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Halo 2 Multiplayer Modes Playtested, Recounted
Thanks to The Next Level for its two-part hands-on impressions of Halo 2's multiplayer modes, as shown at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles last week, including many videos of the action, and discussing "the changes to the heads up display", also noting gleefully: "Is carrying two guns worth sacrificing your ability to throw grenades? In a word: Hell Yeah!", before finally concluding of the Xbox title, due out this November: "It was by far the most fun and intense playing experience I had with any game at this year's E3."
Interesting note that I read about one of the E3 annoucements is that supposedly Microsoft is going to be releasing a version of the XBox controller for the PC. So it should mean that you can play Halo and Halo 2 more like what they are on the XBox if you so choose.
> In a word: Hell Yeah!"
That's two words, genius.
That just goes to show ya, there are three kinds of people in this world...those who can count, and those who can't.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Didn't you just describe most 'gamers'?
You aren't cynical, you are clear headed. Halo is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was told to be good so that's what people thought. You play Halo because you play it with your friends.
Your friends make it the experience you remember, not the game. It brought in new players and made an impact in that fashion, but to most pc gamers, they've played it all before.
In the end it's a game featuring a nameless, faceless robot saving the world from aliens. The multiplayer is a networked/splitscreen deathmatch/ctf with a single character model and uninspired weapons.
Rather than doing something right, they did the opposite, they didn't do anything terribly wrong, which is what made it accessible to new people.
The salivators over Halo 2 are getting really crazy but I'm waiting for the launch of either utter disappointment or overflowing fanatacism.
Didn't you just describe most 'gamers'?
in the face of overwhelming logic i must admit, you're right.
but, still when your gaming experiences themselves are fantasy....you're fucked.
You're right in most respects. The single player version of Halo was nothing special, but it was a gigantic leap in terms of the length and level size of a first person shooter on a console.
But I loved the multiplayer. It was the first time anyone cared about vehicles and made them managable. Sure, tribes had done this, but it was too massive a scale to be any fun. I could watch someone grab my flag and have a getaway driver bring him back to his base, while I shoot with a rocket launcher and watch the whole thing go flying over me. Never before that had I had so much fun in multiplayer on a console.
It was groundbreaking. I mean, look at Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. Sure, it looks like a bad game now, but back then, it was the first 4 player console shooter. Halo was the first linkable console shooter, and it had vehicles, and good level design.
If Halo 2 dosn't innovate, then yes, it will be nothing but hype. But I, for one, hope that it does.
Sorry if I ranted a little, it's late.
My standard layout when using Keyboard+mouse is the numpad. I much prefer it over any combination of WASD since any mapped key is far more logically layed out. (trying hitting "2" from "W" blind quickly and see how many "3" 's show up). Lets take morrowind for example, which has 3 walking speeds:
- Draw weapon = 7
- Walk forward= 8
- Draw Spell = 9
- strafe left/right = 4,6
- Walk backward = 2
- Walk Toggle =
./del
- Sneak = mouse button 5 (far right on mine) + [walk forward]
- ... and an assortment of actions around the top/right for different actions.
I've got about 7-10 buttons in reach to perform actions with, all without moving my hand. Combine that without mouse action and it beats any controller layout you could ever have.In Halo, I have "Boxer" layout. Gotta love the thwack when you hit someone in the head... Beats a grenade any day for close combat. If you're far enough away where a grenade's useful you don't need to rush it. But that's IMO.
What I'm trying to say is: PC games usually have more options than console games , partly because the method of input allows for more variety. More variety is not necessarily a good thing, especially when reflex pressing is an issue. But the flexibility of key mapping means that if you're not happy with the default, change it. With controllers you can't make major changes. A button here a function there and that's it.
Having said that it, I like the simplicity of the Gamecube controller, since you can pick it up and play without too much fear of pressing the wrong button. setting up Halo requires a few quick trips in and out of a game for new people to feel happy with their setup.
