IC Forum Archive

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).

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

Getting clubbe din the back of the head by my partner's rocket launcher having run out of ammo to fight the flood (both of us) was my best moment. Being filled with terror at dying at the hands of stupid fungal zombeez only to be physically beaten to death by my teammate was classic.

SuperWes · Posts: 681

What I've decided about the Halo games is that they're only good after you've already played through them at least once. Notice how people keep mentioning that the AI is so good and unscripted. That's the kind of thing that doesn't come through until after you've already seen the AI react a certain way. The levels are also very confusing until you've played through it long enough to "get" what they were trying to do with the layout.

Personally, I don't like the single player in either game well enough to play them even the first time. The story is average, disjointed, and ugly and the level design is among the worst I've ever seen. Multiplayer though, is the bees knees.

If you've got friends of roughly equal skill that you can set up a LAN game with you're almost guaranteed to have a blast.

-Wes

discoalucard · Posts: 146

The Halos are solid games, but goddamned, do the level designers clueless on good single player levels, at least in the interior sections. The outdoor stages are awesome, but when you head into the bases with long, identical corridors that were boring the first time you saw them, let alone the tenth, and yeah, it becomes a little stale.

Halo really more annoys me because it started so many imitators when there are better games to be ripped off (Deus Ex, Half Life, System Shock, etc)

It is also slow. Why the hell can't I run?

aderack · Posts: 5018

Does Master Chief sleep with electric sheep?

DaleNixon · Posts: 766

I finally bought this game for like 8 USD used. Am I going to regret spending that money?

discoalucard · Posts: 146

DaleNixon wrote:

I finally bought this game for like 8 USD used. Am I going to regret spending that money?

No. It has a very good soundtrack, so that alone is worthwhile. Beware, the first level is overly long and stupid, but it gets good once you land or crash or whatever it is that you did.

Then again, I paid $10 for Death By Degrees and found it fully worth it, so perhaps my view is rather skewed.

aderack · Posts: 5018

I bought my copy for thirteen bucks, and it seems worth the money. It's a solid game! You could kill someone with it.

dhex · Posts: 2963

the pc version of halo suffers from some graphical oddities (namely their pixel shader implementation) but once i fixed that i'd say it was worth the 19.99 i spent on it. due to mr. mech's and others' insistence i'm going to go back and try it on hard.

brian · Posts: 58

For what it's worth, I was never very turned on by either of the games' single-player campaigns (though I had fun with playing them co-op). The game was just too boring for me to get through alone.

I've also had tons of fun with deathmatch and the like. Mostly I just dislike playing it alone.

edwardappleby · Posts: 129

I feel like the only person who has very few friends that actually play video games.

greng · Posts: 96

I remember being the only person (whom I directly talked to) who actually enjoyed the Library (and the flood in general) for the change of pace and strategic style it brought about. It reminds me of Timesplitters II/III stages with the endless waves of zombies. Dumb AI indeed but tense gameplay that was STILL different every time. The way a lot of people talk about the floods AI you would think it was entirely predictable in a memorisable style.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

human seemer wrote:

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.

This is about how I feel.

haircute · Posts: 928

When I was working at a pawn shop, one of my coworkers was a rabid Halo/Bungie fan. When Halo 2 came out he took a week off work and did nothing but play it on Xbox Live. I was teasing him a short while before the game came out about supposed spoilers I knew and he completely flipped out and told me he wanted to kick my ass out in the parking lot.

Anyway, I played single player Halo for the first time this past June. I'd been putting it off because like Human Seemer said, it's just a game that is...there. It's not offensive to me but it never quite seemed to reach out and grab me by the nuts and demand I play it. However, I did have a good time with it! I played it once and didn't stop until I was very nearly to the end and then...I quit. And never bothered to play it anymore. Honestly, it was a wholly unremarkable experience for me but I suppose I can see how people would idolize Master Chief. He is easily one of the most badass characters in recent memory.

I explained this to the rabid fanboy I worked with when we went out for beers one night and when he got good and soused I had to sit through an hour long tirade about how Halo is clearly the best FPS ever. "It has everything!" he would say. "How could you not think it was better than any other FPS!?" he'd say. Thank God it was two dollar double wells that night because if I hadn't have gotten fall down drunk I would have been forced to listen to him for God knows how long...

Anyway, Halo=OK. In my book, anyway.

Genji · Posts: 112

I loved all of the first Halo, except for the Flood-only levels. It was a lot more fun seeing the Flood and Covenant fight each other. I also loved the first Half Life, but in a different way.

On the harder difficulties, Halo was just one setpiece battle after another. Taking cover behind boxes while waiting for my shield to recharge, ramming the butt of a shotgun into an Elite's face, running behind Hunters to shoot at their weakpoint. It was anything but boring - it made me feel alive.

