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You guys should see Halo: ODST Gameplay
Plus Bungie Announced Halo: Reach
(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2009/148/6210432_blog011.jpg)
I can't wait I love the first Halo book! :eek2:
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good.
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As long as Halo focuses on the gritty, beautifully non-conventional war story (terribly Freespace-like, actually) of Human vs. Covenant instead of the mess that the Forerunner/Flood backstory has become, I will be very pleased.
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As long as Halo focuses on the gritty, beautifully non-conventional war story (terribly Freespace-like, actually) of Human vs. Covenant instead of the mess that the Forerunner/Flood backstory has become, I will be very pleased.
Agreed. The Flood/Forerunner can get out of hand and ruin but so far its okay.
But hey the first book which this game will be based on is all about the Humans vs. Covenant and I'm happy as well.
Here are the trailers. There Finally Up.
Halo: ODST (BAD QUALITY CAM) ... http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-halo-3-odst/49979 Second Part: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-halo-3-odst/49977
Halo: Reach ... http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-halo-reach/49988
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So, any further details what Halo: Reach is gonna be... shooter, RTS, or what?
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Am I the only one who sees the title as innuendo? :nervous:
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Judging by the Kotaku comments, probably not.
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So yeah, what genre?
Edit: I mean as far as gameplay, not theme (I know it's sci-fi)
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Probably shooter.
*sigh* They better really mix the gameplay up, or...ugh. Bungie needs to get out of its rut. Halo 3 was a lovingly polished and solid experience, but it lacked the soaring ambition or beauty of Halo 1. I'd rather have that kind of flawed masterpiece than a comfortable follow-up.
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Probably shooter.
*sigh* They better really mix the gameplay up, or...ugh. Bungie needs to get out of its rut. Halo 3 was a lovingly polished and solid experience, but it lacked the soaring ambition or beauty of Halo 1. I'd rather have that kind of flawed masterpiece than a comfortable follow-up.
*cough*Halo 3:ODST*cough*
Ahem...don't mind me... :nervous:
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I thought Halo 3 was too full of next-gen gamin cliches.
I.E. Covering up bad repetitive game design with beautiful graphics and completely ruining the immersion for me by adding that stupid helmet overlay and still not including a static health bar or any sort of health bar at all. Halo 3 was decent, but it was by far the worst in the entire series. I'd pick Halo Wars over Halo 3. Halo: CE was by far the best, as it included the health bar underneath the shield, implementing the perfect blend of tactical battlefield strategy and FPS survival.
As long as Halo focuses on the gritty, beautifully non-conventional war story (terribly Freespace-like, actually) of Human vs. Covenant instead of the mess that the Forerunner/Flood backstory has become, I will be very pleased.
Hey!!! I love the Forerunner back-story! :(
Agreed, though, both ideas I think are a masterpiece. Especially the books, except for Contact Harvest, which I lost interest at around the time they talked about Avery getting drunk. I've been told it's right up my alley with the forerunner stuff though, so I need to ask my friend to give that book back.
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Probably shooter.
*sigh* They better really mix the gameplay up, or...ugh. Bungie needs to get out of its rut. Halo 3 was a lovingly polished and solid experience, but it lacked the soaring ambition or beauty of Halo 1. I'd rather have that kind of flawed masterpiece than a comfortable follow-up.
*cough*Halo 3:ODST*cough*
Ahem...don't mind me... :nervous:
It's a side story, and engine-wise it's just not going to be much different.
I thought Halo 3 was too full of next-gen gamin cliches.
I.E. Covering up bad repetitive game design with beautiful graphics and completely ruining the immersion for me by adding that stupid helmet overlay and still not including a static health bar or any sort of health bar at all. Halo 3 was decent, but it was by far the worst in the entire series. I'd pick Halo Wars over Halo 3. Halo: CE was by far the best, as it included the health bar underneath the shield, implementing the perfect blend of tactical battlefield strategy and FPS survival.
As long as Halo focuses on the gritty, beautifully non-conventional war story (terribly Freespace-like, actually) of Human vs. Covenant instead of the mess that the Forerunner/Flood backstory has become, I will be very pleased.
Hey!!! I love the Forerunner back-story! :(
Agreed, though, both ideas I think are a masterpiece. Especially the books, except for Contact Harvest, which I lost interest at around the time they talked about Avery getting drunk. I've been told it's right up my alley with the forerunner stuff though, so I need to ask my friend to give that book back.
I loved the helmet overlay!
And I like the Forerunner back story a lot. But it's clear that they had some very interesting twists lined up for it, foreshadowed in Halo 2...which were summarily discarded in favor of making Halo 3 easier to understand for preteen boys.
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wait... what the heck was the helmet overlay?
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The fact that the HUD looked 3D and had a general outline of a Spartan visor, instead of being flat.
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The fact that the HUD looked 3D and had a general outline of a Spartan visor, instead of being flat.
Which was a great idea, an homage to Metroid Prime and Republic Commando.
As a basic FPS, Halo: ODST looks pretty good. That orbital drop looks dead sexy, and the usual Halo gameplay is at the very least diverting, and occasionally excellent. I'm not banking on it being particularly good, but there are definitely worse games out there to buy.
Halo: Reach... well, **** it. Last time I trusted Bungie enough to pay $110 for Halo 3, they ended up telling all as assholes who enjoy story and compelling narrative to **** off. Right to our faces. With feces.
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and what's all this ODST nonsense?
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Full-price expansion set deal. Actually looks really good. I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but...if that Firefight mode is as good as Gears of War 2's 'Horde' mode was, it ought to be worth it.
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Yeah ODST looks pretty interesting, though I admit I was blown away by the Halo 2 E3 demo and that ended up being ten times more interesting then the finished product. You know the one that looked like an actual insertion at dusk into a embattled city? This little gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoqGLS1U6GQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoqGLS1U6GQ). As opposed to the foolish, "chase the shiny metal crab bot" over the city we ended up with? Now I don't subscribe to the whole hating Halo because its fashionable schtik so many people have. I found them all a fun ride and worth my time and effort. That said I was pretty disappointed when the gritty New Mombassa siege promised in the demo evaporated in the finished product.
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I agree. That demo was the best thing Halo's ever done. Even the little stuff - the gun sounds, the art style, the effects. But they had to ditch it all because the Xbox couldn't handle it.
Hopefully, between ODST and Reach, they'll recapture some of that awesome atmosphere.
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As far as Halo goes... i enjoyed the backstory.
... but even in the first game: Storming the same absolute identical room full of Covenant for the xth time kinda made it clear to me that the series kinda isn't the "pinnacle" of game design that it's often hyped up to be LOL.
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Well it was a welcome change at the time. I still like the Silent Cartographer :P
I agree. That demo was the best thing Halo's ever done. Even the little stuff - the gun sounds, the art style, the effects. But they had to ditch it all because the Xbox couldn't handle it.
Amen.
I just felt that some key moments in the story were half-assed, as well as team-mate AI. When Johnson dies, where was Adagio for Strings? Why can't a squad of Marines take down Brutes or have the intelligence to run when he's about to swing? Inhuman accuracy with S-Lasers was something I liked though, I always gave them heavy weapons. Oh and few of the missions were actually "fun", the first mission seemed tedious to me at some stages, The Covenant was the best mission by far in the game. Games these days lack those "Oomph Moments". If they could've made sifting through flood that more fun it would've been awesome.
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Well it was a welcome change at the time. I still like the Silent Cartographer :P
My favorite level in the whole franchise. :nod:
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Bungie needs to get out of its rut.
Bungie has always been in a rut. Halo is not, in the end, much more than a very very polished retelling of Marathon. The company is really a one-trick pony.
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I'm trying to figure it out does one ODST in halo 3: ODST say ... Troopers we are Green very very Green ... Troopers we are Mean very very Mean or Troopers we are Green very very Mean.
Ehhh damn sound quality.
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Bungie needs to get out of its rut.
Bungie has always been in a rut. Halo is not, in the end, much more than a very very polished retelling of Marathon. The company is really a one-trick pony.
The gameplay and design are very different from Marathon, and the narrative ambition on display clearly taps into the likes of Iain Banks. The similarities are more out of a desire to create a kind of overall mythos, so that we can feel some of the same horror the Wrkcntater evoked when we encounter the Flood.
And, in any case, Oni and Myth were both solid (or, in Myth's case, excellent) games of a very different breed, proving they can do other things well.
In fact, on that note, Pathways into Darkness was a fantastic and often overlooked game with a lot of really original design choices. The fact that Halo is their smash hit franchise shouldn't disguise their versatility.
Bungie is no more a one-trick pony than Volition was, and the two studios share a lot of remarkable similarities (including their tendency to produce derivative but highly polished and enjoyable work.)
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PiD was really good, even considering its age. What really sorta makes your head spin is the fact that
The W'rckncacntr from Marathon is the same entity as the Dreaming God from Pathways into Darkness. *shudder*
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I know. That freaked me out when I figured it out.
Also, nice work spelling W'rckncacntr better than I did.
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I just remember things like that. Go figure.
Anyway, Halo is less Bungie's baby than it is Microsoft's baby. It's owned by M$, managed by M$, and M$ always does what sells. Bungie's babies are games like Pathways into Darkness and Marathon, amazing games that really make you think. Therefore two things are true:
Bungie > M$
Marathon + PiD + Oni + Myth > Halo
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Let's not bring inequality signs into Halo debates. For some reason, this series has become one of the Internet's biggest flame-inducers. It might possibly be all the rabid fanboys claiming it's the best thing ever.
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I haven't played Halo since No2 but even then I prefered Humans vs Cov, rather than Humans vs Cov, Cov vs Cov, Everyone vs Flood etc etc
As far as Halo goes... i enjoyed the backstory.
... but even in the first game: Storming the same absolute identical room full of Covenant for the xth time kinda made it clear to me that the series kinda isn't the "pinnacle" of game design that it's often hyped up to be LOL.
That never bothered me TBH. I quite like it when games repeat scenery, but altered slightly.
Well it was a welcome change at the time. I still like the Silent Cartographer :P
My favorite level in the whole franchise. :nod:
Everybody's favourite mission heh
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I only liked it because of the ambient sound, not the cliche beach landing :P
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Cliche how? Because of World War II, or games like MoH?
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I like Assault on the Control Room, or whatever it's called. Big snowy levels FTW.
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I like Assault on the Control Room, or whatever it's called. Big snowy levels FTW.
I recall I used to do some rather complicated stuff in Assault On The Control Room at the end to recover a Banshee, fly to the top, open the door to get "Covenant Dance" playing, and then fly off down to the bottom of the pyramid again so I could fight the whole way up listening to it.
It was also the only place to really get much interaction with the Marines, and the only level with the tank.
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I only liked it because of the ambient sound, not the cliche beach landing :P
Hmmm, IMO it could've been done a little better I admit. It would've felt a helluva lot more atmospheric if
A) The Marines lived/ There had been more of them.
B) They'd taken fire en route to the LZ
and
C) The Covenant had taken cover and tried to pin down the Marines on the beach head and tried to run them into the sea (Some real military tactics)
The assault felt... too easy, although it was hard itself on some difficulties it didn't have a D-Day feel to it.
I like Assault on the Control Room, or whatever it's called. Big snowy levels FTW.
Yeah that was alright as well, pretty fun to play to boot.
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This is making me want to play Halo again... but I'm too busy playing Marathon. :D and working. :blah:
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I liked the beach landing.
I always found Assault to be a little long. It was great for Co-Op tho.
I think Halo was probably the last game I was really enthused about. I still get kinda nostalgic when I fire it up and see the title screen.
Tell you what, though. Even now, after numerous play-throughs, I still find Truth & Reconciliation bloody hard.
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Library take my award for hardest Halo mission. On Legendary, the mission is just a b****.
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Hrm, I don't know. The Flood are pretty easy to handle. It's the Covenant Elites that usually gave me trouble.
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Yeah you just have to take you're time with the Flood. Gets really funny when you start finding grenades though. Especially with those exploding fat little dudes knocking about.
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Library take my award for hardest Halo mission. On Legendary, the mission is just a b****.
Hmm me agrees with Roanoke on this one....the library is easy if you just camp around the corners with a shottie, but Truth and Reconciliation on Legendary takes *ages* the first time you play through it...you have to hoard sniper ammo the whole lvl and take out far too many elites :|, and of course the marines are no more than meat shields that don't last 10 seconds once you're up in the ship.
But anyway, back on topic....
Actually no...when the hell is Halo 3 coming out for PC :mad:
If Halo 3 doesn't come out on PC we can bet these won't either.
I hate Microsoft.
[/rant]
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Library take my award for hardest Halo mission. On Legendary, the mission is just a b****.
Hmm me agrees with Roanoke on this one....the library is easy if you just camp around the corners with a shottie, but Truth and Reconciliation on Legendary takes *ages* the first time you play through it...you have to hoard sniper ammo the whole lvl and take out far too many elites :|, and of course the marines are no more than meat shields that don't last 10 seconds once you're up in the ship.
But anyway, back on topic....
Actually no...when the hell is Halo 3 coming out for PC :mad:
If Halo 3 doesn't come out on PC we can bet these won't either.
I hate Microsoft.
[/rant]
wait for windows 7, i bet it will be exclusive for it :lol:
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Library take my award for hardest Halo mission. On Legendary, the mission is just a b****.
Hmm me agrees with Roanoke on this one....the library is easy if you just camp around the corners with a shottie, but Truth and Reconciliation on Legendary takes *ages* the first time you play through it...you have to hoard sniper ammo the whole lvl and take out far too many elites :|, and of course the marines are no more than meat shields that don't last 10 seconds once you're up in the ship.
But anyway, back on topic....
Actually no...when the hell is Halo 3 coming out for PC :mad:
If Halo 3 doesn't come out on PC we can bet these won't either.
I hate Microsoft.
[/rant]
wait for windows 7, i bet it will be exclusive for it :lol:
If theres any chance.. yap he's got that right.
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I made the mistake of dropping the sniper rifle onetime just before entering the ship. The dropship bay especially, was most tricky meh.
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I definitely don't consider Halo the best game out there, but it was very enjoyable. The first encounter with flood in Halo was particularly gut-wrenching. :yes:
The Night City missions look very interesting in ODST....
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actually, I have to consider Halo as one of the best for the sheer number of innovations this title gave us.
Regenerating health, the melee, the grenade button, seemless Inside-Outside transitions, fully integrated vehicle gameplay, ALL THIS IS HALO! It's standart today, which just shows how well this works.
And the Multiplayer is still awesome.
On the other hand, Bungie's level design for the Halo series is mostly terrible. Especially Halo 2, which features some of the worst levels ever. :sigh:
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Cairo station was pretty cool IMO, and Delta Halo.
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I could never get past Cairo's dropship bays on legendary.... :no:
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I could never get past Cairo's dropship bays on legendary.... :no:
Battle Rifle and Plasma Pistol Combo on Elites and your good to go.
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Amen :nod:
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http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/852871/bungie-project-2/videos/halo3odst_trl_desperatemeasures_73009.html is that Malcom Reynolds?!
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Yes it is. Nathan Fillion (Mal), Alan Tudyk (Wash) and Adam Baldwin (Jayne) were all in Halo 3 extensively and will star in ODST. Tricia Helfer of Battlestar Galactica is also in ODST. Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) was a marine in Halo 3 as well.
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Yeah i just giving it a second listen and recognized Wash and Jayne :D I'm sold
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actually, I have to consider Halo as one of the best for the sheer number of innovations this title gave us.
Regenerating health, the melee, the grenade button, seemless Inside-Outside transitions, fully integrated vehicle gameplay
No, just no. People taunt these as things Halo innovated but when taken a close look at it, all those things were in other titles.
All those except melee and a specialised grenade system I can point out Battlezone 2 and Tribes which did it earlier (and there are most probably others that did it too even earlier). Actually the specialised grenade system was done by Tribes too.
As for the last one, the melee button, according to what I got, GoldenEye had one. Four years earlier!
EDIT: Duke Nukem 3D had it even earlier it seems.
Why do people repeatedly mention these things? Who knows. Maybe someone out there repeatedly mentions FreeSpace as the first Space Sim with beams for weapons.
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actually, I have to consider Halo as one of the best for the sheer number of innovations this title gave us.
Regenerating health, the melee, the grenade button, seemless Inside-Outside transitions, fully integrated vehicle gameplay
No, just no. People taunt these as things Halo innovated but when taken a close look at it, all those things were in other titles.
All those except melee and a specialised grenade system I can point out Battlezone 2 and Tribes which did it earlier (and there are most probably others that did it too even earlier). Actually the specialised grenade system was done by Tribes too.
As for the last one, the melee button, according to what I got, GoldenEye had one. Four years earlier!
EDIT: Duke Nukem 3D had it even earlier it seems.
Why do people repeatedly mention these things? Who knows. Maybe someone out there repeatedly mentions FreeSpace as the first Space Sim with beams for weapons.
Good comparison, because Halo is great for all the reasons FreeSpace is. It presented a compelling story with slick gameplay, an innovative and streamlined integration of all the major innovations of the genre, a few extra (arguably revolutionary) features thrown in on top, and a whole crapload of atmosphere.
You can't argue that Halo is not the source of all those innovations (melee, grenade system, regenerating health) simply because the reason they're all prevalent now is because games copied Halo. It may not have originated them but it perfected and propagated them.
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actually, I have to consider Halo as one of the best for the sheer number of innovations this title gave us.
Regenerating health, the melee, the grenade button, seemless Inside-Outside transitions, fully integrated vehicle gameplay
No, just no. People taunt these as things Halo innovated but when taken a close look at it, all those things were in other titles.
All those except melee and a specialised grenade system I can point out Battlezone 2 and Tribes which did it earlier (and there are most probably others that did it too even earlier). Actually the specialised grenade system was done by Tribes too.
As for the last one, the melee button, according to what I got, GoldenEye had one. Four years earlier!