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
"We've all heard the gripes about the gargantuan XBox controller, the Playstation's lack of a hard drive, the Gamecube's kiddy appeal.."
one question: where the hell have you been? the xbox has the s-controller now, which is a perfectly usable size and i'd have to say beats out the dual shock in usability... the playstation now has a hard drive, comes bundled with the final fantasy online game.. and gamecube is getting a bunch of more mature-ish titles. mmm, Adult Link.
First, it was easily the best, in terms of graphics, control, gameplay, and every other measure, FPS for a console up to that point (with only the 007 for the N64 being comparable, but it falls short on graphics). That alone makes it worth the hype. Also, just as importantly, it had a great single player campaign. At a time when multiplayer FPS was THE thing, Halo succeeded on its single player game, which was a nice change of place. The enemies were moderately intelligent, the level design was good, without being too easy to get lost or stuck at any point, there was good variety in the missions and scenery, and lastly, the story, while a bit trite, was well executed.
I've since sold my XBox, after getting home to my PC, and am actually about to buy a GameCube (one of the side effects of switching over completely to Linux is not having as many games to play). But, I still say Halo was a pretty damn good game, on the XBox in 2001 (PC release 2+ years later did nothing for me). Hopefully Metroid Prime (and it's upcoming sequel) will be just as good to me!
so you suck at halo huh?
Halo is like golden eye, it's fun with a group but gets stale after a few hours (less if your not into competing or not a good fps player). The single player isn't anythign special, the story isn't either. The multiplayer vs is simple with few modes relative to other games (like selecting slappers only in golden eye). It's true that the best that can be said is that it doesn't suck.
CS is played by more people and is 5 years old.
Golden eye is a lot older and has most of the same features and some extras.
Quake was more innovative for it's time.
Marathon introduced most of the "new" concepts in halo.
Half-life had better single player.
Unreal tourney and quake 3 had better multiplayer.
Halo doesn't belong in the group of games I just listed it belongs to Turok and unreal (not tourney), good but not spectacular.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The dual shock always felt better then even the s controller. The game cube controller had a similiar form to it. The xbox controller were all rather unweildy.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Save more Marines.
Golden Eye was positively plain as far as story went, the only thing it had going was great play control. I mean emptying clips of ammo into Trevalen's head doesn't kill him, but running across invisible lines does? Lame. Easy and lame. Hell the replay factor came from betting the times to open new goodies. And frankly Time Splitters had way more goodies, and far more interesting and difficult tests. Some of those skins were insanely badass. Not to mention the statistics. If that's what you're looking for, why are you playing Halo.
The proliferation of Halo has little to do with PR people. I was an assistant manager at EB when the Xbox launched and continued to be until last summer. At the EB I was working at, Microsoft was too busy pushing Munch and Oddworld to really recognize Halo. It took a good 6 months until Microsoft really realized, "Dear God, we're still in the console game because of Bungie."
There are two related reasons why Halo has done so First, the co-op experience is great - you can breeze through Halo in a day with a friend, and then there is everything that happens in between. You start experimenting with jumps in the caverns, or messing around with the warthog. You're really just playing together, in a very sandbox-y kind of way. That rarely happened in PC games because anyone you really played with were miles away, or if you took the pain to get together you didn't want to waste it "playing."
Secondly, the ease in setting up multiplayer far exceeds the ease in setting up a PC lan. The xbox is a heavy beast, but a featherweight compared to the pain in the ass that is lugging around a midtower, a keyboard, a mouse, cables from here to kingdom come, and a monitor. About 10-20 of us used to have a LAN party every month. That is, until Halo came along. The 1-2 hours minimum in copying patches, maps, installing CDs you forgot or didn't have - suddenly became 10-20 minutes tops, and was just plugging things in. It was so much easier to bring friends too, because all you needed was a controller - not an entire PC. And, the Halo you played was exactly the same Halo someone played at there house. No one had an advantage because of a faster PC.
