There's 28 weapons, every one with a secondary function that is accessed using the left shoulder button. not the L trigger, but the shoulder button. 8 of the 28 guns also have a third function, usually a mode of vision or cloaking.
Looks like the bots are all very customizable, you can even tell them in what order you want them to drop out of the game as your friends enter. They said the AI is so good you can have a team of 30 guys against one super smart/accurate bot.
There will be no proximity voice ala halo 2 bc Rare wants to keep it clean. (trash talking). Also, they said that the big teams of 32 or so can be split into four teams and you can talk only to your team of 8 or so. Then you use the D-pad to talk to the other teams. This is extremely useful when you have ateam of medics, a team of gunners, a team of snipers, and a team of demolitioners.
There's two main gamemodes, deathmatch and dark ops. Deathmatch will include all the standards, CTF, slayer, team slayer, yadayada, but dark ops will be where each memer of each team has one life to spend. When you die, you watch from the spectator mode. Also, medics can run around and heal fallen teammates, bringing them back to life. think they only have a limited supply of reheals though. They said demolitions teams could plant charges to blow holes in walls for access into enemy bases. All of the guns and equipment are purchased in the "spawn room" before the round starts, but there's only so many rocket launchers, so many health rejuvenators, so many gadgets, lockboxes, vehicles, you name it. Not everyone can buy a rocketlauncher.
The evasive rolls can be controlled after you start rolling, so a good sniper can't just anticipate where you will pop up. You can't shoot while rolling, and you take more damage if hit while rolling.
The cover system sounds cool, and reminds me of the gears of war deal. You press a to take cover, then you see your reticle. Aim it where you want, and when you press the R trigger, you pop up in first person perspective and shoot. Release R to return to cover.
Health sounds a lot like Halo 1. You have shock damage and permanent damage.
There's no jump button. The rolling and cover replace it, meaning there will be less bouncing around and no "bunny hopping" you see in games like COD. Also, if you run against a wall or fence for a second, you'll automatically climb over it.
The levels are huge as we know, about 12 times as big as "sidewinder" from halo 1. You can also lay down "waypoint markers" for your teammates to see.
The radar picks up enemies based on sound. Bigger the weapon they fire, the longer they stay on your radar. You can actually tell what sort of weapn an opponent has by watching the radar. There's also a sort of map in the radar like you've seen in the pics.
The kill TV sounds sweet, it's basically the big spectator mode we've all heard about, but you can watch anybody you want. They will have online leaderboards so you can watch the best and steal some of their tricks.
One weapon is your fists. its secondary funtion is "disarm" to take guns away from your opponents.
You can duel wield smaller weapons ala halo 2.
The left trigger in fact throws grenades, so nades won't be a seperate weapon like in some games.
They will have co-op over xbox live, maybe with four players. Also, the counter op mode is back, allowing you to play through the campaign while your buddies play the bad guys.
The motorcycle can have a driver and a gunner on the back. There's a hovercraft that can seat as many people that can fit on it. They can all shoot but one person can man "a very powerful gun on the back."
Every guns reticle starts small, but as you continue to shoot it gets bigger, kinda like Call of duty. This combined with the cover feature makes firefights seem more like tactical ballets where players move from one spot to the next taking cover and firing with short bursts rather than just running at each other guns blazing. <--------This is probably my favorite thing i've heard about the game so far. Sounds wicked.
And lastly, they reiterate that the game is runing on 25-30% of the hardware specs of the 360.