EDIT: Duke Nukem 3D had it even earlier it seems.
Why do people repeatedly mention these things? Who knows. Maybe someone out there repeatedly mentions FreeSpace as the first Space Sim with beams for weapons.
Good comparison, because Halo is great for all the reasons FreeSpace is. It presented a compelling story with slick gameplay, an innovative and streamlined integration of all the major innovations of the genre, a few extra (arguably revolutionary) features thrown in on top, and a whole crapload of atmosphere.
You can't argue that Halo is not the source of all those innovations (melee, grenade system, regenerating health) simply because the reason they're all prevalent now is because games copied Halo. It may not have originated them but it perfected and propagated them.
But it's not innovating! It's popularizing (for better or worse)! It's a completely different thing!
It also popularized tea bagging and screaming into the microphone, do you call that innovating too?
By the way, which "extra arguably revolutionary features" did Halo have that other titles didn't have earlier?
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Please don't say dual-wield. Bungie did that in the early 90's with their Marathon games.
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actually, I have to consider Halo as one of the best for the sheer number of innovations this title gave us.
Regenerating health, the melee, the grenade button, seemless Inside-Outside transitions, fully integrated vehicle gameplay
No, just no. People taunt these as things Halo innovated but when taken a close look at it, all those things were in other titles.
All those except melee and a specialised grenade system I can point out Battlezone 2 and Tribes which did it earlier (and there are most probably others that did it too even earlier). Actually the specialised grenade system was done by Tribes too.
As for the last one, the melee button, according to what I got, GoldenEye had one. Four years earlier!
EDIT: Duke Nukem 3D had it even earlier it seems.
Why do people repeatedly mention these things? Who knows. Maybe someone out there repeatedly mentions FreeSpace as the first Space Sim with beams for weapons.
Good comparison, because Halo is great for all the reasons FreeSpace is. It presented a compelling story with slick gameplay, an innovative and streamlined integration of all the major innovations of the genre, a few extra (arguably revolutionary) features thrown in on top, and a whole crapload of atmosphere.
You can't argue that Halo is not the source of all those innovations (melee, grenade system, regenerating health) simply because the reason they're all prevalent now is because games copied Halo. It may not have originated them but it perfected and propagated them.
But it's not innovating! It's popularizing (for better or worse)! It's a completely different thing!
It also popularized tea bagging and screaming into the microphone, do you call that innovating too?
By the way, which "extra arguably revolutionary features" did Halo have that other titles didn't have earlier?
It doesn't matter how many people do it first, it's the people who do it right. Halo was in the right place, at the right time, with the right ingredients, and now all shooters riff from it.
As for the generalizations about people who play Halo, the same could be said of anything with broad appeal in such a demographic. It reflects nothing whatsoever upon the game itself.
All that aside you're doubly wrong because Halo did innovate with those features. It was a console shooter with excellent design on the software, simulation, and gameplay level. Its controls, concepts, and graphics all came together in one superb and, yes, innovative package. The fact that other games had used many of those features first, again, means nothing: FreeSpace did almost nothing new but it was still innovative.
The thing that is most striking (and probably least recognized) about Halo is that it is, unlike most shooters, a simulation of sorts. The game engine does very little in the way of cheating. Every entity is a physics-based actor in a simulated world, using proscribed senses to navigate and determine courses of action. The player is just another such actor. This is is very much at odds with the heavily scripted approaches taken by Half-Life and Call of Duty.
Please don't say dual-wield. Bungie did that in the early 90's with their Marathon games.
You could even dual-wield shotguns. Oh, man.
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Good comparison, because Halo is great for all the reasons FreeSpace is. It presented a compelling story with slick gameplay, an innovative and streamlined integration of all the major innovations of the genre, a few extra (arguably revolutionary) features thrown in on top, and a whole crapload of atmosphere.
You can't argue that Halo is not the source of all those innovations (melee, grenade system, regenerating health) simply because the reason they're all prevalent now is because games copied Halo. It may not have originated them but it perfected and propagated them.
But it's not innovating! It's popularizing (for better or worse)! It's a completely different thing!
It also popularized tea bagging and screaming into the microphone, do you call that innovating too?
By the way, which "extra arguably revolutionary features" did Halo have that other titles didn't have earlier?
It doesn't matter how many people do it first, it's the people who do it right. Halo was in the right place, at the right time, with the right ingredients, and now all shooters riff from it.
No it isn't. Popularizing is completely different from innovating. If people say Halo innovated X when X was already in other popular games at the time then they are dead wrong. Just because it had larger sales doesn't change it.
As for the generalizations about people who play Halo, the same could be said of anything with broad appeal in such a demographic. It reflects nothing whatsoever upon the game itself.
Exactly my point! Again, having larger sales doesn't mean it innovated when it featured things that other games already had!
All that aside you're doubly wrong because Halo did innovate with those features. It was a console shooter with excellent design on the software, simulation, and gameplay level. Its controls, concepts, and graphics all came together in one superb and, yes, innovative package. The fact that other games had used many of those features first, again, means nothing: FreeSpace did almost nothing new but it was still innovative.
No. Neither FreeSpace nor Halo can be called innovating because they didn't innovate! They took what was already there and mixed it up into a decent package, I admit. But those cannot be called innovating.
If I create a software that does, say... join together clients of various chat protocols (think Pidgin, Trillian, etc...) and it becomes massively popular with the average guy, does that mean I innovated? Of course not! It was already there!
The thing that is most striking (and probably least recognized) about Halo is that it is, unlike most shooters, a simulation of sorts. The game engine does very little in the way of cheating. Every entity is a physics-based actor in a simulated world, using proscribed senses to navigate and determine courses of action. The player is just another such actor. This is is very much at odds with the heavily scripted approaches taken by Half-Life and Call of Duty.
Thief: The Dark Project
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By Halo 3, the whole gameplay mechanic was getting horribly old. Hopefully ODST and Reach will introduce some new things.
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Now you're just nitpicking. Halo did things that other games had not done. It broke new ground with its controls and its seamless integration of multiple gameplay features. Hundreds of reviewers agreed.
Whether or not you want to call that 'innovation' you've effectively agreed it was an excellent game.
I have no particular agenda with regards to Halo, but I've heard a lot of arguments like yours before and they seem to be rooted in a deep-seated fear of the game.
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Now you're just nitpicking. Halo did things that other games had not done. It broke new ground with its controls and its seamless integration of multiple gameplay features. Hundreds of reviewers agreed.
What ground? I've asked this before. What feature did Halo had that no other game before had? Tribes had most if not all those "innovations".
The reason Halo is more popular is because it was the best game on the XBox.
Whether or not you want to call that 'innovation' you've effectively agreed it was an excellent game.
Again, I agree with you it's a fine game that gathers many features that were already there and presents them in a decent package, but innovating? No.
I have no particular agenda with regards to Halo, but I've heard a lot of arguments like yours before and they seem to be rooted in a deep-seated fear of the game.
Neither do I, but when people start calling it innovating when other games deserve the credit for those innovations, it kind of gets on my nerves. This is just not with Halo, but with any game.
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The combination of elements is innovative. By the logic of your argument, Tribes was not at all innovative because all its gameplay features were simply pieced together from existing pieces of code. It's reductio ad absurdum.
Halo may have riffed, it may have borrowed, or maybe its team simply came up with stuff on its own (doubtful!), but the fact remains that their implementation of features that had been used earlier but perhaps not as well or in a way that was not as striking is still innovation.
Writing is still innovative even if you're using all the same words. You seem to be asserting that a book is not innovative unless it's written in a new language, when in fact all that's required is a pleasing arrangement of the same characters - in this case, gameplay concepts and vocabulary.
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The combination of elements is innovative. By the logic of your argument, Tribes was not at all innovative because all its gameplay features were simply pieced together from existing pieces of code. It's reductio ad absurdum.
Halo may have riffed, it may have borrowed, or maybe its team simply came up with stuff on its own (doubtful!), but the fact remains that their implementation of features that had been used earlier but perhaps not as well or in a way that was not as striking is still innovation.
Writing is still innovative even if you're using all the same words. You seem to be asserting that a book is not innovative unless it's written in a new language, when in fact all that's required is a pleasing arrangement of the same characters - in this case, gameplay concepts and vocabulary.
So again with the earlier example, I make a program which aggregates various chat protocols and it becomes massively popular. Did I innovate?
If by using my definition of innovation, no one innovates, by using yours everyone innovates.
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Then we're both silly, it's a dumb word and this is a dumb argument. (But yeah, I'd probably describe the integration as innovative.)
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Did I mention half the cast of Firefly is in ODST? :P
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Then we're both silly, it's a dumb word and this is a dumb argument. (But yeah, I'd probably describe the integration as innovative.)
Then I guess we are. :P
Speaking of Halo, what happened to Halo Wars? There was a lot of hype going around and suddently it vanished.
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It came out, it was good but not quite great. A real blast for a console RTS, though; I'm surprised by how much fun it was.
It had a lot of excellent and immersive features, including a brilliant physics engine and really fun units.
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It's the smoothest running RTS I've played on console. Granted, that wouldn't be saying much, but this was actually better than several of the RTSs I play on the computer. The unit selection was very well handled, and was only clunky if you needed to select a half a dozen people out of a throng.
My favorite part of the entire game is when the Spartans completely kick the crap out of a dozen Elites in about 15 seconds (cutscene). It was awesome.
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I liked a lot of the story, but I had complaints with a few parts. The Covenant, particularly the Elites, seem kind of noobish - what happened to Fall of Reach/Halo 1 elites and their kickassery? Their ability to challenge a Spartan one-on-one in hand-to-hand combat?
It was also the first Halo story to seem misogynistic to me. Anders' princess complex was right on the line especially when paired with Forge's, uh, testosterone-soaked behavior, but Serena's 'interest in human relationships and chocolate' was a bit much.
Cutscenes were gorgeous though.
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Anders was unfortunately pulling something close to par for the course for an untrained civilian in comparison to the military. Serena on the other hand had no excuse.
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Give me Cortana any day.
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I thought Halo 3 was too full of next-gen gamin cliches.
I.E. Covering up bad repetitive game design with beautiful graphics and completely ruining the immersion for me by adding that stupid helmet overlay and still not including a static health bar or any sort of health bar at all. Halo 3 was decent, but it was by far the worst in the entire series. I'd pick Halo Wars over Halo 3. Halo: CE was by far the best, as it included the health bar underneath the shield, implementing the perfect blend of tactical battlefield strategy and FPS survival.
Halos 2 and 3 don't need a health bar, because it regenerates like shields though slightly slower. Master Chief upgraded to MJOLNIR Mk. VI armor at the beginning of Halo 2, which has built-in biofoam injectors.
Bungie hid it so they could put in all these convoluted mechanics. It only starts to regenerate after a certain amount of time out of combat, etc. You shouldn't need to see it, because if your shields are gone you should be ducking into a hidey hole. Not to mention it's a much less brutal system... the health system of Halo:CE was what made Legendary nigh impossible sometimes.
Halo Wars was a terrible excuse for an RTS in my opinion. It comes down to building a massive army of tanks, the Flood are terribly unbalanced and unplayable, and it's riddled with inconsistencies to the rest of the Halo series. (Elites with claws? Grunt/jackal combat forms?) But nitpicking aside, I'm probably just spoiled by computer RTS games like C&C and Starcraft.:P
Anyway, Halo is less Bungie's baby than it is Microsoft's baby.
Microsoft bought Bungie after Halo was well in development. If you see gameplay footage from the 90s (it was announced in 1999 after it had been underway for several years; Bungie was bought in 2000) it's evident that Bungie's vision remained largely intact. The biggest differences were cosmetic (elites with one jaw, Master Chief with an antennae, smaller scorpion), aside from things that were cut due to constraints (some of which were added in Halo 2, such as the particle beam rifle and specter).
The Covenant, particularly the Elites, seem kind of noobish - what happened to Fall of Reach/Halo 1 elites and their kickassery? Their ability to challenge a Spartan one-on-one in hand-to-hand combat?
This could be said about the other games as well, though to a lesser degree. Eric Nylund was either taking a huge artistic liberty, or writing based entirely on Legendary. :lol:
Though I suppose if the John-117 of the books was able to blow away his enemies with the ease of a video game character, it would detract from his otherwise amazingly well-written story.
Give me Cortana any day.
Seconded. Halo would have been very quiet without her witty comments, too. :nod:
Though I think she was a much more interesting character in the books.
And as for my favorite levels... I'd have to say in Halo:CE it was either Truth & Rec or The Library. No, I'm not a masochist, The Library is just a huge challenge. And I like challenge. Though my favorite moment is the finale. And I always found Silent Cartographer to be rather annoying... I have no idea what all the love is about. :wtf:
In Halo 2 I liked Cairo Station and that level after Outskirts. The one where you kill the scarab. It had good vehicle action.
In Halo 3 the only favorites I have are the part of The Covenant (I think that's the level) where you kill the scarab on foot, and the homage to Halo:CE's ending. The whole game was good but not great. I liked Halo:CE the best... it had a certain charm, probably because it wasn't trying at all to be balanced (is the pistol really a tiny rifle? :lol:). Grenades were also very overpowered fun in Halo:CE.
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Take the scarab out on foot in The Covenant? Are you frakking crazy!? Didn't you see the two Hornets?
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Er, whichever one it was where there was the huge boat that looks like MC's helmet from behind. And the Ark Portal in the background.
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Er, whichever one it was where there was the huge boat that looks like MC's helmet from behind. And the Ark Portal in the background.
Yeah, that was The Storm. Way earlier on.
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Heh, I just remember associating The Covenant with a scarab. Much more well done than the scarab in Halo 2, I must say. Both in appearance and actual gameplay.
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My favorite Halo 3 moment is on the actual Covenant mission. Hornet vs. Banshee dogfights FTW.
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You know, if Halo for Freespace had a big staff they could probably put together atmosphere sequences with Banshees, Hornets, and Pelicans. Or, if all else fails, just rip something off of SoL. :drevil:
I'm not sure how banshees would handle in space, what with their anti-grav pods, and hornets rely on moving air. And pelicans... they just aren't meant for space combat.
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But they can function that way in a pinch. Read First Strike if you haven't already.
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I actually just finished rereading it a couple days ago, and I knew that would come up. :lol:
Though all they did with a pelican in space was use it as a decoy, aside from dodging through an asteroid field. And they used banshees to escape Unyielding Hierophant, nothing more.
Neither a pelican nor a banshee could never hold a candle to a seraph or a longsword.
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My only reason for bringing that up was that it can be used in a vacuum, and could therefore be used in any Halo mod.
Think transport, serving the function of an atmospheric insertion vehicle. Hornets, not so much.
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I suppose Pelicans could the the objective of an escort mission.
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Kinda hard as Halo has no sense of scale. A Longsword interceptor is bigger than a jumbo jet and has more than enough interior room to hold a mine pod, a small armory, as well as an impromptu conference between several people.
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You could say that Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale)
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Kinda hard as Halo has no sense of scale. A Longsword interceptor is bigger than a jumbo jet and has more than enough interior room to hold a mine pod, a small armory, as well as an impromptu conference between several people.
Well, why not? I mean, it's not like a space fighter is going to be the size of a prop plane.
You could say that Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale)
You're not stealing my FREDding time, Scotty!
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Well, a Longsword is bigger than a Pelican is what I mean by no sense of scale. Kinda hard to escort something a fraction of your size.
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Well, a Longsword is bigger than a Pelican is what I mean by no sense of scale. Kinda hard to escort something a fraction of your size.
Well, the Longsword is a fighter, probably not meant for escorting Pelicans in the first place. That's more of a job for the Hornet...
The Longsword escorts half-a-k long Frigates.
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Hornets don't work properly in space, what with their reliance on lift from fans. And if you think a Longsword escorting a Pelican is a strange scale, you probably aren't recalling the closing cutscene to Cairo Station. Not only do Longswords swoop in and bomb open a hole in a Covenant carrier's shields for him, but a UNSC ship of some kind flies by to eat pulse laser fire for him.
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That was probably an energy projector, not a pulse laser, and I kind of think that's ship's passage was more of an eyecandy/coincidence thing. Maybe. I'd never really thought about that being part of the plan before.
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The writer mentioned something about it in the special features of Halo 3 Legendary Edition, and if it was an energy projector (by which I believe you mean the flagship guns that they snipe other ships with) then it would have gone right through.
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I think it does go right through.
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I ought to replay Halo 2... it's been a while. Just beat Halo:CE for my friend last night (who couldn't get past Two Betrayals). :lol: Amazing finale... always has been.
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Yeah, I really think the Halo 1 singleplayer was the best.
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Amazing finale... always has been.
Never was a fan of the Warthog run myself, to be honest...
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It's worth beating on legendary just for the marine elite hug :)
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Yeah... Bungie's little treat for devoted players. :D
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Well, in BSG they had basestars escorting the [smaller] resurrection ship... and nobody complained about that...
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Did I mention half the cast of Firefly is in ODST? :P
Cool stuff
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Kaylee too? :) :) ohmygodiloveher!
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I've been going over to my friends house lately. Since I don't have any FPSs, he lets me come over and play Halo with him, Coop mode.
We finished silent cartographer, but couldn't find time to do the next one. So we just had a sleepover this friday night, beat Halo, and got through the first mission of Halo 2. We got to the part in the second mission when you arrive at the marine's field HQ, were about to go inside when my mom came. :ick:
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Halo co-op was great :yes:
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Lol. We were roleplaying like nerds. :P
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We would usually get bored after a bit and turn on each other. Always good for a laugh, especially with covenant and flood knocking about.
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I kept surprising him with my prowess at using the Sniper rifle and Rocket Launcher. Right up in hunters faces, used rocket launcher, out with 50% shields and full health.
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Haven't played the first Halo for a while now... good memories. :yes:
I'm now waiting for ODST. Looks promising so far. ^_^
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Haven't played the first Halo for a while now... good memories. :yes:
I'm now waiting for ODST. Looks promising so far. ^_^
Indeed. I look forward to a Halo game with characters who have actual personalities this time around.