As you demonstrated, Halo's greatness is often lost on PC players, whom you refer to as "die hard gamers." It's greatness is difficult for PC people to understand, people who've gone to LAN parties for the last 8 years and can, in fact, get the setup down to 30 minutes or less. The feat of 16 players playing the same game at the same time is as difficult to comprehend for PC people who are used to 64+ people, but for video games it was a revolution. Sure, in comparison to PC FPS's, Halo is good. Not great, not bad, but good. Solid. However, as a console FPS, it is the seminal console FPS of all time. The controls are a dream for a console FPS, the graphics were amazing at the time, but more than that it was a pick up and play FPS. A friend who had played video games on his own but never an FPS could hold his own after an hour of playing. I'm not sure you could say that about most virgins to PC FPSs. What you saw of Halo wasn't really Halo. Halo is a bunch of friends in the same house or apartment, drinking beers or soda, cursing at each other from the other room, then taking as much time to recap, retell, and laugh at the stories made during the round that it took to actually play the round. That's Halo. It is a socially viral experience that has little to do with its single player.
What are PC FPS's? They are they elite, the bourgeoisie of video games. They are the ones in the high castle on the high hill. This form is shared in attitude by the people who play them exclusively. Go read some of the comments above on mouses and fps; the belief among PC FPS players is that the video game experience is a diluted, impure one. They're wrong.
What is Halo? Halo is the embodiment of concepts once held so dearly as PC-indiginous, Halo is the democratized FPS for the video gaming mainstream masses. This democratization, this bringing the FPS to the people, was an artform that Bungie pulled off brilliantly. You can say that Halo is average as an FPS, "inoffensive," "nothing new," or "special." That's fine. What you can't say though, is that Halo is not great. If you doubt the impact of Halo on video gaming, you just don't get it , quite objectively, quite plain and simple. You're being too PC-elite to accept that a game can be great, can be really good, can be amazing without you t
Wrong.
The Controller S is currently the most functional and best controller out there for all consoles. I am not flaming or being a fanboy... I own all 3 consoles and here is what I say:
1. The Dual Shock feels cheap, skinny, and the stick placement is uncomfortable. Dpad still sucks since the PS1 days with its 4 individual directions.
2. The Gamecube controller was made for 1st party platformers and nothing else. The buttons are not of equal size on the face and the controller feels the most childlike.
3. Even though the old Xbox controller was replaced by the Controller S over 2 years ago, it was a bad design. But that was the past and MS fixed it with the S. As a result, the Controller S is very comfortable, the right weight, and serves its purpose. I love the controller and how it doesnt tire your hands or thumbs with its properly placed analog thumbsticks.
So there you go. Don't blindly mock the Controller S for the Xbox because of your PS2 fetish.
I totally have to agree on the marketing of Halo... It was totally word of mouth and fan boys spreading it, not really Microsoft churning out stuff for it.
I finally picked up an xbox, Halo LE, really for Halo 2.
Why?
Because Bungie is one of my favorite companies, I have been following there games since pathways into darkness, and I have not been let down. There is also a depth and complexity to a lot of their stories (cortana letters for Halo, and the Enkido letters made by a fan for Halo 2).
Halo.Bungie.org
Halo is ok, but to call it great is a stretch. You mentioned Goldeneye, now that is a great game. The only advantages Halo has is 16 players instead of 4, that two joysticks are more intuitive than the one, and Halo has fun vehicles to play with. I suppose if you like pretty graphics you can call that another plus, but I prefer gameplay.
But for a game subtitled Combat Evolved, where is the evolutuion? Goldeneye had more weapons to choose from. Perfect Dark had guided missiles, guns that worked like auto turrets, proximity mines, timed mines, weapons that could poison you, weapons that blurred your vision, etc. You could choose many different weapons to play with on each map, instead of just the groups of weapons the developers decided you might like. Perfect Dark had bots to play against, not everyone has Xbox live or can get up a bunch of friends when they want to play multiplayer. You could choose from different characters to play as. Why can't I have more than two teams? I know some of the maps wouldn't work out well for multiple team CTF, but otherwise I can't come up with a good reason.
