IC Forum Archive

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

Last week, recently recieving a (this time) working Xbox from Gamestop through the mail, I bought a copy of Halo 1. I'm now on the level where I'm sniping up a mountain. I'm finding this to be horribly boring. Infact nearly everything about the game is boring. The level archiectureis delightfully drab. The level design just makes me scream fits at not being able to do anything. The story is there wanting me to pay attention to it?

I've also FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER played Halo 2 multiplayer for a couple of hours with friends and over Live. I just kept thinking how much more fun I'd have if I was playing Counter-Strike on a PC or KoFEX2 on my GBA in my pocket.

Nothing about this game calls out to me for enjoyment. Am I horribly wrong about this? Am I supposed to shut my brain off when I play this game?

dark steve · Posts: 3002

You're supposed to turn the difficulty up, actually.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Rud13 wrote:

Am I supposed to shut my brain off when I play this game?

Maybe not your brain, but your critique instinct. Just play it, and don't worry too much about why. Suddenly, you'll start having a lot more fun.

Hell, I enjoyed Halo 1 and 2 single-player immensely, and I like to think I know my shit a little bit. I had this same conversation with NFG a few times, who likes Halo 2 single much more than multi and couldn't figure out where all the hate was coming from, except as backlash. "I'm too old for backlash."

dark steve wrote:

You're supposed to turn the difficulty up, actually.

Also that. I've never played a Halo game on anything less that Hard. Hard, well, isn't. It's just right. Legendary is hard.

dark steve · Posts: 3002

On normal, the AI is sleepwalking.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

Dear God man, get a fact checker and semblence of proper grammar.

Mister Toups · Posts: 4943

Rud13 wrote:

semblence of proper grammar.

Those who in live in glass trousers shouldn't throw kidney stones.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

Mister Toups wrote:

Rud13 wrote:

semblence of proper grammar.

Those who in live in glass trousers shouldn't throw kidney stones.

Those that make promises unfufilled should shut their traps.

B coma · Posts: 1455

The thing I like about the first Halo is how you get into a comfortable groove with the combat early on, only to have the game do a complete 180 on you during the turning point of the narrative.

As far as Halo goes, play it co-op if you have anyone to do it with. The original Halo could stand to have slightly tighter and coherent level design overall, or at least I found it to be a little too samey and sprawling for its own good. I think that Halo 2 remedied this without really changing the core game. which works.

ReroRero · Posts: 2148

Rud13 wrote:

I'm now on the level where I'm sniping up a mountain.

Who the fuck ever snipes up a mountain? Usually one stands at the top and snipes down.

Mister Toups · Posts: 4943

Are you accusing me of cockteasery?

B coma · Posts: 1455

ReroRero wrote:

Rud13 wrote:

I'm now on the level where I'm sniping up a mountain.

Who the fuck ever snipes up a mountain? Usually one stands at the top and snipes down.

How do you think the sniper got there in the first place?

arcadecrawler · Posts: 39

Rud13 wrote:

Dear God man, get a fact checker and semblence of proper grammar.

Sucketh me from the behind.

Better?

ReroRero · Posts: 2148

B coma wrote:

ReroRero wrote:

Rud13 wrote:

I'm now on the level where I'm sniping up a mountain.

Who the fuck ever snipes up a mountain? Usually one stands at the top and snipes down.

How do you think the sniper got there in the first place?

But did he start shooting before getting up there?

B coma · Posts: 1455

ReroRero wrote:

B coma wrote:

ReroRero wrote:

Rud13 wrote:

I'm now on the level where I'm sniping up a mountain.

Who the fuck ever snipes up a mountain? Usually one stands at the top and snipes down.

How do you think the sniper got there in the first place?

But did he start shooting before getting up there?

Is he not a bad mothercyborg from the future?

ReroRero · Posts: 2148

You would think he'd have some sense though. That's why you don't send a machine to do a man's job.

Cycle · Posts: 1574

I didn't like halo 2, but that's a different topic.

I loved the first half of Halo 1. The battles are interesting and dynamic, the levels are beautiful (although the indoor environments are pretty unimpressive) and well, blah blah. I just loved it. The game really goes downhill when you meet the flood though. The flood are mindless creatures with no AI and just swarm you. Now, the reason why the battles were so interesting in the first half was that the covenent had some really fun AI to fight with. It wasn't great AI, but it was close and just fun to fight and mess around with. Then you spend the second half of the game fighting mindless zombies who just charge you in droves, and the game loses all its individuality and becomes a generic shooter. That's my biggest problem with the game, but far from the only one. Still, the first half was a really great FPS, even if the second half was merely "good".