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I'm not that bothered really. It feels like republic commando but less to me........
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gamertag: SPARTAN 367
I'm looking for buddies to play firefight with!
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they sure know how to promote a product...
http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/852871/bungie-project-2/videos/haloodst_liveaction_trl_090409.html (http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/852871/bungie-project-2/videos/haloodst_liveaction_trl_090409.html)
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Wow...that's a pretty damn fantastic trailer, actually.
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I can't help thinking both of these new games will end up with the player unearthing yet another Forerunner artifact and fighting off yet another horde of Flood zombies.
Pessimism rules.
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That was a beautiful trailer. Oh, marketing, how excited you get me.
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WTF does ODST stand for? I can't get excited over some unknown initials.
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ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, I think. Basically ODST's climb into drop pods and launch themselves towards the planet's surface, where they will leave the pod and kill everything that isn't friendly.
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WTF does ODST stand for? I can't get excited over some unknown initials.
You can read a decent article on them in Halopedia (http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Orbital_Drop_Shock_Trooper)
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WTF does ODST stand for? I can't get excited over some unknown initials.
Feet first into hell.
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I'm sold.
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campain has been leaked on youtube
here, but the player is on easy and is foolish. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZmyyIi49EI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eescapistmagazine%2Ecom%2Fforums%2Fread%2F7%2E137402&feature=player_embedded)
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I am so sorely tempted to delete that link.
*sigh*
There's no good reason to, but...really? Why would you spoil it for yourself?
If anyone spoils any element of ODST on this forum I will go bat****.
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sorry, but i thought it might be nice for other people, like myself, whom are not going to play it in the near future
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It would still be nice for you and other people like yourself who are not going to play it in the near future to wait for those of us who will play it in the near future to play it. :doubt:
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TBH, I'm not too psyched about ODST myself...
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I wasn't, but after hearing about the length (8-10 hours), the hidden second story, the noir aesthetic, the new music, Firefight...I'm pumped. Bungie has never let me down. Both Halo 2 and Halo 3 seemed disappointing in one way or another when they came out, but both of them turned into enduring, rich classics.
To be honest I'm not sure I've ever played better games. (Not that FreeSpace 2 isn't on par.)
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True that Bungie doesn't disappoint (for the most part), but I'm not really looking forward to playing what appears to be a very derivative rehash of Halo 3 with a couple of new weapons... Bungie said it themselves, it's more of an expansion pack.
Firefight might be a laugh though.
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The story, the final inclusion of the Engineer (it's been in non-spoiler previews), the story, the presence of Tricia Helfer and most of Firefly, the story, the fact that the team described it as a 'labor of love' with a small staff and a lot of devotion, the story, and the noir atmosphere have me very intrigued.
Did I mention that the story presentation sounds genuinely interesting and fun? Loved their description of the 'detective in the rain' aesthetic they were going for.
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The Engineer finally appears? Cool...
Hopefully that means we'll get to see some of the other cut stuff too...
EDIT - Aaaaaand they're going to be suicide bombers? :doubt:
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I really don't get how you can call it derivative. It's an open-world Halo game!
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I really don't get how you can call it derivative. It's an open-world Halo game!
Yeah, that might be interesting. Though just how "open-world" it really is has yet to be seen...
Definitely going to buy it, but not bat**** insane about it really... Might get it as late as Christmas depending on how bothered I am...
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an open-world Halo game!
WHAT YOU SAY?!
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It's one big level that you wander around, but in the level you find things that trigger old-school Halo-style levels as flashbacks.
So there's a 'hub world', not so much a real GTA-style open world.
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ORLY?
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So there's a 'hub world', not so much a real GTA-style open world.
Explain? :confused:
(never played GTA at length)
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GTA is like, 'go anywhere in a huge world that takes an hour to cross', Oblivion-style. Halo is like 'there is a somewhat smaller world (fifteen minutes to cross?) but it links you into multiple smaller missions.
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Pre-ordered ODST today. Looking forward to it.
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Me too. Preordered yesterday.
So excited to finally see Engineers in-game!
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I'll definitely pick this one up. Ever since myself and two ODSTs made it through the entire Delta Halo mission (The computer replaced them with regular grunts when Regret started much to my dismay) I've liked these guys.
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I was waiting for release... but I guess I'll pre-order it.
Not to excited, but I need something new and Bungie doesn't disappoint.
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On the general topic of Halo, I've been playing Halo PC again recently, and this **** has to be the best Halo game in the series, by far. The only one still worth playing.
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I've been playing Halo 3 again recently, and although I started out with Halo PC and loved it, I've got to say Halo 3 captures most of what was great about it and a great deal that wasn't present too.
The only thing I miss about Halo 1 is the Elites. And some intangible feel about the combat, probably the relative weakness of the weapons.
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One of my gripes about Halo 3 is that all the human weapons except for the Rocket Launcher and Spartan Laser just "felt" useless. Even their sound effects sounded like they were vibrators rather than guns. :ick:
And the Brutes were silly. Srs, they went from being awesome primal mindless killers that you really feared in Halo 2 to being basically Elites without energy shields in Halo 3. :doubt:
A lot of other gripes that I can't be bothered to list here basically culminate in me not liking Halo 3 as much as the first two...
Halo 3 was a good game, just not as good as the first...
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One of my gripes about Halo 3 is that all the human weapons except for the Rocket Launcher and Spartan Laser just "felt" useless. Even their sound effects sounded like they were vibrators rather than guns. :ick:
Dude, vibrators don't sound like that. The Battle Rifle was awesome in H3.
And the Brutes were silly. Srs, they went from being awesome primal mindless killers that you really feared in Halo 2 to being basically Elites without energy shields in Halo 3. :doubt:
A lot of other gripes that I can't be bothered to list here basically culminate in me not liking Halo 3 as much as the first two...
Hrm, maybe, but they sure put up a good fight. Try it on Legendary with Tilt and Thunderstorm turned on.
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Dude, vibrators don't sound like that.
Mmm. I wouldn't know anything about that. :P
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Dude, vibrators don't sound like that.
Mmm. I wouldn't know anything about that. :P
You got some learnin' to do, boy!
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played ODST on campus in firefight mode.
its pretty cool, magnum is scpoed, but also with recoil, little more difficult not being SSoldiser
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Plus, melee isn't WTFPWNGE anymore.
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Thank God. The Halo 3 melee metagame had zero subtlety.
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Well, you're a damn Spartan-II.
It shouldn't. :P
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Dude, vibrators don't sound like that.
Mmm. I wouldn't know anything about that. :P
You got some learnin' to do, boy!
Indeed. :pimp:
On the topic of Gun sounds, the Assault Rifle sounded like a woodpecker between the hours of 9am and 5pm, it sounded WEAK. I felt the guns didn't have any "oomph-factor", think COD4 minigun for a well executed example. The Battle-Rifle was okay I guess, but it just didn't feel like a manly weapon of xenocide. And I think the shotgun could've been a *little* louder. :P
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And I think the shotgun could've been a *little* louder. :P
I used the shotgun ONCE on Halo 3 Campaign. Then I never used it again. :doubt:
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And I think the shotgun could've been a *little* louder. :P
I used the shotgun ONCE on Halo 3 Campaign. Then I never used it again. :doubt:
WHAT.
In god's name, why? The Halo 3 shotgun was a tool of ultimate destruction.
Ironically people thought the Halo 1 weapons were the 'best-feeling', but it was apparently because a glitch doubled all the bass on them as compared to real-life guns.
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I don't know about Halo 3, but I found the original Halo's shotgun to be utterly indispensable, especially when dealing with the Flood. I couldn't even imagine going through the whole game without touching it.
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The Halo 1 shotgun was great. A little less powerful than the Halo 3 one, but with more ammo.
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Double the ammo. And double the effective range -.-
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True enough, but without the nuclear-force power up close.
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Yeah, just slightly under that. it was still a one hit kill on ANYTHING at close range. Well, anything living, at any rate.
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And I think the shotgun could've been a *little* louder. :P
I used the shotgun ONCE on Halo 3 Campaign. Then I never used it again. :doubt:
WHAT.
In god's name, why? The Halo 3 shotgun was a tool of ultimate destruction.
Ironically people thought the Halo 1 weapons were the 'best-feeling', but it was apparently because a glitch doubled all the bass on them as compared to real-life guns.
Might've been Halo 2, not sure.
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Yeah, the H2 shotgun was pretty awful.
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Been playing through Halo PC myself here. This pistol is just
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Been playing through Halo PC myself here. This pistol is just
It really is, isn't it? :p
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I know exactly what you mean. Back then, the pistol was a complete
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Shooting down Banshees with it, man.
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I thought you guys might like to know that I spent more than 5 hours of my life on a single match of Firefight on ODST. I got to Set 4, and lasted 325 minutes.
I've saved the film in theater to look over it later.
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Solo? Cool. Difficulty, map?
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On Normal, "Chasm Ten", which is by far my favorite map.
Apparently, my tool of destruction was the AutoMag, which I got like a hundred headshots with.
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I love Chasm Ten.
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So whats the solo replayability like then?
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Decent, I love the missions more than any previous Halo levels. The overworld is fun too if you want to find all of Sadie's Story.
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So whats the solo replayability like then?
I mainly play firefight, but the campaign is good too. :yes:
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I have yet to find all of the audiologs. There are three that escape my grasp.
Good job on the firefight game. Farthest I go was to the last wave of Set 4 with a friend on Lost Platoon. We didn't use choppers for any more than half of it. :P
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You need to find two more logs, then the last one is actually on Data Hive.
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Wat? There's a log on Data Hive?
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U can only get it if u find the other 29 tho. Otherwise the room its in is locked.
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Quick question along the lines of my previous one. . .
If i've read Halo reach and the others, does this game really fill in that much backstory or is it just halo 3 with different skins and an umbrella level?
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ODST? No, it's absolutely worth buying. Completely new story, really enjoyably told, it's a blast.
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ODST? No, it's absolutely worth buying. Completely new story, really enjoyably told, it's a blast.
It takes place on earth during Halo 3, right?
Is it while MC is on the Ark?
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It takes place while MC is still in transit to Delta Halo, during the events of Halo 2.
Or in that neighborhood. It's before the MC returns to kick off Halo 3, and before the Ark Portal is uncovered.
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Back to the topic of Halo: Reach... My main interest is what improvements to the engine these guys are going to make.
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They're apparently building a 'new engine', but it'll probably share a lot of the H3/2/1 engine, all of which were just drastic evolutions to one degree or another.
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it'll be curioius, i'll definately have to try the beta when it rolls around...
...i see classes...
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Maybe it's an 'academy' type game.
I mean, that's basically what Reach amounted to, right? The place where they trained spartans?
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Maybe it's an 'academy' type game.
I mean, that's basically what Reach amounted to, right? The place where they trained spartans?
And then the Covenant showed up and there was a big battle. But I'm sure it'll be more about the training than the enormously significant battle. :P
What I'm really looking forward to in Halo: Reach is fighting Elites again. Yeah. Sick of Brutes.
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Didn't the Covenant end up glassing Reach though? Been a while since I read that book.
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They only glassed it partially, then landed lots of troops to hold it and search for some Forerunner stuff buried there.
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(http://www.tradebit.com/usr/dealershoppe/pub/9002/toyota4runner2000.jpg)
Turbo Pun
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You're a turbo pun :p
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You're dad's a turbo pun.
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derail much? :doubt:
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rerail and bump
Halo Reach Trailer (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/halo-reach-spike-tv/59813)
I was pretty pleased with ODST so I have strong hopes that this will turn out pretty good as well, especially if they take a different slant on it the the standard MC fair.
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rerail and bump
Halo Reach Trailer (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/halo-reach-spike-tv/59813)
I was pretty pleased with ODST so I have strong hopes that this will turn out pretty good as well, especially if they take a different slant on it the the standard MC fair.
the suggestion that it will be squad-based is promising..
EDIT: that's the ingame stuff!??
awesome.
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That trailer is simply boring.
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No it's not, especially not if you know what it is. It's a cinematic taken from the game, rendered in-engine in real-time. It's rather impressive.
More importantly, it shows off the characters and attention to detail Bungie's employing.
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I don't like the music. =/
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WAT
Heresy! I thought it was pretty heart-pumping.
Also, I take back the earlier statement. mxlm could be right: the trailer might be a bit dull if you're not a Halo junkie. BUT I AM.
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No it's not, especially not if you know what it is. It's a cinematic taken from the game, rendered in-engine in real-time
I, uh, knew that already :p
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See my last post.
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No it's not, especially not if you know what it is. It's a cinematic taken from the game, rendered in-engine in real-time
I, uh, knew that already :p
i for one didn't, and that made me go oh, damn!
glad i has a thing for beta acess.
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My favorite part isn't the squad based play, or the music. It's that the Spartans are finally being given some non-book time character! The different armor, varying emblems and personalities (at least the ones visible in the trailer) are what I've been waiting for for quite a few years now.
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The trailer makes things look pretty exciting. What I think is cool story wise is that we already know that Reach was a massive battle that ended badly for humanity. So with the basic path already set there's quite a bit of really cool stuff that can be done but we know it's going to end on what is probably a sad note. All of those beautiful locations.... glassed.
Looking forward to the possibilities of squad based combat and a new story. I love that they have already shown off a dropship like aircraft that looks a bit like a Pelican but with more conventional/throwback propeller blades. Looking forward to more new old stuff :)
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Good music, amazing atmosphere, and bad-ass looking Spartans. (Helmet paint and arm prosthetic?)
What's not to like?
Question: What's Lone Wolf carrying, doesn't really look like a BR.
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Argh! My laptop can't handle processing that orgasm. From what I saw, it looks kinda cool. :)
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There are leaked screenshots that show a BR-like weapon (stripped AR with scope? BR predecessor? Whatever it is, it looks like what the 'lone wolf' was carrying) and what appears to be the deformed child of the needler and the carbine. Can't wait to get more details. A part of me is sad that elites will be the enemy again, because while brutes may have been less interesting, the elites have such a cool backstory and culture, and presumably they won't pull a Halo 2 on us again (I'm playing as WHAT NOW?) so we won't get to explore that much anymore.
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I have wanted to kill Elites again for two games now.
ODST almost reeked of RetCon in that department.
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I want to play as the spartan who rejects the gene therapy and ends up with spikey skeletonitis.
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I want to play as the spartan who rejects the gene therapy and ends up with spikey skeletonitis.
i'm sorry, the instant i heard reject gene therapy, i instantly tough it'd be like playing as johnny in MGS4, but my allies are more powerful.
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I have wanted to kill Elites again for two games now.
ODST almost reeked of RetCon in that department.
Yep... Brutes are amazingly dull.
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Killing brutes is a bit like killing 4chan users, really. All they do is go BAW and rage at things.
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Elites are back yay!
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bump
Yeah so apparently the February 2010 issue of Game Informer will have details regarding Halo: Reach. Sounds awesome. :)
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Indeed, this is looking promising. :)
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Cool, it looks like they turned the reptile-Jackal guys from Halo: CE into an entirely new enemy.
Weapon lineup isn't half-bad either.
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Really liking what they plan to do with the camerawork and atmosphere.
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I'm wondering if Firefight will return, and what they plan to do with Multiplayer.
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is there a link to this info?
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Only magazine scans. Google 'halo reach game informer scans' or somesuch.
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Only magazine scans. Google 'halo reach game informer scans' or somesuch.
OR click here
(http://www.allgamesbeta.info/2010/01/halo-reach.html)
damn. link broken.
just google them i guess.
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Why does she have an XBox controller plugged into a computer?
(Now I know somebody's going to say "you're a homo for noticing that" :P)
I was a bit miffed with those scans, the light obscures a lot of the text on the third page. In fact those aren't scans at all, just photographs. Still cool though. :ick:
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Doi.
It's How the game is playtested. Before burn to master disk. Didn't anyone watch the bonus stuff on the halo 3 tin second DVD?
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My god I'm gonna go broke this year...
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(http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/106/1068717/halo-reach-screenshots-20100211025105306.jpg)
You can see here, the Death Star orbiting the forest moon of Endor. Although, the weapon systems on this Death Star or not yet operational, the Death Star does have a strong defense mechanism. It is protected by an energy shield which is generated from the nearby forest moon of Endor.
There are some pretty snazzy screenshots and concept art up on IGN. What I've seen looks impressive... most impresive
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/142/14276699/imgs_1.html (http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/142/14276699/imgs_1.html)
I almost wish they would remaster the whole series to this standard.
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Zomg!
Halo Reach ViDoc is here!
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=HaloReach_ViDoc
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Cool. I really like the direction they're taking with this game.
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****ing Silverlight-based video player. I tried to watch it earlier, and wanted to rewind a few seconds. It broke. So I refreshed the page, and tried to jump forward. It broke.
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Try download helper. . . And VLC player.
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****ing Silverlight-based video player. I tried to watch it earlier, and wanted to rewind a few seconds. It broke. So I refreshed the page, and tried to jump forward. It broke.
I didn't even try use Silverlight. Searched it on YouTube.
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Quality isn't too good on YouTube...
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It's a whole lot better now that they've added HD and stuff.
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Quality isn't too good on YouTube...
As another solution you can download it from the website and play it with VLC or something.
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New VIDOC Carnival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUv98eWVnL0
Any of you in the Beta?
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Of course. Have a copy of ODST, so I'm in.
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Trying to figure out if I have enough money to buy ODST...
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Shame the Beta starts the 3rd but Invasion doesn't begin until the 7th. Well, I must wait eagerly then.
Well, that is assuming that the Live servers don't blow up due to the download demand :lol:
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Not to mention Bungie just signed a deal with Activision for their new IP
over the next 10 years.
