Four player co-op for Halo 3?

By Robert Purchese Published 21 May, 2007

Beta code says "yes".

Crafty coders playing the Halo 3 beta have unearthed references to a four-player co-op mode.

We're still waiting to hear from Microsoft about whether it's legitimate, and if it will feature when the full-game launches on 26th September.

"Only 2 players may play splitscreen coop on the same Xbox 360 console. The party size is too large to start the game. Up to 4 players may play coop on Xbox Live or System Link. Loading information from Xbox Live..." read the on-screen text for the party-menus, courtesy of teamxbox.

Their digital probing also gave them an insight to previously unannounced weapons, vehicles, and game types. A full list of these can be found below.

Weapons

  • Assault Rifle
  • Battle Rifle
  • Beam Rifle
  • Brute Shot
  • Carbine
  • Excavator
  • Gravity Hammer
  • Flamethrower
  • Magnum
  • Missile Launcher
  • Needler
  • Plasma Pistol
  • Plasma Rifle
  • Fuel Rod Cannon
  • Rocket Launcher
  • Shotgun
  • SMG
  • Sniper Rifle
  • Spartan Laser
  • Spiker
  • Sword

Vehicles

  • Mongoose
  • Warthog
  • Hornet
  • Pelican
  • Scorpion
  • Ghost
  • Brute Chopper
  • Spectre
  • Shadow
  • Banshee
  • Phantom
  • Wraith

Game Types

  • Capture the Flag: Invade your opponent's stronghold, heist their flag, and bring it back to your base to score.
  • Slayer: Kill as many of your opponents as you can. The player with the most points wins.
  • Oddball: Find the ball and hold on to it to earn time. The player with the most time wins.
  • King of the Hill: Gain control of the hill to earn time. Keep your opponents off and earn the most time to win.
  • Juggernaut: Work together to take down the Juggernaut. Beware, you kill the Juggernaut, you become the Juggernaut, and only the Juggernaut can win.
  • Territories: Find and control the territories on the map. The more territories you control, the faster you earn time.
  • Infection: Destroy the Flood or become infected. Score points for killing flood or big points for infecting a human. The player with the most points wins.
  • Assault: Da bomb!
  • V.I.P.: Protect the V.I.P. from dying at the hands of your opponents. If you are the V.I.P., you must stay alive or your opponents score a point.

Variations

Apparently these will be shareable with other users in a similar way to movies.

  • Team Slayer
  • Team Swords
  • Team Rockets
  • Team Shotguns
  • Team Fiesta
  • Team Phantoms
  • Slayer Duel
  • Sword Duel
  • Rifle Duel
  • Rumble Slayer
  • Rumble Swords
  • Rumble Rockets
  • Rumble Shotguns
  • Oddball
  • Fiesta Ball
  • Team Ball King
  • Phantom King
  • Crazy King
  • Team Crazy King
  • Multi Flag CTF
  • CTF Wraiths
  • CTF Classic
  • Shotgun CTF
  • 1 Flag CTF
  • 1 Flag CTF Fast
  • Multi Bomb Assault
  • Rapid Assault
  • Neutral Bomb
  • Neut. Bomb Fast
  • 3 Plots Land Grab

Games menu options

A glitch also allowed beta players to see the following settings from the game menu options:

  • Damage resistance
  • Shield multiplier
  • Shield recharge rate
  • Immune to headshots
  • Grenade counts
  • Infinite ammo
  • Weapon pickup disabled
  • Player speed (25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, 100%, 110%, 125%, 150%, 200%, 300%)
  • Player gravity (50%, 100%, 200%)
  • Vehicle use (passenger only)
  • Motion tracker range (10m, 25m, 75m, 100m, 150m)
  • Appearance: Vis effects (black glow, team glow, white glow). Active camo (good camo that might fool and elite, poor camo that might fool a grunt, invisible).
  • Indestructible vehicles (on, off)
Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (46) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ecureuil #1 5 years ago

    Best Halo news ever.

  • espadachin #2 5 years ago

    wow, thats pretty nice!

  • Xerx3s #3 5 years ago

    Best Halo news ever.

    You mean a rumour with sites that refer to eachother as source.

    EDIT: The odd thing however is that the pelican is greyed out as an object on the H3 webby.
    Edited by Xerx3s at 21/05/07 @ 12:29

  • Dizzy #4 5 years ago

    Infection was a player invented game in H2... good to see Bungie is going to include that in H3 ;)

  • barnettbeans #5 5 years ago

    /Wets Pants

  • Steroyd #6 5 years ago

    Would be shocking if Halo didn't have this feature.