I also enjoyed the story, though, which was more entertaining than most sci-fi action flicks I've seen for quite sometime.

Oh... and yeah, don't play on anything but hard and above. The difficulties below were there for the kids and mainstream.

Slonie · Posts: 422

Co-Op on Legendary.

skinny coder · Posts: 262

DeusJester wrote:

Hell, I enjoyed Halo 1 and 2 single-player immensely, and I like to think I know my shit a little bit. I had this same conversation with NFG a few times, who likes Halo 2 single much more than multi and couldn't figure out where all the hate was coming from, except as backlash. "I'm too old for backlash."

I'm just the opposite, I only enjoyed the campaign in co-op. I knew that I would enjoy co-op MORE than playing it alone (I'm a fiend for co-op modes) but, like Rud13, I found the game very boring single player. The difficulty thing is especially true with two players though, what with the continually respawning near your still-alive Spartanmate. The chaos that is co-op Legendary is at that perfect level where it's frustrating right to a point that when you finally beat the area there's an incredible sense of accomplishment.

But - the fun of playing split screen with friends (on multiple TV/Xboxes if you can) may not be the same fun as a LAN party with friends, but in terms of work needed to set up 4p Halo versus a LAN party, Halo is certainly a great bargain! There's something to be said about huddling on a couch with buddies... trashing talking works so much better when you know how to make the person cry...plus we often have a crowd of people watching (since I rarely play with more than one Xbox that means that like half of the group doesn't have controllers) and so there's a peanut gallery that gets to 'ooh' and 'ahh' with each of the rounds best moments.

sethsez · Posts: 1977

Halo is really a game that doesn't come to life until Hard and Legendary. The AI gets cranked up, and you'll suddenly be forced into using tactics that you'd never, ever need during the normal game. And it becomes clear that everything was actually built around these tactics, making the easier difficulties totally pointless.

Gouki · Posts: 212

Should a game really need to be turned up to the maximum difficulties to be enjoyable though? It just makes the others redundant. Why have it at all? Why not just have the harder stages as the defaults?

Of course, Halo wasn't really that great anyway. I could never get into the game. There was just something about that made it... turn me away.

Szczepaniak · Posts: 815

Thank you Rud13!

Your are officially my favourite IC member, for the whole day!

Halo is a travesty of a videogame, and frankly, while I should spend an entire paragraph saying so eloquently, I am lazy. SO let me say this.

Halo is godamned shit, of epic proportions.

People say it moved the genre forwards? It set it back at least a decade. maybe two decades.

I always compare it to Half Life, released years prior to it. Why do people praise a game that is beaten to a pulp by a game so much older than it?

Two guns. TWO FUCKING GUNS?! What the fuck is this? A NES game where I only have two buttons? Half Life 1 had like 20 weapons, which you carried AT THE SAME TIME. Read that sentence again Bungie, until you un derstand the words.
HL = 1 point
Halo = 0

The flood. WTF is this? Wolfenstein 3D? Where the hell is the AI people talk about? Rubbish! Half Life 1 had varied enemies, with either good AI (marines), or were not infinite and annoying (headcrab zombies are better than flood zombies).
HL = 2 points
Halo = -1 (yeah, I hate the flood THAT much)

Saving. Thank you Bungie, you auto-saved right when I am out of ammo, in the middle of nowhere, low on health and surrounded by a million enemies. Half Life has manual quick saving. For the WIN!
HL = 3 points
Halo = -1 (I should remove another point here, but I'm being generous.)

Level design. Levels in Halo? WTF is this? Goldeneye? HL had one giant complex, which improved the flow of the game. The pacing was crap a sresult in Halo, not to mention infuritatingly difficult in most places.
HL = 4 points
Halo = -1

Co-op characters. Could you control the marines in Halo? I don't think you could. Very annoying. But there were many of them. HL had useful allies that aided with puzzles. OK. Even ground here.
HL = 5 points
Halo = 0 (could Halo be making a comeback?)

