Halo 5: Guardians – Hammer Storm Available Now As Free Download

343 Industries has launched Hammer Storm as the next batch of free content for Halo 5: Guardians, bringing a plethora of additional gameplay in the form of new game modes, new weapons, new REQ items, and more.

For starters, they’ve added the classic Halo Assault game mode to the Arena, revamped for Halo 5. The objective for Assault remains fairly simple: Get the ball to the enemy’s goal to score. Naturally this is much more difficult in practice.

Just to get control of the ball, enemies are going to have to be taken down, and when holding the ball, weapons are inaccessible. Melee can still be used, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed. Also, carriers will be equipped with two thrust charges for an extra burst of speed for the mad dash to the goal.

Another game type included is the community-favorite: Grifball. In this scenario, players spawn on opposite sides of an open court and then have to cleave, hack, and smash through each other in order to score the Grifball. Once the Grifball is picked up, carriers will turn orange, thus making themselves even more noticeable targets.

Fiesta Slayer is yet another mode in Arena, where what weapon players start out with is totally left up to fate. The player may spawn with a Rocket Launcher, or they may just spawn with a pistol, and with each new life they’ll get a new weapon.

And what would a Halo update be without a new map? Torque is the new Arena map, and caters to both Capture the Flag and Assault matches with the pistons in each courtyard pivotal for cover and objective maneuvering. Timing is key here as pistons don’t remain stationary.

As previously mentioned, there are also new weapons included, such as the

– Gravity Hammer. Available in Arena, Forge, and Warzone, this Rare Power weapon is a devastating melee weapon equipped with gravitic impellers which produces a damaging, area-of-effect knockback pulse of energy with each smash. Be warned each smash does consume energy unless a regular melee attack is used; and

-The classic Halo: Combat Evolved M6D Pistol: Stable, reliable, and easy to use. Should the player be fortunate enough to score a headshot, watch for the classic death animation.

With the new REQ items, there’s also a myriad of new weapon skins, armors, new attachments for loadout weapons, emblems, assassinations, visors, and stances.

Also with Hammer Storm, there’s the standard fixes and cleanups for Multiplayer, Sandbox, and Forge, amongst others.

The full list for the fixes and a more in-depth look at the additions of Hammer Storm can both be found at Halo Waypoint.

And last but not least, 343 Industries has announced that one of the new modes expected to arrive over the coming months after many, many requests from players is the Firefight mode. The new mode will be called Warzone Firefight, and will bring PvE to Halo 5: Guardians’ multiplayer and allow players to fight alongside their friends against common enemies.

Once again, Halo 5: Guardians – Hammer Storm is available now as a free download.

Source: 343 Industries

Trailer via Halo, YouTube