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.'"
3? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:3? (Score:1)
Re:3? (Score:0)
Re:3? (Score:1)
The Final Word on Halo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0)
Meh sounds about right. Graphically the game is well below par - I can't really think of anything outside of current PC shareware type fps'es that look worse. Gameplay wise the game looks like the same old Halo as last gen.
After how bad Halo 2's single player and how many other good fps'es are either out of coming out this year Halo 3 really is lost in the pack of much better games.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
I enjoyed cliches so I bought some of the novels. They're dreck. gr. 10 reading level, simple exposition, cardboard characters. basically typical of the cheap pulp sci-fi fare. It's a well made games and a sort of interesting rehash of old storyline so I'd play it and like it but indeed it's not some seminal masterpiece of story line.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0)
It boggles my mind to think that someone could actually think that novels set in a video game universe are great literature. I mean I remember thinking the novelization of Blaster Master that I had in third grade was great, but I was aware that it didn't embody the breadth and depth of human emotion.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0, Funny)
* Your precious Dreamcast has just be stomped like a bug right out of the console market by Sony's PS2
* You have two choices as a gamer. Latch on to Nintendo and the GameCube - not going to happen with Nintendo and its gay kiddie system with a fucking purse type handle - or the Xbox.
* You latch onto the Xbox and you see lots of screenshots of close ups of a guy totally covered in shiny green metal. Shiny metal to you is the pinnacle of computer graphics.
* You become a Xbox/Halo fanboy. You sit in every forum trashing every other fps and hyping Halo 24/7/365
* Your Halobox flunks out of the console race early and Microsoft rushes out a poorly designed replacement follow up to the Xbox.
* You start to see even shinny-er close ups of green metal with bright lights on it. You are now certain Microsoft is about to take over the console world with a game that is THAT SHINY!
Fast forward to the week Halo 3 is released and you can imagine just how hyped you are.
Your entire pathetic gaming life has been latched to this one shitty little franchise for the past seven years. It has to be the best thing ever or you would be admitting to yourself what a complete and utter loser you are.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Halo multiplayer is about the social aspect. While co-op isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, you couldn't before sit down with a friend in front of the TV and play it. Not unless he stuffs his machine in the trunk and drives it over to your place anyway. I hate to generalize, but if you're a lone gamer type, you won't enjoy Halo much at all. It's a game that truly shines when you have multiple people over and the fragging gets intense, which you simply cannot do in the PC world.
To add to that, it's not just Halo. My friends and I had an absolute blast with Black Hawk Down, another game that allowed split-screen co-op. It was a mediocre game by all measures, but somehow none of that mattered very much when you were killing terrorists with buddies.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
What is in Halo that you cannot get from playing online with Counter Strike, Half Life, Day of Defeat, or America's Army?
If you say vehicles... I will say Unreal Tournament.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
The ability to get a group of friends together and have people take turns playing their own custom variants without someone having to sit and change settings on the server each time. And even creating those variants on the fly.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Being in the same room as your opponent. If you're someone who values hanging out with his friends as much as gaming in and of itself, this is a very huge bonus indeed. I don't play Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and other such PC multiplayer games for the same reason I don't play Halo on Xbox Live - the legions of smacktards who are simply no fun to play with. I do, however, relish an opportunity to sit down with my friends and kill each other, trash-talking the whole way.
Yes, you can accomplish sort of the same thing with a LAN party, but that's really not the same you know.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
dude... get a clue!
Cant do in the PC world? me and my friends get together EVERY saturday for a LAN, we've been doing it for the past 10 YEARS!!! We dont have to lug 4 TVs around to get a decent gameplay experience (cause everyone know split screen is just THE greatest *sniggers*)
seriously man... dont come spouting that console babble here... your lible to get (as they say in the 1337 PC gaming circles) PWNT!
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Can you do it with no equipment and one pc? Split screen on my little 47 inch tv is fine by me.
Here is the difference between PC gamers and Console gamers:
4 Gamming Class PCs (3,000 + total), networking cable (50+), router (50+), 4 legal copies of the game (100 +) = 3200 +
1 console (350 +), 1 tv (800 +), 1 game (60), 4 controllers (120+ (one comes with the console)) = 1330 +
Main reason I like console gaming is due to the hardware race involved with PCs. I decided to give up having to spend console level pricing every year just to keep up hardware specs on a pc back in 2001. Since then, I have spent a whopping 1,500 on console hardware. How many people can play current video games on a pc for the last 6 years, with all of the video effects turned up and intended performance, with only expending the equivalent of 250 per year? This if you exclude the TVs, dual purpose and all that.