  • EmiliasHorse #7 5 years ago

    It just gets better and better. As if I needed further reasons to own Halo3.

  • Skooch #8 5 years ago

    Lubbly jubblies!

    /lightens Monday blues

  • robg #9 5 years ago

    Does this mean when one of you dies the entire team has to go back to the start? (Annoying) Or that they just respawn with the rest of their team? (Incredibly easy)

    The thoughts of a Halo 2 on Legendary co-op completer :)

  • geepersd #10 5 years ago

    @robg - I'd guess it'd be similar to how it is now - you respawn with your team if they're not in danger so if you go down in a firefight you have to wait until it's over or one of the team is well away from danger to respawn

  • morriss #11 5 years ago

    I had a chat with the admin over at Halo.Bungie.Org, and Bungie haven't as yet denied these reports, which is unusual for them. As Frankie usually debunks stuff early.

  • TONYgr #12 5 years ago

    FOUR PLAYER COOP WITH LIVE?ARE THEY FOR REAL?THE BEST FIRST PERSON SHOOTER OF ALL TIME!PERIOD!

  • Yossarian #13 5 years ago

    "EDIT: The odd thing however is that the pelican is greyed out as an object on the H3 webby."

    it's been redesigned as a vertical take off and landing craft so it can implemented in multiplayer. in the beta one of the loading screens has a flying craft in a hangar that looks suspiciously like it might be the remodelled Pelican.

  • The-Bodybuilder #14 5 years ago

    I have to say, I'm a big fan of Halo 3, but it's never been my MOST wanted game, as I've always held a cautious optimism/pessemism due to lack of info.

    But after playing the ultra fun team skirmishes on the beta, and wondering how much more fun it could be, then seeing this list, It's nearly at the top.

    The hornet sound like the human equivilant of the banshee.

  • Yossarian #15 5 years ago

    I am guessing that the 'Gravity Hammer' is another addition to what Bungie calls 'the Brute sandbox'

  • IAmBatman #16 5 years ago

    > Certain stages could be way too easy for 4 people

    You should email Bungie and tell them which stages are going to be too easy with 4 people, I bet they haven't even thought about it themselves.

  • Steroyd #17 5 years ago

    I imagine 4 player campaign co-op would be quite hard to pull off though. If you think about how you have to make the levels much more challenging to accommodate 4 players. The amount of aliens you can show on-screen at once, and all of their AI.. it's pretty much optimised for 1 single player - maybe 2.

    When you have 4 players, then you have to think about the level design.. Certain stages could be way too easy for 4 people.

    I see what you mean what would be cool is if they adopted what Killzone did with the four seperate characters, where they sort of branched off into their own little segments on the level to help out the other 3 players accordingly to that characters ability.

    That'd be pretty cool.

  • The-Bodybuilder #18 5 years ago

    @Wonga

    An explanation as to why the graphics aren't as good as other game, perhaps? Bungie have always stated they were going for a more epic, war situation with halo 3 (think future war scenes of the terminator series).

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #19 5 years ago

    I've been waiting for human aircraft since Halo 1, so I imagine they'll finally make their appearance here. I envision some genuinely huge maps to take advantage of air superiority :-)

    However, I'm being a bit cautious about all this, because even if there's references to it in the code, it doesn't necessarily fit that it makes it through to the final game, right?

  • Darren #20 5 years ago

    @The Bodybuilder - A good point except for the fact that the E3 2006 trailer shown for Halo 3 was apparently running off the ingame engine according to Bungie so it looks like the single player campaign, at least, does have great graphics. All the multiplayer needs is a bit of anti-aliasing and it'll be fine; graphics are less important for online games I reckon.

  • robg #21 5 years ago

    @geepersd - so, incredibly easy then :)

    Still, it'd be fun to have 4 warthogs ploughing through loads of Covenant :)

  • SBfistfun #22 5 years ago

    FOUR PLAYER COOP WITH LIVE?ARE THEY FOR REAL?THE BEST FIRST PERSON SHOOTER OF ALL TIME!PERIOD!

    Nope

  • The-Bodybuilder #23 5 years ago

    @Darren

    Bungie did the same thing for Halo 2, remember?
    If you wanna have a look at sp alpha build, then look at the first video doc from LIVE. The graphics are also on par to that of the alpha mp build at the time, so if the mp build has progressed to what we see today, then the same applies to the sp build too.

  • andrewwd #24 5 years ago

    Sword: NO

  • TONYgr #25 5 years ago

    SBfistfun MAYBE YOU ARE RIGHT.NOT THE BEST BUT ONE OF THE BEST!ARE WE OK NOW?

