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Halo 2 Sells 5 Million Units
A witty GameIndustry.biz writer: "Avid gamers clock up 28 million hours shooting each other in the face on Live". They have word that Halo 2 has surpassed 5 million units sold through. The sequel beat the record achieved by the original game, which took 2 years to achieve.
I'm not at all surprised. I don't know anyone who has an Xbox and wasn't psyched about getting this game. I was psyched as well, but now I can't stop playing World of Warcraft.
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I've had it since it came out and still haven't played it on Live yet. Then again, I haven't finished the campaign...
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But how can anyone play a first person shooter on a gamepad? Absolute motion axis suck for aiming. Anyone who says otherwise is a console system apologist, and in denial.
EVERYONE sucks the same, though.
With PC FPS, you have the weenies who do nothing but play FPS games, and who can pick a pixel in the blink of an eye. They're simply not fun to play against -- nor fun to play as when your friends aren't.
Halo is great for multiplayer, because you sit there and game and no ammonut of practice with the game makes you wholly incapable of being beaten by you friend on the counch next to you.
Microsoft acquires license to print money.
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"It took the first one two years because it sucked."
Uh, I don't know about you, but I don't think Halo sucked at all. It added ton of features that influenced FPSes for years to come:
* First game to incorporate lifelike, accurate AI in open battle scenes. Half-Life accomplished this in tight spaces, but most routines involved paths with very tight corners. They've evolved it even further in Halo 2: watch as AI takes cover under the boxes you just blasted.
* First game to include a bevy of pixel shaders correctly. Yes, the corridors were repetitive, but they sure looked purty.
* First game to get console FPS controls perfectly. Goldeneye came in a close second, and would've worked if you weren't using button for moving the sight up and down. Every console FPS I've seen since Halo (besides Metroid) has its controls.
Halo is great for multiplayer, because you sit there and game and no ammonut of practice with the game makes you wholly incapable of being beaten by you friend on the counch next to you.
This is not true. While the perfect precision is not given to anyone, those with practice can actually get it within a decent amount. When my ex-roommate convinced me to play perfect dark with him, he could aim just fine, it took me 3 hours just to figure out how to point in the general direction.
With the mouse, most people can point it in the general direction. I guess you could chuck it up to everyone has a decent amount of practice with the mouse.
So as far as I can tell, it does not level the field at all, it just makes it equally frustrating for everyone.
Worse, it is less ergonomic, at least for me. My fingers and wrists hurt after only half an hour of (joystick based) gamepad use. I have to quit just as I am getting started.
badness 10000
World of Warcraft just sold a record number of units in their first day. Halo 2, Half-Life 2, and Doom 3 have all just hit the store shelves. With so many awesome games out there that people are buying so often I wonder if this is a sign of people being otherwise discomforted by life.
Is there any historical evidence showing leisure activities blossom when so much else in the world seems to be in disarray?
Direct away from face when opening.
2 thoughts:
-a mouse becomes like a puppet, turn your wrist-head left, and your puppet turns left. HIGH potential for intuitiveness after an initial comfort-level is met. most people's problem with pc 1stp's are with using the KEYBOARD.
-an analog stick is bound in it's maximum rotation, creating a paradox between speed and precision. a mouse (esp optical) has no reasonable bounds on the distance or speed you move it.
Gotta disagree with that one. I live in a fraternity house, and we have 4 TVs hooked up with Halo/Halo II with multiplayer. There are three or four people that consistently are on top - just like any small group of PC gamers (I used to LAN party pretty often, too). I think it's just what you're used to - these people started FPSes on console, and they can get damned good at it. They think PC control sucks. Me, on the other hand, started gaming with Doom II and still can't get the hang of dual joysticks on modern consoles. The level of skill between the masters of the two platforms is the same, though; they can achieve the same amount of precision that any PC gamer can with a mouse/keyboard, from what I see (and I play them 10 hours a week or so).
The thing that you don't really notice is cool and original about Halo 2 until it's pointed out to you: The fact that your teamate AI's actually have conversations with eachother, while you're playing, and even coordinate attacks with eachother.
We could capture a whole shitload of flags.
The world can be wrong today for once.
stupid 1-button touchpad on apple laptops.....
It does get annoying sometimes, but for normal use, I right click about once every hundred to thousand left clicks. You can Ctrl-click to get the same effect as a right-click. And if you're playing games, you're better off getting a mouse; USB mice with a right button work well with the Mac.
But how can anyone play a first person shooter on a gamepad? Absolute motion axis suck for aiming. Anyone who says otherwise is a console system apologist, and in denial.
It is harder to hit a specific target. However, I'll offer these two counterarguments: 1) the screen, not the reticle changes as you move the mouse, so your brain works more like "keep scrolling...stop", as with a gamepad, than "move to there" as with a normal mouse cursor, and 2) derivative joysticks are a lot better for panning at a constant rate or quickly moving than carefully sliding your mouse or picking it up every time it runs past the edge of your desk.
Besides, how do you use keys for walking? It makes it hard to vary the rate at which you walk. Especially on Halo, there's a value to walking slowly such that you don't show up on the motion sensor, and changing walking speed can be useful for confusing people to snipe ahead.