My friend friend, I think it is the hardware manufactorers that have PWND you.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
And like you said, split screen is fine if the TV is big enough. I have a 54" downstairs that is great, even with 4 player games, and even on a 32" split screen games aren't bad with 2 players.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
i havnt upgraded my PC in 2 years, guess what... still plays Bioshock without a hitch and high resolution and nearly maxed settings... i'm guessing it looks beter than its console counter part. The best part- i'm a mid range buyer... i'm only using an AMD 4800+, 2gb ram and an ATI 1900xtx, total price for me to build the machine... $1500.00
by letting yourself belive the hardware manufacturers hype and lies that say you have to have only the best and top end hardware to have a good play experiance, you've allowed them to ruin PC gaming for you...
i believe its the marketing departments that have PWNT you!
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
How much have you have spent in 6 years? By your numbers, has it been a new computer every 2 years? I have spent 1,500 across 6 years.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html [linuxgazette.net]
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
I used to be a huge LAN gamer myself, but eventually the hassle of shoving a tower, monitor, keyboard, mice, etc, into your trunk (making sure they don't get jostled around TOO much) and driving it all over to someone's place is simply too much to do often. As compared to console gaming, where you just plug in 4 controllers (worst case scenario everyone brings their own, but I've never had that problem) and off you go.
Console LANs are fun, 16 player Halo in the same room with 4 TVs is something else. But like PC LAN parties they take some effort to set up, so it's not as simple as calling up a buddy and having him bring beer and controllers.
Which brings up a good point: how big of a house do you need to do a 16-player LAN effectively? The most I could ever do back in my LAN days was 8 players, and that was a very sizable house. I know a 16-player Halo "console LAN" can be done in a relatively large living room, which makes it advantageous.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Mind you, I don't think everything about Halo is great. It's not a particularly great game mechanically (it's good, but nothing that hasn't been done before), although I'm led to believe the recharging health system (ie, shields) was fairly new when Halo 1 debuted. Multiplayer, especially in Halo 1, is uninspired... Halo 1's multiplayer is thoroughly mediocre by my standards, although Halo 2 is a lot more fun to me. The exception to this rule is CTF: Halo has some of the best CTF I've ever played.
In short, I think the music, story, and atmosphere of the single-player portion are amazing, but the multiplayer is a mixed bag. I also would like to point out that Halo isn't just a console series, PC ports of Halo 1/2 do exist. Hell, I play Halo only on the PC for that matter, dual joystick controls don't do it for me. I think the Halo games are the finest FPS games ever crafted... but I also think Half-Life is the single most overrated game ever released, so my opinions obviously aren't the majority's on the subject of FPS.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0)
Had a friend who talked the same way about some game on the Jaguar years ago.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Hell, I don't even own either generation of Xbox, so what little point you may have had completely falls apart there.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
The only redeeming quality I've seen to the Halo series is its use as a multiplayer game with a bunch of friends. I find it's multiplayer to be very well-balanced and very fun. The single-player campaigns though....somehow they were just missing something.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Anyways, I just thought that it was interesting that you found the games so emotion-less, and I found them to be the most emotionally compelling games I've played (in their own way).
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
I really hate doing this whole quote and respond shit, but you seem to need it.
No FPS, certainly has delivered anything close to that level of amazing plot which keeps me hanging on to see what happens next. Not a ton of RPGs, which are all about story, deliver a story as good as Halo's.
What plot? I have played both Halo & Halo II... the plot is so weak that I don't actually think anyone wrote the plot, it was more than likely just random ideas drawn out of a hat.
I think the Halo games are the finest FPS games ever crafted... but I also think Half-Life is the single most overrated game ever released, so my opinions obviously aren't the majority's on the subject of FPS.
I can't believe you even typed this bullshit. Halo has ripped a lot of ideas from Halflife, and while I'm not one to agree that popularity means something is good, Halflife is one of the most popular games of all times for good reasons - PLOT, graphics, audio, atmosphere, mods (in other words, the stuff that is missing from Halo).
