I cancelled my pre-order a while back.
In the US beta I put in at least 80 hours, and got to the beginnings of what they consider to be end-game. Don't get me wrong, it can and probably will be a great game that sees huge success. The downfalls I can see as of now are the lack of mission dynamics, and the retarded explosive weapons that are end game and virtually ruin all competition.
As far as mission dynamics go, the few core objectives basically become regurgitated in missions that have 7-9-13+ steps instead of 4 or 5. It is noticeable, but actually not as bothersome as you would think. That is, assuming you are playing with people. If you do missions solo you will likely be stuck in constant 1v1's, which are totally fucking gay.
Now, explosive weapons. In this category you have your rocket / grenade launchers, and Less-than-lethal grenade launchers. It has been my personal experience to have witnessed a SINGLE rocket to destroy an entire team. Shoot at the ground in front of their car. The car blows up. They die. Even if they are smart and get out of the car before you blow it up, at least two of them will die from the incredible blast radius.
There was a guy named magebane in the beta who had a rating of 220(how the "leveling" system works... every time you level up a contact or one of your stats like "Cop" or something, you get 1 point into rating). I played like all day every day, and only had a rating of 160. Just to give you an idea further than this, Contacts obviously take longer and longer and longer to level as you go up in tiers. Kid had no life. Regardless; he had a rocket launcher. He enjoyed sitting atop a car or building or something that gave him a good angle. From this point, he would do what I bitched about previously. Shoot a rocket, watch teams die, build up a ridiculous killstreak, watch more people die, and LOL as he masturbates to his incredible e-peen status.
edit: Needless to say, the game is incredible otherwise. I can't bring myself to play until they just remove the explosive weapons. This game isn't Halo. I don't want it to be Halo. Come end game, you are playing fucking Halo.
