Halo 3 Beta via Crackdown fixed

[KEEZY]

I got that too, but after waiting a few more seconds (30-40) it let's you jump in.

I had some trouble fully joining a room. I'd join, but it'd still be loading my assets or something. After getting into a smaller room it figured itself out. Sorry for all of the invites and confusion everyone.

Just as a reminder you CAN get 16 people into a lobby, but right now there are no Matchmaking Playlists that support 16 players. The most it will do is 8. The general consensus seems to be that you'll be able to play 16 players during the Beta, just not yet. I don't see why they wouldn't want to test it out with 16 players, since that is when Halo 2 faltered the most.

Hopefully all of the issues will be cleared up soon. Since it dropped at night, after everyone was home, I'm sure the servers got slammed pretty damn hard. Around 10 EST, there were probably 2100 people on. By midnight, there was 34000. Now, Bnet is saying there are 75887 on. Insane.

[Joe Sacto]

I finally got on after waiting a bit. There were 110,000 ppl on when I got in. The matchmaking is so streamlined and quick, I was playing right away and I'm impressed. I've only played Halo 2 a couple of times so I don't have alot of experience with the series.

My first match was on the snowbound level and I jumped into that ghost machine and began gliding around shooting people...that was damned good fun. I didn't do too bad with the sniper rifle on valhalla I think it was with the mancannons. It's really satisfying shooting people right as they launch out of that thing.

[Gordon]

Bloody Hell.

The Halo 3 Public Beta is either currently unavailable, or has expired. Look out for the official retail release of Halo 3 this fall! If you want to shoot stuff and blast your buddies right now, why not try Shadowrun for the Xbox 360 and Windows Vista? Find out more at www.shadowrun.com

Worst thing is friends are online playing the game.

[Gordon]

Yikes, then I turned it off and back one, but then it would not sign in my Xbox Live profile within the game, though it did sign it on the system. Then after several restarts of the Xbox 360, and playing a level of Crackdown I exited out and it allowed me to play it. Feels like a beta because the whole process of getting it working was a huge problem...

[ZoomZoom71]

YAY!! Finally got to play this morning. Of course, I got severely taken by those better than I, so I look forward to playing w/ some of you.

[Jon Liu]

Zoom, get prepared to be taken by those better than you, once again!

Not by me! No way! By others!

[Quo]

I think I've got about 60% downloaded... I had to give up and go to bed last night. The way they patched it (Crackdown) works, but it kicked things back to original x-box in terms of functionality... am I missing something or do you have to actually sit there and watch the dang bar fill up across your screen? Any time I left the download screen, everything stopped:

Try to back out and play Crackdown while I wait. Download stops. Resume.
Message from Peench. Go to read it, Download stops. Reply. Resume.
Message from AZ. Go to read it, Download stops. Reply. Resume.
Check to see who's still playing, Download stops. Oops. Resume.
Fall asleep. 360 falls asleep too, Download stops. Give up and go to bed.

Funny how much you miss background downloading when you don't have it all the sudden.

On the graphics side, I don't see how graphics guys could ever be satisfied with the Halo series. The way I look at, that's just the Halo style. While you should be 'wow'-ed by the graphics in terms of gameplay-- and by that I mean explosions, animations, the depth and clarity of the field of play, good rag doll physics, etc. -- the actual environmental graphics aren't overly impressive. I mean, they might happily improve the look of the water, etc... but the rock/cliff faces in the Halo environment, etc. are just part of the overall feel of the game. They may never be photorealistic, etc.

Personally I can live with it either way. I just want the game to be fun, and usually Halo accomplishes that.

[ZoomZoom71]

Sounds like we're all able to get this downloaded. Great! Any comments/thought/impressions on the Beta should be posted here.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by Quo

Try to back out and play Crackdown while I wait. Download stops. Resume.
Message from Peench. Go to read it, Download stops. Reply. Resume.
Message from AZ. Go to read it, Download stops. Reply. Resume.
Check to see who's still playing, Download stops. Oops. Resume.
Fall asleep. 360 falls asleep too, Download stops. Give up and go to bed.

OG Xbox download or just no background downloading? Either way that sounds like it's annoying as hell.

[ZoomZoom71]

Because the download was happening through Crackdown, it seems like they "took away" the ability to download the Beta in the Background. So you pretty much had to find something else to do while it was being downloaded.

[Quo]

Originally Posted by ZoomZoom71

Because the download was happening through Crackdown, it seems like they "took away" the ability to download the Beta in the Background. So you pretty much had to find something else to do while it was being downloaded.

But you can't go too far away... because when your 360 "falls asleep" from inactivity, the download pauses. So basically you have to watch TV and flip over the input during commercials to make sure it's still d/ling...

[D_Litch]

Originally Posted by Quo

But you can't go too far away... because when your 360 "falls asleep" from inactivity, the download pauses. So basically you have to watch TV and flip over the input during commercials to make sure it's still d/ling...

I watched Oldboy and hit up on the analog stick every 4 minutes, for 2 hours!

[Wood Ghost]

I dl it about 2 am & it only took 10-15 minutes. I was surprised, it took a lot longer to dl AW.

[ZoomZoom71]

Originally Posted by Quo

But you can't go too far away... because when your 360 "falls asleep" from inactivity, the download pauses. So basically you have to watch TV and flip over the input during commercials to make sure it's still d/ling...

Hmmm, that didn't happen to me. In fact, I shut off my TV at about 90% to hit the hay, and the 360 was off this morning, presumably becuase of an auto-shutdown. But, the demo was completely downloaded. I think I know what you're talking about, though. Was the screen dim, as if your status had changed to 'Away'?

[Quo]

yeah.

I've got it set up wrong somehow, don't I...? doh.

[Peench]

No, it dims, but keeps downloading (or at least it does for most downloads).