Halo was fun, Halo 2 was overrated, Halo 3 is the last dieing gasp of a company that sold it's soul to Microsoft. Yes I do own an Xbox, and a 360, and a gaming rig, and a Wii, and a DS, and the list goes on (way back to an original Amiga & Atari). Opinion is one thing, but claiming that something has a plot when it clearly doesn't, claiming that a game that has survived for years is overrated is a load of bullshit.
If you want to play a great game from Bungie, go buy an old mac (or a 360) and play Marathon. Marathon > Halo 1,2,3
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0)
Dude, I know.
Superman 64, is probably the best game I've ever had the pleasure of playing.
Forget the great graphics and gameplay innovations, the plot gives me chills everytime I play the game.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
So, you didn't like it - others do.
Personally, I've had more game time playing Halo and Halo 2 than any other game - replaying the single player mode every now and then and playing against friends or online.
It'd definitely go in my Top 10 Most Played list, but perhaps not in other lists (e.g., will never forget the story of Deus Ex, and always loved the feel of Q3A).
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:0)
Gee, that's quite an accomplishment with the amazingly deep and varied Xbox library of games
LOL!
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
But thanks AC.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:1)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Until Halo, anyone who played games online or off was a computer/gamer dork. That's how the rest of the world viewed gamers. Somehow people realized it was more fun playing the games than it was making fun of the gamers, and things switched. Halo was the first multiplayer game that was socially acceptable to play. And since it was the masses first, of course they are going to latch onto it and proclaim it king.
Quake.. Doom.. Unreal.. HL1/CS.. even Goldeneye (going console).. only played by gamers and the rest of the world looked down upon us. It wasn't "cool" enough. I don't think Halo switched things, it just benefit from the switch.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
How old are you, log0n? I see the incredibly low Slashdot ID. Surely you're old enough to remember back before arcades became dark rooms full of upright video cabinets. When I was very young, I remember the arcade being a sort of carnival without the rides that teenagers of all varieties would go to. And most of them would at least dabble in playing the video games present. It wasn't "online" play but it was certainly social interaction through gaming.
"Quake.. Doom.. Unreal.. HL1/CS.. even Goldeneye (going console).. only played by gamers and the rest of the world looked down upon us."
You should've been in college when Goldeneye came out. That was the first time I had EVER seen people sitting around playing video games during a kegger. Granted, it was still mostly guys actually playing but there was a crowd watching and nobody who was playing was ever looked down upon for it. And most of them didn't play many video games before or since. I was in grad school by the time Halo came out so I can't really compare atmosphere. Halo never came across to me as a mainstream thing.
I'd have to agree with log0n (Score:1)
H1 happened to arrive at the right place, at the right time. Subsequently there has been a boom in the use of various communications technologies including cell phones, text messaging, and online game play. Not all caused by H players, but the users are sourced from the same audience.
I admit the first 'video game' I ever played was Pong. Halo's adversarial and cooperative modes are much improved over that early experience.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
Multiplayer, until Halo I think, was difficult with consoles because it was either split screen, or you had to have two boxes and two TVs, etc. So true play-at-your-own-home FPS gaming was a novelty for console users, but it's something PC users have been doing for 10 years (at least!)
Madden, Baseball, Virtual Fighter...those are console games.
Re:The Final Word on Halo... (Score:2)
But maybe thats just me, for a game you can pick up and play, then but down till whenever its fantastic, its not really improved on golden eye we used to waste hours on, but its not worse either and it allows us to have more than 4 players if need be (Though it doesn't let us play with proximity mines, which you use to baricade the toilets (where they spawned as I recall) by tactically placing them as to kill anyone getting in, but not allowing them to shoot them easily.
And on a side note, I've always wondered has anyone tried running 2 UT (GOTY) clients on the same computer and trying to have multiplayer on the same computer, never have got round to trying it now I have 2 graphics cards in this thing.
Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:0, Troll)
LOL
Looking at what Halo 3 has in reality turned out to be one can only be left with the question: What the hell has Bungie been doing for the past three years?
After three years of 'work' Bungie has shipped a game that:
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.
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.
Outside of a variety of gameplay tweaks and additions Halo 3 might have been a decent 360 launch title where people would have been happy with such a weak effort and been happy just to play a new Halo in 720p.
What will the final verdict on Halo 3 be?
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.
Microsoft will put out lots of press releases claiming all sorts of "Fastest..." "Biggest..." and the 360 will continue to sell at roughly the same pace as the first Xbox(24 million after four years for the Xbox, 10 million at just under two years for the 360 worldwide).
