One of the Amazon.com Lightning Deals going on right now is Halo: Reach for $29.99.

You have to claim the deal from the Black Friday Lightning Deals page to get the $29.99 price.  Already, the deal is 64% claimed.

If you miss it though, you can still snag Halo: Reach for $39.99 on the standard product page.

Bungie just flipped the switch on Halo: Reach.

How to Get and Play the Halo: Reach Beta

Insert your Halo 3: ODST disc, and you’ll see an option to “Play the Beta” in the main menu.  Hit that menu selection and it will take you to the download screen.  Get some popcorn though, because it’s a 1.15GB download.

Yeah, Halo: Reach beta is coming next Monday. Before then though, we’ll get a glimpse of Carter, SPARTAN A259, prepping to become a SPARTAN-III supersoldier .  The clip from the short film “Birth of a Spartan” is below. 

A longer version of this short film should be out later this week.  So, stay tuned.

A bit of trivia for all of you who didn’t read the Halo novels (which are very good sci-fi reads, by the way):  The Master Chief was a SPARTAN-II, which come from much narrower gene pool due to special criteria for the SPARTAN-II program.  The survival rate for SPARTAN-II genetic augmentation procedures was 44%.  Advancements in technology and a less aggressive augmentation procedure for SPARTAN-III recruits yielded a 100% survival rate.

SPARTAN-III’s were meant to be expendable, and were trained in classes of 300 or so.  The SPARTAN team in Halo: Reach, Noble Team, defied the odds and, as a result, are rewarded with more suicide missions, from which they keep coming back.

Halo: Reach multiplayer beta is just around the corner – May 3.  IGN has the scoop on the new maps with plenty of screenshots and a big interview with Chris Carney and Lars Bakken from Bungie.

While we’re all stoked about getting our hands on some fresh Halo action, it’s clear from reading the interview that we’re all going to be a bunch of guinea pigs as well while Bungie use data from our game play to make the final release of Halo: Reach a better experience for everyone.

May 3 game on.

[IGN via Joystiq]

If you pre-order Halo: Reach on Amazon.com, you get a $20 credit toward future purchases on Amazon.

Check it out here.

The Halo: Reach trailer (above) dropped a few days back with plenty of peeks at multiplayer action based on an Alpha build of the game.  The Beta version should be accessible May 3 for those who have Halo 3: ODST on hand.

Below, you’ll find another quick behind the scenes snippet on Halo: Reach, courtesy of G4TV.

Welcome to Reach.

Bungie unveiled the Halo: Reach teaser trailer at the VGAs last night.  Above, you’ll see the YouTube version from Bungie’s channel (with HD turned on).

As you can see, there are multiple Spartans, female Spartans (with a prosthetic/bionic arm) and Elites with swords.

None of this reveals anything major in the plot though.  It looks like there may be Spartans with dedicated skill sets.  None of these Spartans appear to be any of the ones we’re familiar with (e.g., Linda, Kelly, etc. from The Fall of Reach).

Here’s some quick screen caps from the short trailer that identifies these new Spartans:

"Lone Wolf" (appears to be the main character) - He's a Lieutenant and new to the team.

Carter - Spartan 259 ("Commander" according to Kat)

Kat - Spartan 320

Jorge - Spartan 052

Sniper Spartan

Skull Spartan - Clearly, he likes grenades...

There doesn’t appear to be any identification on the Skull Spartan – other than the skull face, of course.

Of course, the fate of Reach is already known; however, there are many battles fought and many stories to tell along the way.  As an admitted Halo junkie, I’m stoked about the game.  While we get multi-player beta in 2010, I’m really looking forward to the story in the campaign.  And, I’m glad to be back in the saddle fighting against the Covenant again (including Elites).

Order Halo: Reach on Amazon.com.

Geoff Keighly of Spike TV dropped the news on Twitter.

The world premiere of HALO: REACH happens only at the 2009 Video Game Awards, Live 12/12 on Spike.

That’ll probably get Spike some more viewers.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Halo back story, Reach is a Human planet where the Covenant (the alien bad guys) wiped out a huge part of our civilization by “glassing” the planet with their alien nukes.  Hence the tagline: “Falls 2010.”  It happened before the first Halo game.

There’s a great book (for those of us geek enough to read novels about Halo) called Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund that tells the whole story.  It’s a heck of a book, and I hope the game stays true to the storyline (or stays out of the direct plot of the book).