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Halo 3 - The Final Word
In anticipation of Halo 3's release later this month, EGM and the folks at 1up have been creating a veritable altar to the Halo deities over at the website. This edifice has tons of information on the two previous Halo games, commentary from numerous Halo-literate folks on the subject, as well as weightier articles like a preview of the co-op mode (four players, mind), a primer on the story if you've missed something, and a breakdown of the good and bad in Halo 3 . Yes, there are even some things they don't like about the game. From the co-op breakdown: "The Achievements offered tantalizing hints of the game's structure, features and techniques, a welcome morsel of information for the faithful to contemplate and speculate about. The co-op news was greeted with even more warmth, because it put to rest ill-founded rumors that Bungie was planning to deliver a half-completed game. On the contrary; up to four players will be able to take control of the Master Chief, the Arbiter and two Elite warriors, N'tho 'Sraom and Usze 'Taham. (Don't bother trying to pronounce their names; just appreciate the promise of joining up with three friends to conquer the game.) And somewhere in the middle, these two topics are connected by something even more intriguing. Halo's co-op game and its Gamerscore-grinding intersect at a point enigmatically referred to in the game's Achievements as the 'Meta-game.'"
meh.
Militant Agnostic: "I don't know, and damn it, neither do you!"
What the hell has Bungie been doing for the past three years?
Making beeeeeeautiful water. Duh!
Seriously, I realize you're just trolling, but even trolls need food now and again so here goes.
1) Looks almost identical to Halo 2, just with the resolution bumped up and some higher rez textures. It's the same old last gen style engine. Three years of work and people getting confused in comparison shots between Halo 2 and Halo 3 is shockingly bad for what is supposed to be the killer first party tour de force for Microsoft.
I assume you're thinking of the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. It's been said over and over that the rendering engine used in the beta is not the engine that will ship with Halo 3.
2) Has the same networking setup as last gen. The rumored dedicated servers turned out to be a pipe dream. Instead Halo 3 has the same old last gen 16 player cap per game and lag prone P2P networking for games. With all of Microsoft's money you would think they could have hired someone to actually updated the networking code to next gen levels.
Considering that Halo 3 supports 4-player online co-op, I tend to doubt that the exact same netcode drives both games. I also tend to think that the game's netcode was improved and worked on just like any other part of the game. Speaking of online lag, I'm not sure what dedicated servers would solve. I could be mistaken, but usually lag in online games is due to the players' Internet connections to the host. These connections are subject to varying disruptions and considering the realtime nature of the game, any disruptions will be very noticeable. Until everyone has 10Mbit fiber connections with 3ms latency between consoles I think lag is going to be something you just have to deal with in online play.
The same almost entirely US Xbox fans who bought the first two Halos will buy Halo 3. The rest of the gaming world will go right on not caring about the game
Uh, that's usually how sequel game releases go. Previous fans buy it, people who didn't like the first couple games won't.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Online Co-Op For Halo 3 Launch Confirmed
Halo 3 Preorders Top 1 Million, Marketing Begins
Halo 3 Almost Done
Halo 3 Has Gone Gold
A Look At Halo 3's $10 Million Ad Campaign
Halo 3 - The Final Word
This whole thing is turning into the bastard child of Vista and the iPhone. And this list doesn't even include the articles (about the 360 and ilovebees) that were about Halo but didn't have Halo 3 in the topic. Despite this we still have two news posts about Halo 3 *marketing*, two about it going gold and one correcting an incorrect earlier /. article (I think that was a first).
Did /. ever push any other game like this?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
...out from the woodwork comes the trolls who have clearly seen and played (extensively, might I add!) the version of Halo 3 that went gold!
Enlighten us, messiahs, with your ever-precious judgements!
Clearly, you know more than the staff of EGM who has actually played the game. Gah.
Seriously though, a couple things:
1)Article about Halo 3 isn't newsworthy, but that seems to be the trend here anyway.
2)Halo 1/2 may not have been God incarnated into video games, but they were still worth my 50 bucks. I don't think we need the over-the-top bashing of anything even remotely Microsoft related here...
3)I'm going to get rated troll for not calling Halo 3 a complete pile of poop.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
I hate to be a hater, but Halo is the single most over-hyped game in history. It is a par shooter at best and the fact that it gets as much attention as it does is disgusting. It is not a revolution in FPS games. It is not a revolution in anything. It is just a decent shooter... that's it. Why can't anyone see that?
Future indie game developer of America (and possibly Canada)
Does that make it worth all the hype? Well, probably not. But I've never really run into another shooter that plays quite like it (aside from Marathon, naturally...) Being an old-school Bungie fan myself (creator of the Eternal mod for Marathon, current admin of one of the two still-active Marathon forums, and former head honcho of the Myth section of Bungie.org), I was initially uber-hyped about Halo. Finally, Bungie was coming out with Marathon's spiritual successor (if not outright sequel), and they were gonna make the big time with a major hit game, simultaneously released on both Mac and Windows like the Myth games had been... ooh boy that was gonna be great!
Then the MS buyout happened. Halo became an Xbox title; the PC version took second fiddle, the Mac version more like seventh fiddle. I've never been much of a console gamer, and NEVER been a fan of Microsoft. So I pretty much gave up on Bungie. But, a friend of mine bought me an Xbox and Halo for my birthday, so I gave it a shot, had a good bit of fun. It's a nice game, feels a lot like a modern, polished version of Marathon, which is exactly what I had always wanted (though getting used to the console controls was a bit of a trick at first). Like you say, Marathon and Halo play VERY differently than other FPSs, and I've never much been into other FPSs for that reason. In Bungie games you move slower and, to me it seems, much more realistically. It's a much more relaxing, flowing feel to the combat, less hyperactive twitch reflex. (Obi-wan's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized age" feels somehow appropriate here). It also has coop, which has always been my favorite gametype; combines the social interaction and teamwork of a multiplayer game with the progressive, task-oriented nature of single player games, with a bit of the ol' Legolas & Gimli kill-count competition going on. So to me, Halo was the best FPS yet, and I actually went out and bought Halo 2 with my own money (the game I've bought for the Xbox that was given to me) and enjoyed it even more, especially coop on Legendary. And now I plan to buy Halo 3, though I'll only be playing it on my friend's 360. Seems a fitting way to end my involvement with Bungie, and I want to see how the series ends.
But, imagine my surprise when I looked about in the general gaming chatter online, especially here on Slashdot, and find out that apparently the only people who like Halo are dumbass pothead jocks and frat boys who masturbate with Microsoft brand hand lotion while shoving giant vibrating Xbox controllers up each others asses. Or at least, that's the impression you'd get listening to all the shit that people talk about it on the Internet. Certainly a surprise to me, the intellectual geek who spent much of high school pouring over mythological and literary references hidden away in Marathon terminals.
No, Halo is not the be-all end-all of all video games. But it's not utter shit either. I particularly hate the criticism that it's "old hat" and offers nothing new in terms of gameplay, especially in comparison to mainsteam PC games, which I spent many years looking down upon for lagging in relation to Marathon. (Wow, that new game has a story? Friendly NPCs? Dual wielded and dual function weapons? Cooperative play? Yawn. Welcome to 1994). When the latest sci-fi movie comes out, do you say "oh bah, I've seen a sci-fi movie before, show me something new"? No? So why can't a new game just be a newer, more polished version of the same sort of game that you liked before, with some new settings to explore, some new characters to meet, and some new situations to be resolved?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."