My favorite new gun so far would have to be the Needle Rifle, which is funny, because going in I expected the human DMR to be my favorite. I like all the armor abilities, and which one I use just depends on the level and game type I'm playing. I also vastly prefer Powerhouse over Swordbase of the levels available in the Beta so far.

It seems like the game is very balanced for being in the Beta stage, and the gameplay itself is very enjoyable. It's still Halo, but with much more variety and new layers of strategy. My favorite non-gameplay feature to be added in definitely has to be voting for maps. It is much better than simply vetoing, and allows the players to really pick what they want to play for the most part.

Now, to the not so great things. First of all, the Beta servers crashed almost the instant it was available for download through ODST, and as of about 9 P.M., downed servers, and slow load times were still a major problem. While at one point I got as many as 11 games in a row without a problem there were many times where I spent as much as 30 minutes waiting for the servers to load in between matches, and often when they did load and I found a match the pregame lobby would stall for about 5-10 minutes before the match would start.

Now I know this is a Beta, so for today, while these issues are annoying, they are not the end of the world. What will cause me some distress is if these issues persist beyond the first few days of the Beta. I trust in Bungie's expertise in huge multiplayer games, and am confident that they can handle everything thrown at them. I just hope they do it fast.