Halo 3 - The Final Word 106
In anticipation of Halo 3's release later this month, EGM and the folks at 1up have been creating a veritable altar to the Halo deities over at the website. This edifice has tons of information on the two previous Halo games, commentary from numerous Halo-literate folks on the subject, as well as weightier articles like a preview of the co-op mode (four players, mind), a primer on the story if you've missed something, and a breakdown of the good and bad in Halo 3 . Yes, there are even some things they don't like about the game. From the co-op breakdown: "The Achievements offered tantalizing hints of the game's structure, features and techniques, a welcome morsel of information for the faithful to contemplate and speculate about. The co-op news was greeted with even more warmth, because it put to rest ill-founded rumors that Bungie was planning to deliver a half-completed game. On the contrary; up to four players will be able to take control of the Master Chief, the Arbiter and two Elite warriors, N'tho 'Sraom and Usze 'Taham. (Don't bother trying to pronounce their names; just appreciate the promise of joining up with three friends to conquer the game.) And somewhere in the middle, these two topics are connected by something even more intriguing. Halo's co-op game and its Gamerscore-grinding intersect at a point enigmatically referred to in the game's Achievements as the 'Meta-game.'"
The Final Word on Halo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Making beeeeeeautiful water. Duh!
Seriously, I realize you're just trolling, but even trolls need food now and again so here goes.
1) Looks almost identical to Halo 2, just with the resolution bumped up and some higher rez textures. It's the same old last gen style engine. Three years of work and people getting confused in comparison shots between Halo 2 and Halo 3 is shockingly bad for what is supposed to be the killer first party tour de force for Microsoft.
I assume you're thinking of the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. It's been said over and over that the rendering engine used in the beta is not the engine that will ship with Halo 3.
2) Has the same networking setup as last gen. The rumored dedicated servers turned out to be a pipe dream. Instead Halo 3 has the same old last gen 16 player cap per game and lag prone P2P networking for games. With all of Microsoft's money you would think they could have hired someone to actually updated the networking code to next gen levels.
Considering that Halo 3 supports 4-player online co-op, I tend to doubt that the exact same netcode drives both games. I also tend to think that the game's netcode was improved and worked on just like any other part of the game. Speaking of online lag, I'm not sure what dedicated servers would solve. I could be mistaken, but usually lag in online games is due to the players' Internet connections to the host. These connections are subject to varying disruptions and considering the realtime nature of the game, any disruptions will be very noticeable. Until everyone has 10Mbit fiber connections with 3ms latency between consoles I think lag is going to be something you just have to deal with in online play.
The same almost entirely US Xbox fans who bought the first two Halos will buy Halo 3. The rest of the gaming world will go right on not caring about the game
Uh, that's usually how sequel game releases go. Previous fans buy it, people who didn't like the first couple games won't.
And... (Score:4, Insightful)
Enlighten us, messiahs, with your ever-precious judgements!
Clearly, you know more than the staff of EGM who has actually played the game. Gah.
Seriously though, a couple things:
1)Article about Halo 3 isn't newsworthy, but that seems to be the trend here anyway.
2)Halo 1/2 may not have been God incarnated into video games, but they were still worth my 50 bucks. I don't think we need the over-the-top bashing of anything even remotely Microsoft related here...
3)I'm going to get rated troll for not calling Halo 3 a complete pile of poop.
GRRR! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GRRR! (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, Halo has a different feel from a lot of other shooters. It's slower and less instantly deadly. It sounds minor, but it's not. It allows some friends of mine who get queasy easily to play with us. A lot of people who were turned off by Quake/Half-life uber-speedy take-3-steps-die gameplay really like Halo.
Does that make it worth all the hype? Well, probably not. But I've never really run into another shooter that plays quite like it (aside from Marathon, naturally...) and rather than trying to get a group of friends to all migrate to Death Hell FPS Satan Shooter and waste my money buying FPS after FPS trying them out until I find just the right one, it's nice to just say 'oh cool, next version of Halo is coming out, my friends will get it, we'll very very likely enjoy playing it, can't wait'.
I think it's more about inertia now, but that doesn't make it a bad game.
Oh, how times have changed (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that make it worth all the hype? Well, probably not. But I've never really run into another shooter that plays quite like it (aside from Marathon, naturally...)
Then the MS buyout happened. Halo became an Xbox title; the PC version took second fiddle, the Mac version more like seventh fiddle. I've never been much of a console gamer, and NEVER been a fan of Microsoft. So I pretty much gave up on Bungie. But, a friend of mine bought me an Xbox and Halo for my birthday, so I gave it a shot, had a good bit of fun. It's a nice game, feels a lot like a modern, polished version of Marathon, which is exactly what I had always wanted (though getting used to the console controls was a bit of a trick at first). Like you say, Marathon and Halo play VERY differently than other FPSs, and I've never much been into other FPSs for that reason. In Bungie games you move slower and, to me it seems, much more realistically. It's a much more relaxing, flowing feel to the combat, less hyperactive twitch reflex. (Obi-wan's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized age" feels somehow appropriate here). It also has coop, which has always been my favorite gametype; combines the social interaction and teamwork of a multiplayer game with the progressive, task-oriented nature of single player games, with a bit of the ol' Legolas & Gimli kill-count competition going on. So to me, Halo was the best FPS yet, and I actually went out and bought Halo 2 with my own money (the game I've bought for the Xbox that was given to me) and enjoyed it even more, especially coop on Legendary. And now I plan to buy Halo 3, though I'll only be playing it on my friend's 360. Seems a fitting way to end my involvement with Bungie, and I want to see how the series ends.
But, imagine my surprise when I looked about in the general gaming chatter online, especially here on Slashdot, and find out that apparently the only people who like Halo are dumbass pothead jocks and frat boys who masturbate with Microsoft brand hand lotion while shoving giant vibrating Xbox controllers up each others asses. Or at least, that's the impression you'd get listening to all the shit that people talk about it on the Internet. Certainly a surprise to me, the intellectual geek who spent much of high school pouring over mythological and literary references hidden away in Marathon terminals.
No, Halo is not the be-all end-all of all video games. But it's not utter shit either. I particularly hate the criticism that it's "old hat" and offers nothing new in terms of gameplay, especially in comparison to mainsteam PC games, which I spent many years looking down upon for lagging in relation to Marathon. (Wow, that new game has a story? Friendly NPCs? Dual wielded and dual function weapons? Cooperative play? Yawn. Welcome to 1994). When the latest sci-fi movie comes out, do you say "oh bah, I've seen a sci-fi movie before, show me something new"? No? So why can't a new game just be a newer, more polished version of the same sort of game that you liked before, with some new settings to explore, some new characters to meet, and some new situations to be resolved?
Re:GRRR! (Score:2, Insightful)
People can't be lemmings, running off the side of cliffs following the person in front of them? You are about this?