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September 10, 2017
While content updates for Halo 5 stopped some time ago, new balancing changes will be making their way to Halo 5 soon.
The new balancing changes will bring a huge overhaul to the different weapons players can use in Halo 5. Many players are speculating that the balance changes are a method for 343 Industries to test the waters with changes that they may bring to Halo 6 when it finally launches.
After 2 years of data to go through, those at 343 Industries that are still working on Halo 5 have decided on a new plan of action for the weapon mechanics in Halo 5: Guardians.
The 343 team warned that not everybody will like the changes, but they think the balancing is for the best.
"With a game and community as varied and nuanced as Halo 5, it's just not going to be possible to make everyone totally happy all of the time. Some folks may not like certain changes, while others may think some of these changes are great."
A total of twelve weapons will be getting
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March 02, 2017
The radar has been an iconic part of the franchise ever since the Halo: Combat Evolved days. Over the years, the radar has had a number of changes but it has mostly remained the same.
The trouble with this is that much of the rest of the Halo gameplay experience has evolved. The radar is now a little outdated and it certainly needs some more love to fit better with the gameplay available in Halo 5: Guardians.
343 Industries has finally started working on changes to the radar, and the new tweaks will soon be ready to test in an upcoming multiplayer playlist.
An official update post on Halo Waypoint mentioned, 'Nearly 16 months of player feedback and game data has driven some interesting internal explorations to alter the way the Motion Sensor functions in Halo 5. On Thursday, March 9, we will kick off a public test of this new Motion Sensor to gather player feedback and metrics to help determine if this has a potential place in Halo 5 going forward, as well as potential
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September 02, 2016
Halo Wars 2 will have all of the key elements of a good real time strategy game, but it will also have some elements that could have only come from completely out of the box thinking at the Halo Wars headquarters.
It has been revealed that a 'mysterious mode' in Halo Wars 2 will offer gameplay that's unlike any RTS experience we have seen before.
Unfortunately we do not have any information about the mysterious Halo Wars 2 mode, besides a small tease from 343 Industries Studio Head Dan Ayoub, who said, "One of the modes, which I can only tease for the time being, is actually a completely new way to play a RTS. It really takes standard RTS gameplay and turns it on its head. And that's a mode that can be played in a shorter time frame as well, like five, six, seven minutes."
It's hard to say whether the new mode will truly turn RTS on it's head, or whether Ayoub's statement was a little overhyped. It seems that they have designed some kind of quick match mode that will
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July 07, 2016
After what felt like an unending schedule of free Halo 5 content, it's been announced that the monthly content drops for Halo 5: Guardians will now stop. Whilst this was the original plan announced by 343 Industries in the beginning, it's almost a shock to think that’s almost been a year since the game launched.
Since the release of Halo 5: Guardians, there have been eight big content drops, all of which added plenty of new cosmetics, new maps, new items and in some cases even new Warzone modes or AI enemies.
Now that the monthly content drops have stopped, 343 Industries want to make it clear that support for the game won't stop. In fact, some new content is still planned for the near future, even if it isn't going to be as substantial content releases. It's likely that the 343 team are now moving most of their resources to the next Halo title.
343 Industries recently mentioned that, "While you won't be seeing updates every month moving forward, nor updates the size
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June 21, 2016
It may sound odd, but the 343 Industries team are adding a new enemy to Halo 5 Warzone and it's called the 'Grunt Goblin'
The new Grunt Goblin will appear in games as either a Legendary or a Mythic boss. It's essentially a large covenant mech that seems to be the enemy equivalent to a Mantis. It's operated by a grunt and has a very, very large needler and a big fist that looks menacingly capable of smashing through pretty much anything.
Character designer Steve Dyck left a few statements about the new vehicle. "There are two variants of the Grunt Goblin with different capabilities. "Essentially, the backstory of this battle suit is it was built by Grunts for Grunts in what the Grunt designers agreed was the perfect embodiment of agility and lethality."
Senior systems designer Chris Proctor chipped in to say that, "Unlike other vehicles, the Grunt Goblin cannot be hijacked or boarded and has a complete immunity to EMP effects." This means plasma pistols aren't going
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January 06, 2016
Since the release date of Forge in December, Halo 5 players have been kept busy. All sorts of great Forge maps and custom game modes have been created since the release date of Forge but that has been one issue that many players have already come across.
Previously there was a limit on the number of files each player could upload to the Halo 5 servers. Whilst there still is a limit, it has now been increased so that players have a much larger amount of space to be creative with. Previously save files for custom game modes and Forge maps was set for just 40 slots, but players are now given 100 slots in total.
Forge mode has been an incredibly important part of the Halo franchise ever since Halo 3. A large part of the Halo community has grown around custom games and Forge maps and since Halo Reach, well-built custom Forge maps have even made it into the official matchmaking map rota. The same could happen for Halo 5, but there is still one missing feature.
A file share
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November 22, 2015
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
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November 12, 2015
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
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October 29, 2015
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
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October 26, 2015
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.
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