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asdfghjkl
whyyyy
bungie whyyyyyyyy
****. Well, at least it's only a publishing deal, they won't own the new IP or have any kind of stake in Bungie.
In fact I'm just going to pretend that Bungie has teamed up with Blizzard, and Activision just happens to be Blizzard's deformed hideous roommate.
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Which is different than reality how?
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In reality Blizzard is Activision's cash cow, which is part of why Blizzard's creative spark has sort of guttered out.
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How do mean guttered out?
They've got 2 possibly 3 large releases this year.
Blizzard is famous(notorious) for releasing things soon (http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon) and when they meet they're incredibly high standards internally. Which was why they had to add a fourth "tier" of gear at the end of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, the next expansion wasn't ready for release.
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They've essentially been treading water creatively since WoW's release. Not to mention wasting all the incredible story set-up in The Frozen Throne.
Comparing Starcraft's development to Starcraft 2's is also illuminating.
Somewhere along the line, they lost the thing that made Starcraft's remarkable transformation possible.
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I don't disagree on certain of those points.
Blizzards problem with WoW is simply this, it's too big and they have moved from making themselves happy with their product, like with the original WoW, to making the 9 million people that play it happy.
Ima nerd out real quick here: Just compare the final bosses in "vanilla" WoW, Ragnaros, Nefarian and C'thun(not counting KT, he made a reappearance in Wrath). Anyway, Rag is a 50ft tall fire god, Nef is a black dragon that dwarfs Rag and all you ever see of C'Thun is his eyeball and maybe a portion of his stomach. Fast forward to BC, the "big bads" are a Naga(Lady Vashj), two insane Elves(Illidan and the other one who's name escapes me atm), and their boss, a demon trying to invade Azeroth. While it's handled relatively well, the baddies are all smaller scale physically and simpler encounter wise. Now, with WotLK, the "big bads" are a Lich, a potato with about 30 mouths and a disembodied brain, a renfaire and The Lich King(who for all intent and purpose is an overpowered necromancer with a bad attitude and delusions of grandeur). These are even smaller scale battles than BC. The "epic" is almost gone from the game.
With Starcraft, their trying to recreate the "lightning in a bottle" that the original had. The mistake that they seem to have made here is that people are going to get turned off by the idea of having to buy 3 games to complete the story and be able to play all 3 armies in multi. The whole Starcraft 2 and 3 separate releases reeks of Bobby Kotick milking a cash cow till it's beyond dry and tossing it in the bin. It's happened before and it'll happen again. When all of SC2 is out we'll probably get a release announcement for SC3 and discover that it's been in development for 5 years.
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*cough cough cough*
HALOOOOOOOOOOoooooo.
ARe there any vids of single-palyer out. I'm sick of watching multi-betas.
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With Starcraft, their trying to recreate the "lightning in a bottle" that the original had. The mistake that they seem to have made here is that people are going to get turned off by the idea of having to buy 3 games to complete the story and be able to play all 3 armies in multi. The whole Starcraft 2 and 3 separate releases reeks of Bobby Kotick milking a cash cow till it's beyond dry and tossing it in the bin. It's happened before and it'll happen again. When all of SC2 is out we'll probably get a release announcement for SC3 and discover that it's been in development for 5 years.
All three armies in multi are available if you have any of the installments, IIRC.
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I just got in early. God bless you, urk.
I love Bungie. So cool. Few devs personally give codes out to fans.
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It's the best Halo game since Combat Evolved. Arguably better.
Amazing balance - all the weapons are useful and powerful, except maybe the Assault Rifle. Even the Plasma Repeater is great. Fantastic new game modes (Stockpile is fun.) The Pistol and DMR don't completely dominate the way the BR did. The Needle Rifle is actually probably better than the DMR.
The Plasma Launcher is the most fun FPS weapon I've used in a long time.
Players have a lot more health. Battles are more tactical and balletic. There's a lot less 'charge, fire AR, melee.'
Grenades are like nukes.
The Focus Rifle is terrifying.
All the armor abilities are useful, but not equally so in all gametypes. In King/Oddball type games, you really want to have Sprint. In slayer, Armor Lock is great for teamwork. On Sword Base, the jetpack is amazingly handy.
Elite Slayer is incredible. Elites play totally differently. You feel athletic and powerful. The Evade move totally changes the game, in a good way. it's insane.
I am enjoying this game in an unreserved way that I did not experience with Halo 3.
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This game met with General Battuta's Seal of ApprovalTM :yes:
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A lot of people seem to be getting hung up on changes that I didn't have much trouble with: 5-shot DMR and pistol instead of 4-shot BR, reticle bloom, and especially the new shield/melee system.
Basically, if you have even one point of shields left, it'll absorb a full hit (one bullet or melee.) That means that if you don't have someone's shield down when you melee them, the melee isn't going to kill. This is exasperating some people, but I like it; melee is now sort of an equalizer.
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I think I'm going to love this because it takes my favorite FPS setting and incorporates the great mechanical elements of other really good FPSs (reticle bloom from MoH/CoD to name one) to make it even better.
Can't wait until Monday. :yes:
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what are the chances of this ever making it to PC?
but i already know it's going to be windows 7 only. or whatever new OS is out by that time. still haven't ever played HALO 2.
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You're not missing much, dude.
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i know. especially since they would be half-assed ports of the console version. but i still would like to play through single player. i couldn't care less about multi.
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For anyone playing in the Beta already, does the UNSC grenade launcher seem overpowered or abused in any sense? I can already see the amazing potential for a "noob tube".
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People only get mad at "noob tubes" when they start losing to them. :P
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That, and random frags are hilarious...
:lol:
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For anyone playing in the Beta already, does the UNSC grenade launcher seem overpowered or abused in any sense? I can already see the amazing potential for a "noob tube".
No, not at all. It's a very skill-based weapon, extremely tricky to use right but powerful when in talented hands.
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Day 3 wrapped up. It felt better than either Day 2 or Day 1. Everything is clicking in my head, skills falling into place.
This game is amazing.
I played for about seven hours today. I've never been one for objective gametypes, but playing with a friend, I had a blast with one-flag CTF and Stockpile.
One Flag on Sword Base is fantastic fun, an inch-by-inch struggle to get to the flag to a gravity lift, then pull a tricky physics glitch to get the flag up to the highest balcony where the capture point is, all as the enemy team uses Armor Lock to slow your progress and then - once you've moved the flag to the balcony - Jetpacks to soar up after it and try to recover it.
I still love the weapon set. The AR is useless, but everything else seems to have its place.
The game's graphic design is gorgeous in the menus. Clean and moving. I'm not as big a fan of some of the HUD elements, specifically the loadout menu and hud indicators.
Movement speed feels faster, and the controls are more responsive. The helpless 'stuck in tar' feeling from Halo 3 is gone.
The melee metagame is actually pretty good, I've decided.
The psychology of multiplayer is much more relaxed now, because (hooray!) there's no numerical rank next to your name that frustratingly tops out and then collapses from under you as you lose games. My record is not exactly shining, but I know I'm a good player and I'm enjoying myself because I'm not stressing about my rank.
With only two maps and a few gametypes, Reach is already more fun than most games I've played this year.
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It's the best Halo game since Combat Evolved. Arguably better.
Assuming the answer won't require umpteen paragraphs (I only played CE): why weren't 2/3/ODST better than 1?
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For anyone playing in the Beta already, does the UNSC grenade launcher seem overpowered or abused in any sense? I can already see the amazing potential for a "noob tube".
No, not at all. It's a very skill-based weapon, extremely tricky to use right but powerful when in talented hands.
Thanks General, good to know.
Shame I have lots of homework to do tomorrow, because I'm going to be up all night finishing it, but only after a few hours of Reach :D
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Battuta, you're tempting me to buy a second-hand copy of ODST, download the beta, and return it for my money back when I'm done with all this good feedback.
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Holy crap, I freaking love Invasion.
I prefer being Spartans, but that's only because of the DMR. The whole gametype is pretty awesome. Balanced, too. I've managed to both win and be beaten on each side, usually determined by only seconds on the clock. It's also helping my K/D skyrocket. +42 in the last three games.
This game looks like it's going to be worth getting solely because of the multi. :yes:
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Invasion's a good time. The Elites get a little shortchanged by their lack of an anti-armor loadout as incredibly powerful as the Spartans' Grenadier. All in all it seems a bit tilted towards the Spartans right now, but I still managed a few caps as an Elite.
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Yeah, the more I'm playing, the more it looks like the Elites got a little gimped on starting positions too. All of them are within LOS of the Spartan positions, and Spartans star with DMRs.
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You generally need a larger offensive force to defeat an entrenched defensive force.
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The ratio is 3-1.
But is the defensive force entrenched? I'd doubt it, especially in a Halo game. :P
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Generally, the Elites can win if they actually work together. That must be why it seems like everyone who gets stuck as Elites screams violently into their mic to pick Invasion Slayer instead.
@Dilmah: You'd be surprised how good the starting position of the Spartans is. They start with DMRs, ~3 stories up, and the Elites have to cross an open field with only scattered cover. Then the Elites have to fight up several stairwells and an open area in the ship before they can even begin to take the objectives they need to.
It's possible to get fully half of your kills in the first four minutes as Spartans.
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Everyone seems to think the AR is useless, but it's actually quite effective if you use it right. The key is to use it in bursts, or if you prefer to spray and pray, then move in close and to the side to avoid your opponent's fire. Also, it seems to work well from a jet pack, probably because precision is less necessary.
By the way, the double melee is a great way to kill someone at close range... unlike Halo 3, it's hard for someone to kill you with anything but a headshot before you can melee them the second time. Also, a precisely timed melee can now counter a sword strike. Shotgun still pwns.
And there's nothing quite like sprinting up behind a jetpacker just as he's taking off and giving him a good smackdown assassination.
-m
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So have we heard anything about single-player yet, assuming there is one? :P
Because frankly I couldn't give a crap about multi.
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Not really, and yes there is a campaign.
No real info though, unless you count the fact that all multiplayer maps are from single player.
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Everyone seems to think the AR is useless, but it's actually quite effective if you use it right. The key is to use it in bursts, or if you prefer to spray and pray, then move in close and to the side to avoid your opponent's fire. Also, it seems to work well from a jet pack, probably because precision is less necessary.
By the way, the double melee is a great way to kill someone at close range... unlike Halo 3, it's hard for someone to kill you with anything but a headshot before you can melee them the second time. Also, a precisely timed melee can now counter a sword strike. Shotgun still pwns.
And there's nothing quite like sprinting up behind a jetpacker just as he's taking off and giving him a good smackdown assassination.
-m
aww yeah.
but for me it was decloaking, love my STALKER setup.
hehe, works awesomely if you have an invincible pound guy to run into a room, then you crouch walk in.
So have we heard anything about single-player yet, assuming there is one? :P
Because frankly I couldn't give a crap about multi.
heard they have 2x the AI potential H3 has, so campaign will be better methinks.
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So have we heard anything about single-player yet, assuming there is one? :P
Because frankly I couldn't give a crap about multi.
the general trend of games has been forget about singleplayer, because multi is where the money is. especially for halo. most of the people i know who got 2 and 3 never even touched the campaign.
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So have we heard anything about single-player yet, assuming there is one? :P
Because frankly I couldn't give a crap about multi.
the general trend of games has been forget about singleplayer, because multi is where the money is. especially for halo. most of the people i know who got 2 and 3 never even touched the campaign.
However, both Halo 2 and Halo 3 had decently long and decently constructed single-player campaigns. It's irrelevent whether anyone you know played them or not if it existed. Rest assured, there will be a single player campaign for Reach. Just check out Bungie.net for everything (and I mean everything) available right now.
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yeah i know there will be, but the focus is shifting away. i don't know what 3 was like, but i've played the 1 and 2 campaigns, and 2 definitely felt inferior.
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yeah i know there will be, but the focus is shifting away. i don't know what 3 was like, but i've played the 1 and 2 campaigns, and 2 definitely felt inferior.
Three was great, campaign and mechanics-wise, but the story was getting kinda old by that point. Have you actually watched or read any of the stuff on the Reach portion of Bungie.net? If the focus is shifting, it's only the players doing it.
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well that's a pleasant surprise then. there may be hope for mainstream gaming yet.
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ODST had a pretty *****in' campaign actually. I'd say it was my second favorite of the Halos, only being surpassed by the first game.
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:bump:
Nwq ad aired on telly, Reach is out in just over a week or so.
The ad showed old bluey taking a Seraph blast to the what-not and A Jet PAck :yes:
Can not wait, glad it's pre-ordered, and i've got enough cash in the bank to cover it :wakka:
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The day one of my floor-mates gets it, I will, in all likelyhood, nerdgasm something fierce.
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I have a friend whom is definitely picking it up around launch, and we're pencilling in co-op LEGEN-wait for it-DARY the weekend.
the game's campaign, multi (especially new forge) and firefight options look excellent, I reckon game of the year
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I may even go mad and actually buy it when it's fairly new rather than waiting, like a tight ass, untill it's old and cheap. ODST was great IMO, 2 and 3 only "ok".
Gonna be strange seeing other spartans in the s/p campaign after all this time.
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Hmm, seriously contemplating placing a pre-order for this at my local EB. But still, so many games to buy and so little money!
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I'm a 99% single player or split screen coop player of the Halo games. I only play online when they have free XBox Live weekends... I've considered getting Live Gold at some point but we'll see. I really liked the previous Halo single player campaigns and I really enjoyed Halo 3's campaign in particular. Halo 2 was good but Halo 3 was a much better narrative.
There was a mention at some point that Halo Reach may have a slightly longer campaign than Halo 3... particularly if you play on the harder difficulty levels. I'm not sure if that's because there are more enemies to chew through or what the reasoning was there but either way I'm looking forward to the single player campaign. Particularly the space combat portion... that looks fantastic! They said that wasn't just a short little thing either but a properly full blown mission.
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There is a lot of debate right now as to how long the campaign actually is. We know that it is 9 missions long and 1 cutscene mission, but the jury is out on the amount of time. Review sites are going for between 6-8 hours for "normal", but they have often confused easy with normal, so who know what they actually mean..
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I still play Firefight with my brother so that's gotta be fun :)
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I'm just not convinced I'm going to get that much more mileage out of a Halo game anymore, especially when Civ V is releasing close to the same date.
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I'm just not convinced I'm going to get that much more mileage out of a Halo game anymore, especially when Civ V is releasing close to the same date.
with almost an MP map editor (forge world and all the upgrades to object manipulation, one has easy tool to make hundreds of neat MP maps) and the loads of custom options the game has, this actually looks like its made to be a last halo game, and I think that if you want a solid shooter, reach will be best value for money.
Civ5 looks pretty damn ballin as well though, those are 2 good games to get complementary.
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Well, now that this baby's out, I think I might have to fork out the cash this weekend.
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Civ V will have an endless world of mods. Halo: Reach will not. It's pretty easy to figure out which one i'm buying.
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Why not both? :confused:
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i don't own an xbox.
I'll get one eventually, for rock band and soul calibur and other party games, but as far as i'm concerned shooters just don't work on consoles.
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Well I just ordered Reach. First time I've paid full whack for a game in about 5 years.... :blah:
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Took it for a quick spin last night after Kendo, on Legendary and its insane. Takes half an Assault Rifle mag to drop a grunt and the Elites are death incarnate. They fly round the battlefield and even if you can keep em in the piper they shrug off most of your fire. All the while landing killer hits on you, and if you get into melee expect to be smacked 20 yards. :P
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Yea... Its great!
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I'm about halfway through right now. Expect me to make a big post when I finish it tomorrow. So far my impressions are a mixed bag, coming in a bit below my expectations. Criticisms are split pretty evenly between narrative choices and design choices.
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Yeah, a few of the reviews I read weren't too impressed by the story.
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No one has anything to fear in the flight combat space missions...
Even after changing my controls about 10 times during the mission itself, it still
is fairly nasty. Pick a game and it's probably got a more entertaining flight combat
model.
Dumb down Crimson Skies, invert all the controls in the wrong directions, and make it
so turning doesn't actually turn but sort of pivot you in the direction.... and weapons that
are really uninteresting... that's what it equates to. Sky boxes and the environment were nice,
gameplay was pretty poor.
...and coming from a console gamer that's played every Halo for more hours than is healthy,
Reach has by far the worst campaign story, of any Halo game.
Multiplayer is fine beyond some things like tanks and certain weapons that are overpowered.
Bungie's so called "swan song" is a bit of an embarrassment to the other games, and largely the novels IMO.
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No one has anything to fear in the flight combat space missions...
Even after changing my controls about 10 times during the mission itself, it still
is fairly nasty. Pick a game and it's probably got a more entertaining flight combat
model.
Dumb down Crimson Skies, invert all the controls in the wrong directions, and make it
so turning doesn't actually turn but sort of pivot you in the direction.... and weapons that
are really uninteresting... that's what it equates to. Sky boxes and the environment were nice,
gameplay was pretty poor.
...and coming from a console gamer that's played every Halo for more hours than is healthy,
Reach has by far the worst campaign story, of any Halo game.
Multiplayer is fine beyond some things like tanks and certain weapons that are overpowered.
Bungie's so called "swan song" is a bit of an embarrassment to the other games, and largely the novels IMO.
question:
what weapon(s) is/are OP outside of power weapon class? (because power weapons are supposed to be rather powerful)
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The weapons all seem quite balanced to me. In the Beta the Plasma Launcher was the only terrible offender.
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i never really took halo multiplayer seriously. it was always a massive uber-weapon cluster**** to me. granted i've only played 1 on PC.
(fuel rod :shaking:)
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Halo Custom Edition is lots of fun.
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i never really took halo multiplayer seriously. it was always a massive uber-weapon cluster**** to me. granted i've only played 1 on PC.
(fuel rod :shaking:)
Yeah it's not really like that. Tends to be very team-based with a heavy emphasis on communication.