  • Darren #26 5 years ago

    @The Body Builder - Yeah, I do remember what happened to Halo 2... I've still got that E3 2003 video on my PC hard drive in fact... but, even so, I hope you're completely wrong about Halo 3... the multiplayer looks fine but I was hoping that like, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Rainbow Six Vegas and Ghost Recon A.W., the single player would have much better graphics (without those games' v-sync issues obviously!).

    Fingers crossed, eh?

  • kangarootoo #27 5 years ago

    @Egster

    "Just adding more and tougher opponents does not give the same thrill imo."

    Well thats probably true in their opinion too. What makes you think they didn't consider this, instead of just assuming the worst?

    I thought the co-op in both H1 and 2 was great fun, so I've no reason to currently expect that H3 will be any different.

  • the_dudefather #28 5 years ago

    hope im not going to be the player who has to walk when we find a warthog

  • Yossarian #29 5 years ago

    you will be on a Mongoose

  • kangarootoo #30 5 years ago

    Is there a no squeaky penny farthing?

    That would be comedy gold every single time if it was always found next to a warthog in a 4 player game.

    "Guuuys, wait up!" Eeey eeey eeey

    Hehe, I crack myself up ;)

  • The-Bodybuilder #31 5 years ago

    >"I hope you're completely wrong about Halo 3"

    I hope so too darren, I hope so too.

  • foamy #32 5 years ago

    These must be the best news regarding gameplay of Halo 3 to date :|

  • Metalfish #33 5 years ago

    Arrghh lists of details!

    /doesn't read to avoid losing the magic

  • Fyzzu #34 5 years ago

    kangarootoo should be on the development team. I'd buy it just for that. Seriously.

  • Xerx3s #35 5 years ago

    Bengali: It only proves things most people where more or less already expecting. The coop isn't confirmed.

  • davisorle #36 5 years ago

    Post deleted at 20:44:35 16-04-2012

  • captainrentboy #37 5 years ago

    That list of potential multi-player options pretty much sums up why Halo is regarded as one of the best shooters on consoles.
    I've had a fair few blasts on the Beta now, and bar possibly getting rid of the jaggies the graphics, on what are hopefully just the multi-player, don't bother me one bit anymore, cuz it's just so facking fun anyway, especially when you personally know your team of four on the slayer/task matches.

  • Mudo #38 5 years ago

    I can't believe Bungie were careless enough to leave all this residual code in the beta. They should know what their community is like.

    They had better take this in good grace, as they have only themselves to blame.
    Edited by Mudo at 21/05/07 @ 18:44

  • foamy #39 5 years ago

    4 player co-op will be quite hard in what comes to connection. Dozens of enemies, their coordenates, and actions need to be sent to the 4 players, the actions the player do, need to be sent to all of them, etc. A lot of lag is the most likely. If Bungie do manage to do this with no latency problems, I'll bow to them :]

  • wired009 #40 5 years ago

    Coop play is my favorite feature of the Halo series. A friend once asked me why coop was limited to 2 players I speculated it was due to the hardware limits of Xbox 1. Those of you who are skeptical about 4 player coop on the X360 need to play Rainbow 6 Vegas. 2+ coop is already here, and it rocks. I will be more than happy w/ Bungie if they follow through on this rumor.

  • Sl1pstream #41 5 years ago

    Infection is zombies, right?

    If this isn't a rumor, I wonder how they're going to implement the team change.

  • NegativeZero #42 5 years ago

    4-player co-op might imply that the handful of Spartans still alive might feature in the plot somewhere. Though that's admittedly a stretch.

    I imagine that the 'gravity hammer' is something like what the brute boss from Halo 2 carried around.

    Myself, I'm most excited that it looks like we might *finally* get the Flamethrower. The whole Marathon feel that the games have is cheapened without the ability to set your friends on fire.

  • WillTheSecond #43 5 years ago

    Four player co-op? Nice! I was pleased to hear this is going to be included in Free Radical's Haze, too.

    Plus the idea of being able to change the gravity in matches is fun too...

  • captainrentboy #44 5 years ago

    Going from the books aren't quite a few Spartans still alive anyway? I'm not sure on the very latest one, but going from the third one there's still some of Master Chief's buddies dotted around.

  • mcmonkeyplc #45 5 years ago

    /sex wee!

  • SexyBodyBuilderDude #46 5 years ago

    This is the greatest videogame news I have ever read!

    The thought of playing four-player Co-Op with the Campaign mode of Halo 3 is incredible!

    Halo 3 is going to be the best game ever!!!!!!! That's why I have my copy pre-ordered, and that's why I will be waiting in line at midnight to take mine home and play it on my Xbox 360!!!!!!!!