The enemies had personality. Sticking a grenade onto a grunt and watching him run screaming into a group of his friends... it just never gets old.

Also, I loved that you couldn't carry more than two weapons. Not because it's more "realistic" than carrying an entire arsenal around on your back, but because it adds a valuable strategic element. The weapons you have greatly alter the strategies you have to use in a battle.

Paradoxically, the experience was lessened somewhat when I played it on a PC. The screen was smaller, the sound more muted, and the controls more irritating. I actually preferred the gamepad for control in this case. The feeling of spontenaity is lessened when your finger has to search for the "throw grenade" button. On the X-Box, I knew where all the buttons were.

It was clearly designed to be played on a console, is what I'm saying.

Clutchbone · Posts: 160

Talbain wrote:

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.

You're saying this on a forum where scrolling 2d shooters are talked about in nearly every thread, and the forum names come from fighting games, by the way. But yeah, I don't really get what you're saying? Is the problem that there aren't BIOMODS and fucking experience points? Not every single game has to cram some kind of RPG shit into it.

And uh... did you actually play the game? Or have you just never played any other FPSes? Because there are significant differences between the way Halo plays and the vast, vast majority of FPSes play. Not saying it is better, as that's a matter of taste (I don't really like Halo so much personally, nor do I most FPSes), but calling it derivative because the variations it provides in gameplay aren't shoved in your face like they are in Deus Ex is an extremely shallow way of looking at it.

Most FPSes give you a 10+ weapon arsenal. Halo lets you carry a maximum of two. Most FPSes rely on healthpacks or the equivalent for restoring life (whether it is Deus Ex-style damage to areas of the body, or the traditional "number from 0 to 100" in most games). Halo gives you a shield that recharges when out of combat. Most FPSes are fast-paced, and encourage you to eliminate the enemy as quickly as possible (so as not to be injured). Halo is exceptionally slow for a first-person shooter, and rewards you for defeating the enemy carefully rather than quickly.

I could go into how this varies the gameplay (your choice of your two weapons is equally as important as which biomods you choose in determining the way you play the game, for example), but that would take a while and I don't really feel like typing anymore, honestly. But this viewpoint of "no RPG elements = no originality" is an awfully superficial way of looking at things, and rather than me saying "OH YEAH??? WELL I THINK HALO ROCKS!" I think it would be better if you gave it (and other FPSes, for sake of contrast) an actual shot.

sethsez · Posts: 1977

The thing with Halo is that the best aspects of it aren't on the surface. It's a deep game, but doesn't present its depth up front or in a list of bullet points. The fine balance of everything is what makes it so great, but it doesn't try to dazzle you with an amazing story or huge scripted setpieces (usually) or absurd weapons or anything else. It all comes down to the combat, and you can't really explain why it's so good beyond "everything is perfectly tuned to everything else."

Kind of like Dragon Quest, actually. A description doesn't really do it justice.

I should mention that I used to hate the game before I really sat down and tried to understand it. Now it's one of my favorite FPS.

Scratchmonkey · Posts: 2229

A lot of people hate Halo for what it represents, rather than what it is.

Genji · Posts: 112

It wasn't the RPG elements that made Deus Ex special, although they did contribute to the more important "complete missions in the way you see fit" feel.

I would never dislike a game purely on the grounds of it being "derivative". This does not affect my enjoyment of any particular game.

sethsez · Posts: 1977

Scratchmonkey wrote:

A lot of people hate Halo for what it represents, rather than what it is.

A focus on a single gameplay element honed to a fine point rather than the kitchen sink mentality of most games today?

Clutchbone · Posts: 160

Genji wrote:

I would never dislike a game purely on the grounds of it being "derivative". This does not affect my enjoyment of any particular game.

I would! I just don't really see how someone could think Halo is.

yellowlightman · Posts: 359

sethsez wrote:

The thing with Halo is that the best aspects of it aren't on the surface. It's a deep game, but doesn't present its depth up front or in a list of bullet points. The fine balance of everything is what makes it so great, but it doesn't try to dazzle you with an amazing story or huge scripted setpieces (usually) or absurd weapons or anything else. It all comes down to the combat, and you can't really explain why it's so good beyond "everything is perfectly tuned to everything else."

You speak the truth.

The longer you play the more apparent how much care has been put into the combat balance. Especially with the 1.1 Update to Halo 2... opens up a lot of options and variety, while still remaining finely tuned and balanced.

Scratchmonkey · Posts: 2229

[quote="sethsez"]

Scratchmonkey wrote:

A focus on a single gameplay element honed to a fine point rather than the kitchen sink mentality of most games today?

To a lesser extent.

More than that, it is perceived as representative of how the mainstream is sullying the sacred geekly nature of videogames.

Or the fratification of videogames, if you prefer.