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I realized that I should stop punishing the crap outta myself and throttled it back to Heroic for now. Its much more manageable this way. Though I gotta admit Legendary really proves why the UNSC is losing to the Covie, Elites are like something out of a nightmare. They move like a damn big cat, swift and evasive all the while raining death at range and throwing you like a rag doll when you get close.
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It had a few moments where it all came together and one point where it really moved me, but all in all Halo: Reach was a just-barely-less-than-bitter disappointment.
Bear in mind all of this is coming from a huge Halo fan.
The soundtrack was subpar. There was one good, catchy theme and it never managed to kick into full throttle. The rest was either forgettable or jarring.
Of the game's nine main levels, I'd say that on four of them - recon with Jun, Falcon ride in New Alexandria, Tip of the Spear, and maybe Sword Base - I did not fully understand why I was there, what I was supposed to be doing or why I should care for most of the level. The narrative was choppy and fragmented.
On that note, things seemed to just sort of happen offscreen when they should've happened onscreen. The Covenant are on Reach? Well that's interesting, why didn't I hear about the massive fleet overhead? Oh there is no massive fleet, there's just a cloaked (I presume they mean some kind of advanced active camo) carrier conducting teleportation (well there's a new one, makes you wonder why they bother with so many things) to the surface. Fascinating. Shame I stumbled through the first half of the game assuming there was already a fleet in orbit.
The storytelling was mediocre, in part because it was so choppy and in part because most of the characters never really got to breathe. The two who were most interesting died first. Po-faced Carter was a dreary and uncharismatic leader in the recent Nolan North-esque mold, though less expressive. It was ironic that I ended up looking forward to the deaths because I figured they'd be some of the cooler, more impressive things the characters would do.
The only time the campaign really moved me was at one point during the level Exodus, but in the end it just highlighted the problems with the story - there was no driving thrust through the whole campaign, no sense of the overall military action on Reach, just a series of somewhat modular engagements without place or context, even when there were big maps trying to give us context. It was choppy and ultimately sort of cheap; Noble Team never got its own story, just an ancillary part in the Master Chief's saga (no matter the end monologue's healthy attempts to make us feel better). In that sense I suppose it fits the expendable S-3s.
The last level, post-credits, was arguably the best in the game in terms of achieving Reach's promise, though that end monologue cheapened it a bit. Leave it unsaid, Halsey, leave it unsaid. Shame the emotion of the level before it was ruined by a fairly bog-standard level and a lot of dull dialogue.
Really I think the greatest failure, storytelling-wise, was Bungie's final inability to tell a story without resorting to Forerunner artifacts. We all wanted Reach to be what Halo 2 and then Halo 3 were advertised as: a desperate military struggle in defense of a world. I appreciate their dedication to the overarching mythos, but it was time to step away from the plot coupons. Make your characters and their actions important on their own; don't give them things to carry that make them meaningful. And no I don't care that First Strike established the Forerunner artifacts on Reach - they were baggage.
But my biggest problem of all with the single player story was the gameplay.
The Elites were fantastic. Straight up excellent. Other than that...this was a Halo 3 mod. It might have felt even less fresh than ODST. We got the same enemies with the same behaviors in every respect save the Elites, they brought back the damn Drones in two places (two too many), the vehicle sections were plodding and predictable because they were all things we'd done before (space combat was a Hornet level, at length), and worst of all, Halo's cherished 30 seconds of infantry fun, carefully balanced on the golden tripod of guns/grenades/melee, felt...boring. Poke poke poke with the DMR felt no different than rattling away with a BR back in '07. The armor abilities, though key in multiplayer, were mostly unremarkable in campaign.
So little work went into bringing this gameplay up to the bar set by Valve and others in recent years. My Noble teammates are just plain...invincible, yet as ineffective as normal marines? I can't trade weapons with them or interact meaningfully in any way - reviving downed teammates or anything? I get a squad roster yet no use of the several free D-pad slots? The dialogue is repetitive and insensitive to context? (Valve pulls off Alyx and we get Halo 1 level Marine banter, but less entertaining?)
They talked a big game about the AI upgrades, but I never saw any significantly larger vehicle engagements than in Halo 3. Nor did I see a particularly larger number of enemies in one area. The levels were more open, yet never as memorable or well-used as Halo 1's open levels. They did not reclaim the magic.
They dropped three Scarabs into the final level and didn't let us fight one of them? Why even bring that asset into Reach, Bungie? The hell?
Where did the awesome detonations of exploding Phantoms go? Why is it just an underwhelming poof now?
Bungie has made it quite explicit this is their biggest, best game. But it did very little new, succeeded in few of its design objectives, and markedly underperformed in the modern shooter market. This is the first time I've really felt let down by their work (yes, I think ODST was significantly more successful for what it set it to do, and arguably looked better to boot).
Off for Firefight and multi now. I hope they didn't ruin the awesome Beta multiplayer by overpolishing it into humdrum hokum. I could play that beta all year and forget about this mess of a campaign.
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I definitely agree with Battuta on all the points about Halo Reach. ODST seems to get a lot of unfair ragging for not being a full Halo game but after experiencing Reach, I've concluded that ODST succeeds so much more on the artistic and emotional level.
I'm keeping Reach in my 360 library solely to scratch my "fight Elites on the Halo 3 engine" itch. Oh, and for the improved Firefight and multiplayer. If only Halo ODST (properly) had Elites roaming around in New Mombasa.
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Playing on Heroic, I'm glad that Bungie, whatever the other faults or perceived faults in the game, managed to make Elites badasses again. Real badasses, too, not just informed badassitude. And Hunters. Hunters were painful again. Plus, reticle bloom makes some of the weapons feel like they should have, way back in Halo: CE (I'm looking at you, assault rifle), although I'm curious as to why these ARs have 32 round clips and the Chief's still have 60.
I'm only about four missions in (and not noticing choppy narrative, really, but maybe that's because I was the next best thing to glued to the screen and speakers when I was playing, so I didn't miss much that I know of), and my only major gripe (aside from higher level elites getting two Armor Abilities) is that splatter kills are way to easy to get now. Stuff keels over at the merest prod. That, and AI drivers are still pants-on-head retarded.
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It was ironic that I ended up looking forward to the deaths because I figured they'd be some of the cooler, more impressive things the characters would do.
:lol:
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It was ironic that I ended up looking forward to the deaths because I figured they'd be some of the cooler, more impressive things the characters would do.
:lol:
It's even true of the main character. The last level was the most awesome.
I also forgot to ***** about the fact that there seems to be much less combat dialogue for Marine allies. I wonder if they were running out of disc space. And having the Covenant not speak English was...okay, but didn't make them that menacing as their language is just garbled guttural gibberish. I'd rather have English grunts and WORT WORT WORT back. Where the hell is the WORT WORT WORT?
I'm only about four missions in (and not noticing choppy narrative, really, but maybe that's because I was the next best thing to glued to the screen and speakers when I was playing, so I didn't miss much that I know of)
I don't know where you get this idea that the narrative problems are somehow resident in the player. I was paying pretty damn close attention - this is a new Halo title, after all - but like Modern Warfare 2 (which you made the same argument about) Reach just doesn't present itself well. Halo 1 and even ODST were far better in this regard.
Also do we really need this awful lines about army-concealing shields? You couldn't think of a better name - theater shield? Strategic stealth? At least nobody told me to go TO WAR
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Amen Battuta... amen...
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I'd rather have English grunts and WORT WORT WORT back. Where the hell is the WORT WORT WORT?
I miss laughing at the exaggerated Elite gibberish from Halo CE. Stickying or needling Elites were the best since they had that super long anguished death cry of "ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH" when killed by an explosion. Elites just seemed goofier back in the day despite their lethal predispositions. I guess since they solidified their back story and their personalities for Halo 2 and beyond, they've become much more serious.
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I don't know where you get this idea that the narrative problems are somehow resident in the player. I was paying pretty damn close attention - this is a new Halo title, after all - but like Modern Warfare 2 (which you made the same argument about) Reach just doesn't present itself well. Halo 1 and even ODST were far better in this regard.
Comments about Modern Warfare 2 aside, I was just saying that I didn't notice that the narrative was choppy, not that any feeling of choppiness would be resident in the player.
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I don't know where you get this idea that the narrative problems are somehow resident in the player. I was paying pretty damn close attention - this is a new Halo title, after all - but like Modern Warfare 2 (which you made the same argument about) Reach just doesn't present itself well. Halo 1 and even ODST were far better in this regard.
Comments about Modern Warfare 2 aside, I was just saying that I didn't notice that the narrative was choppy, not that any feeling of choppiness would be resident in the player.
Well you suggested you didn't notice the choppiness because you were paying attention, which suggests I wasn't.
Here's an interesting exercise to illustrate the choppiness, thanks to HBO's Cody Miller. Go through each level of the game and ask yourself if you could cut it without impacting the story.
Pillar of Autumn: No. It’s what jump starts the whole game.
Halo: No. It introduces us to Halo, and provides time for The Autumn to Crash.
T&R: No. If we don’t rescue Keyes, we don’t learn Halo’s a weapon, the covenant fire it and we all die..
Silent Cartographer: Yes. There’s no real reason why we need to find the cartographer, THEN go to the maproom. Skipping to AoTCR is an option.
AoTCR: No. Without getting to the control room, we never learn where keyes is, and Cortana never learns about Halo’s purpose.
343 GS: No. It introduces the flood and sets up the remaining conflict.
Library: Yes. Nothing really happens in this mission, GS could have teleported you right to TB and everything could continue.
TB: No. You need to stop Halo from firing.
Keyes: No. You need keyes’ implants to blow up the Autumn.
Maw: No. It’s the climax.
So Halo’s really only got 2 levels that don’t do anything to advance the plot. What about Reach?
Winter Contingency: No. This jump starts the whole game.
Sword Base: Yes. The events of this level are pure action. Set up coms, defend ****, etc.
Nightfall: I still don’t know what we were doing in this level, so definite yes.
Tip of the Spear: Yes. Blah blah take out a shield protecting some covenant thing. Again pure action and no plot at all.
Long Night of solace: Yes. Blah Blah, blow up some covenant ship which is totally unimportant. Again, pure action and no plot.
Exudus: Yes. Blah Blah, get civilians out of the city. Notice how the plot hasn’t advanced AT ALL since meeting with Halsey.
New Alexandria: Yes. Blah Blah destroy some com jammers. The game’s almost over, and the plot STILL hasn’t advanced since level 2.
The package: No. Finally, the plot moves. We learn we need to get Cortana to Keyes on the Autumn..
Pillar of Autumn: No. It’s the climax.
Notice how in Halo, the plot is steadily advancing all throughout the game? Now notice in Reach, how only the very beginning, and the very end of the game move the story forward at all?
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Winter Contingency: No. This jump starts the whole game. [agreed.]
Sword Base: Yes. The events of this level are pure action. Set up coms, defend ****, etc. [agreed.]
Nightfall: I still don’t know what we were doing in this level, so definite yes. [There was an entire section of the continent blacked out to satellite surveillance, etc. Noble team splits into recon teams to locate both the source of the blockage and the (rather obvious to infer) base in the area. This is where we learn how the Covenant got onto Reach in such large numbers without anyone noticing.]
Tip of the Spear: Yes. Blah blah take out a shield protecting some covenant thing. Again pure action and no plot at all. [agreed.]
Long Night of solace: Yes. Blah Blah, blow up some covenant ship which is totally unimportant. Again, pure action and no plot. [The Covenant ship you call totally unimportant is a supercarrier the likes of which the Battle of New Mombasa surrounds
completely. It is also responsible for a large portion of the Covenant ground troops and Command and Control for same. Also, Jorge dies. Behold! Plot!]
Exudus: Yes. Blah Blah, get civilians out of the city. Notice how the plot hasn’t advanced AT ALL since meeting with Halsey.
New Alexandria: Yes. Blah Blah destroy some com jammers. The game’s almost over, and the plot STILL hasn’t advanced since level 2.
The package: No. Finally, the plot moves. We learn we need to get Cortana to Keyes on the Autumn..
Pillar of Autumn: No. It’s the climax.
Notice how in Halo, the plot is steadily advancing all throughout the game? Now notice in Reach, how only the very beginning, and the very end of the game move the story forward at all?
My responses (to the levels I've played so far) are in brackets.
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Again you're making the assumption that I somehow didn't see all those things you just cited. I did. They're just not plot points of any worth or merit. The Nightfall one was basically a long hike for a single plot point that most of us already assumed was true, and the whole storyline around the
supercarrier[/i] was literally just killing time until the main fleet showed up.
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Alright Batman, I have to ask what that TO WAR thing was a reference to.
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At one of the early dramatic points in Halo 3.
MARINE: Sir, squad leaders are requesting a rally point. Where should they go?
MIRANDA KEYES: *pauses*
*looks over shoulder*
*cocks pistol dramatically*
"TO WAR".
fsaihogreagregar
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Funny I can get a WORT WORT!! during firefight. Its a bit more subdued then in past games, but as my broken body flopped across the landscape I believe that was the last thing that I heard before expiring. I took a break from the campaign to accrue points for cool **** for my Spartan, they seem a bit more curtailed then in ODST. Fun as hell mind you, but I can often manage to survive a bout by myself were in ODST I could last a long damn time but eventually I was doomed. Did I mention Firefight is fun as hell?
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I sure hope that exchange is on youtube.
ETA: Jesus, nevermind. Every video I look at is people punching her over and over and/or titled RAEP!
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Play through was about 11 hours all told and I had a ton of fun. Perhaps the only thing I didn't like was not having enough time to get to know the characters. I felt like I knew the ODST team better by the end of ODST. Still... Reach was great. Firefight will probably be played for a long time to come for me so I'm looking forward to that.
Also bonus points for such an incredible theme song. I love the drums and haunting choir motif. And it connects well with the other Halo games without using exactly the same theme.
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(http://i828.photobucket.com/albums/zz203/jeager1999/MasterChef.jpg)
(http://i828.photobucket.com/albums/zz203/jeager1999/Masterchef2.jpg)
Halo sucks. Duke Nukem is forever.
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The good news is the Reach multiplayer is brilliant. As good as Bad Company 2.
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Anyone else think the Elites seem unconvincing ? I mean the way they move and behave ? Seems like their only real strength is shields that protect from just about anything save overcharged plasma and the weakness of Spartan 3 shields.
I've yet to see an Elite do anything interesting like they would in Halo 1.
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What level are you playing at? They're fiendish in Legendary. Hell in Firefight I shot a Goldie in the face point blank with a Spartan Laser and he chuckled then hewed me with his beam sword.
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yeah, espicially on legendary co-op, the elites are very aptly named.
bastards cloak and flank, dodge needles like crazy, rush me with jetpacks, lock armour just as their sheild was about to drop so their buddy with the fuel rod can blast me, these guys are nuts.
then I got into a fight with brutes and laughed at their stupidity as i dispatched them easily, still on legendary.
really liking the game
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I liked it.
ODST had better music and was more atmospheric, but an uninteresting story.
I think the story of Reach was not so much about noble team but about the battle itself. Despite being spartans they're just participants in a larger struggle. That said, the narrative wasn't clear enough about what was going on. It's almost as though the game assumed the player had already read the books and whatever other backstory goes along with it. As though it takes for granted that not every player is a rampant fanboy.
There are also too many noble team members and not enough character development.
Overall it had some cool bits but never grabbed me emotionally.
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I think the story of Reach was not so much about noble team but about the battle itself. Despite being spartans they're just participants in a larger struggle. That said, the narrative wasn't clear enough about what was going on. It's almost as though the game assumed the player had already read the books and whatever other backstory goes along with it. As though it takes for granted that not every player is a rampant fanboy.
Yeah, this was especially weird. It left so much out that it felt it was nodding towards the books, and yet it out-and-out contradicted the books again and again.
:wtf:
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Reading the reviews makes me glad I don't own an Xbox and the only Halo game I ever played was the first one.
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What? Why? It's still an entertaining game, the mechanics and gameplay are superb, and the story still exists, flaws or not.
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Not sure what any of you guys are talking about with the Elite AI either. Maybe I'm just not paying attention but I never noticed any significant difference in the AI behaviour from Halo 1 to Reach (And I played through all the Halo games in the past three months or so). It could just be the nostalgia talking.
The only thing I really noticed is that they got rid of that annoying Brute charge from Halo 2. Where the Brutes would throw down their guns and charge like an ape and seemingly double their hitpoints in the process. I died a good twenty times in the throne room to that crap.
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What difficulty? The difference on Legendary between Halo: CE Elites and Halo: Reach Elites is comparable to the difference in lethality of the Magnum between Halo: CE and Halo 2. God help you if you try Legendary with four people. Elites will bend you over and rape your entire party if you don't handle them very precisely.
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What difficulty? The difference on Legendary between Halo: CE Elites and Halo: Reach Elites is comparable to the difference in lethality of the Magnum between Halo: CE and Halo 2. God help you if you try Legendary with four people. Elites will bend you over and rape your entire party if you don't handle them very precisely.
Probably played on Heroic.
I played through most of 2 and 3 on Legendary, the only elites that gave me trouble were the dual-plasma blaster weilding ones on the space station.
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Got Reach. Might play it or might wait till next weekend.
So I played it, I hadn't touched my xbox in months so it took me some getting used to, but once I got the mojo flowing it was pretteh kewl save for a few weird snags here and there.
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apparently people online can't handle a simple helicopter with just a machine gun, still plenty vulnerable to sniper rifles, hidden DMR fire, laser, rockets, AND banshees, not to mention face-raping scorpion tank (**** that thing is OP, disregard whatever I've said before, unless there are base laser spawns, a map should NOT have it.
every time my brother and I get a falcon, the enemy team begins quitting out as I fly it around and all over them while he presses RT.
was 1 away from getting him a perfection one time.