Interactive environments. In HL, an OLDER game, I could blow up boxes, chairs, desks, glass, all kinds of cool stuff. In Halo, there was nothing. I could fire a freakin rocket into a trash can, and NOTHING would happen! How much crack were Bungie smoking? What did they do? Outsource all their programmers to central Bahgdad? Why the hell couldn't they add some interactivity to the environment?!
HL = 6 points
Halo = -1 (this is an Xbox game for gods sake!)

Vehicles. HL had those railroad things on the tracks.... Halo had really cool vehicles. Damn, and I was hoping Halo would finish this content with negative numbers.
HL = 6 points
Halo = 1 (yeah, I am being very generous here and giving it 2 points)

Conclusion:
Despite the cool vehicles, Halo still sucks. The AI is non-existent, and the enemies rely on sheer brute force to get by. The environments are not interactive. The flood is annoying. The auto-saving is broken. The two weapons thing is quite possibly the most idiotic decision in the history of gaming. EVER. Utter, utter rubbish. And a disgrace to gaming.

Why does everyone love it?

For the record, I have never played Halo multiplayer (multiplayer at my house is either Monkeyball or Saturn Bomberman).

TOLLMASTER · Posts: 1977

I have never been able to play Halo or Halo 2. However, my fanboyism means I must say that Tribes did everything Halo multiplayer did but also more, and that Tribes is easily obtainable for free on the internet. Sometimes, it is even legal!

don't play Tribes 2 though it ~~sucks~~ sux

dhex · Posts: 2963

half life ain't really an fps. not in the same sense.

(i am the mainstream, btw, having only played halo on either normal or easy.)

Thunder Force 6 · Posts: 308

Oddly enough, I find Half-Life (1) to be quite boring.

Maybe I just haven't played enough, but the whole damn thing seems like such a chore.

Napoli · Posts: 236

TOLLMASTER wrote:

I have never been able to play Halo or Halo 2. However, my fanboyism means I must say that Tribes did everything Halo multiplayer did but also more, and that Tribes is easily obtainable for free on the internet. Sometimes, it is even legal!

don't play Tribes 2 though it ~~sucks~~ sux

The difference is Halo 2 is fun to play online and Tribes sucks. And comparing PC games to PC games, Quake 2 was ten times a better multiplayer experience than Tribes ever was.

human seemer · Posts: 82

Its always been really hard for me to formulate an opinion on Halo. They are among the most nondescript video games ever produced. Nothing about Halo is exceptional, however everything about Halo is acceptable. It is a game that stands on the shoulders of everything that came before it, yet takes absolutely no risks. It sustains the genre while doing nothing to advance it. Personally I don't like or dislike halo, but I do think its rare for a game to have no outstanding features while having virtually no faults.

TOLLMASTER wrote:

I have never been able to play Halo or Halo 2. However, my fanboyism means I must say that Tribes did everything Halo multiplayer did but also more, and that Tribes is easily obtainable for free on the internet. Sometimes, it is even legal!

don't play Tribes 2 though it ~~sucks~~ sux

I used to play both Tribes and the sequel often when they were popular. I recently found the discs for both of them while unpacking and I want to play again. I'm guessing (alot of?) people still play Tribes, but i'm not so sure about T2. I dont remember T2 sucking though. I remember it as basically a graphically updated Tribes with a few extra features. Why do people prefer Tribes to the sequel?

Napoli wrote:

Tribes sucks

Of course you're entitled to your opinion but ideas from Tribes have found their way into lots of games, even recently like in Star Wars: Battlefront. It also spawned the torque engine which has done nothing but good things for the indie dev scene.

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

First off, the fact of the matter is that if with a game, any game, if you go into it expecting to hate it you most likely will.

I will now repost previous comments I have made previously in a previous manner.

I once wrote:

The AI of Halo (the first one) is still some of the most dynamic and fun enemy AI I've ever encountered in a game.

Then, once, I also wrote:

Yeah, the difficulty levels really do matter. Don't bother with Easy, that's for grannies who have never held a joystick in their lives, and Normal is only good for the first level or two where you're still learning the controls. Heroic was what the game was designed around, and Legendary is there if you're feeling confident enough to test your mettle against the developers preferred challenge level.

Enemies counts increase the harder you play it at, which increases the dynamics of the battle because they all think for themselves but look out for each other. It's the only FPS I've ever played where I found myself entrenched in ten minute long firefights against a group of enemies. And that's just a single group, there's like, hundreds throughout the entire game.