Dark Age Iron Savior · Posts: 3148

I hate Halo because it really isn't interesting in any sense.

It may be fun....but it isn't interesting.

EDIT: Keep in mind I mean interesting to me. Also keep in mind that usually means "you can stack stuff and then totally climb it".

sethsez · Posts: 1977

Like Dawn of Sorrow?

I kid, I kid.

Granted, Halo doesn't give much to you. You have to make an effort to get into it to see what's there. For a mainstream success, it's remarkably demanding of the player.

Slonie · Posts: 422

Dark Age Iron Savior wrote:

EDIT: Keep in mind I mean interesting to me. Also keep in mind that usually means "you can stack stuff and then totally climb it".

You never stacked Warthogs to use as stepping stones?

skinny coder · Posts: 262

Dark Age Iron Savior wrote:

I hate Halo because it really isn't interesting in any sense.

It may be fun....but it isn't interesting.

EDIT: Keep in mind I mean interesting to me. Also keep in mind that usually means "you can stack stuff and then totally climb it".

There is that giant soccer ball you can find in Halo 2.

That's kind of interesting.

But you can't climb it.

Dark Age Iron Savior · Posts: 3148

Slonie wrote:

You never stacked Warthogs to use as stepping stones?

There are some things you stack and some things you drive! These are two distinct classes of objects that can be interacted with!

They can, however, sometimes intersect in the area of "can be used to kill allies".

extralife · Posts: 3316

I remember once in Hang 'em High on the original Halo, we got eight people stacked on top of each other. Our little tower went to the very top of the level.

WarpZone · Posts: 396

yellowlightman wrote:

sethsez wrote:

The thing with Halo is that the best aspects of it aren't on the surface. It's a deep game, but doesn't present its depth up front or in a list of bullet points. The fine balance of everything is what makes it so great, but it doesn't try to dazzle you with an amazing story or huge scripted setpieces (usually) or absurd weapons or anything else. It all comes down to the combat, and you can't really explain why it's so good beyond "everything is perfectly tuned to everything else."

You speak the truth.

Totally agreed. This also explains why I wasn't very impressed at first- all I saw was a generic premise & art direction, and in general it just looked like a template FPS. I also incorrectly passed off the field battles as being the sort of stifling, single-solution set-pieces that I tend not to like.

Then yeah, after reading more about the game and hearing some critical praise from friends, I gave it another ago (regrettably the PC version that time), and started to appreciate its balance and AI. I haven't played the sequel, but it some ways it sounds even more elegant- like with the shield replacing "health" entirely.

TOLLMASTER · Posts: 1977

human seemer wrote:

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?

I cannot really give you an idea as to why I prefer Tribes 1 over 2. It has more to do with "feel" than anything. It is not a quality I can really give substance. While I can sometimes lose hours playing 45 minute Broadside matches in Tribes 1 with Shifter Mod, I don't feel the need to play more than half an hour on Tribes 2. It is okay, certainly, there is nothing wrong with it. It just doesn't "feel" right.

One thing I can give definition to is that Tribes 1 maps tend to be a little bit slower paced and larger. In Tribes 2 it is about the go go go, while Tribes 1 feels liike it was designed for teamwork, vast overarching crazy impossible plans, and setting up base defense and defenders.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

Thanks for the advice everyone. I gave it another go and

Well I still can't stand it. I feel completely unengaged by the game. To all those praising the AI as the focal piece of the game, no AI will ever match that of real live human competition. And for you to say that the AI is the centerpiece of the game, there is no reason I should seek Halo as my battleground for combat.

THUS I RETURN TO MY WORLD OF HALF-LIFE MODS AND PHANTASY STAR ONINE.

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

Well, again:

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

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.

Nice to hear you tried, though.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

Well, again:

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

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.

Nice to hear you tried, though.

I went in expecting GREAT things ok.

brian · Posts: 58

[quote="Scratchmonkey"]

sethsez wrote:

Scratchmonkey wrote:

A focus on a single gameplay element honed to a fine point rather than the kitchen sink mentality of most games today?

To a lesser extent.

More than that, it is perceived as representative of how the mainstream is sullying the sacred geekly nature of videogames.

Or the fratification of videogames, if you prefer.

Uh, that has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself, though. You can't hate a game for popularizing a genre, or for being popular (because it itself is a good game), or for the type of people that like it. Or rather, you can, just that you're retarded if you do.

Halo represents nothing like that. All of those things you've mentioned are represented by Halo's success, not the game itself. And, TO REITERATE, to hate a game solely because arghgh it's not underground enough anymore (i am feeling less special and unique than ever!!) is some of the dumbest shit ever.

DeusJester · Posts: 1388

Scratchmonkey wrote:

A lot of people hate Halo for what it represents, rather than what it is.

Yep. That creeps its way into here, but it's a lot worse in places where the inhabitants are desperately trying to show how hardcore they are.

