Halo: Reach factoids have been popping up all over the place like decloaking Elites, thanks chiefly to the chaps at Edge and Game Informer but also, somewhat less officially, to EB Games, who let slip a few gameplay screenshots on Wednesday morning. You know what this means, readers? It means Whining Season has officially commenced.

We’ve had a good old gander at the material, and we’re ready to throw down a gauntlet or two. Brace yourselves for some serious subheadings.

What’s hot…

Six Spartans is a bit ridiculous now, isn't it. The Covenant really should have called in sick.

The return of the Elites

We got on well with the Brutes in Halo 3. Which is to say, we enjoyed blowing their shields away with our battle rifles and grenade-tagging the suckers to screaming submission. But for all their secondhand camo cloaks and jet packs the Brutes never quite lost the status of thuggish Covenant middle-management – glorified bully boys, giddy with excitement at their newfound prominence within the caste structure. For a game as solemn, as elegaic as Reach, we need an enemy we can respect. And with the Elites, it’s all about respect.

Crysis-style power-ups

Bungie is good with gizmos: slightly ludicrous though they appeared in concept and execution, the Bubble Shield and Grav Lift proved to be fantastic, highly tactical additions to Halo 3’s campaign and multiplayer. Reach tips its hat to Crysis in the form of recharging, one-at-a-time “armor abilities”, transforming your Spartan into a speed freak or a tank at the touch of a button. We like it. We also like what it implies for the game’s environments, which will probably need to be both larger and more abundant in secondary routes and landmarks to accommodate the greater range of run-gun possibilities.

Reach can handle up to 40 on-screen light sources, in contrast to Halo 3's two or three.

Bigger but not too big

Numbers are a much-abused weapon in the fanboy arsenal. Right now, for instance, there’s a lot of ballyhoo among the PS3 faithful about how the 256-player MAG is da biggermost online FPS everer, and so forth. While Halo has always gone heavy on modes and auxillary content, Bungie has never been in the business of feature overkill, and nothing’s changed with Reach. Online matches are still limited to 16 players – cosy affairs in which a man can be reasonably sure of walking two feet from a spawn point without taking a bullet through each of his major organs.

Which is not to say the game won’t offer more: Reach can handle double the AIs per area that Halo 3 can, we’re told. But the onus, as in past Spartan sequels, seems to be on providing more stuff to do within existing parameters, rather than piling on the bullet points.

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The Quickfire Q&A is our schizophrenic antidote to over-worded, boringly constructed articles, giving you all the key info plus a joke or three in snappy question-answer format. Next up, Rebellion’s Alien vs. Predator for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Give us the feature breakdown on Alien vs. Predator.

You’ve got three single player campaigns for three different organisms: spindly, slavering Xenomorph, high-tech head-hunter Predator, and small, squishy, terrified, soon-to-be-limbless Homo Sapiens. On top of that, there’s online multiplayer for up to 18 players.

Three multiplayer modes have been announced. Deathmatch needs no explanation. Predator Hunt casts one player as the Predator while the rest don the soft, pink bodysuits of human Marines. Kill the Predator and you become him. Infestation pits just one Alien against Earth’s finest, but any human players killed respawn as Aliens.

What were you playing, where were you playing it and for how long?

A no-frills, 5-10 minute round of deathmatch on a PS3 build of the game at the Eurogamer Expo in central London.

No, it doesn't look quite this good.

First impressions?

It’s no feast for the eyes at this point. Textures are low-res, the geometry is blocky, the lighting lacks tone and depth and the framerate bounces in and out of the teens, especially when you’re using the Predator’s visors. Character models are quite large and detailed, though, and everything gets pleasantly graphic when you melee or stealth-kill somebody’s ass. Providing you’re playing a Predator or an Alien, that is. Marines? Not so hot in a brawl.

Which side were you on?

I was a Predator.

And did you stomp Marine scalp and kick Alien buttock?

The first part certainly. Predators can “focus-jump” to choice lurking/sniping spots as indicated by a little red reticule, then pick off dawdling ape descendants beneath with their shoulder cannons – these take a few seconds to lock on and must be recharged at energy depots between uses, but splat everything and anything in one hit. Or you might shrug into your invisibility cloak, sneak into the middle of a platoon and gut somebody with your wrist blades while his mates aren’t looking. Decisions, decisions.

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You think a white boy invented those moves?

Timegate Studio’s sci-fi FPS Section 8 is out today for PC and Xbox 360, care of up-and-coming Brit publisher Southpeak Games. If you’re new to the game, think of it as the beefier younger brother of Dynamix’s lamentably defunct Tribes series: clad in enormous, upgradeable robotic supersuits, players catapult onto the battlefield from orbiting starships, steering themselves toward their landing zones whilst dodging shots from those on the ground.

Tanks, mechs, bazookas, sniper rifles and all our favourite old mechanics and vehicles get a showing, and there’s a hearty helping of real-time tactics in the form of portable supply depots, turrets and sensor arrays. It doesn’t look too shabby either, though the art design is sunk to its cybernetic kneecaps in generic space marine land.

We’re a little worried about how the orbital deployment trick will factor into multiplayer. If it’s too easy to shoot new players out of the sky, whichever team gets a foothold first will cream the other side. Conversely, we could be looking at the greatest and most frenetic reinvention of the spawn point since developers started rotating those suckers.

But why linger in the interplanetary void of uncertainty? There’s a demo on Xbox Live. Go headbutt some clouds.

Section 8 Launch Trailer

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