Halo 5

Halo 5: Guardians has already had one of it's new free DLC packs released but 343 Industries now has more content in store for the game. In December, 343 Industries will release another free DLC pack with extra content.

In the new December DLC for Halo 5, players will have the chance to unlock new armor, new weapon types for Warzone, new weapon skins and of course the new Forge mode.

When Halo 5: Guardians was released, players were not given access to Forge mode because 343 Industries still had some tweaks to make to it. In December the covers will be unveiled and the new Forge mode will finally be available to players. It looks as if players will get access to a Forge world they will feel familiar with but there may also be a space themed Forge map too.

If you have played Halo 5 you will know that the rocket launcher's appearance has been completely redesigned. Fortunately players will have the chance to use the old school rocket launcher after the December update

Despite the small map pool on Halo 5, it looks as if there are still some issues that has caused 343 Industries to take some pretty extreme measures. One of the Arena maps for Halo 5 is called Orion - this map is a small spaced 4v4 map designed mostly for objective modes like Strongholds.

For now, Orion has been removed from the active map pool because there are currently a number of exploits that players have been using that 343 Industries would like to fix before reapplying to Halo 5 matchmaking.

Whilst 343 Industries did not list the exploits that are being fixed, it's very clear that there are some that were very advantageous. One exploit allowed players to use ground pound to glitch themselves out of the map - they could stay there without dying and could attack players from outside of the map.

On top of fixing Orion, 343 Industries has also stated that they are working on fixing up the spawn system - this seems to be an issue for some maps and game types, especially

If you've been paying attention to anything that has come out of the 343 Industries camp then you may have heard that they will be releasing map packs as free DLC for Halo 5. Most of the additional funds for Halo 5 will come straight from the gold REQ packs, which cost $2.99 and provide players with cosmetics and Warzone boosts and items.

Thankfully, it looks like there won't be a lack of DLC content, despite all of it being free. In fact, the first DLC content patch for Halo 5 will be hitting servers in November. 343 Industries has already revealed what content will be included in the first patch.

In just under a week, the new content patch for Halo 5 will be launched. In this first content patch, 343 Industries will be adding a few different features, including the much loved Big Team Battle game mode. Unfortunately there aren't any dedicated in-house maps for BTB yet - instead, you'll have to make do with maps created in Forge by the 343 developers for the 8v8 game mode.

Halo has always been the franchise that has helped Microsoft sell consoles so it's no surprise that the game always performs well. With that being said, Halo 4 didn't bring in as many sales as 343 Industries may have hoped, but it looks like they've returned Halo to it's former glory with the latest release of Halo 5: Guardians.

After just one week, Halo 5 Guardians has already made a large number of records, including day one sales, week one sales and most sales for an Xbox One exclusive title. On top of the numerous sales records for performing so well in the first week, the 343 Industries launch stream for Halo 5 received a Guinness World Record for being the most watched video game launch ever.

Microsoft has revealed some interesting first week stats for Halo 5, along with sales numbers. On top of bringing in $400 million in revenue from Halo themed consoles and the Halo 5 game itself, Halo 5 Guardians has been played for an accumulative 21 million hours thanks to the

After the very poor launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, it's no surprise that the community's trust for 343 Industries has been a bit strained. Thankfully, Halo 5 Guardians released this week with relatively no troubles at all. Thanks to the beta events and the pre-release leading up to the full game release on October 27, there were no major server issues on day one.

Whilst there were a few server hiccups here and there, for the most part Halo 5 Guardians has been silky smooth on matchmaking. The same can be said for the rest of the game too - Halo 5 Guardians has a very sleek 60fps that is seen everywhere in the game. Resolution is 1080p at it's highest, but sometimes it is downscaled to ensure that the 60fps frame cap stays consistent at all times.

The matchmaking service has been working fine all week and the new Spartan CSR ranking system is working just as expected. Every single playlist has been playing out fine, including modes in Warzone and Arena.

