here’s the deal, straight from Bungie:

As of this morning, Friend & Family codes have been distributed to approximately 10,000 randomly chosen members of the Bungie.net community. Using a variety of different criteria, our web team created a pool of approximately 40,000 people and from there we randomly allocated the codes we had available.

Obviously there are a lot more than 10,000 registered Bnet members and unfortunately we aren’t able to accommodate all of you. We’re sorry but hope to see you online next week. At this point anyone who still wants to participate in the Halo 3 beta will need to do so via the Crackdown file download starting on 5/16.

So please don’t ask me if I can get you into the beta early as well, I can’t. I believe there are still copies of Crackdown available for sale, and the public beta starts next week. If you’re in the F&F beta this week, please let me know and let’s get together for some killin’.

In the meantime, I’m sure there are plenty of videos being posted on the gaming sites and youtube. The environment is beautifully done, with lots of additional details. When Master Chief jumps and lands in the snow, for example, the snow splashes up around his feet.

Gameplay’s what it’s all about, though, and the gameplay is pure Halo, even better than we remember from Halo 2. We’re working on learning just how to apply the new shield, trip mine and other weapons. I’m at the bottom of just about every game’s stats, but I’m used to that. <grin>

I hope to see you in the public beta next week.