The Halo: Reach multiplayer beta kicked off to a flying start yesterday, with players from around the world gaining access via their Halo 3: ODST game discs to what Microsoft is calling the “biggest console beta ever.”

The beta will run until the 19th of May, giving players to chance to experience and test a piece of the competitive multiplayer action in Halo: Reach. It includes a host of new features including new game types, weapons, armour abilities, player rewards, customisation options and social settings.

The beta was plagued by a few problems when it went live yesterday, with Bungie admitting today that it was “not quite fully operational” but still better than yesterday when it was “getting hammered” with the “backend blowin’ up” leading to slow matchmaking times and inaccessible playlists.

The latest word from the developer was that “it should be moving at a pretty good clip now that our online team has applied some technological fixups. You should still expect suboptimal performance, but you should also now be getting games with relative ease.” The developer went on to thank players for their patience, but reminded everyone that “we’re not out of the woods just yet.”

But that didn’t stop over 1 million unique players logging in to the beta yesterday, with Bungie extending their thanks to “everyone who helped stress their servers and systems” via an update on their Twitter account.

Find out more about the new game types featured in the Halo: Reach beta in the introduction video with actress Aisha Tyler below. You can also enjoy an assassinations gameplay trailer after that.

Halo: Reach is currently in development at Bungie Studios and will be launching exclusively for the Xbox 360 this fall.

Welcome to the Beta

Assassinations Gameplay