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Ushering in the new year, the Halo 5: Guardians beta opens the gates to 343 Industries' rewritten Xbox One engine, its dedicated servers, and its strike out for full 60fps playback. The three-week sampler is very addictive as is, even with months of development left, showing a game that is recognisably still Halo at its core. But have the opportunities offered by the Xbox One hardware affected the gameplay balance from previous games at all - or is this all just about surface? Map rotation is in its second phase now, leaving behind the industrial Empire and the covenant-themed Truth map (based on Halo 2's popular Midship) in favour of the arcade inspired Breakout, plus Regret and Eden. We've been playing the beta for a while now, so our focus for this piece is on the original two stages, but even with the new maps in play, it's clear that 343 Industries still has its laser-focus on 4v4 slayer games for the purposes of testing.
A close comparison with Halo 4 in its Master Chief Collection guise is illuminating. Although Halo 5's pace is improved by the addition of new moves, such as ledge-grabbing and mid-air boosts (bearing an uncanny similarity to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's agile controls), the technical advances behind the game are largely focused on the visual effects running over the top. On paper this is the least we can expect from an Xbox One rendition of Halo, but in practise it has a range of repercussions, both for better and worse.
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