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apparently people online can't handle a simple helicopter with just a machine gun, still plenty vulnerable to sniper rifles, hidden DMR fire, laser, rockets, AND banshees, not to mention face-raping scorpion tank (**** that thing is OP, disregard whatever I've said before, unless there are base laser spawns, a map should NOT have it.
every time my brother and I get a falcon, the enemy team begins quitting out as I fly it around and all over them while he presses RT.
was 1 away from getting him a perfection one time.
I don't think people have realized that four sniper rifle shots will take out the Falcon (or Banshee, or Ghost.) It is an anti-materiel rifle after all.
You can also snipe the driver out of a tank. Tank is horribly OP, though, I got a 33-0 perfection in BTB slayer the other night.
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DMR (or sniper rifle) > vehicles, in almost all cases. Only exceptions I can think of are the tanks for either side, and then you can just kill the driver instead. Although, it can be just as effective (or moreso) to bumrush the tank on a Mongoose and SPRINT TO THE FINISH to plant a grenade.
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Played some MP yesterday. Reminds me of why I got bored of Unreal Tournament those many years ago. Some games are fun, like 1 in every 4 games, but a lot of them are just pretty tedious.
On FFA, people always chose that boring Infection scenario.
Too many of the scenarios give the player the DMR as a default gun as well. Playing with the same gun every battle is boring.
The only times I had lots of fun were in the Hemorhagh map when there were lots of vehicles. Even if I got my ass run over, it was good times. Makes me think I should pick up Battlefield or some such game where vehicles are more prevalent.
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I think the story of Reach was not so much about noble team but about the battle itself. Despite being spartans they're just participants in a larger struggle. That said, the narrative wasn't clear enough about what was going on. It's almost as though the game assumed the player had already read the books and whatever other backstory goes along with it. As though it takes for granted that not every player is a rampant fanboy.
Yeah, this was especially weird. It left so much out that it felt it was nodding towards the books, and yet it out-and-out contradicted the books again and again.
:wtf:
This is pretty much why I gave up on Halo, the devs have no respect for their own continuity or plot, and some of their plot (which isn't particularly great or original anyways) contains some of the most laughable aspects ever.
I can't remember the aspect about Reach that a friend of mine brought up, but I do remember that it had us chuckling at how ludicrous it was.
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Halo 1 is best Halo.
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I was never even all that impressed with the original Halo, to be honest. It was a solid game, and the overall storyline/setting was fun (fantastic soundtrack too), but there were some glaring problem areas. While the singleplayer campaign had ten levels, they comprised only five legitimately-unique locations, and most of those had a massive amount of architectural repetition within them. (Dear lord, that assault on the control station...) The combat tended to evolve into a very repetitive pattern of strafe-from-cover, fire-a-few-shots, and duck-into-cover-to-recharge-shields, and the relatively-few enemy types didn't mix things up all that much. I only played multiplayer a few times, but the whole thing felt very slow and ponderous gameplay-wise, and I usually wound up getting picked off by snipers from halfway across the map before I made any real headway. I started out as a Descent player, so I guess I was just much more used to Descent 3's fast-paced 6DOF style; I guess the equivalent FPS would be something like TF2 or UT.
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Wrapped up the Campaign last night, here are my thoughts.
I agree with Battuta that it seemed pretty disjointed. Not that I particularly feel the need for missions to be driving plot progression, for example I liked the mission about securing the civilians' escape, but for the most part it seemed like I was doing random crap that wasn't important at all. There was no context for what I was doing nor what was going on in the larger scope of the battle. After trying something new in ODST it seemed like a step back in mission design and storytelling.
Regular Halo generally played out that there was a big SNAFU and Master Chief generally found himself alone behind enemy lines. It worked because the story and plot supported it. Reach finally had the promise of making a Halo game that involved being a part of larger operations acting in a team. Instead it just teased about doing that, "Oh yeah big armored cav charge!" heh no, just kidding you and Kat can do some peripheral mission by yourselves. Instead I generally found myself playing similar missions to the original three Halo games, only the objectives where completely muddled and pointless. I still would love to have something with elements of Rainbow Six/Ghost Recon/Call of Duty set in Halo but Reach certainly wasn't it. The other Spartans were pretty much useless, no different then regular Marines only they didn't die five minutes into the engagement. The only two I actually liked where Jorge and Emille, and I liked Emille because he was an unlikable prick.
Not that it wasn't without some nice moments, the hall fight after you where ambushed at the relay post, the scene in the mission after you wipe out the AA gun and a couple frigates show up and start pounding the **** out of everything was pretty cool. It was fun tangoing with the Hunters in the casino dance floor, I was in the zone for that one it was a thing of beauty. Sneaking up to make a beach assault with ODSTs at Sword Base.
Oh and why the hell was the forerunners in there? I don't recall Cortana ever mentioning "Hey Chief guess what? I've got the entire Forerunner DB on file."
Don't get me wrong, I still liked it, just that I was hoping for a lot more.
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This is pretty much why I gave up on Halo, the devs have no respect for their own continuity or plot, and some of their plot (which isn't particularly great or original anyways) contains some of the most laughable aspects ever.
Actually that's what really scares me about Reach. Bungie is usually fanatic about continuity, and the Halo novels tied in perfectly well with the games right up until Reach where they threw sanity out the window for the lulz of it.
It's like it's not even a Bungie project anymore.
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Wrapped up the Campaign last night, here are my thoughts.
The only two I actually liked where Jorge and Emille, and I liked Emille because he was an unlikable prick.
Dunno if this a spoiler but whatever
I didn't get Emile's character quite frankly. His helmet and apparent preference for knives makes him out to be a stone cold
psycho. But he's really just a smooth talking token black guy.
All the team members are a bit hard to distinguish except for the token female. Had the same problem with ODST. When you can't see their faces and their armour's more/less the same it's hard to know and consequently care about who anyone is. Especially when you have to keep track of both names and number designations.
Reminds me of a predator. The guy who told the awful, hammed-in jokes was supposed to wear a red beret but he thought "who's going to wear a red beret in the jungle? That's stupid". Consequently, its hard to distinguish him from one of the other guys.
When you throw the audience into a group situation they need to be able to read the characters better. For me at least, Reach failed for the most part.
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I have started Reach.
Dialogue is not as good as it could be, voice acting seems average at best.
More later.
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Campaign thoughts:
Space level was ****ing awesome.
I mean, I want a game based on that.
****ING GIVE ME SABRE MULTIPLAYER OR GIVE ME DEATH.
squad was meh, did like machine gun dude jorge though, he was a bro.
immediately after the space mission, however, we're boarding the covenant corvette, and it would have been very awesome if it were more open ended, and/or when you initially go through the sheild on top, you could hear and have normal gravity instead of seeming still-vacuum until a random hallway.
they have freaking energy shields for keeping air in in other places
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My views;
Fighting Elites seemed fairly hit 'n' miss. Lower rank dudes were fun but high rank peeps, with absurdly tough shields, just felt like a chore.
All the usual alienchatter had been replaced with random alien babblings which I felt was a step backward, added on at the last moment.
I also noticed some odd AI glitches. Friendly troops getting stuck, driving off cliffs etc and a couple of periods where Marines and Brutes didn't appear aware of each other. I had one brute chasing me round a pillar and the marines didn't even seem to know he was there, even standing within 2 ft/right next to each other, and vice versa. Very strange, especially for Bungie.
Shame we didn't see how MasterChief ended-up in stasis on the Pillar of Autumn, or even a quick scene showing Reach glassed.
The revamped Pillar of Autumn looked pretty sweet. The defence of the lab doors was a pretty decent battle too, although totally contrived.
Space combat wasn't quite the train wreck I was expecting. Didn't really add anything, and I wouldn't have missed it, but it wasn't so bad.
Also finally! the oomans had some decent close air support - that's bugged me fron day one and the flyie-thingies in Halo3 were ugly.
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The revamped Pillar of Autumn looked pretty sweet. The defence of the lab doors was a pretty decent battle too, although totally contrived.
Space combat wasn't quite the train wreck I was expecting. Didn't really add anything, and I wouldn't have missed it, but it wasn't so bad.
Also finally! the oomans had some decent close air support - that's bugged me fron day one and the flyie-thingies in Halo3 were ugly.
you got to get a friend on splitscreen and go online, fly the falcon on big team on map 'spire'
the thing is like a warthog, but harder to kill, and easier to give gunner angles to shoot.
so easy I got my bro to 11-0 before their team fully quit out
in big team.
with the new quit penalties.
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Is everyone you play a big enough bunch of losers that they quit, or do you help them along a bit?
Honestly, 11 kills isn't exactly an awe inspiring number.
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Is everyone you play a big enough bunch of losers that they quit, or do you help them along a bit?
Honestly, 11 kills isn't exactly an awe inspiring number.
I know, but they were in about a minute, and they tried to snipe the gunner, but I was able to just make us dodge the round while gunner sprays, and then I would always move around to their spawn areas.
2 left the match early, so that helped a bit, and then another pair on our team was trying to do the same thing, with their falcon.
I think its intimidating to see a chopper fly over to your spawn and then whittle you down, and you know of no good counter on the map.
(though there is a rocket spawn)
11 in a thing with a decent time to kill as opposed to the rape tank isn't impressive, i agree, but hey, it was weekend after release, noobs were out there and they left, we didn't die.
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Well then the other team is just idiots. You don't snipe the gunner, you snipe the whole damn gunship out of the sky. :P Sniper rifle will take out Falcon in much less than a full load of ammo, just make sure you don't ricochet it off some oblique part.
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also, camping someone's spawn site is teh gay.
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I happen to agree, but most stuck up MLG bastards would throw you out the window for saying that.
Also, on the Falcon, 1 Plasma Pistol tends to solve that problem rather quickly.
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Or any amount of attention from a sniper rifle.
Or a grenade launcher.
Or a lot of things.
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I'm about to buy this game against my will tomorrow morning. Meh, should fill the time between now and the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops as well as Medal of Honor: 2010 nicely.
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hey, it's not my fault that they spawn them close to the teammates we're pelting with MG fire in random areas of the map, spire really doesn't have fixed spawns
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All of the maps (minus the Invasion maps, of course) spawn on the basis of "is this spawn point more favorable than these other spawn points?" since sometime during Halo 3. It's related to how close any given members of the other team are, how close members of the same team are, and how many of each are close/not close (and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember off the top of my head. They explained it in a weekly update way back with an example of a "legitimate" spawn killing)
That's why they spawn so close to the people you're shooting at. So, yeah, by staying at long range like that, you're influencing the spawn preference (your team = farther away, their team = closer).
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Bought the game this morning, now home from gathering at a mate's place for the AFL Grand Final and playing HR. First impression is good. :D
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Wow, just played multi with a few mates, big team battle or some ****. Man, I love the jetpack. :D
Finished first level of single player, apart from an annoying checkpoint, wasn't much to complain about.
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Wow, just played multi with a few mates, big team battle or some ****. Man, I love the jetpack. :D
Finished first level of single player, apart from an annoying checkpoint, wasn't much to complain about.
Here, let me give you something to complain about.
The spaces are massive and you have six times the usual friendly firepower, yet the enemy numbers are strangely small.
The battles are largely self-playing; I did the level yesterday by running around killing Moa birds.
This is the worst crime: the dramatic mighty introduction of the Covenant on Reach, after half a level of buildup, is looking out a window and seeing a Skirmisher standing on a roof. Le wut.
Apparently in Reach they reversed their usual workflow and started the level design before building a story around them, and boy does it show.
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Meh, I honestly couldn't care less about most of that, call me ignorant and whatnot.
I just play games like Halo and COD for fun. And I mean, the minute I saw a green super soldier pwning it up with dispensable Marines in the original Halo, I lost all intention of seeing the series play out as an artform and started enjoying the games for what I thought they were: big vehicles, mean guns, and cannon-fodder aliens in the middle of a secondary struggle for the survival of humanity. Experienced through some walking suit of armour.
Don't get me wrong, I immerse myself in the story when I play the games, but I always play them with a 'Take it easy,' attitude. It's always great to have the game wrapped up in a good yarn and have my mouth drop to the floor every now and again because something insane's happened onscreen. But at the end of the day, I don't expect an amazing narrative or gameplay that actually puts me into 'TACTICAL MODE: HOT' when I play a Halo game. Much less, any series that's most famous for a bloke running around in a green suit of armour with a gun, single-handedly saving humanity. :P
As for self-playing battles, I didn't find that to be too true with these walking suits made of bullet-magnet that the story calls 'Noble Team'. ;) Sure, you can take care of most firefights by flanking left, leaving Noble to be your base of fire whilst you assault the hostiles (I'm not sure why they're referred to as Tangoes by the friendlies... meh), but as long as Covenant are dying and I'm doing the shooting, I don't really mind this in a Halo game.
I used to hate Halo some time ago because it wasn't really sophisticated in terms of its storyline the same way as RPGs were (in-game for the most part), and the combat wasn't tactical in the same way Ghost Recon was. But now I view Halo as really something akin to a party game. On Fridays about a dozen or so of us will turn our xboxes on and throw a Halo game into our disc drives, form a party, and play a few custom games whilst yelling and screaming over the mikes and making asses out of ourselves whilst having a good laugh. And that's what Halo is to me.
As opposed to games like Mass Effect that I play almost purely for their storyline and associated elements.
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*snip*
See, your arguments would be a lot more convincing if the previous Halo games hadn't accomplished all you wanted and provided a pretty good yarn on top of it.
I understand that perspective from a consumer point of view, but as a producer Reach's campaign feels inexcusably lazy.
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Well it was really more a drawn out rationale about why I view Halo as a casual game to be played in the company of friends/with friends over XBL rather than an award winning narrative worthy of purchase purely for its story. Instead of a structured argument with the intention of swaying one's view, since as a writer yourself, you view this through a completely different set of lenses.
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Well it was really more a drawn out rationale about why I view Halo as a casual game to be played in the company of friends/with friends over XBL rather than an award winning narrative worthy of purchase purely for its story. Instead of a structured argument with the intention of swaying one's view, since as a writer yourself, you view this through a completely different set of lenses.
Fallacy of the excluded middle; there's no reason both shouldn't be possible.
Interestingly the majority opinion on halo.bungie.org is that the campaign is a tepid mess.
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Of course not, but I don't really happen to care about the story either way.
And thus, I'm able to enjoy my $80 investment regardless of whatever mess people think Bungie have made with the story.
Some people saw a conclusion to the Halo saga in Reach, I saw another game to play on Fridays. :lol:
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This is the worst crime: the dramatic mighty introduction of the Covenant on Reach, after half a level of buildup, is looking out a window and seeing a Skirmisher standing on a roof. Le wut.
Not that I'm going to argue that the story wasn't a disjointed mess featuring for the most part a series of missions with trivial objectives with no context. But what did you expect to make first contact with? It seems obvious to me that your first engagement will be with the enemy's scouts and light infantry, that's their job. I mean its a Skirmisher, the name is on the tin.
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I don't know, maybe a massive armada of Phantom dropships or something else dramatic, like a Scarab supported by Elites and Grunts blowing the building next to you sky-high before a Hornet blows it to smithereens with a barrage of rockets before getting melted by a wave of plasma fire from the infantry.
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Of course not, but I don't really happen to care about the story either way.
And thus, I'm able to enjoy my $80 investment regardless of whatever mess people think Bungie have made with the story.
Some people saw a conclusion to the Halo saga in Reach, I saw another game to play on Fridays. :lol:
See, the thing is that the criticisms being made here aren't limited to the story. They're also applied to the gameplay. And, bizarrely, Reach's gameply never even matches the scale achieved in Halo 2, let alone Halo 3. Even ODST had more 'battle' levels with friendly vehicle support.
I mean what's up with that? If you're going to be playing a game on Fridays it shouldn't be an underperforming one.
This is the worst crime: the dramatic mighty introduction of the Covenant on Reach, after half a level of buildup, is looking out a window and seeing a Skirmisher standing on a roof. Le wut.
Not that I'm going to argue that the story wasn't a disjointed mess featuring for the most part a series of missions with trivial objectives with no context. But what did you expect to make first contact with? It seems obvious to me that your first engagement will be with the enemy's scouts and light infantry, that's their job. I mean its a Skirmisher, the name is on the tin.
Easy solution. Move the end of 'Winter Contingency' to the beginning. First contact should be the awesome fight in the comm relay.
Then transition to the promised hordes of Covenant that Bungie's own documentaries pledged us - 40 AI characters in one space. Scarabs striding the mountains using Bungie's AI LOD system, and flocks of Banshees. And for goodness' sake don't intro the first squad of Elites with nary a comment.
When you compare the level of chatter and context in, say, Halo 2's New Mombasa courtyard battle to Reach...it's just really puzzling.
Also spardason's idea is pretty cool.
Now if anyone says 'but the Covenant snuck onto Reach!', well, that's just one enormous plothole. The game should have started with a total blackout from the Visegrad region attributed to Insurrectionist activity; in truth it would have been ballistically inserted Elite pods taking out the local sensors followed immediately by a wtfhuge fleet. None of this 'army-cloaking shield' and 'teleportation spire' crap.
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I'm not going to argue the campaign was a giant let down. I still wanted giant Kursk esq battle with Scorpions and Wraiths since the run up to Halo 2. That mission with Jun would have made much more sense if it was an assassination of some Elite Field Marshal at the Covenant FOB. The whole Falcon mission was bizarre and pointless. There was no point to bringing up the Forerunner, I mean I don't even recall it being a plot point in any of the subsequent games.
But to be honest Winter Contingency wasn't a "bad" mission in my opinion. Granted I think the way they spread the action out across the map was a bit boring but the actual Op wasn't militarily bizarre to me. I'd expect them to drop the Spartans away from the relay. I mean they figured it had been seized by rebels. Flying Falcons right up to the thing isn't much of a surprise and's got Black Hawk down written all over it. A quick silent approach on foot makes sense in this case. Making first contact with a perimeter of Covenant scouts and light infantry is what I would expect. Granted a mix of skirmishers and Spec Op Elites would have made for a cooler first contact but I wasn't exactly miffed that it didn't kick of with some giant frontal assault on the main Covenant Armada at the Relay. That would have been militarily bizarre to me.