It was a dark and stormy night when I wrote:

Yeah, at least they put all their effort into the part that really mattered: Making the game engage you. That all people ever talk about is the crappy level design is kind of missing the whole point, I feel, as to what makes the game so special.

I mean, yeah. The game is clichéd in just about every aspect from the story to the Flood. It's clichéd as fuck. But it's still amazing as hell once you start getting inside the heads of your enemies. The first time I threw a grenade at a Red Elite on a bridge and he jumped over the side rather than get blown up I grinned for a solid thirty minutes. I had just learned a new tactic to add to my repertoire of alien killing skills.

The first game had so much space and room for the encounters to play out in too. That's what I disliked the most about the sequel. Everything felt too crammed together, it seemed there was never enough room to really sustain a ten minute long firefight. It was just a pretty backdrop that you ran through on your way to the end. You could tell they dicked around too much and had to develop it in six months to make the ship date. Just look at all the things that they hyped up for two years and then cut out at the last moment.

So, where does that leave us? Right, the AI. As hard as the game can be at Legendary the AI never cheats you. If it can't see you then it actively searches for you until it gets bored and decides you've ran away. There's a reason people only talk about the AI when discussing Halo on message boards and not every other shitty aspect of the game like people like to focus on. It's what makes the game what it is, which is a damned fine "Combat Simulator". Yeah, the levels get boring after a while. The Flood is kind of stupid compared to the other enemies. The story isn't exactly Pulitzer Prize material.

But the AI never lets up on you. And it's not like they all have the same tactics they use. Different enemy types have different AI systems they follow. Jackals are weak if you catch one all by his lonesome, but they're fucking deadly in groups of three or four or more. They're the assassin squads, light and birdlike, and menacing in groups. Grunts are cannon fodder but a large group of them can turn the tide of a battle if they chose to swarm you. They won't, of course, if you take out the Elites, their field commanders. They'll become incredibly disorganized and visibly scared if you take out the leader. Makes it easier to mop them up, and what's more satisfying than taking out an enemy who's terrified of you? Elites are like the equivalent to the player, they have recharging shields too and they can take a lot of damage. Their different colored armor delineates rank. The blue ones are the most inexperienced in battle, and they'll be more likely to make stupid decisions like taking you head on rather than seeking cover. Red Elites are the more seasoned variety, and they're good at dodging grenades and gunfire. The Black Elites are the best of the best, but you only ever encounter those near the end of the game, supposedly after you've gotten a hardy grasp on everything thus far.

Also, ever notice how Hunters always travel in groups of two? It's because they're "brothers" and the one looks out for the other. While you're engaging one the other is finding a better position to fire his cannon at you, but he won't if you're too close to his brother and there's a chance he could miss you and hit the other. They have huge plasma cannon that can drop your shields in one hit, and if you get close enough they'll charge you and smack you around with that shield on their arm. They have a weak spot on their back but it's not really an exploit, it's a genuine challenge, especially in close quarters, to position yourself to where you can hit it. That's why Hunter battles are fast and nasty and brutal.

The game is more about recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of your enemies and exploiting what you've learned to your benefit than anything else. It's about on-the-fly decision making, that you can only carry two guns is indicative of this design philosophy.

Add in the vehicles and the dynamics only increase more. If you don't keep your head about you in the larger outdoor battles where there's alien tanks and fighter ships, Ghosts and Banshees, it can get really hectic and scary really quick.

My only problem with the game nowadays is I'm too efficient at it. I'm too much of a good killer that the battles lose their dramatics too quickly because I'm kicking so much ass. Legendary is the only mode that offers a challenge for me now, but that requires more patience than anything. Lots of "Stop, Drop, and Pop" encoutners as I call them, where you meet the enemy and it becomes a ten minute firefight.

Actually, come to think of it, those are pretty exciting too.

wackodave · Posts: 69

I don't really know what to say other than I have almost the exact opposite opinion to that of Szczepaniak. It's only "almost" the exact opposite because the vehicles do rock.

aderack · Posts: 5018

I just got Halo a few weeks ago. I played about an hour of it before I got distracted by other things. It's... a very well-made game. It's smart, competent, and it's got a few unusual quirks. Actually, the concept that you can only carry around two weapons is one of the more neat premises in the game.

I've not been rushing to pick it up again, though -- especially after playing four-fifths of the way through Half-Life 2 (which I will get back to, when I've time). Different game, I know. Almost a different genre. Still. Huh. Halo is so... sterile, by comparison.