It's sort of like a self-professed movie buff talking about how much better old movies are than new ones because, you know, they saw Seven Samurai on TV and it was totally awesome.

At least Rudie actually played it, though. Not wached someone else play it, not looked at the back of the box, not read about it on IGN, but sat there for a while and shot stuff. That immediately sets him apart from about 99% of most halo haters. If someone's seriously given something a chance and they still don't like it, well, there you go.

I do get a MASSIVE kick out of talking people into admiting what they really don't like about the game, and having it turn out to be fury over Bungie's "selling out". Usually the only question I need to ask is, "so, are you a Mac user?"

These are the same people who were flying the Halo flag all over the damn place prior to the Xbox announcement. Now you say the word "Bungie" and they rear back and hiss.

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

Rud13 wrote:

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

Well, again:

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

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.

Nice to hear you tried, though.

I went in expecting GREAT things ok.

It's more of a slow burn than anything else. GREAT things take time to sink in, is all I'm saying.

Still though, dif'rent strokes and all.

Intentionally Wrong · Posts: 673

Reading over this thread, I find myself mostly wondering why things have to "take risks" in order to be interesting--where does this idea come from? This notion that somehow, an experience can only be enjoyable if it could potentially wind up horrible? If I write my PIN on my debit card and toss it out the window of a moving vehicle, that's taking a risk... yet even if no-one takes the money out of my account, I can't say that it's particularly fun.

Sure, that's an obtuse example, but I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between something like what I described and what you guys mean when you say the game needs to "take risks." I've heard that phrase bandied about a lot in the past year. The Incredibles needed to take more risks, apparently; now Halo does, too. What the hell do you mean when you say this?

Dark Age Iron Savior · Posts: 3148

Intentionally Wrong wrote:

What the hell do you mean when you say this?

I personally haven't said it and probably wouldn't say it, but the thing is, Halo could really have used something more to distinguish it in terms of....well.....itself.

I mean, I'm going to pull up an example in the form of a somewhat obscure SFC RPG known as Dark Half (not to be confused with Dark Kingdom, another obscure SFC RPG, where you are a mercenary working for the big badguy). In the game, you play as both the "legendary hero" and the "legendary evil", alternating between them for each chapter of the game. The former goes around getting allies and grabbing treasure, while the latter murders innocent townspeople and recruiting monster servants.

In the final chapter, you choose who you want to play, and fight the other character to the death.

So, look at Halo once again. The game can really just be basically summed up as a sci-fi FPS, with no additional major twist, right? You can point out high quality production values, emergent gameplay depth/quality, and so on - but some people really look for that major twist to add a truly unique value to the experience.

Of course, what constitutes unique can vary from person to person. While some might feel it's unique/notable for the game to be so solid (in the sense that were you to hit it, it wouldn't fall apart very easily), other people want something like Dark Half, which forces the player into a two-sided narrative, only to draw back at the end and allow them to make the ultimate choice.

Ah, nevermind.

sethsez · Posts: 1977

Dark Age Iron Savior wrote:

The game can really just be basically summed up as a sci-fi FPS, with no additional major twist, right?

See, what gets me is that the health system and the two gun limitation set the game apart from just about every other sci-fi FPS ever released, and yet it still gets crap for being "generic."

Slonie · Posts: 422

sethsez wrote:

Dark Age Iron Savior wrote:

The game can really just be basically summed up as a sci-fi FPS, with no additional major twist, right?

See, what gets me is that the health system and the two gun limitation set the game apart from just about every other sci-fi FPS ever released, and yet it still gets crap for being "generic."

Plus the best seamless implementation of vehicles in a FPS (which aren't first person, it becomes an action game when you're piloting one), with awesome physics. The vehicles worked hand in hand with the co-op-done-right. Hell, if you don't even think of Halo as a FPS, and insateadt consider it an action game that usually takes place from the first person view, it makes sense. Hell, it didn't even begin development as a FPS!

(or a 3rd-person squad-based shooter for that matter, it started out as a real-time strategy game ala Myth, but that's another story altogether)

The health system (partially in 1 and completely in 2) solved the issues of medpack collecting and compulsive quicksaving found in many PC FPSs. Even Call of Duty 2 copies it! It doesn't make much sense from a realism point of view in that game but it does from a gameplay point of view.

Anyway, at least the original poster said they find Halo boring. Not that Halo is boring...

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

Too many people found too much enjoyment in Halo for it to be definitively boring.

On the other hand Nanobreaker is definitively the worst game of this generation and should be avoided by everyone. No, don't buy it because you want to show it to everyone saying, "That's the worst game of this generation." Trust me on this one. There is not another game of this generation so uninspired, dull, lifeless, soulless, skillless, and pure shit that exists on video game shelfs.