Single player is boring and tedious. Co-op as you said is fun, but some of the levels are so freaking long with no place to save and some of them are the same exact room over and over again. Multiplayer is good, but I am positive that if someone made a 16 player Perfect Dark that used the Halo button layout on any of the current consoles, I would never touch Halo again.
I probably play multiplayer Halo once a week, mainly just to enjoy hanging out with my friends and sometimes we have a fun game, but often I find myself seeing how many melee kills I can get or trying to get as many kills running people over with the warthog or seeing what kinds of stunts I can do in the ghost instead of caring that I should be guarding a flag or killing other people or trying to grab a flag. Sometimes I just quit playing and watch because I am bored. I played Goldeneye until I wore out each and every one of my four N64 controllers and then bought 4 new ones and I still play it now and then. I'd probably play it more often now but I have to admit the Halo controls are so intuitive after a while that going back to the Goldeneye controls is a little painful.
Amen. I was incredibly disappointed with Halo. The graphics were OK, though not spectacular. But I'd been led to believe it was the second coming of Christ, as far as games went. The hype around Halo had gone to unprecedented heights. Because it was an Xbox exclusive (I refuse to have a Windows PC just for games) I was almost tempted to buy an Xbox. I'm glad I didn't.
When I finally got my eager hands on Halo I found a FPS with no story, repetitive levels, and predictable "surprises". I played it for a few hours before turning it off. This wasn't a Quake. This wasn't an Unreal. This wasn't a Deus Ex, or Half-Life. Halo is/was an above-average FPS but it really isn't/wasn't all that special.
The hype-machine around Halo was bigger than the game. The game was certainly good. I'd have given it an 8/10. But from the way it was hyped I'd have expected 10/10. If anything, the hype worked against it because I expected more and was disappointed. I prefer to go in expecting very little and being pleasantly surprised (eg, Oni).
PS: yes, yes, Oni wasn't as good as Halo.
This is an excellent comment, but I would add that many people, myself included, believe that the single player element of Halo is also well worth defending, and certainly more than average. I've been playing FPS titles since Doom, usually with a focus on single player and same-room multiplayer, and Halo is hands down among the three best titles I've played. This is because every aspect of it - as with Goldeneye, for example - is well thought-out and implemented. The vehicles integrate perfectly into the game, every weapon has its place, the dual-weapon system imposes a new layer of strategy, the AI - regardless of its actual 'intelligence' - works wonderfully, the checkpoint system is flawless - the end of a battle really feels like an achievement - and the levels are splendid, regardless of the oft-criticised (misunderstood, IMO) repetition in the latter half of the game.
I play it single-player to this day and it continues to impress me. In fact, the single aspect of it I don't care for is the fact that the Hunters are relegated to a simple nuisance once you know their weak spot. Every other enemy remains a threat throughout the game - the grunts are fodder but can easily strip your shield in one shot, the jackals can mess you up if you have the wrong kind of weapons (and bring out the beauty of the melee attack, and even the swarming flood have an edge - you can swat them off or ignore them most of the time, but in a low-shield situation they become your #1 threat.
But two caveats: Halo MUST be played on Legendary for it to really shine. This is absolutely vital, and I'm sure I'dve tired of it some time ago if Legendary wasn't an option. And secondly, I haven't played it on a PC, so I don't know how that version would appear to people. I play a fair amount of mouse/key PC FPS titles, but Halo - again, like Goldeneye - seems made for its host console's controller. I know it was originally Mac/PC bound, but it's clear that Bungie took as much care integrating the controller as they did tuning the AI and touching up the textures. Every console has these rare (sometimes Rare, arf) titles that are bound to it irrevocably; I think Halo holds that position with the Xbox.
I should add that I'm not particularly enamoured of the Xbox - I prefer the more eclectic games library of the PS2 - but Halo, in my opinion, is a brilliant example of what a game can be and why I still play games, at my age, when I ought to be out fishing or whittling 'round back.
If you want to buy the hype, go here
By that logic, Counter-Strike is 'fine', the graphics fine, and the multiplayer is fine so its 'nothing new, nothing special.' Same with Half-Life, other than the storytelling it was nothing special. We've seenen it all before, the WASD keys+mouse setup was becoming standard, graphics were nothing groundbreaking, and the only improvement to multiplayer was an easy to use server finding system.
