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Fixing Bungie's Broken Masterpiece
1up.com has an unflinching article looking at what is broken about Halo 2, and what can be done to fix the problems. From the article: "The problem isn't the cliffhanger ending, because then you'd have to hate The Empire Strikes Back. Nor should you blame the prelaunch marketing plan that had consumers believing Halo 2 would be a battle for Earth -- it was documented before launch that the adventure would take place across the universe. It's not the Metal Gear Solid 2 hero-fakeout trick; while Master Chief represents Halo to many people, Bungie's use of the Arbiter to show another facet of the Halo universe demonstrated the company's commitment to the world of Halo and not the characters of Halo. And it's certainly not because Halo 2 didn't have cooperative online play. No, Halo 2 polarizes fans because of its multiplayer mode... and, more to the point, the problems therein. "
The game design has elements of stratedgy that I refuse to acknowledge, and it lets people beat me.
A company only has to provide the majority of its customers with a decent playable experience. Pet Peeves, balance issues, and equipment issues are all assigned straight to the circular file.
We care, but only to the extent that its profitable to do so. You see, we have your money. So, you're not in a good position to make demands.
Using this, they've made Halo 2 exclusive. Halo 1 CoOp exclusive, and Don't expect Halo 3 to be any different, what with them being owned by Microsoft.
Its the same thing with all big titles: BF2? Lots of Glitches, Balance Issues, Horrible Interface, etc.. but Does EA care? No. They'd rather just put out BF2.5, and have you pay 49.99 for more of the same broken game.
...it's Xbox only.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
...that the single player mode was derivative and not fun at all, and was missing all the huge, sad, and almost religious overtones of the entire first game, which was flawed to begin with. Anybody who assesses their game's strengths, and then capitalizes on the weakest areas is bound to end up with an inferior product.
Obviously none of these problems affected the game's sales in any way though, and most people don't seem to think there is a problem with the game at all. So, I guess, define "broken".
If "broken" means everyone loves it and it sold a bajillion copies, I hope I get to make a broken game someday too!
"No, Halo 2 polarizes fans because of its multiplayer mode... and, more to the point, the problems therein"
No, the single player game wasn't finished and that's the problem with it. I've never played Halo 2's multiplayer as I don't want to pay for Live. The simple fact is the game was too short, towards the end it had too many "copied and pasted" sections of levels and it didn't have an ending.
Comparing Halo 2's "ending" to The Empire Stikes Back is misleading, TESB clearly had a conclusion to its story, Halo 2 just felt like it had a bug that skipped the last level of the game. The game wasn't finished, it was rushed out and it suffered for it. Halo 2 did have some very good, very fun levels early on, but pretty much once you left Earth the game became repetitive and lost the epic feel the Earth levels had.
Well, I'm sorry to hear yet another game has a less-than-ideal MP experience.
Let's face it, MP design is an expensive and unpredictable proposition: by definition, you need to pay a group of people to validate and refine any design, and try to find loopholes.
Then you release it in the wild, and social interaction throws everything out the window. Imbalances come out, and the most effective, simple play style comes to dominate (aka "Gaming the Game"). Many users get alienated and leave for other products. At that point, you can either nerf-and-patch -- usually with the result of alienating the remaining players who stayed with the product because of that "simple play style" -- or you can adjust for those deficiencies and charge for an "update" -- the case of the infamous "battlefield 2.5" joke made above. But then you're locked into updating once every year, tops, and perpetually chasing the gameplay problems.
So, what are the options?
A) Hit a home run: by divine inspiration, get it right.
B) Keep it as simple as possible. Social interaction is complex; games don't need complex rules.
C) Give the users wide latitude in developing their own maps and rules, and hope that some evolutionary theory lets the best stuff float to the surface.
I've played a lot of Halo 2 on Live. I've not really played the single player game since the one play through I did when I first got the game.
I'd say this article is mostly quite good, pointing out the gripes with Halo 2's online aspects. Although I'm not sure if the weapon controlling is as much of an issue, I've not had that much of a problem, it usually only comes into play if you're already being beaten, or on Collossus, with it's stupid weapon layout.
