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XBox (Games)

Online Co-Op For Halo 3 Launch Confirmed 53

Posted by Zonk from the thank-goodness dept.
Happily, the internets were wrong. Via Joystiq comes the happy news from Bungie that not only will we be able to play the Halo 3 campaign in online co-op mode, but up to four players at the same time can enjoy the experience. "Acting as a team is a fantastic new twist to the Campaign gameplay - something that works as well on foot, in close confines as it does on the battlefield, with large scale vehicle mayhem. Scared of Jackal snipers? Send out a scout to see what dangers lie ahead. Terrified of an open field? Flank your enemies and swipe their rides. The combinations and scenarios are endless - and you'll be able to enjoy them time and time again in Saved Films of your co-op exploits. We mentioned that we've been having a blast. We have a lot of stories. Many of them would require that we explain some of the reasons replay will be a big factor, but not quite yet. Soon, we promise." For more on the game, 1up is running the only preview out there of an entire single-player campaign level called 'Tsavo Highway'.
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Online Co-Op For Halo 3 Launch Confirmed More

Online Co-Op For Halo 3 Launch Confirmed

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  • Sold. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MeanderingMind ( 884641 ) * on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @11:21AM (#20072627) Homepage Journal
    I didn't really care about the prospect of playing games on Live, but if I'm able to run through the campaign with my old college buddies across the country I'm sold.

    I guess that means I'll have to subscribe to Live.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by necro2607 ( 771790 )
      Either that or just install a copy of Hamachi [wikipedia.org] so you have a VPN connection bewteen your machine and your friend's. :) There are some other Xbox-centric tools like XBConnect [wikipedia.org] as well.
  • Kinda nice that they got rid of the magical double thing, and gave you two more named chars with a bit of back story.

  • New Elites instead of existing SPARTAN-II's... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jZnat ( 793348 ) * on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @11:21AM (#20072651) Homepage Journal
    Does Bungie even acknowledge the existence of the Halo novels? It would have been quite easy (and interesting to the story) to use all of Blue Team for example as the four available characters instead of making three of them Elites. I hope that the story at least attempts to connect to Ghosts of Onyx...
    • They are all trapped on the shield world though.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) *
      Does Bungie even acknowledge the existence of the Halo novels?

      I think this is one of those times when the game drives canon. I'm sure if they thought it would be better to do that they would.

    • It apparently does, its made the connection the remaining members of blue team are stuck in a dyson sphere, unable to further participiate in the war until they escape.

      Ok, so maybe thats now the connection you were looking for...

  • Co-op has always been a highlight of Halo games for me, as it is what I felt truly set the game apart from its FPS predecessors.

    4-player online co-op that allows you to save films of the gameplay? That right there is worth $60 for me easily. It will be my favorite gameplay mode (apart from split-screen co-op -- nothing beats having your buddy next to you as you whoop Covenant arse together, especially since it spares you having to wear that wretched headset .. and there's no lag ^_^).

    • Co-op has always been a highlight of Halo games for me, as it is what I felt truly set the game apart from its FPS predecessors.

      4-player online co-op that allows you to save films of the gameplay? That right there is worth $60 for me easily.

      Heck, it may be worth getting an XBox 360 for me.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by flitty ( 981864 )
        Me too! I guess i'll always be that 6 year old who keeps bugging my brother to play Contra with me. That Price drop isn't gonna hurt either :P

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by flewp ( 458359 )
          Unfortunately my stand out memory of playing video games with my brother is me pushing down the power button on the NES and my brother informing me that if I let go, it would be the last thing I ever did.
  • Anyone else feel that MS needs to try and get Halo 3 for PC out and enable it with cross-platform gaming on Games for Windows Live?

    Given that Halo 2 for PC was released only this year, I posit that my wish is highly unlikely. Obviously, MS would want to avoid the cannibalism of the Xbox 360 sales boost that Halo 3 is going to induce.

    What if they price the PC version at $100 though? Would that be economically viable for both MS and the gamers?

    Cheers!
    • Obviously they need to hold on to Halo 3 until the next version of Windows comes out so they can force a few gamers to upgrade Windows just to play a year old game that should run fine on Windows 2000.
    • I know it's just anecdotal, but on my most recent visit to big time retailers (Best Buy, Circuit City, Target), it looked like the PC games that require DX10 and thus Vista in full stock with seemingly little interest. There were tons of "Shadowrun" boxes and nearly as many Halo 2 PC. So pricing it at $100 may reduce what could be already poor sales.
      • Well, the $100 pricepoint would only be for Halo 3 (with the $40 being the exclusivity tax for being too cheap to buy a 360). Moreover, with DX10 limiting it to Vista means MS might get some Vista adoption going amongst gamers. Question is what strategy would allow them to

        Reasons to boost price:
        a) Not terribly affect 360 sales boost
        b) Make enough money per sale to recover costs of porting a game designed for the 360 to PC

        Reasons to lower price:
        a) Encourage adoption of Vista amongst gamerfolk
        b) Sell enough c
        • "But even if is financially feasible, I bet MS is just going to sit on their asses and bully PC gamers into buying a console because they probably assume the 360 is a godsend and that every human wants to play Halo 3."