To a certain extent that's intentional. I'll have to play more to process the situation in any more detail.

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

There's more to it below the surface than meets the eye, that's for sure. Not exactly the kind of game you can break down into seperate bullet points. In other words: THE WHOLE IS NOT THE SUM OF ITS PARTS.

It's not really a game you'd play to beat either, unless you're just so enraptured with the story that you have to see how it ends, which seems unlikely with this crowd. It ain't Marathon, much as it wants you to believe that it kind-of is. As I said before, it's a game you play because the act of playing is gorgeous.

aderack · Posts: 5018

The story starts out well. I like the whole excuse for the game getting started (with the ship AI business), and the way the beginning scenes on the ship are narrated. Nothing new. Solid, though. It... feels like something Peter Jackson would appreciate. Lo and behold.

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

Yeah, it's like you said, it's well built in just about every aspect. Even the story. But it's nothing new if you've ever read any decent science fiction.

And if you dig deep enough into it there's some stuff to ponder and appreciate.

Talbain · Posts: 628

There's a problem with FPS in general. It's not difficulty, it's not the AI, it's basically the lack of originality. Halo suffers from being terribly derivative, though all FPS games are derivative on some level. The good ones like Deus Ex (which is still derivative) are more solid because they do interesting, different things with the way in which you play the game. You have lots of different skills, as well as a set of augmentations that improve your ability to do different things, but you're never so far ahead of the enemies you can just go in and annihilate everything. The story is interesting, yes, but an FPS has to fall in on gameplay, and Deus Ex had some very interesting gameplay in that there was a lot more than a simple formula. You could train your character in many different ways, whereas in other games, there's no training, the only that changes is the difficulty as you go from area to area, progressively getting more challenging. I've played Halo, and while it's amazing visually, it's still very derivative. What it does more than others is just that it's polished. It looks and feels like an FPS at its best basically, despite being contrived.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

I do think comparing Halo and Halflife kind of shed light on what each is trying to do.

Halo is built around the fighting. That is all. Anything else in this game is a tool to the fighting. The lack of interaction in the environments (in Halo 1...2 has a tiny bit more interaction)is part of this because the environments exist solely to provide a backdrop for the fight. Halo wants you to plan your fight, strategize it all out and then execute. This is why Halo works so well in Co-op. When I played through the game with a friend, we would pause the game, or just stand still, it certain areas and plan out what was going to happen next. It kind of felt like playing two man football against an army. And then having to throw your plan out the window and adapt because the AI figured out what you were doing.

Yes, the two weapons adds to this, and playing co-op and having four weapons to work with only makes it more interesting.

The story only really exists to give a bit of context to the game. This said, it is actually a surprisingly interesting little tale, as long as you aren't expecting Faulkner. And it does have some genuinely funny characters for such an unimportant part of the game.

Halflife is the almost opposite end of the spectrum (though I really only speak from experience with part 1. 2 is on the list of post X-mas goodness). Halflife exists to tell you a story, and make you feel that you are part of that story. Yes, there is some good AI in the military figures, though after playing the high levels of Halo, the AI doesn't seem as smart. But the key emphasis of HL is getting the player into the game as a character. Halo really couldn't care less about this, at least it seems to me.

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

boojiboy7 wrote:

the key emphasis of HL is getting the player into the game as a character. Halo really couldn't care less about this, at least it seems to me.

Right. I mean, you play as a cyborg one-man army who barely ever speaks and we never see his face. Master Chief is like the perfect videogame avatar.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

The game seems to want to remind us of his status as a video game character as well, so that when he speaks, for the most part, he is seen in third person. It doesn't want us identifying with his as a character. It seems he is more meant as a tool we control in combat, but a separate person when it comes down to the tale. Gordon Freeman is meant to be us.

Mister Toups · Posts: 4943

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

boojiboy7 wrote:

the key emphasis of HL is getting the player into the game as a character. Halo really couldn't care less about this, at least it seems to me.

Right. I mean, you play as a cyborg one-man army who barely ever speaks and we never see his face. Master Chief is like the perfect videogame avatar.

Doomguy.

Thunder Force 6 · Posts: 308

Mister Toups wrote:

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

boojiboy7 wrote:

the key emphasis of HL is getting the player into the game as a character. Halo really couldn't care less about this, at least it seems to me.