The Plasma Pistol (and the incredably cheap "noob combo" it leads to) is the real "completley broken" bit IMO. It's tracking is way too good, it seems to be almost impossible to dodge it. The fact it kills an entire overshield is a bit OTT as well, just taking one sheild bar off, or dropping the player down to a normal shield would be less annoying IMO.
Vehicles are probably a touch too hard to take down, but luckily the real bastard (the Scorpian, with) is only on one map AFAIK, and that has two rocket launchers about to help counter it.
The fact that the matchmaking system apparently prefers hosts in the US is annoying for people in the UK, as some weapons like the Shotgun and Sword are ver badly affected by lag. It often seems like it takes one point blank shotgun blast then a meele attack to (hopefully) kill someone, whilst other people can kill me in one shot six feet away.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
Isn't this constant linking to 1up.com getting a little obvious?
Seriously though.. and this is only going back 1 week!! What's going on?
The first, mentioned above, is that there is a problem with the single-player. The entire campaign story of Halo 2 is one giant build-up with to a climax that simply isn't there.
.25 or .5 second "overheating" delay between switching weapons might help gameplay a bit, but not nearly so much as increasing the speed of, and damage caused by, the needles fired from the Needler. An increased needle speed would allow the needles to actually hit a moving target, and an increased damage per needle would mean that a whole half-clip wouldn't have to be emptied at a moving target just to take it down.
Second, the hype did play a big role--that the I Love Bees A.R.G. had such a large following (and with due cause!), but such a small amount of actual interaction or blending with the Halo 2 game is a shame and, in my opinion (be it humble or otherwise), a flaw in both marketing and gameplay... because it isn't just the A.R.G. that should have had some sort of impression on the story--it was the books, too.
Thirdly, the author might be having a bit of cognitive dissonance, in that he or she laments the loss of the three-shot-kill pistol (a single weapon), and then laments the so-called "n00b combo" of the plasma pistol and battle rifle. The truth is, the pistol of the first Halo could kill faster than the combo of the second, and while not everyone starts with that combo, those who utilize it forfeit carrying the "power weapons" that can counter them--namely the sniper, rocket launcher, sword, and shotgun. Yes, a
~UP
Eat the Path.
2: This guy has clearly not been on coag since the battle rifle modes were established. Yes, rockets are the best way to take out warthogs and banshees, but not the only way. Since every player has an accuracy based weapon, its actually quite easy to knock out the pilot's shields with a coordinated assault. Also, how do you take out the warthog? Snipe the driver.
3: Dual wielding. This guy has no idea what he's talking about. Plasma Rifle/SMG gets destroyed on open maps by Battle Rifle, and on confined maps either pistol shows what true skill is. And then there's the grenades. Most good players don't dual wield until they find a pistol because the grenades are so powerful now.
Beyond the Polygons : Because 50,000 polygo
If they had one it wasn't Halo2
How come no one ever mentions the auto-aiming rocket launchers? I can't stand it when it redirects my rocket towards the player's chest. If I wanted to shoot there, I would have pointed there.
And to think it was Bungie that tought us to aim at the enemy's feet (Marathon).
halo 2 is BY FAR, the best multiplayer out there.
the only real complaints you can make about it, are "its not halo 1"
and for those people I say "pistol sniping is just fucking stupid"
you cna get on at pretty much any time and have a decently balance lag free match of your choosing against worldwide competitors. 99.9% of what people say is baseless griping, like this article.
You mean - appart from playing FPS's on a console?
Multiplayer is fine. Single player is broken. You must remember that Halo is a coop game (that's where it shines) and the experience should have been far better than it was. Coop is the future. Once I played Halo with a friend, I couldn't go back to simply trading shots with the computer. Titles like Half Life 2 and Splinter Cell 3 are the rare exceptions these days because the story is so good and there's something unique to do or confront on each level.
The best levels were the Earth levels and the first Arbiter mission. After that, Halo 2 just slowly degrades from there. The final levels flat out sucked. They were nothing more than Doom 3 corridor crawls - which is an outdated gameplay. There was nothing unique or interesting (like fighting in space or taking down the scarab) to spice up the second half of the game's levels. It got boring, Master Chief's objectives in the second half did not progress the story very much, and the game's ending left a really bad taste in my mouth.
