On September 26^th 2007, Halo 3 will be hitting European shores.  With the multiplayer beta now in full swing, we thought it would be a good time to recap on what makes Halo 3 one of the biggest and best games to look forward to this year.

The beta has shown off all sorts of new features that show how far we’ve come since Halo 2.  There are new weapon types, new vehicles and some great new grenades to stick to them.  For the first time we have equipment types separate to weapons, including the shield grenade, energy drain, grav lift and trip mine.  The grav lift provides a great way to infiltrate bases as you just jump over the surrounding fortifications, while the energy drain proves extremely useful in clearing crowded rooms as it drains Spartan shields.

As well as new weapons like the Brute Spiker and Spartan Laser (effectively a rail gun that can take down vehicles too), Halo 3 introduces the option of ripping mounted weapons from their stands to wreak havoc on the battlefield.  When you pick up the minigun, the game switches to a third person perspective as you carve up your opponents under a rain of bullets.  Once you’ve had a few goes on the minigun, there’s always the next step up – the missile pod, with devastating effect.

Last week, Xbox Community Manager Graeme “AceyBongos” Boyd lined up alongside some of his Xbox Community Network fansites to play the Bungie team at their own game (lucky git). Here’s what he made of it all:

“When you’re just getting used to the new maps, weapons and vehicles in the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta, it doesn’t help when your opponents already know the game inside out. But that’s what happened when I found myself up against Luke Smith and Lars Bakken from Bungie on the night the Beta went live. These guys really know their stuff and have the skills to match, so getting a tour of two of the Beta’s new game modes, VIP and a re-designed Territories, was a perfect lesson. A lesson in getting PWNED, that is.

“In VIP one member of each team becomes powered-up and you can only register a score by taking them out. The Bungie boys demonstrated how important it is to gang up on the VIP to drain his shields, and also the art of acting like a bodyguard for your own VIP. Happily I acquitted myself pretty well, winning the game for my team with an Assassination on a helpless Bungie VIP!

“Then we headed to Valhalla, the biggest map in the Beta, for some Territories. In this mode one team has to capture a series of marked zones while the other team defends them. The Bungie guys really stepped up their game here, with the highlight coming when they eliminated me and two of my teammates by coating the Man Cannon landing area with the new Brute Spike Grenades just as we hit the deck.”

Poor Graeme, you can check out his games against Bungie in the Halo 3 Beta through going to his profile (AceyBongos) and looking at his shared films.

By Mark Eveleigh, Xbox.com Editor, Gamertag: Making Sparks