If you caught the Halo bug last month when Halo: The Master Chief Collection added Halo: Reach to the mix, then you might like the news coming down the pike. The original alien, first-person shooter Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition will now see a limited test for PC players. It should arrive in the month of February.
Playtest your childhood
The original Halo: Combat Evolved released back in 2001, with PC and Mac ports following in 2003. At the time, 15-year-old me couldn’t have been happier with his Microsoft Xbox and the hours of fun that the future would hold. However, the game was all but forgotten as a relic of a past console life before Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition released on the Xbox 360. It would later be included as part of the Halo: Master Chief Collection in 2014. This latest news from the game’s forums now indicates an impending February 2020 test — but with caveats.
It looks like the team at 343 Industries is working diligently to provide a sense of transparency when it comes to the test dates. The team has detailed “Rings” (tests) that a build of the game must endure in order to go live to Halo Insiders. On the official blog regarding these test flights, it notes how the team moves within the rings, saying, “This audience could be hardware based, experience based, locale, or any specific metric the team is looking to validate or stress at any given point as these flights are not BETAs, but indeed are at-scale tests to validate the state of the build to assess functionality and release readiness.”
I did it for the test
It’s unclear as to who will be invited to participate. But, if you’ve been logging the hours in Halo: Reach, you might have stumbled your way into the next flight for testing. As previously mentioned, this isn’t a full-on, full-boar move to pit people into beta matches and severs. Rather, this feels like a limited, invite-only test of what the team has built to date. But, some test items include the following:
- Single Player and Cooperative Campaign
- Multiplayer
- Customization
- Progression
