Gamers across the globe are eagerly anticipating the release of 343 Industries' Halo 5: Guardians. The second game in a new trilogy, Halo 5 will bring players back into the gun-toting world of Master Chief. There are a lot of franchises we wish developers and publishers would just put to rest, but we could play Halo forever. The series and its iconic protagonist have become synonymous with the Xbox brand. It will be a sad day if this trilogy finishes up and Microsoft ditches Halo. That said, I'm a huge fan of new intellectual properties, so there's both good and bad here.
If there's one thing that's become prominent over the past few years, it's the expanded use of beta testing. Some developers are offering highly exclusive alpha testing, which acts a pseudo game release long before both the beta and retail dates of any given game. There's a good deal of controversy surrounding these, as some games remain in open or closed beta tests for quite a long time. This offers players the feeling of exclusivity without ever actually having that exclusivity mean anything. This has proven to be a pretty strong marketing ploy. That said, if someone values early access to a game, then there's probably no question as to the value of beta testing.
Halo 5: Guardians will be offering gamers the chance to opt in for beta testing, as well. From December 29, 2014 to January 18, 2015, gamers can try out Halo 5's multiplayer section for free. You'll have to download an enormous file to take part in this, though, as it weighs in at around 10 gigabytes. Luckily, the new consoles seem to all offer quite a bit more storage space and this should only fill a spot on your hard drive temporarily. When the real game comes out and the beta ends, something tells us you're not going to want this monstrous file sitting around on your console's hard drive.