Now, Halo 2, which will not be a rushed game as near as I can tell, ought to be fairly good. Bungie, after all, has shown us that they can make groundbreaking games with the Marathon series, so I think it's premature to condemn Halo 2.
The marines, if there are a lot of them in tight space, can be a pain to unclog. But other than that they're hardly the liability that other games helpers are. In fact, on occasion they can be pretty damn badass. And even if they weren't useful, I imagine I'd still find myself doing everything I can to keep them alive for their color commentary. In Golden Eye, granted an older game for an older system, the enemies were pretty supid. And in the case of Trevalen, there was no AI. Reach the prescribed way points. Put 300 rounds in his head, doesn't slow him down, but if you run from side to side of a dish, well then he practically kills himself. And in other contemporary squad based games, your helpers can be positively retarded occasionally going out of their way to commit suicide. Almost remnicent of X-wing missions where phase one was to kill your allies so they wouldn't wreck the mission.
The enemy AI is superior in Halo too. I'm not talking about the crouching to recharge the shield, or the charge and bash tactics. But they way they mob when they sense victory, hold to cover when they're uncertain, and run when they're losing. The way they don't automagically know where you are (except for the occasional mortar tank), how you can alert them, but there is a range to their senses. Playing poker can be fun, but I don't think I'd bother against a computer that didn't just count cards, but rather looked ahead in the deck. It's lazy. I can spend my $50 on the work of people who weren't.
Fwiw, most enemies have weak spots. Nearly everything will go down quick with a head shot. There appears to be a small patch of orange on the heads of larger shield guys, and a sniper round there seems to drop them in one. And the flood, if you put a pistol round in their tentical hole, bite it, perhaps to get up again, but still.
Sure it has some weak spots. Marines that manage to climb into a ghost, and elevator physics being two. But all things considered, it's a real diamond in a field of rough.
Then there are the unintended joys. Who hasn't played co-op and tried to see how high they blast the bodies and vehicals when something went south? Or reminisced about that time they shot a shield bearer through the head bouncing the shot off the inside of his shield through the hunter/jackle/whatever? Or some fantastic snap shot.
Golden Eye was good for what it was, and for it's time. For multi-play people I played with found it boring. Levels were too small, controls to awkward. It was frenetic but sort of detached. But for single player, especially as the game wore on, people are remembering a game that was not Golden Eye. Nothing in it came anywhere close to the experience Halo affords. And the characters in the game were as thin as in Tomorrow Never Dies. Time Splitters makes Golden Eye look like a joke, and Halo is definately better than TS.
Hey alaren, how much is Sny paying you to trash Microsoft here?
Whatever it is, they have simply wasted their money.
Any clear thinking guy can see a Benedict Arnold weasel who kisses Japanese ass for money, to trash American companies, from a mile off.
Halo 2 is going to be the most succesful game this year . Period.
Sony disinformation and propaganda or not.
I'd go find another line of work if I were you, creep.
If I couldn't have played the Halo campaign co-op, I'd probably label it as just 'darn good'. It had solid controls, clear and concise mechanics, good story, few load times, expansive areas, good voice acting, good AI, some fun-as-hell vehicles, and even a sense of humor.
In a time when its contemporaries were trying to resell us ever-longer loadtimes, polys for the sake of polys and deathmatch for the sake of deathmatch - bungie delivered a solid game. Honestly, let me know if any other FPS in 2001 delivered half as well over as many areas - because I'd love to play them.
Without co-op, it's a well polished FPS, and admittedly not deserving of the 'great' accolades that are heaped upon it. It's much like Half-life in that respect. Hell, there's a few parts of the campaign I'd call downright 'poorly thought-out', or even 'amatuerish'. But throw in a friend and jack up the difficulty, and I get over even those spots in a hurry.
