You've heard about the game modes and the maps now it's time to hear me splurge on the good stuff, the c.lasses with armor abilities and mechanics like controls and vehicles.

In Halo 3 players got equipment to use in multiplayer and singleplayer such as the bubble shield, power drain, health regenerator or gravity lift. In Halo: Reach equipment is built into the Spartan suit creating c.lasses such as Airborne, Guard, Stalker or Scout. Airborne has a jet pack allowing for some players to get in good sniper positions or get the drop on unsuspecting enemies. Guard is like have your own personal shield, but only for a certain amount of time that is. It's great during Team Slayer if you get in a jam you can guard yourself and wait for some teammates to come to your rescue. Stalker gives you a limited time of invisibility and when you are near an enemy while invisible it causes the enemies radar to look as if there are about 20 enemies around them and the slower you move when invisible the more invisible you are to your enemies. You have to be patient but it's well worth it. Finally, Scout gives your Spartan the ability to sprint for a certain amount of time which is especially useful when trying to get to a flag quickly or rescuing a teammate. Spartans aren't the only ones that get armor abilities because in the Invasion game modes we can't forget about the Elites. Elites in the beta thus far have the ability to turn invisible just like the Spartan's Stalker ****and also have an armor ability to do the dodge roll many fans of the series will recognize from the previous Halo games when facing Elites as the enemies, very useful move and very scary when facing an Elite that knows how to use it well.

After choosing your c.lass probably the next thing you'll notice is the control changes. The most notable of changes is the melee button being changed to the right bumper instead of the usual B button and using your equipment is done with the left bumper. It's hard to change a control scheme when you are so used to it one way but after playing Reach for awhile you soon find that this control scheme works, and it works well.

Well you've chose your c.lass, got killed trying to get used to the control scheme and now right in front of you spawns a shiny new Warthog. You yell at your buddy to take the wheel while you take the back and get ol' Betsy. Flashing back to your Halo 3 glory you lay down on the fire button ready to take on anyone moving but what's this? Why did the mini-gun stop firing!? Overheating you say? Yep, in Reach you can no longer fire billions of rounds without skipping a beat. This is good though, it makes the Warthog a little more balanced on the battlefield and definitely gives more opponents opportunities to take it down.

There are of course other ways to take down your enemies and that's in the way of assassinations. What is more humiliating for your enemy to be forced to watch you do a sweet assassination? Not much and that's what makes these so awesome to do during gameplay. Simply holding the melee button an extra second behind an enemy will perform the short cutscene assassination but it doesn't make anyone invincible, a quick teammate can come to the rescue and can kill you fast enough and save his buddy so sometimes you have to decide if the assassination is worth it but most of the time, it is.

Halo: Reach has improved on many things large and small and will definitely make a big impact as how players will play which may be a little different from what they are used to. No longer can many players just rush in, shoot and melee for a quick kill because if the player has a shield still the melee will only take the shield down so a little more shooting and accuracy is required in Reach, less on the run and gun. I'm definitely excited for the release and I wish it wasn't so far away!