Instead of diversifying their line up and beefing up their first party development Microsoft has become fixated on Halo with the belief that if they just spend enough money hyping the games that the gaming world will finally come around and care about the franchise.
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:0)
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:0)
to you sir, I say... (Score:1)
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.
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:1)
The other issue was when a host dropped out it spent 30 seconds finding another host. So in a 25 kill 8 player deathmatch which would normally be over in 3 minutes, you spent 15% of the time lagged out.
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:0)
The person who is host must have decent connection/upload or it's laggy for everyone else. Player internet connections matter, but if the host connection sucks, the players' connection doesn't matter.
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:2)
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:0)
Their only other option would have been to go down the Gears of War route and limited the number of characters on screen to just four or five and stuck the player in tiny rooms and corridors.
People would have reacted much worse if they had gone down the same same cheap route Epic did.
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:2)
Dude, the XBOX 360 GPU is the most powerful GPU on any console right now. PS3 whomps its ass on physics because of the Cell, but for graphics, the XBOX 360 wins.
Bandwidth of getting those graphics off DVD media into memory though, that's a different matter. (And btw, BluRay is slower).
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:0)
The PS3's GPU is based on nVidia's 7800 series while the 360's GPU is based on early versions of ATI's R600 series.
The reason behind this is that Sony originally wanted to do all of the graphics in software on 4 Cell processors and not have a GPU. However late in the design phase they realized that this design was not viable (even 4 Cells with all of the SPEs enabled can't match the parallelism of a GPU for graphics work) and added on a GPU and just used 1 Cell.
Interestingly this is an exact repeat of what they went through with the PS2. Back then they wanted to do all of the graphics work in software on the Emotion Engine but found it wasn't viable and tacked on a GPU.
Aside from physics, there really isn't that much use for an overpowered processor on a console. GPUs do graphics better so it's foolish to try to foist that task upon the CPU and even the most sophisticated game logic and AI can easily be handled on a conventional processor.
Next generation the consoles will probably have GPU-like hardware for physics calculations (it's already available for PCs), but Sony will probably still try to heap too much work onto an overambitious CPU design yet again.
Re:Halo 3 - The Final Word: Fail (Score:1)
Not true. The PS3's GPU is based on the updated G71 architecture, which is that of the GeForce 7900 series, not 7800. The primary advantage the G71 architecture has over the G70 architecture is a reduction in power consumption (and reduced heat output as a result.)
"the 360's GPU is based on early versions of ATI's R600 series"
No. The Xenos is based on the R520 architecture, and its performance is more in line with that of the top-end Radeon X1800-series (which utilizes the same architecture.) It may utilize unified shader pipelines and a couple other features introduced to desktop GPUs with the R600 series, but that doesn't make it part of the R600 family.
It is indeed correct though that the Xenos is considered in most rendering situations to be the more powerful GPU.
Enough! (Score:5, Interesting)
Online Co-Op For Halo 3 Launch Confirmed [slashdot.org]
Halo 3 Preorders Top 1 Million, Marketing Begins [slashdot.org]
Halo 3 Almost Done [slashdot.org]
Halo 3 Has Gone Gold [slashdot.org]
A Look At Halo 3's $10 Million Ad Campaign [slashdot.org]
Halo 3 - The Final Word [slashdot.org]
This whole thing is turning into the bastard child of Vista and the iPhone. And this list doesn't even include the articles (about the 360 and ilovebees) that were about Halo but didn't have Halo 3 in the topic. Despite this we still have two news posts about Halo 3 *marketing*, two about it going gold and one correcting an incorrect earlier /. article (I think that was a first).
Did /. ever push any other game like this?
Re:Enough! (Score:1)
We also have quite a bit on Manhunt 2, no?
Re:Enough! (Score:4, Funny)
I bet you'll find lots of references to Duke Nukem Forever
Re:Enough! (Score:0)
Of course not, this is not the same site it was five years ago. Slashdot has essentially turned into a for hire marketing blog.
Halo is just an extreme example because you have the intersection of a company with amazingly vast money to spend on marketing mixed with a fanbase whose entire gaming identity is dependent on putting forth the illusion that Halo is anything but a very average FPS with a gigantic marketing budget.
Re:Enough! (Score:2)
Re:Enough! (Score:2)
(Yes, yes, this is Slashdot and so you have to declare that Halo sucks, etc, but you also have to admit that it's popular. Unless you're completely delusional, in that case, status quo.)