Co-op makes the game great. Too many game developers and publishers seem to ignore the fact that gaming originally was, and is again becoming, primarily a social activity.
good game + social element == great game
In the opinions of many gamers: If Halo2 isn't 'different' from Halo -- that'd be the greatest accomplishment Bungie could hope for.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
The other thing to consider is that everything just fit together so well in halo. I played it well after it had come out, so it really didn't look all that good. But something about the music, sound effects, weapons, level design, and monsters flying through the air screaming really hooked me. My first fps was wolf 3d so i've been around the block in terms of control scemes. I got used to halo's no problem with the controler and it works good enough for me.
Halo is just a well put together game all around. When you start playing it, everything just comes together, and you cant put it down. I tried to figure it out, here I am, playing this fps game, with no new concepts and so so graphics, yet, I can't put it down.
That's just called a good game. I know it's startling to admit it, but a good game doesn't need to inovate, it just has to put everything together so it's fun to play.
Rather than doing something right, they did the opposite, they didn't do anything terribly wrong
Rather than do something right? please...
ok, I'm not a big PC gamer (I have a mac)... I've played some quake3, UT and old school marathon games in college... I firmly believe that halo is the best game ever... wanna know why? you have to look at the big picture...
this was the first time I ever played a FPS with a good story... you don't have to read anything to follow the story either... (here is where the xbox with its controller start to shine over the PC) you can go through said story with a friend, in your living room, sitting next to you on your comfy couch.... you can watch the story on your nice big TV and hear it through your home theater...
on top of that, you can play it on "pathetically easy" to "incredibly hard" with 2 mid-points in between... halo on legendary is the way it was meant to be played... the AI and the balance of the weapons becomes apparent here... if you never tried it like that, do it now...
the game itself is extremely polished (yeah the textures are repeated and some of the maps are copy/pasted)... you have eth AI of the marines and covenant... the vehicular combat... the explosion physics....
and now we start with the multiplayer... fast enough to be fun for vets... slow enough for n00bs/sepectators to follow/learn... EXCELLENT multiplayer map design (blood gulch, sidewinder and hang 'me high are 3 of my favorite multiplayer maps of all time)...
jumping in/out of vehicles on the fly... 2 or more people in the vehicle at the same time? this crap is groundbreaking... this game predates BF1942 here folks... system link lets 16 people play on a network... unheard of on the console world before halo1... awesome gameplay types (totally customizable) involving vehicles... not unheard of, but never done this well (you can save custom gametypes to keep you from having to set them up each time)...
here is some flamebait here... I am pretty good with a mouse/keyboard, but I prefer to play halo on my xbox (other than the lack of online mode)... I put in some hours on my brothers PC playing it right after it came out... I think the game itself was tweaked to play with the controller... the vehicles are much easier to control with a controller...
from the previews/info I have seen on halo2, I am completely excited... I cannot wait for 11/9... I am buying 2 copies of this game... 1 for each xbox I own... I have 2 xboxes, so I can play 8 person halo at my house...
it is for these reasons that I say Halo (on Xbox) is the best.game.ever (until halo2 comes out)
Yes, no doubt Halo has many good things going for it, as does its sequel. However, I really don't understand people who get excited about features like dual-wielding weapons. Is it really that cool? I vaguely remember doing it in UT, maybe it was a mod for UT. Didn't seem special then, doesn't seem special now. But even then, it's not a matter of whether or not this feature is original, it's just not a feature that is interesting or exciting. Similar to partially destroyable environments and completely destroyable vehicles. They just seem so desperate to be excited about this game they'll point out every stupid little thing in obnoxiously hyper ways. This includes the "journalists" and the PR people. But at least it makes sense coming from the PR people.
I'm sure I'll love Halo 2 when it comes out, but this stuff is just not exciting. The single player video they showed last year is still more exciting than this new (new to halo anyway) stuff.
Please, help me understand why the repetition of similar levels is not a bad thing. I never bothered finishing the game because it seemed there would be nothing worth seeing in the last third or so.
