Halo 2 Goes Gold

schmiddy writes "This just in -- Halo 2 has officially gone gold as of today. Bungie has confirmed the story with an announcement on their front page. Trailers and such available here ."

Comments

Re:Why I dislike Halo (and all modern console game

[ZorbaTHut]

I've spent a long time trying to figure out why I dislike this argument. It never sat well with me. It took me months - but one day I went to a friend's house to play some RPGs and I realized why.

"Give us better weapons!"
"No."
"But the game won't be fun unless you do!"

You know, power isn't everything. Sometimes part of the fun is not being godlike. In PC FPS games, you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to snipe people, instantly, with a machine gun, from two hundred yards away. And you know, I don't care. It's not interesting.

In Halo, it's a lot tougher. "Fire for effect" becomes a reality. Sometimes you're not really trying to hit anything, because you can't, you're too far away - you're just trying to keep their heads down.

To me, a game isn't necessarily fun just because I can kill things more easily. It's fun because of the challenge. It's fun because of the story, or the coolness. I'm told they jacked up the difficulty when they moved Halo to the PC - is it more fun now? I mean, sure, you're more powerful. No argument. So are they. So why is it now "more fun"?

I'd agree that there's a level of frustration when you just can't make the controls do what you want. But I didn't encounter that in Halo. You can snipe easily, if you have a sniper weapon. You can aim if you put a little time and work into it. It's far above the frustration point - so what's the issue?

Compare Starcraft and Total Annihilation. In almost every way, Total Annihilation's interface was far superior. You could select an unlimited number of units. You could queue up any commands, up to and including construction commands (yes, that's right - thirty seconds of clicking and you've got fifteen minutes of construction set up.) Does this mean TA is a better game?

No, of course not.

A game is a good game if people enjoy it. That is necessary and sufficient. Deer Hunter is a good game - for its target audience, it fills the exact need. Halo is a good game.