Things that should have been obvious to Bungie:
- not being able to pick up and carry the turrets
- can't steal the jackal's shield
- can't pilot and wreak havoc with the scarab
- very few pitched battles where you're fighting with the marines; there should have been more chaos on Earth with fighting raging everywhere
In short, Halo 2 was missing it's polish. The improved graphics were much appreciated but Bungie took THREE years to make Halo 2 and what we got was Halo 1.5 (and with the amount of resources Bungie has at their disposal they have no excuse). We should have been given an expansion pack by now; some new multi-player maps do not count.
Gates says that Halo 3 will ship when the PS3 ships. Even if that's Christmas 2006, Bungie's only got 2 years this time around to make that ship date and 1 year is already gone. Bungie is screwed. There's no way they can retool their 3D engine (next gen graphics, physics, AI, etc.) and make a ton of really cool content (new levels, new bad guys, new equipment, cutscenes, etc.) by 2006 if they want to deliver a true sequel. This is Microsoft's flagship title running on their next gen console. Expectations are sky high as they should be given the hardware specs.
Fact: I've read at least two articles (one from anandtech.com) claiming that it will take 2-3 years AFTER the new consoles come out to redesign the 3d engines to take advantage of the complex multi-core architectures. Until that happens, you won't get to the next level of gameplay. That means 2007-2008 at the earliest.
"Even if that's Christmas 2006, Bungie's only got 2 years this time around to make that ship date and 1 year is already gone. Bungie is screwed."
The reason Halo 2 wasn't up to par is that they were probably working on Halo 3 before Halo 2 was finished. Keep in mind that I'm not saying whether Halo 3 will be bad, good, or indifferent, just pointing something out.
And, for what it's worth (2 cents?), I don't like this shit with video games. Bungie (and every other company) should be giving every single game everything they've got. No unneccessary planning for sequels ahead of time. Bungie probably had all sorts of great ideas for storyline, items, etc (for Halo 2). and just went "half of this will be good for Halo 3". Unacceptable.
The exact same thing happened with the Matrix. They made one awesome movie (equivalent to Halo 1) , and decided ahead of time to make not one, but two sequels. And what happened there? It was one movie divided into two parts (Reloaded and Revolutions). If those two movies were one movie (with the boring shit cut out, did we really need to spend so much time watching Zion getting invaded? Yawn.), it might have been just as awesome as the first. I'm not saying Halo 3 is doomed, but please don't buy an X360 without playing it yourself for a reasonable amount of time first.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
In my anononymous, cowardly opinion, the biggest problem with the Halo2 multiplayer was the lack of an optimatch.
I can't sign into the game and jump into a game of "Multi-Flag CTF on any map", or "Any team-based game on only Zanzibar" or "Assault on Warlock with 6 players"
On opening night, I and a friend both claimed a vacation day from work, stayed up to buy the game, and popped it in, excited to play some CTF games on the map of our choice, and found that....we couldn't. You can play Matchmaking, in which you choose generally what kind of game you want to play (Big Team Battle), and then get shoved into a random map/gametype that may or may not be what you wanted to play.
There should be some method, like with other XboxLive games (RainbowSix3, Crimson Skies, Ghost Recon, etc etc) where you can narrow down the type of game you want to play by map, by gametype, by number of players, connection speed, etc, and jump into a Custom game that's starting up which matches your requirements. In Halo2, you can't even see other custom games going on, even if they're being played next door to you, unless someone on your friend's list is in it.
With Halo2, the only way that you can jump into a gametype that you want is to:
a. start a custom game, and start inviting friends in to play, IF they're online and IF they're even interested in playing that gametype.
b. Play through several games of matchmaking, in gametypes that I *don't* want to play, in order to build up a party of people who want to come join you.
There are custom games going on all the time set to open-invite, which exactly match the gametype I'm looking to play at that given moment; I shouldn't have to be on someone's buddy list before I can see the game and join in.