Halo Reach - tips and tricks?

It comes down to the individual player.  One hit melee kills usually follow a burst from your weapon.  Basically saying, you need to take down your opponents shields first.  They don't have to be totally gone but you definitely want to deminish them in this fashion.  Grenades are great for taking shields as well as using a plasma weapon.  Plasma repeaters, rifles and pistols are a shields bane in this game.  Knowing the best uses for individual weapons will help you as well.  Close quarter weapons such as the shotgun, sword, hammer and assault rifle have little effect if you're not standing fairly close to your target.  Although the AR can be used up to mid range if you happen to be good with it.  Your mid-ranged weapons such as the pistol, DMR and the needle rifle are the bread and butter for most players.  The DMR is effective at long range if you've got the skill set.  Long range weapon such as the sniper rifle are specialized.  It also happens to be a power weapon.  Power weapons can be defined as any weapon strong enough to control an enemies movements.  Lasers, snipers, rockets... even a shotgun or sword can be a power weapon in the right arena.  You could also define a power weapon as any weapon that can deliver a one hit kill to a target. 

It helps to know your environment.  Get to know the maps.  This is imperative to knowing where you're taking fire from and to then counter the attack with either evasion or counter fire.  Without this knowledge, you're a walking dead man.  Headshots come with practice and quick aquisition.  This should be your primary means of getting kills.  Running up to an opponent for a melee is going to get you killed more times than not.  If you're trying to rootout an opponent in a certain room or area, use grenades to flush them out.  At the very least try to take their shields down.  After that, one shot to the head is all it takes.  Granted, there's a lot to learn when you're playing a shooter but the basic strategies are the same.  Having shields helps make up for small mistakes but an experienced player will make short work of your shields, and the second they're gone, so are you.

The best way to play is with a group of people you can trust not to leave a match because you're losing.  Folks are friendly for the most part and don't usually mind dropping a few pointers here and there but i wouldn't go into every match announcing the fact that you're not that experienced.  First off, you'll be painting a target on your back for the other team and second, you'll probably inadvertantly persuade some MLG try-hard to leave simply because his precious K/D rate could possibly suffer, leaving your team shorthanded.

Anyway, this is turning into a wall of text so I'd better bring it to a close.  My gamertag is Strunky.  If you really want to learn, feel free to message me with a freind request.  I'd be glad to help you learn the basics.

Thanks for an informative and well expressed response - that was a very useful confirmation of what I suspected. Specifcially I had guessed that rank attained has more to do with perserverance than any objective measure and that the items purchased from the armoury are eye candy only - any improvement is purely about the level of focus and mastery of the control system.

From what you are saying I believe I need to hone some skills playing against human opponents so I will avoid team games until i can get my hit ratio higher. I also infer that chat forms an important part (presumably necessary in the more advanced team games) and so far I've kept that option off to protect my son - who actually plays better than I do but having played kingpin in the early morg days I know the language can be somewhat, errrr,  adult.

Look out for a friend invite - I will be in touch once I lose the high embarassment factor

Thanks again

Reg

You don't have to be embarrassed by your performance dude.  We all had to learn at some point and none of the folks I play with regularly would mind you tagging along at all.  Hell, some of the games I played last night were so terrible... I had a -10 or higher K/D rate for the first 5 games. It was nasty. I'm an old fart though so it takes me several games to get my Halo legs.  Anyway, if you're still apprehensive about playing before you get some practice... a really good way to practice your headshots is playing "Gruntpacolyps" in matchmaking firefight under score attack.  It's a single player firefight experience where you only fight Grunts.  There are varying levels of Grunt troops that swarm in from 4 sides.  Most will take only one shot to the head but the Grunt Spec Ops will take two because they wear helmets.  First shot knocks the helmet off, the second takes their face off.  you know you're getting the hang of it when you're only using one or two bullets per target.  When you get good at that... you can always try to shoot your own grenade out of the air.  It's a silly trickshot but it helps you learn to aquire targets quickly.  Maybe I'll show you that one when you come play.  

You should go play with him : )

.

I have no tips/tricks to add, but he's right about the fact that everyone was new once and there's no point being embarrassed about it.

[quote user="RegMigrant"]You search the menu's and find matchmaker and discover that, despite the skill limit on the search pane, *everybody* can move faster, aim faster and get head-shots before you can see them. - Not Cool - (but way fun)[/quote]

You could try increasing the " Look Sensativety  " on the controller settings menu. Turn it up a bit, play the game until you're used to it, then turn it up some more. Rinse and repeat until it is maxed out or it's at a level that you're comfortable with.

you can try the bumper jumper control settings :D or any other you want but you can try all of them, see wich one is more your style and helps you aim better while jumping or hit faster (maybe you press faster the LB instead of A to jump)

Thanks for  theadvice, I have played Gruntpocalypse on legendary and completed it a couple of times - excellent time wasting :)

- par score 50000!!!?? - I managed 12k on the first time i completed the default settings with 0 lives left, so room for improvement there.

- I'll be playing with control options and continuing to try and improve. my current record is 12 kills on slayer but i think it says more about my opponents in that case than me

The embarassment factor is more about someone my age getting beaten my son - arent dad's supposed to be invincible:)

Here are two pieces of sage advice that were passed to me during my gaming time with Halo 2, they've stuck with me through the years:

"Aim for da head and when you see dem go get dem."

"Kill them more than they kill you."

Obviously these came from a kid in a lobby giving out unsolicited advice.  

also this worked on halo 3, aim for the body first and then go for the head, I think it was first 3 to the body, the 4th to the head, CSB knows this one as well as some other forum members.

"CSB knows this one as well as some other forum members".

.

I'd never offer that as advice myself.