Enough! About WoW! (Score:0)
And while we're at it, /. should stop pushing Eve Online since we know all about its scandals, anything from either id Software which has been around for over a decade and Valve since we're still playing Counter-Strike, and /. should go back to mindlessly bashing anything from M$ since /. is the stronghold of anti-M$ sentiment on the internet.
Re:Enough! (Score:2)
go go slashvertisement!
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.
Re:And... (Score:0)
No one is claiming Halo 3 is a 'complete pile of poop', seems like the consensus is the game is meh to average. And most people are sick of the absurd levels Microsoft has and is going through to try to hype the game.
I wouldn't be surprised if much of the money Microsoft is spending on the Halo 3 hype is doing more damage than good as people continue to get more and more sick of hearing about the game.
Re:And... (Score:2)
GRRR! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GRRR! (Score:0)
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?
Re:GRRR! (Score:2)
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:Oh, how times have changed (Score:0)
No, everyone knows that 'Mac gamers' tend to be Halo fanboys too. Too tiny and irrelevant to bother mentioning.
Sorry. Well, not really.
Re:Oh, how times have changed (Score:3, Interesting)
Try Starseige Tribes on the PC. It's a multiplayer game circa 1997 which was ahead of its time by a WIDE margin, but it also shares the more slow-paced approach that Marathon and Halo both have.
Secondly: People on Slashdot aren't anti-Halo, they're anti-mainstream. Anything popular, they hate. Don't believe it, it's all just posing to look cool on the Internet.
Re:Oh, how times have changed (Score:1)
Tribes2 vs. Halo -- Re:Oh, how times have changed (Score:1)
The original Halo was one of those games that reached a critical mass in hype and consumer mindshare (before Microsoft bought out Bungie) with good reason. Before Halo (and Tribes2) all first-person shooters involved running on foot, dodging, and shooting your target, going back to the days of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom1/2. At that time, the Quake and Unreal series simply polished the graphics and added true 3D aiming, but the gameplay remained largely the same. The promise of Halo 1 was to add vehicles to the genre and every single PC and Mac gamer who played first-person shooters wanted to buy a copy on launch day...THIS WAS A VERY BIG DEAL...and then Microsoft bought out Bungie and broke the hearts of every single PC and Mac gamer by making it an Xbox 1 exclusive.
At the same time that Halo 1 was being developed, there was another upcoming first-person shooter that had not received as much attention as Halo 1, called Tribes2. Tribes2 also added vehicles to the FPS genre, but THIS TITLE would be released on the PC. I still remember the outcry and backlash from the PC gaming world about how Microsoft was taking Halo away from us and I learned about Tribes2 from that community of gamers. Disheartened Halo fans (like me) swore to buy Tribes2 as a substitute for Halo1 to feed our hunger for vehicles in the FPS genre on the PC.
I did not buy an Xbox, but I did play Halo 1 at a friend's house and I hated aiming in FPSes using the gamepad's joystick (as I suspected, it's a screen-jerky tap-fest and is not nearly as accurate as the mouse). On the other hand, Tribes2 was (and still is) the DEEPEST first-person shooter I have ever played on any platform. Aside from the keyboard character speech bindings (a wonderful feature), your character can run, jump, and has a jetpack strapped to his back that allowed your character to fly for limited periods of time. It has a one-man hoverbike (no guns), one-man speed flyer (with lasers and was later modded to fire rockets as well), one-man rolling repair-and-rearm vehicle with an automatic turret, three-man bomber (pilot, lead gunner/bombadier, and tailgunner), two-man tank (driver and gunner), and a 6-man heavy transport flying shuttle (one pilot, four side-gunners, and one tail-gunner). My favorite vehicle was the tank -- I loved to drive it and trample enemies all over the place while my gunner rained machine-gun fire and HUGE EXPLODING MORTARS on the enemy base -- especially near their base's vehicle station and flag stand. I would even capture the enamy flag and take it back to my base in my tank.