For

The entire Halo 5 soundtrack has recently been put up online by 343 Industries. The new soundtrack can be listened to on 343's official Soundcloud page. In the past 343 has used Soundcloud to share other Halo 5 promotional content, so it's quite the surprise to see the full soundtrack go up online for free.

Most of the tracks have never been played before, whilst some of the more familiar sounds, such as the composition of Halo Canticles, may be recognized by some Halo 5 fans. In previous Halo games, the name to be remembered for Halo soundtracks was Marty O' Donnell, but this time round Kazuma Jinnouchi has been given the steering wheel. Jinnouchi has been renowned for other compositions, including the soundtrack for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

Even though the full Halo 5 soundtrack can be listened to for free on Soundcloud, the same soundtrack can be purchased in physical format on Amazon for $23. The soundtrack is available in physical CD and in Vinyl.

343 Industries has just released a bunch of details about the upcoming matchmaking system for Halo 5. In the newly released information, 343 explained how penalties will work for bad behavior and how the new ranking system will work.

Players who repeatedly follow any of the following behaviors will be given temporary cooldowns which will prevent them from playing online matchmaking.

+ Quitting matches
+ Betrayals or team killing
+ Idling (AFK)
+ Intentional suicides
+ Excessive disconnects

The ranking system in Halo 5 has taken an interesting redesign. Players will first have to play placement matches. Once they have 10 wins under their belt, they will be given a rank. There will be a number of different ranks including Bronze, Gold, Platinum, Onyx and Champion.

Each rank will have a number of tiers within and once a player reaches Onyx and Champion the tiers will be replaced with a MMR score, which will be their leaderboard

343 Industries, Mojang and 4JStudios have all teamed up together to create a themed Minecraft DLC pack for Minecraft on the Xbox One and Xbox 360. This isn't the first time we've seen themed mash up packs for Minecraft on the Xbox, and in fact it's not the first time we've seen a Halo pack either.

In the past we saw a full Minecraft Halo theme which included a Halo texture pack, Halo music track and Halo map. This time, 343 Industries has worked closely with Mojang to create a Halo 5: Guardians skin pack.

Starting on October 23, players will be able to purchase a skin pack for Minecraft that adds a number of Halo skins to the game. The Halo DLC pack will only be available on Xbox One and Xbox 360.

For those that have already purchased the previous Halo mashup pack, you'll be happy to hear that this upcoming skin DLC will be available to you for free. Everybody else can pick up both the mash-up pack and the now included skins for $4.

In total there are eight different

Halo 5: Guardians will be getting a new clan system upon launch and players can already create their own clans and add their friends. The new clan system in Halo 5 is called Spartan Companies and each company can include up to 100 players.

As well as being an opportunity for players to create a social hub for communities and friends within Halo 5, Spartan Companies can be used to bring new players together. If you visit the Spartan Companies page you will find a list of all of the clans already created and it's possible to request invitations into these companies.

A player can only be in one company at once so players will have to remain loyal to their groups. As an added incentive to try out the Spartan Companies system, when a player joins a company for the first time, they will be rewarded a REQ pack with a guaranteed cosmetic item inside.

These REQ packs can of course not be used till Halo 5 is actually available and players can only gain 1 REQ pack from Spartan

There's no way to deny it. Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched with tons of issues and it completely ruined the possibility for many players to even play the game properly. 343 Industries has definitely taken the poor launch of the Master Chief Collection to heart though, and the boss of Xbox, Phil Spencer has spoken out about 343's promise to make sure Guardians is released without any problems.

"I know that of all of our teams, no team at their core feels the need to hit a great launch from a multiplayer and connection issues more than 343. That team took the issues around the launch of Master Chief Collection, it kind of hit them in the heart, because it's Halo Nation. It's the people who love these past Halo games."

Every time Phil Spencer has gone to visit 343 Industries, he's been impressed by their dedication to ensuring the quality of Halo 5, and it's multiplayer in particular, is as high as possible.

"No team is focused on it more than 343," Phil Spencer