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December 18, 2015
A brand new free DLC pack has been added to Halo 5: Guardians and it adds a range of new features. The DLC pack has been named "Cartographer's Gift" and it features a large number of new features and cosmetic items.
The most important addition to the new DLC for Halo 5 is Forge. Forge wasn't added at launch like it was in previous Halo titles. The wait was worth it though because Forge in Halo 5 is the most complex version we've seen of the map builder yet. Players are given a huge range of new tools in the new Forge.
On top of Forge, the Cartographer's Gift DLC has added a large range of new Spartan armor pieces, including two new armor sets, the iconic MARK IV armor set and the Raijin armor set. New emblems, new helmets and a variety of new Warzone REQ rewards have also been added into the latest DLC for December.
The December DLC is just the start of it as well. A brand new free DLC pack will also be released in January and a sneak peak at that has revealed that
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December 17, 2015
To help encourage Halo 5 players to play regularly, 343 Industries has added a new feature that rewards daily playtime in Arena and Warzone.
Starting immediately, players are now able to earn two extra REQ packs every single day so long as they follow a couple of criteria. The first REQ pack can be earned by winning an Arena match, whilst the second REQ pack will be awarded to players for their first Warzone win of the day. If you expect to play Halo 5 daily and manage to have a winning game of both Warzone and Arena, you're essentially able to collect up to 14 free REQ packs each week.
A daily login bonus isn't a new concept - in fact, we've seen countless games offer similar features. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain offers daily login bonuses to players for example, although for this reward players only have to boot up the game. Forcing players to win games in both Arena and Warzone to earn their daily rewards is great because it encourages players to play well, at
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November 26, 2015
It should come as no surprise that Halo is one of the biggest selling franchises on the Xbox. Since the release of Halo 5: Guardians on the Xbox One, a lot of people have been wondering exactly how many sales the game has managed to make.
Now that data is slowly coming in about sales around the world, fairly accurate information on Halo 5's week one sales are being announced. According to VGChartz, a website dedicated to reporting video game sales, Halo 5: Guardians managed to sell approximately 1.46 million copies in its first week.
The exact first week number, according to VGChartz is 1,457,849 copies, although this does not include digital sales, so we could be looking at over 2 million copies at least.
For an Xbox One exclusive title, 1.46 million isn't bad at all, but it is quite small in comparison to previous Halo releases. In fact, Halo 5 Guardians sold less copies than almost every other Halo release. Here's a week one sales rundown of the last eight Halo games.
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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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November 07, 2015
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.
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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.
For
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October 16, 2015
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.
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October 14, 2015
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 disconnectsThe 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