          It's like you punched me in the gut with that. I was visiting those retailers because I had finally broken down and decided to grab a 360. When you think about it, the whole Games for Windows initiative can be seen as "win-win" for Microsoft. Either you:

          a) Want to stay on the PC and b

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by PM Guy ( 944790 )
      I think this has less to do with Microsoft than with Bungie's obsession with balancing play. If you believe Bungie's updates, each weapon is meticulously play tested for balance, fairness, and fun. It would be fairly impossible to have the same experience on a PC as a 360. No matter what side of the controller/keyboard debate/debacle you fall on, they are clearly different beasts.
  • Are they named Tucker and Private Donut? You team killing ...

  • On a related subject... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MarcoG42 ( 1087205 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @11:48AM (#20073217) Homepage
    High school and college student grades are expected to be at an all time low this fall semester. Also, the words "fuckstick", "fag", "asshat", "shitcock" and phrases such as, "your mom " and "oh yeah?! where do you live, bitch?! i'll kick your ass!" are expected to be at an all time high.

  • Replay your replay? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @12:12PM (#20073669) Journal
    Maybe this has been talked about before, but I haven't seen it anywhere. Supposedly the replays are stored not as a rendered movie file, but rather as the actual movements and events in the sequence that they happened. The being the case shouldn't it be possible to not only watch your replay from whatever angles and such, but also to jump back into the game from any arbitrary point in that replay and then play out the game differently?

    That could allow for players to sort of create their own "scenarios" which they could start from, and try out different strategies and such to "solve" those scenarios. Maybe one team spends some time setting up some cool defenses at a base, and the other team can repeatedly try to take it over, without having to spend all that time setting the defenses up at the beginning of each round?

    I don't know, just thinking out loud here.
    • Yeah, it basically saves a script of what happened. Each time you watch its acted out in the engine.

      Movies files at hi rez would be killer size wise.
    • Sounds reasonable enough, although you would then require the "scripted" opponents to have their own AI turn on instantaneously and be cognizant of their surroundings. I'm not sure how that would work itself out. I do like your thoughts and it would have tremendous value for any small clans that would typically be unable to gather up real counterparts to train with.
      • You're right about the AI stuff, that would probably be quite a challenge, maybe as part of the game state that is saved for the replay is enough contextual information that the AI can use to understand why it was doing whatever it was doing at a given point in time?

        • All that has to happen is that they record whatever they seed their random number generator with. If the RNG is seeded with the same initial value, then the same inputs will always produce the same results. Technically speaking you should then be able to jump in at any point, and when you take over your input will change and then things will play differently.

          I don't think it would be very fun, though. Not to mention completely cheapen the gameplay as you could essentially rewind things until you win. The mo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ravyne ( 858869 )
      Thats actually a really good idea, though, if its not in now its far too late to add such a large feature, test it, and hammer out all the bugs since Halo 3 is due out in under 2 months now. Its not such a huge feature that it couldn't be applied via a patch, however.

      I'm glad to hear that online co-op is in, it wasn't necessary to have it, but it is a really nice plus and it will add a ton of replay value. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who's moved half-way across the country since the original Halo (or
    • I remember when the original Driver [wikipedia.org] on the PSOne did this. It was a blast watching crazy car chases from any and every angle. It took up almost the who memory card, but it "recorded" your game in the same way. It was one of the games bigger features, too. I'm not sure if any of the sequels carried this feature. One of my favorite 'features' was that every car would lose its hubcaps shortly after they started moving. Just like in every 70's movie.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )
      Probably to make it easier to do red vs. blue episodes. Considering how much extra buisness they brought microsoft, it's the least they could do to improve sales...
    • I gave them this idea back in May for their co-op team- I mean, co-op is awesome, but what about vs. co-op? Think of the new zombie game coming out by the CS folks, where you play online as covenant versus space marines in online play. Use the ranking system, or a custom tailored one (since you're already going to have one built-in for singleplayer(shhh there's some goodies with that that we might not have been told about. Devil May Cry did it once though, and I liked it, so it's awesome)) to give the playe

    • Supposedly the replays are stored not as a rendered movie file, but rather as the actual movements and events in the sequence that they happened.

      Bungie already did that with the Marathon games a decade ago. You could basically save a playthrough of the entire game in a fairly small amount of space, and you could trade the files around to watch how other people did things and see ridiculously skillful runs by particularly good people, all without having to download enormous movie files like with most games. Being able to fit a substantial amount of that in a few hundred k was nice when almost everyone was still using fairly slow dialup. They didn

  • Let us know when RoosterTeeth does an intro video for H3.

  • have I played a co-op FPS game online with more than two people. I can't quite remember the max players allowed on a server (8?). It was a total blast, although having to type out everything you wanted to say was a PITA. Also, with so many people playing together sometimes it got a little too hectic.

    4 player co-op sounds like the sweet spot. Also, I don't care if players 3 and 4 are Elites. Hell, they could be grunts and I'd still be cool with it (especially if they cried "They got leader!" when the player

  • I'll be happy if they just get the off-line co-op working decently. Halo 1 & 2 had horrible co-op support. IIRC, in Halo 1, you had to beat a level single handedly before you could play it co-op, and there was no way to save progress in a co-op mission. Halo 2 was slightly better in that you didn't have to beat the level in single player mode first, but you still couldn't save progress in co-op, so if you didn't finish a mission, you had to start over the next time you sat down.
    • In both Halo and Halo 2, you did not need to beat the level in single player mode first. That said, it did royally suck that you couldn't save co-op progress mid-level. I remember leaving my Xbox on for days at a time while trying to go through the game on Legendary with a friend.

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