Right. I mean, you play as a cyborg one-man army who barely ever speaks and we never see his face. Master Chief is like the perfect videogame avatar.

Doomguy.

Joe Higashi.

You're damn right, I think he's a cyborg.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

Mister Toups wrote:

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

boojiboy7 wrote:

the key emphasis of HL is getting the player into the game as a character. Halo really couldn't care less about this, at least it seems to me.

Right. I mean, you play as a cyborg one-man army who barely ever speaks and we never see his face. Master Chief is like the perfect videogame avatar.

Doomguy.

In just the way he is designed, I think the Cheif is trying to be the next generation of the Doomguy. I mean, he is wearing even more armor, distancing hinself even more from being a person. For all we know, the dude is a robot (well, excluding all the Halo appocrypha).

dark steve · Posts: 3002

"Is the player a Cyborg?"

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

Mister Toups wrote:

Doomguy.

"Old and Busted"

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

Master Chief.

"New Hotness"

Jeh?

Mister Toups · Posts: 4943

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

Mister Toups wrote:

Doomguy.

OG

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

Master Chief.

Scrub

Fixed.

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

O NO U DIN'T!

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

Then what the hell are we supposed to make of doomguy in doom 3?

yellowlightman · Posts: 359

I didn't care much for the first Halo, although I did play through most of it with a friend in co-op mode one Thanksgiving break.

I bought my XBox because of Halo2's multiplayer, and never really touched the campaign. I've been playing on Live fairly consistently for the last year or so, although recently I only play with friends.

For the Halo haters, I would say get some friends and give the multiplayer a shot. If nothing else, it's fun to yell online at kids who have yet to reach puberty (or at least sound like they've yet to).

Thunder Force 6 · Posts: 308

yellowlightman wrote:

For the Halo haters, I would say get some friends and give the multiplayer a shot. If nothing else, it's fun to yell online at kids who have yet to reach puberty (or at least sound like they've yet to).

Oh my God. The horrible things I've screamed into the ears of children.

At the least, I'm assured a seat in Hell right next to Chuplayer.

Napoli · Posts: 236

Thunder Force 6 wrote:

yellowlightman wrote:

For the Halo haters, I would say get some friends and give the multiplayer a shot. If nothing else, it's fun to yell online at kids who have yet to reach puberty (or at least sound like they've yet to).

Oh my God. The horrible things I've screamed into the ears of children.

At the least, I'm assured a seat in Hell right next to Chuplayer.

I've been playing Halo 2 online nonstop since its release. I think everyone who plays that game is going to hell. Its just too difficult not to scream at the annoying 12 year olds who play the game.

Slonie · Posts: 422

The combat's the thing. And playing through Halo, you'll get into fantastic action setpieces and encounters that play out totally unscripted. For instance, my friend and I were heading back towards the end of a canyon that was stuffed with enemies, including tanks. I flew a stolen banshee up to the top of a bridge high above the end of the canyon as my friend took up a position facing the bad guys and began to engage. The scene from his point of view was awesome as rockets began to rain straight down onto the tops of the tanks from above.

There's also the Covenant "airport" on top of a mesa in that canyon. You'd never know the first time you trek through there, you only see it later if you've got a banshee (airplane, to those non-Halo players).

Oh, and of course that time you can get a banshee early by beating the pilot to it on a land bridge earlier on...You can skip half the level that way! Or just harass the hell out of the ground forces arrayed against you. Halo at its best gave you lots of options to go where you wanted and do things the way you wanted.

I agree with what's been said about Halo 2 losing this feel. A great example of this was the last level, with invisible walls everywhere keeping you from flying the banshee off of the "track". To make matters worse, enemies would fly out to attack you from above the invisible ceiling...Ugh.

dark steve · Posts: 3002

Yeah. It gives up a lot of the emergent spontaneity from the first game in favor of prettier setpieces and more "cinematic" play.

Also the first game made me squeal with delight when I realized I was frog-blasting vent cores. Whereas the second did not.

David Cross is kinda funny, though.

Scratchmonkey · Posts: 2229

Halo has some great moments in the same sense that GTA3 provides you with some great moments: By allowing the player to create personalized moments of beautiful chaos out of nothing.

To put it another way: Accidentally landing a Banshee on your partner while playing co-op is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen in a videogame (and I was the one being landed on).