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There was no point to bringing up the Forerunner, I mean I don't even recall it being a plot point in any of the subsequent games.
What is this I don't even :wtf:
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There was no point to bringing up the Forerunner, I mean I don't even recall it being a plot point in any of the subsequent games.
What is this I don't even :wtf:
I don't recall Cortana ever mentioning "Hey John guess what? I already came preloaded with the Forerunner's SQL Database from the giant holographic disco ball hidden under a glacier" as in that whole plot arc in Reach never was mentioned in the subsequent games.
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Gee, you ever think that might be because all of the "subsequent games" came out between three and nine years before Reach did?
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Gee, you ever think that might be because all of the "subsequent games" came out between three and nine years before Reach did?
Gee, you ever think Bungie might come up with a story that fits seamlessly and isn't contradictory to the work they already did three to nine years ago instead of a main campaign arc that 'should' have impacted chronologically later games but instead is a plot hole?
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Gee, you ever think that might be because all of the "subsequent games" came out between three and nine years before Reach did?
So that makes it even more of a bizarre mistake to bring up this narrative element in Reach.
It's come to my attention that apparently Bungie changed its design methodology for Reach. They set up a series of levels and then built a story around them, instead of vice versa.
/me facepalms
What's more they spent a great deal of time contradicting their most popular novel, one they themselves referenced many times, in a way that didn't add anything to Reach itself.
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Like I said, the scary thing was that until Reach, the Halo universe blended seamlessly together in novels and games.
Now it doesn't.
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Like I said, the scary thing was that until Reach, the Halo universe blended seamlessly together in novels and games.
Now it doesn't.
I just don't think reach is cannon, even relative to the other 4 games.
look at the guns, the extinction of a covie race happens in day-ish between it and Halo CE, the inferior armour MC has relative to noble team and their abilities.
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Like I said, the scary thing was that until Reach, the Halo universe blended seamlessly together in novels and games.
Now it doesn't.
I just don't think reach is cannon, even relative to the other 4 games.
look at the guns, the extinction of a covie race happens in day-ish between it and Halo CE, the inferior armour MC has relative to noble team and their abilities.
Meh. It's just a game. Canon schmanon.
The books are irrelevant quite frankly because the games should be self-contained.
People on another website were complaining about up-armoured grunts and so forth. I don't view the new guns and enemies as being contradicting what came before, but rather as replacing it. It's like the Brutes. In Halo 2 the mooks just used plasma rifles and carbines. Then in Halo 3 they got their own side arm, the Spiker. Did they invent this gun between Halo 2 and Halo 3? No, of course not. Rather, I view it as an evolution of the universe. Meaning brutes have been in several different games, but their look, armament and behaviour has evolved. So in other words, to me what changes is not the weaponry but rather the armies as a whole. And in each game the armies are the same, its just that the idea of what those armies are has changed. So the Brutes in Halo 2 should have spikers, had they been created by bungie. But they weren't. So in that iteration they use plasma rifles. And in that way, in Halo CE there were probably up armoured grunts and the like, but because that idea had yet to evolve we simply have what we have.
And besides, different guns does not mean better. The big needler is just a carbine replacement. The covie sniper rifle is inferior to the old one. The DMR is less of a gun than the later assault rifle.
Wow, just played multi with a few mates, big team battle or some ****. Man, I love the jetpack. Big grin
Finished first level of single player, apart from an annoying checkpoint, wasn't much to complain about.
Jetpack sucks man. All it does is make you a target.
I like the holograph. Love seeing people chase after my decoy then I go shoot 'em in the back. One time this guy jet packed up on pinnacle and smoked some guy in the back. I peeked around th corner, stuck him, blew him up then activated my decoy and ran off. He comes over there, looking for revenge, sees me and starts wailing on my decoy while meanwhile I'm halfway across the map.
The dumbest one is that armour lock down. I friggin stick a guy with a plasma, he does armour lock down, and doesn't die. That's some first rate bull**** right there.
Only thing I wish was in Reach was those quad striders from Halo Wars with the beam cannon. Would be cool to see some of those lesser scarabs in action. Forget what they're called. Oh, Locusts.
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My problem isn't as much with the canon breaks from the books as it was that I thought the writing and level design were inferior to any previous Bungie game.
I mean compare the set pieces battles to Halo 3. Reach is a step down.
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The dumbest one is that armour lock down. I friggin stick a guy with a plasma, he does armour lock down, and doesn't die. That's some first rate bull**** right there.
Dude, that's the whole point of Armor Lock. Learn how to beat it, and then laugh at their pathetic struggles for a few more seconds of life.
The only thing I wish they'd change about it is the ability to do a complete 180 melee when you pop out of it. I actually wish you couldn't look around while you were in it. That'd fix a bunch of stuff wrong with it. As is, you can use it to look around corners without putting yourself in danger.
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The dumbest one is that armour lock down. I friggin stick a guy with a plasma, he does armour lock down, and doesn't die. That's some first rate bull**** right there.
Dude, that's the whole point of Armor Lock. Learn how to beat it, and then laugh at their pathetic struggles for a few more seconds of life.
The only thing I wish they'd change about it is the ability to do a complete 180 melee when you pop out of it. I actually wish you couldn't look around while you were in it. That'd fix a bunch of stuff wrong with it. As is, you can use it to look around corners without putting yourself in danger.
That would neuter it even further.
Armor lock was a beautiful thing in the beta - a skill-sensitive, nuanced technique that made grenade spam survivable and melee battles interesting and strategic. Now it's a vaguely underpowered deathtrap, except in team play or when a Ghost is trying to ram you (where it's awesome.)
If you took away the ability to pop out at any angle, you'd render it utterly impotent.
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Then could we at the very least take away the ability to look around corners with it?
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Then could we at the very least take away the ability to look around corners with it?
If they gave it back the melee EMP ability, maybe. :(
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Jet Pack seems useful in firefight. I still like sprint the best especially with a DMR and M45, but jump pack has saved my bacon on occasion when a beam saber wielding Elite or Hammer lugging Brute comes charging up on me. It adds a level of tactical mobility plus descending upon a Grunt pile from the heavens dealing righteous wrath with a gravity hammer is obnoxiously fun.
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The dumbest one is that armour lock down. I friggin stick a guy with a plasma, he does armour lock down, and doesn't die. That's some first rate bull**** right there.
Dude, that's the whole point of Armor Lock. Learn how to beat it, and then laugh at their pathetic struggles for a few more seconds of life.
Meh, armour lock should make you invulnerable to incoming fire, not invulnerable to fire you've already been hit with. My favourite weapon in any halo game has always been the plasma grenade, so when some power complete neuters it I don't much care for it of course. Thankfully very few people play with Armour lock it seems.
Jet Pack seems useful in firefight. I still like sprint the best especially with a DMR and M45, but jump pack has saved my bacon on occasion when a beam saber wielding Elite or Hammer lugging Brute comes charging up on me. It adds a level of tactical mobility plus descending upon a Grunt pile from the heavens dealing righteous wrath with a gravity hammer is obnoxiously fun.
Yes I found the jump pack a lot more useful in the campaign. I suppose maybe the problem with the basic multi game is that people just do a huge leap in the middle of the map with no cover, and everyone automatically shoots them of course. When the pack is probably best for short leaps onto higher levels, or, on some levels, saving your ass when you fall off like a dork.
I wish people would quit picking Infection or stupid SWAT or worst of all Snipers. Infection's the worst though, so friggin boring and the zombies ALWAYS win, at least in my experience.
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Well yes the zombies always win, that's how the game ends. The point is to kill as many as you can first.
I agree that SWAT and Infection really need their own playlist, though.
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My problem isn't as much with the canon breaks from the books as it was that I thought the writing and level design were inferior to any previous Bungie game.
I mean compare the set pieces battles to Halo 3. Reach is a step down.
You mean such as the battle against the two Scarabs when you're taking out the Prophet?
It probably is, there aren't too many large battles. Replaying it on Legendary the one thing I do like is when aiding Sword base you see enemy Serephims or whatever streaking in and hitting the base (or at least I think they are, never looked too hard).
But the "big battle" such as it was, the bit with the charge of the light brigade was pretty friggin stupid. I think I actually saw a few scorpions at the starting over head shot, but by the end it's a bunch of friggin dune buggies charging across an open field towards fortified positions. Each buggy with only like three friggin guys in it. Who does that?
The whole game for me was pretty much "why am I getting my ass killed in this vehicle? Doesn't this stupid army know about closed crew compartments?" Even the friggin Rail Gun doesn't have an armoured operator's compartment. The closest you can really get to big battles in Halo is in Halo Wars I think. Especially when it's like 3 vs 3 multi team battle. Get some huge crap goin on.
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My problem isn't as much with the canon breaks from the books as it was that I thought the writing and level design were inferior to any previous Bungie game.
I mean compare the set pieces battles to Halo 3. Reach is a step down.
You mean such as the battle against the two Scarabs when you're taking out the Prophet?
It probably is, there aren't too many large battles. Replaying it on Legendary the one thing I do like is when aiding Sword base you see enemy Serephims or whatever streaking in and hitting the base (or at least I think they are, never looked too hard).
But the "big battle" such as it was, the bit with the charge of the light brigade was pretty friggin stupid. I think I actually saw a few scorpions at the starting over head shot, but by the end it's a bunch of friggin dune buggies charging across an open field towards fortified positions. Each buggy with only like three friggin guys in it. Who does that?
The whole game for me was pretty much "why am I getting my ass killed in this vehicle? Doesn't this stupid army know about closed crew compartments?" Even the friggin Rail Gun doesn't have an armoured operator's compartment. The closest you can really get to big battles in Halo is in Halo Wars I think. Especially when it's like 3 vs 3 multi team battle. Get some huge crap goin on.
Yeah, I liked Halo Wars (and yes I play Starcraft and SupCom and whatnot!)
But Halo 3 at least had levels where you worked with friendly vehicles. You know, three tanks, a couple railgun hogs, you vs. Wraiths and Ghosts and Scarabs. Reach doesn't have that. :(
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Yeah, I liked Halo Wars (and yes I play Starcraft and SupCom and whatnot!)
But Halo 3 at least had levels where you worked with friendly vehicles. You know, three tanks, a couple railgun hogs, you vs. Wraiths and Ghosts and Scarabs. Reach doesn't have that. :(
Don't forget the battle where you fart around on a Mongoose while some guy with a rocket launcher hangs on the back.
Maybe in Reach they were trying to showcase the armour abilties a bit more, which of course they can't when you're in a vehicle. The one time they had the frigate take out the AA gun (well, finish it off) it was pretty cool. Wasn't really enough of that though I agree.
Is it just me or is the Concussion rifle not at all as effective in the hands of the player as it is in the hand of the elites? Even that friggin vehicle with the little mortar on it. I hit some little turd with that thing he doesn't die, but get hit direct and you do. Concussion rifle never seens as effective when I'm nailing people with it either.
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Yeah, I liked Halo Wars (and yes I play Starcraft and SupCom and whatnot!)
But Halo 3 at least had levels where you worked with friendly vehicles. You know, three tanks, a couple railgun hogs, you vs. Wraiths and Ghosts and Scarabs. Reach doesn't have that. :(
Don't forget the battle where you fart around on a Mongoose while some guy with a rocket launcher hangs on the back.
Maybe in Reach they were trying to showcase the armour abilties a bit more, which of course they can't when you're in a vehicle. The one time they had the frigate take out the AA gun (well, finish it off) it was pretty cool. Wasn't really enough of that though I agree.
Yeah. I didn't notice until my third time through that level that there's a huge (but ugly) battle going on in the distance, and when you kill the AA gun, some bombers come in and blow up three Scarabs.
Is it just me or is the Concussion rifle not at all as effective in the hands of the player as it is in the hand of the elites? Even that friggin vehicle with the little mortar on it. I hit some little turd with that thing he doesn't die, but get hit direct and you do. Concussion rifle never seens as effective when I'm nailing people with it either.
That's because your character in the game has less health than pretty much any enemy and even less than your own side's Marines. Whereas the Elites have about as much health as three or four multiplayer characters, maybe more.
Conc rifle's pretty good in multi though, at least if you're above them.
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That's because your character in the game has less health than pretty much any enemy and even less than your own side's Marines. Whereas the Elites have about as much health as three or four multiplayer characters, maybe more.
Conc rifle's pretty good in multi though, at least if you're above them.
I'm not even talking elites, it seems a bit hard to kill even basic grunts and jackals with those things. So I just stick with the direct-fire guns instead.
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conc rifle is a good anti-light-vehicle gun.
and good in multi, it's a lot like the old brute shot.
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conc rifle is a good anti-light-vehicle gun.
and good in multi, it's a lot like the old brute shot.
I basically ignored the little break action Halo version of the M79 for a while but decided to force myself to use it on Firefight once and it was actually a lot of fun. Great crowd control on minor enemies, can still take out armor/hunters and softens up the Elites and Brutes. Plus you can corner shot them.
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conc rifle is a good anti-light-vehicle gun.
and good in multi, it's a lot like the old brute shot.
I basically ignored the little break action Halo version of the M79 for a while but decided to force myself to use it on Firefight once and it was actually a lot of fun. Great crowd control on minor enemies, can still take out armor/hunters and softens up the Elites and Brutes. Plus you can corner shot them.
The grenade launcher is pro. It's one of the most skill-sensitive, rewarding weapons in Reach. That's what a power weapon should be like.
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Just finished Reach a few hours ago. I'll give the story a 6.9/10.
The one thing I found most annoying about Reach was the poorly placed checkpoints. It isn't fun having to run through a ten-fifteen minute segment of a mission with no checkpoints and having to repeat it a million times.
Apart from a few quibbles here and there, things like the ground formation of mongeese and hogs traveling so bloody close together and then things like the Covenant incorrectly being referred to as tangos impacted on immersion, but otherwise I found the story to be decent. Although the night infiltration level wasn't a favourite of mine and the poorly placed checkpoints made levels that should've been fun a bit of a pain.
The level of atmosphere/story cohesion I thought was a bit inconsistent. In my opinion, it started acceptably, dipped a little during the middle (with various spikes upwards) and got phenomenally better towards the end.
In fact, the ending level raised my opinion of the entire game. The post credits level however could've been done a wee bit better, the music perhaps a bit more poignant with a touch of decisiveness like Belisarius' latest piece, but that's alright.
Halo multi isn't something I play just whenever to have fun and feel driven by the multi objectives like I do in MW:2, the style just doesn't get me. But for playing with friends and such, I think it's fairly unbeatable.
And Forge is in a world of its own. I love it.
Overall I give it a 7.5/10.
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I just finished it again on Legendary and found myself giggling at some of the dialogue.
"We have hostile tangos in pursuit!"
Gee really. Well we'll send some friendly buddies to help out.
That line is also delivered by a patrol 'returning to base', yet the Hog in question is driving AWAY from the base.
What really weirds me out about Reach is how it dances around showing any of the actually important stuff. The Covenant fleet that arrives to take the planet? Never shown (bar a few seconds of jump-ins.) The actual glassing? Not shown, even though it takes places between two levels!
Narrative decisions were so bizarre.
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I just finished it again on Legendary and found myself giggling at some of the dialogue.
"We have hostile tangos in pursuit!"
Gee really. Well we'll send some friendly buddies to help out.
That line is also delivered by a patrol 'returning to base', yet the Hog in question is driving AWAY from the base.
What really weirds me out about Reach is how it dances around showing any of the actually important stuff. The Covenant fleet that arrives to take the planet? Never shown (bar a few seconds of jump-ins.) The actual glassing? Not shown, even though it takes places between two levels!
Don't forget the huge friggin space battle, which was apparently the largest of the war from what I understand. Don't even SEE the terran fleet, save from a couple poor frigates and the pillar of autumn.
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Firefight voices seem to be severely lacking in both quantity and quality of quips compared to ODST. I mean you want to kill Covenant just to here the next Jayne Cobbism in ODST, here it takes forever for a gibe and its generally lame like "Welcome to Reach"... really?
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After a bit of a cock-up spending a few hundred quid on a telly last month, I didn't have enough for my pre-order. So I re-ordered it after pay-day, it turned up yesterday. I finished it at half three this morning.
It's a pretty game, it looks nice. I got the black box option.
I expected to see the repair platform scene from the novel during the Sabre section.
I also expected the carrier kill to be more in line with the book.
On that note, Reach is THE UNSCDF stronghold and fleet base. How'd they run out of nukes?
I also liked the fact that Kat died unspectacularly.
Daft one-armed bandit. Never did find out how that happened ;s
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Has this been posted? If not, here it is. If yes, here it is again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXasCjUTNpE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXasCjUTNpE)
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OMG...ROFLMAO!!!!!
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That reminds me very much of a friend of mine...
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I also expected the carrier kill to be more in line with the book.
On that note, Reach is THE UNSCDF stronghold and fleet base. How'd they run out of nukes?
The UNSC had been using nukes for the entire war, as they're practically the only thing that scratch Covenant ships. They were running low everywhere even before Reach.
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Has this been posted? If not, here it is. If yes, here it is again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXasCjUTNpE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXasCjUTNpE)
I laughed so hard at that.
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The UNSC had been using nukes for the entire war, as they're practically the only thing that scratch Covenant ships. They were running low everywhere even before Reach.
The UNSC even at the height of the war doesn't issue nukes in large numbers. (If they had, it might have helped.) A destroyer or cruiser typically only has three to five Shivas aboard.
When you compare that to the figures for maximum warhead production now (Did you know we build over 1000 a year? Warheads are planned obselence and have to be replaced.), never mind what we could do (the United States has the capacity to build over 100,000 warheads a year if it ever feels like it, and Russia something like twice that, nevermind if you get the rest of the world in on the Deus Ex Nukina defense.), it frankly seems the UNSC is just really stupid.
