Halo: Reach armor effects will cost you plenty

News by Stephany Nunneley-Jackson Former News Editor

Published on Aug. 27, 2010

By now, everyone interested in Halo: Reach knows they'll earn credits in the game to unlock voices, armor, and even armor effects.

What they may not know, is what some of these cool armor effects are - but we've got you covered below.

Or rather MTV does.

According to the site, you can customize all different pieces of your Spartan gear: helmets, shoulder pads, chest pieces, knee pads, wrist accessories, sidearm accessories and your visor color.

If that's not your sort of thing, there's armor effects. At the lowest level, there's the Grunt Birthday Party, which causes confetti to explode whenever someone kills you with a headshot. Like in Halo 3.

Four armor effects will be available to unlock at launch, and more are likely to come post-launch. There are no prerequisite rank requirements, you just need to have the credits to unlock 'em.

Here's a taster:

Grunt Birthday Party (Cost: 100,000 Credits) - Player's head explodes in confetti when killed with a headshot.

Hearts (Cost: 200,000 Credits) - When the player dies, hearts appear around his/her body.

Pestilence (Cost: 1,000,000 Credits) - Player's armor constantly radiates a dark cloud of insects.

Lightning (Cost: 2,000,000 Credits) - Player's armor constantly radiates electricity.

The game's executive producer, Joseph Tung, said these effects are all about having fun in multiplayer mode.

"We set the price at a certain point to where I think there will hopefully be a subset of people that ultimately get those effects, " he told MTV.

"We already have wacky stuff like Headhunter, [a multiplayer mode] where there are skulls popping out of your head and Juggernaut where you move twice as fast as everyone else when you're the Juggernaut.

"When you're in multiplayer, we expect you to be in a different mindset. It's all about having fun, and I think [armor effects] fit fine there."

MTV estimates players can earn around 500 credits during a match, so as an example, say you wanted the Pestilence effect - you'd play at least 2,000 matches before accumulating the 1M credits to purchase it.

Depends on how dedicated you are, we reckon.

Halo: Reach is out worldwide on September 14.