[Roanoke]

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.

[MR_T3D]

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.

[Scotty]

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.

[MR_T3D]

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.

[Scotty]

Well then the other team is just idiots.  You don't snipe the gunner, you snipe the whole damn gunship out of the sky.   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.

[Roanoke]

also, camping someone's spawn site is teh gay.

[carbine7]

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.

[Scotty]

Or any amount of attention from a sniper rifle.

Or a grenade launcher.

Or a lot of things.

[Dilmah G]

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.

[MR_T3D]

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

[Scotty]

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).

[Dilmah G]

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.

[Dilmah G]

Wow, just played multi with a few mates, big team battle or some ****. Man, I love the jetpack.

Finished first level of single player, apart from an annoying checkpoint, wasn't much to complain about.

[General Battuta]

Wow, just played multi with a few mates, big team battle or some ****. Man, I love the jetpack.

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.

[Dilmah G]

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.

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.

[General Battuta]

*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.

[Dilmah G]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Dilmah G]

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.

[StarSlayer]

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.