Heh...I understand what you mean. I avoided Halo for a while for that exact reason - I figured it was overhyped, and what have you. However, I gave it a shot when my roommate picked up a copy for the PC, and while it's not the second coming of Jesus that some fanboys tend to make it out to be, it's a very solid game, and I can honestly say that it was one of the more solid and enjoyable FPSes I've played in a long time. The single player campaign is a lot of fun, and throws you for some interesting loops at times, and the multiplayer is a different kind of multiplayer - halfway between WW2 sims and Unreal Tournament. It's paced a lot like WW2 FPSes, but the vehicles, weapons, and shields are very much more in the vein of the UT and Quake type of games. I enjoyed it enough that I ended up buying my own copy, for what it's worth.
Regardless of the marketing, Halo was a very solid game, and from the looks of it, Halo 2 will be, as well. For all the hype, if Bungie delivers a product on par with the original, they'll have another satisfied customer here.
OK, ignoring the obvious fanboy syndrome whereby you replace the idea of well thought out arguments with cheap flames and attacks. You've also managed to completely ignore two very important game due out this year.
Doom 3 and Half Life 2 have been top of many gamers' wishlists for years, the original HalfLife is still selling respectable numbers, despite being around 6-7 years old (and till only a few years ago was still at the top of most games mags recommended FPS games). The odds are stacking quite highly on their side.
h4h4 pwN3d J0O, cr33p.
Never played Deus Ex or Half Life, have you?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
No you rabid fanboy, he means halo is overrated and sucks.
Now you can go back to writing your erotic fanfic about you and master chef getting it on.
Microsft's free PR deparment is at work here, just look at all the deluded fanboys jerking off.
The next game could be a buggy un-original POS and they would still say it is the greatest game ever. They will even claim that feature that have existed in FPS for years are some how new and innovative when they appear in Halo 2.
Hmm.. for not trying to be a troll or flamebait, I think you should check your information at least once before posting.
First of all, your comment waters down to: "Have you ever done bungie jumping? (pun intended) Oh yes its great! I havent done it but I have heard is great!" Bungie jumping the thing everyone has heard is great!
And yes that comment is as pointless as it sounds. Just a thought here: what about if you ask the people who have done bungie jumping? or better yet why dont you try it youself? Bungie jumping aside, Im not going an hour explaining why IMO halo is good (Which I can because Ive played it!) Im just wondering whoever modded your comment up must be really desperate for bashing halo one way or the other.
Anyway the first part of your comment was actually intelligent, people play what they like period. And to answer your comment in a straight manner BUNGIE didnt had a good PR office that convinced everyone their game was great before MS contracted them and MS didnt contracted them because their PR tricked them into it. you do the math.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Halo is one of the few video games I have actually finished, mainly due to the AI. Whether it is really that smart or not, the experience shines. Granted I don't have that much FPS experience, but Halo is one of the few games where I actually felt like I was fighting a squad of enemies. Each battle feels different and unique. And yes, the game doesn't really shine until you play on the hardest or second-hardest difficulty level. Lower than that, and the enemies feel more like your basic FPS target practice. Besides that, it was a very well-polished game with great graphics for a XBox launch title. The game was certainly rushed, but the finished product was very complete considering the circumstances. When Halo was shown for the first time at E3, that demo level (Silent Cartographer?) was in fact the ONLY level they had completed up to that point. And that was a scant 6 months before the game was released! Although I can see how some are a bit jaded with the game (or just flat-out didn't like it), I think to claim that Halo is ALL hype is completely overblown.
Huh?
Half-Life brought us many new things that came together to make an excellent game:
1. EXCELLENT AI for the time.
I remember getting freaked when the marine squads actually managed to cooperate to encircle me and attack me from unexpected places. This was such a change from your typical Quake, where enemies either come straight for you, or romp around in pseudo-random fashion.
2. Skeletal Animation.
There's just nothing like natural movements for your models.
3. Immersive sound.
HL was one of the first games to include both EAX and A3D, and it used these technologies to great lengths to produce immersion.