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Probably some peacenik who wants the planets to be livable after all the humans are dead.
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Probably some peacenik who wants the planets to be livable after all the humans are dead.
Doesn't work because the UNSC knows that lost planets will be glassed.
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Maybe something to do with just how much fissionable material it takes to damage a covenant ship, combined with PD interceptions and the sheer number of ships they need to be distributed to? I don't think we ever get hard numbers on how many nukes/ships the UNSC has.
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Maybe something to do with just how much fissionable material it takes to damage a covenant ship, combined with PD interceptions and the sheer number of ships they need to be distributed to? I don't think we ever get hard numbers on how many nukes/ships the UNSC has.
Another giant gaping Reach plothole.
The Covenant fleet does not arrive at Reach until after Tip of the Spear. Before that time, the only ships present are corvettes and the cloaked carrier, which does not engage.
Somehow every nuclear armed asset at Reach goes down before Tip of the Spear.
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Wait, is it confirmed that the UNSC uses absolutely no nukes after the Covenant fleet arrives?
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Doesn't invalidate the concept that some hippie issued a "no nukes" policy because they thought "We can win this!".
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Doesn't invalidate the concept that some hippie issued a "no nukes" policy because they thought "We can win this!".
/me headdesks
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Okay, yeah, seriously Lib, it's a fictional setting, created by people specifically to tell a war story. There isn't a "but hippies got in the way!" reason for there to be no nukes.
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The cutscene before the attack on the Carrier, where we hear the Spartan chick Has A Plantm, states they have no nukes. Presumeably they either simply had none on planet or lost the capability to lauch them when all hell broke loose. TBH, I don't understand why the Covvies where dicking about with stealth bubble things. You have a huge fleet, "space superiority", a doomsday weapon that can be fired from orbit and no terratorial desires. Why not just roll-up enforce and waste the site from orbit.....?
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Doesn't invalidate the concept that some hippie issued a "no nukes" policy because they thought "We can win this!".
Lib, you cool dude, the Spartans in the campaign explicitly said that they wanted to use nukes on the Covenant, but that all their nuclear capability had been taken out. (Which is bull****, but...)
I mean seriously, who the **** would give a 'no nukes' order when the endgame if you lose the planet is the Covenant nuking it from orbit?
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I cite First Strike - Vice Admiral Whitcomb had a nova bomb...
Kelly tossed a nuke into the grav lift of a hovering Covie ship...
...and the previous Noble 6 has been shown in the commercials to
perform a similar feat.
They had nukes.... someone forgot to hire the storywriters and editors.
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BTW, why make a game about an event that was fleshed out in a 400 page book years ago? The Fall of Reach fills in the backstory of Halo fairly decently, and it explains why the Covvies weren't keen to burn the planet. They were looking for Forerunner relics and trying to learn about why Humanity was fighting so hard.
Also, per TFOR, the regular human ground forces came up about even and the Spartans won every engagement against the Covenant. It's just that we had NOTHING that could stand up against their cruisers in space since their plasma weapons virtually one-shot everything they aimed at. The only noticeable space victories came when the cruisers were infiltrated by Spartan forces several members of which suicided to make sure the ship went down.
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BTW, why make a game about an event that was fleshed out in a 400 page book years ago? The Fall of Reach fills in the backstory of Halo fairly decently, and it explains why the Covvies weren't keen to burn the planet. They were looking for Forerunner relics and trying to learn about why Humanity was fighting so hard.
Reach retcons the book out of continuity fairly nicely. :(
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BTW, why make a game about an event that was fleshed out in a 400 page book years ago? The Fall of Reach fills in the backstory of Halo fairly decently, and it explains why the Covvies weren't keen to burn the planet. They were looking for Forerunner relics and trying to learn about why Humanity was fighting so hard.
Reach retcons the book out of continuity fairly nicely. :(
I loved TFoR. :(
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For anyone else who bought the black box edition, Halseys journal clears up one or two things, namely why Cortana was present to be handed to Noble6 when at the same time she was off planet with 117 and Keyes was performing the Keyes loop aboard the Iriqois.
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For anyone else who bought the black box edition, Halseys journal clears up one or two things, namely why Cortana was present to be handed to Noble6 when at the same time she was off planet with 117 and Keyes was performing the Keyes loop aboard the Iriqois.
It patches a few things up but not nearly enough to mesh with The Fall of Reach.
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That's my feeling on the matter too. I'm still glad I bought it though. :D
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Since I never played Reach, let me just ask this. Is Noble Team Spartan-II's or Spartan-III's?
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Since I never played Reach, let me just ask this. Is Noble Team Spartan-II's or Spartan-III's?
Several Threes, one Two, and no One worth caring about, if you see what I did there. (Well except Jorge!)
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Jorge is a S-II. Kat, Carter, Jun, Emile, and the player are all S-IIIs.
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Which is all the more amusing when you consider that the books establish Halsey knew nothing about the Spartan III's until Ghosts of Onyx. Also that the SIIIs were intended to be used soley as disposable super soldiers (which to be honest was fairly odd to me..but whatever), sent into situations that not even Spartan IIs would be risked on. Good enough to get the job done, not good enough to come back (except in a few cases). So the idea that there was a team of IIIs and IIs working together...on Reach, just baffles me.
That's why I don't have much faith in Bungie's next venture...especially considering they invalidate their own cannon.
To give you an example...Halo storywriter Joseph Staten wrote one Halo book called Contact Harvest. In it, it establishes that Harvest, the first human colony to be wiped out by the Covenant, somehow wasn't actually wiped out. Not only that..but Sgt. Johnson was there...and he's actually a Spartan I (Project Orion) and...yeah. Of course, the Halo CE manual, which I assume someone at Bungie wrote, stated that Harvest was completely wiped out...and that most of the ships sent to investigate were wiped out...so how were there any survivors?
Bungie did a fine job keeping the story solid through the first three games, but as enjoyable as Reach is, it's clear Bungie just wanted out and decided keeping any kind of continuity was pointless. That's a terrible message to their fans, but oh well.
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Let me get this straight, there's a bunch of Spartan-III's on Reach, for no good reason, considering their purpose as soldiers who could complete suicide missions by dint of sheer numbers, and there's one single S-II in Noble Team, which makes no sense considering he should be with the rest of the S-II's that are supposed to be protecting the surface power installations so the SMAC's can keep firing.
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Let me get this straight, there's a bunch of Spartan-III's on Reach, for no good reason, considering their purpose as soldiers who could complete suicide missions by dint of sheer numbers, and there's one single S-II in Noble Team, which makes no sense considering he should be with the rest of the S-II's that are supposed to be protecting the surface power installations so the SMAC's can keep firing.
Actually...there's an intel entry on Bungie.net which does a fair job of explaining why the S-IIIs are on Reach. That element of the backstory I don't find fault with.
But the SMACs are never mentioned, nor the generators, nor the Spartan-II Red Team.
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Let me get this straight, there's a bunch of Spartan-III's on Reach, for no good reason, considering their purpose as soldiers who could complete suicide missions by dint of sheer numbers, and there's one single S-II in Noble Team, which makes no sense considering he should be with the rest of the S-II's that are supposed to be protecting the surface power installations so the SMAC's can keep firing.
Actually...there's an intel entry on Bungie.net which does a fair job of explaining why the S-IIIs are on Reach. That element of the backstory I don't find fault with.
But the SMACs are never mentioned, nor the generators, nor the Spartan-II Red Team.
So, they ignored TFoR and First Strike just like that? (Yes, I remember reading about the bizarre "no nukes" order, which is odd considering a UNSC admiral was going to blow the planet up with nova bombs as a form of extreme asset denial.)
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Let me get this straight, there's a bunch of Spartan-III's on Reach, for no good reason, considering their purpose as soldiers who could complete suicide missions by dint of sheer numbers, and there's one single S-II in Noble Team, which makes no sense considering he should be with the rest of the S-II's that are supposed to be protecting the surface power installations so the SMAC's can keep firing.
Actually...there's an intel entry on Bungie.net which does a fair job of explaining why the S-IIIs are on Reach. That element of the backstory I don't find fault with.
But the SMACs are never mentioned, nor the generators, nor the Spartan-II Red Team.
So, they ignored TFoR and First Strike just like that? (Yes, I remember reading about the bizarre "no nukes" order, which is odd considering a UNSC admiral was going to blow the planet up with nova bombs as a form of extreme asset denial.)
Ah, I actually do remember a nuclear hold order being issued in TFoR for a very good reason: the EMP would burn out the MAC guns.
(Which was bull**** but...hey, at least they tried.)
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That was in close proximity to the SMAC's. I explicitly remember Cortana remote-piloting the SHIVA-armed Longsword into the Covenant flagship's shield sphere while the shields were down, then detonating it when the shields came back up so the explosion would be contained by them and have no place to go but the ship.
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That was in close proximity to the SMAC's. I explicitly remember Cortana remote-piloting the SHIVA-armed Longsword into the Covenant flagship's shield sphere while the shields were down, then detonating it when the shields came back up so the explosion would be contained by them and have no place to go but the ship.
Er...then why are you saying anything about a nuclear hold order? I can't remember any other ones being issued.
Bear in mind the Pillar of Autumn is going to have trouble getting anywhere near any sort of Covenant flagship as it's apparently on the surface of Reach in a drydock when the main Covenant fleet arrives. :blah:
Oh and the Covenant has 22km long ships now.
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There's a simple reason Nukes weren't used. Because they're boring! That's why.
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There's a simple reason Nukes weren't used. Because they're boring! That's why.
I like this logic
'press X to nuke' is boring compared to shooting aliens.
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That was in close proximity to the SMAC's. I explicitly remember Cortana remote-piloting the SHIVA-armed Longsword into the Covenant flagship's shield sphere while the shields were down, then detonating it when the shields came back up so the explosion would be contained by them and have no place to go but the ship.
Er...then why are you saying anything about a nuclear hold order? I can't remember any other ones being issued.
Bear in mind the Pillar of Autumn is going to have trouble getting anywhere near any sort of Covenant flagship as it's apparently on the surface of Reach in a drydock when the main Covenant fleet arrives. :blah:
Oh and the Covenant has 22km long ships now.
What the ****...? :confused:
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There's a simple reason Nukes weren't used. Because they're boring! That's why.
I like this logic
'press X to nuke' is boring compared to shooting aliens.
The use of nukes in Reach wouldn't have impacted the gameplay; they would've been used on ships.
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'press X to nuke' is boring compared to shooting aliens.
Defcon disagrees. So does my Harpoon experience. Nuclear D/B, away!
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Harpoon had nuclear weaponry?
Almost makes me want to grapple with the interface. Almost.
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Harpoon had nuclear weaponry?
Almost makes me want to grapple with the interface. Almost.
Well bear in mind there were no visual effects, so it was just 'fire it, watch destruction reports'.
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Well, right, but the destruction report from a nuclear depth charge probably would have been hilarious.
"You sank your own battlegroup. Nice job, sir"
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There's a simple reason Nukes weren't used. Because they're boring! That's why.
I like this logic
'press X to nuke' is boring compared to shooting aliens.
The use of nukes in Reach wouldn't have impacted the gameplay; they would've been used on ships.
Yeah but the lack of nukes allowed the writers to shoe-horn in some fighter space combat and some marine boarding action. So I'd say it affects game play.
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There's a simple reason Nukes weren't used. Because they're boring! That's why.
I like this logic
'press X to nuke' is boring compared to shooting aliens.
The use of nukes in Reach wouldn't have impacted the gameplay; they would've been used on ships.
Yeah but the lack of nukes allowed the writers to shoe-horn in some fighter space combat and some marine boarding action. So I'd say it affects game play.
So now I'm not sure what point is being made here. We were discussing whether a 'no nukes' order was given.
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There's a simple reason Nukes weren't used. Because they're boring! That's why.
I like this logic
'press X to nuke' is boring compared to shooting aliens.
The use of nukes in Reach wouldn't have impacted the gameplay; they would've been used on ships.
Yeah but the lack of nukes allowed the writers to shoe-horn in some fighter space combat and some marine boarding action. So I'd say it affects game play.
So now I'm not sure what point is being made here. We were discussing whether a 'no nukes' order was given.
No, you were discussing how it made no sense that Reach didn't have nukes to use instead of the slipdrive op that appears in the game, that is you said <<Lib, you cool dude, the Spartans in the campaign explicitly said that they wanted to use nukes on the Covenant, but that all their nuclear capability had been taken out.>>. To which I said there's a reason they didn't have nukes, because nukes are boring. You countered by saying Nukes wouldn't affect game play because nukes would only be used against ships (ie situated in space). To which I say that clearly the presence of nukes would affect game play because then the slip-drive operation arc would have no place in the story and there would be no space combat and no covenant-ship assault, etcetera.
Or in other words, the lack of nukes was problem put into the story for the sole purpose that the Spartan team would have a reason to go into space, fight in combat spacecraft and assault a covenant corvette. Because if they did have nukes presumably they could just nuke the enemy fleet into oblivion or whatnot.
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Which is all utterly tangential because this was an argument about Lib's assertion that nukes were not used because of hippies being worried about environmental damage.
You almost made it back far enough but didn't get there.
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Well, right, but the destruction report from a nuclear depth charge probably would have been hilarious.
"You sank your own battlegroup. Nice job, sir"
I always liked it because if you forced a nuclear D/B drop from an Orion on a doubtful sonar contact, you got a kill. Every time. Same thing with nuclear ASROC. Takes the frustration out of ASW.
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Which is all utterly tangential because this was an argument about Lib's assertion that nukes were not used because of hippies being worried about environmental damage.
You almost made it back far enough but didn't get there.
I don't care what Lib's arguing about, I was presenting my own argument as to why Nukes were not used (they're boring). You were responding to my argument not his, therefore how is Lib's relevant?
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Which is all utterly tangential because this was an argument about Lib's assertion that nukes were not used because of hippies being worried about environmental damage.
You almost made it back far enough but didn't get there.
I don't care what Lib's arguing about, I was presenting my own argument as to why Nukes were not used (they're boring). You were responding to my argument not his, therefore how is Lib's relevant?
Because I wasn't responding to you. Like I said above, if nukes were used in Reach it would've probably been in a cinematic sense, not in gameplay.
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Takes the frustration out of ASW.
Heh. I remember trying to play 688i because I loved all the Jane's flight sims. It was...not for me. Fleet Command, though, that I could handle.
So Harpoon's scenarios didn't, like, prohibit you from using nukes on pain of triggering the annihilation of the species or something?
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Which is all utterly tangential because this was an argument about Lib's assertion that nukes were not used because of hippies being worried about environmental damage.
You almost made it back far enough but didn't get there.
I don't care what Lib's arguing about, I was presenting my own argument as to why Nukes were not used (they're boring). You were responding to my argument not his, therefore how is Lib's relevant?
Because I wasn't responding to you. Like I said above, if nukes were used in Reach it would've probably been in a cinematic sense, not in gameplay.
If you're not responding to me don't quote my message (and the resulting message by T3R_D or whatever).
If you quote a conversation that's separate from the one you're debating are you surprised by the resulting confusion?
As for what you're saying.
The only time nukes are mentioned in Reach is in reference to the super carrier. The lack of nukes promotes a certain sequence of events that the player directly participates in. Therefore nukes, or the lack thereof, has an effect on gameplay.
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Guys, we don't need to have this 'discussion'/argument whatever. A silly debate over 'you said this, but I was actually saying it to him,' isn't going to go anywhere productive.
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Guys, we don't need to have this 'discussion'/argument whatever. A silly debate over 'you said this, but I was actually saying it to him,' isn't going to go anywhere productive.
Don't tell me what I can't do.
Which is all utterly tangential because this was an argument about Lib's assertion that nukes were not used because of hippies being worried about environmental damage.
You almost made it back far enough but didn't get there.
I don't care what Lib's arguing about, I was presenting my own argument as to why Nukes were not used (they're boring). You were responding to my argument not his, therefore how is Lib's relevant?
Because I wasn't responding to you. Like I said above, if nukes were used in Reach it would've probably been in a cinematic sense, not in gameplay.
If you're not responding to me don't quote my message (and the resulting message by T3R_D or whatever).
If you quote a conversation that's separate from the one you're debating are you surprised by the resulting confusion?
As for what you're saying.
The only time nukes are mentioned in Reach is in reference to the super carrier. The lack of nukes promotes a certain sequence of events that the player directly participates in. Therefore nukes, or the lack thereof, has an effect on gameplay.
Yeah, at this point I'm so confused myself I'm just willing to plead insanity. I think the conversational threads got crosswired at some points.
Anyway, the use of nukes we were talking about was in reference to The Fall of Reach, a Halo novel that came out well before the game.
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Don't tell me what I can't do.
Take it easy, you bloody choco.
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Don't tell me what I can't do.
Take it easy, you bloody choco.
It's a Lost quote, you heathen!
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Hey gais, I just found out that the one skirmisher you shoot right outside the window is NOT the first Covenant you see on Reach.
There's a stealthed Elite running away from the burning Warthog at the very beginning. Killing it, however, does not change the course of the mission, which I found kinda WTF-worthy.
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Hey gais, I just found out that the one skirmisher you shoot right outside the window is NOT the first Covenant you see on Reach.
There's a stealthed Elite running away from the burning Warthog at the very beginning. Killing it, however, does not change the course of the mission, which I found kinda WTF-worthy.
You are le nubs! This is not, in fact, a 'real' Covenant, but a data pad carrier, part of Reach's equivalents of the Terminals.
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That only makes it somewhat worse.
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Cheer up, big man. This whole valley just turned into a fr
huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurk
bluuuugggh uuuuuuuuuuuuurgh
cleanup plz
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huh
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I am vomiting at some botched dialogue in a critical scene.
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yeah, the story and acting is weak, especially compared to, say, ODST, where I actually gave a damn about my squad (and the captain, nat.)
this game is really meant for co-op firefight and MP, that's the cool part.