And the buttons are better; dual-wielding is almost subconscious due to good use of the button layout, and having two joysticks of the same kind allow you to correlate your walking and your moving.
I've played using both, and I see them both as equal in strengths and weaknesses. Position controls have as many drawbacks as velocity controls.
Halo 2's what, a month old, less? How old is CS?
You just invalidated your point. The PA crew did play the shit out of multiplayer, but as the parent post stated, they didn't like the single player campaign. Hyperbole or not, they didn't even enjoy the co-op campaign (which is the point of the comic).
My biggest beef with all the fanboyism and rave reviews about Halo, and now Halo 2 is that they're almost always entirely based upon multiplayer. There are a few people now and again that claim to love the single player campaign, and that's fine, and there are also those people that openly admit they only play games for the multiplayer aspect, and that's fine as well, but all of the hype around the Halo series is WAY out of hand.
This game is hyped as being the best ever, but a title only deserves that moniker if all aspects of it's execution are pulled off flawlessly, and both Halos are not flawless.
On a side note, what about the other huge game release of the season: GTA:SA? I read that first WEEK sales were expected to top 5 million. Why do we hear constant updates on Halo's progress, but nothing about the competition. I find it odd that the Halo series, having sold 10 million copies in two years is somehow trumpeted as proof that videogames have come into their own, while the first two GTAs have sold more than twice that, with only one extra year, and no data on San Andreas's sales, and the only thing that series gets is shit from all sides about objectionable content.
I think theres a bit of a generation gap. Most experienced gamers have played the shit out of FPS on the PC, and the last 4-5 years thats pretty much the only Genre that keeps coming out with games frequently that are for the PC.
I think console gamers and newer less experienced gamers in general have played less games then hardcore gamers period (in the library of games they have previously played). And this is really why you have yuppies thinking Halo 2 is the greatest thing "evar!!" it's not. It simply copies what has existed since the Doom and quake days with slight refinements, it does not play "radically differently" then any other game, you can have just as much fun in Serious Sam or SS 2nd encounter then you can in halo. The AI may be good but even if the AI was dumb as shit Halo would still get glowing reviews and still have millions of drooling idiots claiming its the best thing ever.
The thing halo has is Master Chief and the fact that they nailed the feel of the universe and style of aliens well enough to make the game universe appealling.
If you replaced all the graphics in halo with placeholder art I doubt halo 2 would get such glowing reviews. The halo experience is really about the small things they layer to the game that adds up to an overall experience on top of the graphics. They got things like the cpu controlled team mates right and the fact you feel they aren't just mindless dolls. They keep the pacing of the game going by having the recharging shield so you dont have to run around to find health and theres usually always plenty of ammo because you can pick up alien weapons and use them against your enemy.
It's nothing revolutionary they just limit your guy and force you to make decisions. You can't carry 10 guns at once and pull them out of your ass you can only carry two.
I still think its because most console gamers this generation have never been exposed to a lot of great FPS and thats why you see Halo selling so well.
Like a lot of your complaints, it seems like you don't know how to play Halo very well. No harm in that, but it does nullify some of your points.
The Assault Rifle is a piece of junk against targets like the Elite (though it is very useful against some later enemies) - the Covenant are most vulnerable to Covenant weapons, which is what you were 'supposed' to use. The power levels aren't unbalanced (though the odds are certainly against you) - you chose the wrong tool for that situation.
Because of this I assume you didn't play the Legendary difficulty level, which is where you really see the AI at work. It really almost turns into a different game as the difficulty ramps up.
That balance you are talking about is the control innovation the original poster was talking about. Among other subtle things, Halo slows down your aiming speed when the reticle is over an enemy. That is what modern console FPS games are copying now.
Through its refinement, Halo also showed the world the 'correct way' to set up the controls, so it became the standard even if it wasn't the first use of such controls. That counts as an innovation, too, IMO. (And I would argue some of its elements were new - not a lot of games had a dedicated grenade or melee button before Halo!)
Regardless of specifics, new features in a game usually aren't widely copied unless the game is fun enough to notice and show these off. That is the case with Halo1: imperfect as it may be, it doesn't suck. Not even remotely. The game was fun for a lot of people, and to insist otherwise is just nonsense. A game doesn't get to be as loved as Halo1 is by millions of people if it isn't fun to them. It just didn't click with you (maybe because you didn't know how to play well - but that could just be the result).
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
No, I think there just haven't been any Big Hyped Games(TM) to get excited about in the past two years. Halo 2, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and, to an extent, GTA:SA have been eagerly expected for years. Last holiday season we had some good games that came out, but these are not only Big Hyped Games(TM) but Sequels to Big Hyped Games(TM). And, believe it or not, gaming is still such an absolute microcosm, and gamers are generally so young that they're not really interested in politics (see: youth vote 2004), that I don't think that theory really holds water.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The XBox is a great system, but one reason Halo 2 has sold so many copies is because there is not any other good games out for the system. I can say this because I own an XBox along with every other system and I barely have 4 games for it. I've bought several multi platform games in the near past, but they never seem to make an XBox version. Unfortunatly, since I do own all the systems, Halo 2 doesn't have enough appeal for me to purchase it. Games like Ninja Gaiden and HL2 do, though.