4. Huge Levels
Did you forget those huge continuous maps that were designed with fast load waypoints to produce bigger levels than any PC was capable of handling at the time? They managed to implement this sectionized loading without perceptibly hurting gameplay. This was much better than say, the Quake way of doing things, where each short level came to a close before you loaded the next.
5. Did I mention the Great Story?
As for Counter-Strike:
The reason CS did so well is the same reason QuakeWorld TF did so well: they adopted existing concepts and meshed them with new ones, packaged them in a professional, well-tweaked mod with decent, mod-specific maps, and gave it all away for free.
In the case of TF, they took the already existing CTF concept and added a class system. New and innovative weapons and equipment rounded out the improvements.
In the case of CS they adapted most concepts from Rainbow Six. The idea of realism in equipment and the concept of "dead until the round is over" were adapted, but made more fun. The key here is that the original Rainbow Six wasn't all that popular on the PC, mainly because it was too slow and realistic. CS managed to find a balance, and popularized both concepts.
CS did add one innovative feature: the concept of BUYING your weapons based on earned cash was previously only a concept in RTS games.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Which chef do you think it will be next? That Hiroyuki Sakai is sooooooooooo dreamy!
"Do you suppose that's why God lives in the Heavens? Because he lives in fear of His creations?" - Steve Buscemi
Most Halo players never have. Hence the reason it's rated so highly.
Anyone care telling me why Halo 2 is so desired? Is it doing anything so revolutionary? All I hear is that people want it for the sake of the first one.
Then Best Buy had a $30 sale on it and I figured, why not? So I got it and was not dissapointed in the least. I enjoyed the SP experience more than I enjoyed the Half-Life experience (probably because of Half-Life's jumping puzzle ending). Is it the best thing since sliced Cacodaemons? Not really, but it's still one of the best FPS games I've played and I've been playing them since Wolf3d :-)
-Redundancy Man strikes again!
I played half life for a little while a few times (I have played counterstrike). Never played Deus Ex. I've never owned a PC, only macs.
have you ever played a first person shooter on your nice big tv with your buddies right next to you while sitting on your couch?
I've never felt the need to buy a huge screen that operates at less than VGA resolution.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I've never felt the need to buy a huge screen that operates at less than VGA resolution.
Well jeez then, get one that does do VGA resolution.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Uh, CS was just a revision of the Action Quake series for Half-life. Any 'advances' it had were stuff I had already been doing in Quake2 (via Action Quake 2) for a couple years. If Halo wasn't innovative (the original argument), than Counterstrike is even less so.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
The dual weapons thing in Halo 2 is cool for the same reason the grenades and melee attack were so cool in Halo 1 - all of it has been done before, but Bungie did it different and far better.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
HDTVs generally cost more than an (already outrageously expensive) 23" Cinema Display, and have nowhere near the resolution or utility.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
HDTVs generally cost more than an (already outrageously expensive) 23" Cinema Display, and have nowhere near the resolution or utility.
A. A 'PC games = best' type of person probably shouldn't whine that some kind of console gaming requirement is too expensive. A thousand dollars for a decent HDTV doesn't seem too crazy to me compared to how much money you save just by going the console route. No PC upgrades in five years more than compensates for a measly thousand dollars.
B. I don't watch much television myself, but an HDTV and appropriate television signal still provides quite a bit of utility. And you will be ready for the HD DVDs coming out 'any day now'.
C. Then just use the freaking VGA monitor you have. I have been doing that with consoles since 1999.
If you want the best gaming experience (ex: high resolution, DTS sound) you have to pay the price for it. No primary PC gamer should ever be complaining about that truism.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
I already own a computer and a nice monitor, for non-gaming purposes. I don't have any other reason to own a console and HDTV, so their costs are extra, while my PC costs are already paid (except possibly the vid card, but that's still cheaper than console + TV).
No PC upgrades in five years more than compensates for a measly thousand dollars.
What you mean is "no improvements in technology for five years". You don't have to upgrade a PC constantly, you just get nicer results if you do. With consoles, you don't have that option, so you're stuck with outdated tech, except for the year or so after each new generation is released.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.