Tribes 2 also had a class-based system where you could choose to be a fast and light, medium and well-rounded, or heavy and rain exploding mortars of destruction on the enemy. The weapons you could use and items you could deploy were based on the size of your character class and you could choose change classes mid-game. Tribes2 also had turrets that you could control, allowed you to deploy additional turrets, and also allowed you to extend your default sensor grid using radar (detected most friends and foes and showed them on the tactical map, but could not pick up cloaked enemies) and motion detectors (could detect cloaked enemies, especially those moving in on your flag). It also had a jammer-pack that the flag capper could use to jam the enemy's motion detector, sonar, and turrets for a limited period of time. The first thing I would always do is deploy auxiliary turrets near my team's flag with motion detectors and radar sensors to extend our base's defensive network and reduce the enemy's flag captures.
In Tribes2, medium and heavy armors could also carry and deploy remote equ
Re:Tribes2 vs. Halo -- Re:Oh, how times have chang (Score:0)
Re:Tribes2 vs. Halo -- Re:Oh, how times have chang (Score:0)
It's really not that hard of a formula to recreate. As I see it the core elements were tactical objectives, plenty of features encouraging team work, highly customizable loadouts, vehicles, expansive landscapes with actual distance between the points of interest to necessitate the use of the aforementioned vehicles, and jet packs (or any other sufficiently sophisticated movement system). If another game comes out with those elements, maybe with some stuff like the Natural Selection commander features added for good measure, I probably will play that game 5+ hours a day for the rest of my life.
too true! (Score:0)
Isn't it available for free now?
Re:Oh, how times have changed (Score:2)
I believe you were looking for the word "poring", though my question may be mute.
Re:Oh, how times have changed (Score:2)
I love Halo. I (like you) will buy it just to play on a friend's 360. I met Bungie with Halo and after playing through it I had to go back to Marathon to see what else they've done. There's a story there that I enjoy. There's enough sci-fi standard cameos to make me feel at home (love you niven, heinlein). The weapon choices make it interesting and co-op means I don't sit alone cussing at it for hours, I do it with a friend & have the chance to expand my vocabulary. I've got 2 kids, a wife and a job that I work at more than I should... but this is worthwhile.
mmmm. Love.
Re:Oh, how times have changed (Score:2)
As a long time FPS player, I enjoyed Halo. I don't think it is fantastic (probably because I don't like FPS's as much on consoles) but it is certainly worth playing. You just have to come on Slashdot prepared that people are not rational...but there is always a few gem posts that cut through the bias and makes it worth reading.
Re:GRRR! (Score:2)
Field of View (Score:1)
I have yet to play Halo 3. Is the FOV in Halo 3 the same as Halo 2?
Re:Field of View (Score:0)
Probably. But they did bring back the Halo 1 Assault Rifle. W00T!
(Actually, I'm a weirdo who likes needlers. Nuthin takes out elite like the ol stick-and-run)
NEEDLERS RULE !! (Score:0)
Just commenting in support of a needlebro.
I Love Bees 2 would have been good, if (Score:0)
Let's call this a near-dup... (Score:2)
http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/09/12/1912212.shtml [slashdot.org]
I suppose the editors deserve a pat on the back for not posting EXACTLY the same story on the same day, but I think the SlashDot faithful got the message: Halo 3 is coming out soon, if anyone still cares. Any TECH news go down today or is it just games?
I like Halo and being bashed (Score:1)
I don't think that Halo 3 is any more over hyped than any other big budget game out recently. Final Fantasy games are rammed down our throats and I don't think they are all that great. I've heard enough about WoW to make me want to puke every time I hear it and I have never played it. The same can be said for MGS 4, and I can't stand that damned pimp daddy GTA garbage. Talk about over hyped big budget filth! Halo 3 isn't exactly breaking new marketing ground here.
I love the Unreal series, but I will still take a Halo on my 62" DLP over a PC FPS any day. Since I am rambling, the PS3 games that come out this season had better rock because I am feeling screwed out of nearly a thousand dollars for a console, controllers, and two "decent" games right now. Thanks a lot $ony.
That's funny (Score:2)
That's funny. I feel the same way about Halo 3.
Re:I like Halo and being bashed (Score:1)
You get a free pass to praise Halo, but don't abuse it
Another Halo huh? (Score:2)
"new" graphics engine, same meh (Score:1)
Re:Been there done that (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Been there done that (Score:2)
Re:Been there done that (Score:1)
This comment is a nice demonstration of how insular some communities can get (in this case, I'm talking about Slashdot).
Most people don't have computers that can play recent games, if they even have a computer at all. And of those that do, a significant portion don't have broadband. And yet, those people may still be friends.
Re:Been there done that (Score:0, Troll)