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Review: Halo Wars
- Title: Halo Wars
- Developer: Ensemble Studios
- Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
- System: Xbox 360
- Reviewer: Soulskill
- Score: 7/10
A solid camera system is the foundation of a good control scheme, and here Ensemble gets off to a running start. The left stick pans around the map at a variable speed determined by how far you push the stick. You can scroll slowly or quickly, and you can also change the maximum speed in the options menu. It's very responsive and easy to get from one place to another. You can hold the left trigger for even more speed, going all the way across the map in about a second. The right stick controls the zoom function, which is largely irrelevant — you'll probably want to keep it zoomed out as far as it will go most of the time — and pushing the stick to the sides rotates your view. You won't need to use this very often, but it's convenient and useful if you want to see things from a different angle.
The other way you can move around the map is with the directional pad. Hitting left will cycle through your base positions, and pressing down will cycle through your unit positions. Occasionally you'll get an alert — for example, a few of your units will be under attack somewhere on the map — and pressing right will take you immediately to the position of your latest alert. Getting around the map is definitely not a problem in this game. It's about as close as you can get to the ease of use that comes with a mouse and keyboard.
The next big hurdle was unit selection, and again, Ensemble did a fine job, giving you all the options and speed you're used to in these types of games. The A-Button selects units individually, but if you hold it down, you get a good-sized circular area which you can then sweep over multiple units to select them at the same time. This takes the place of the typical click-and-drag rectangles on the PC. It's slightly slower, but not by much, and you get the added benefit of being able to grab everyone in a circle around a unit you want to stay put. On top of that, double tapping the A-button on a unit will select all of that type of unit nearby. The right shoulder will select everything on screen, and the left shoulder will grab all units period. The only notable missing function is the inability to save certain groups and switch back to them, and even then, if your groups are spread out, it's not an issue.
If you have multiple unit types selected, the trigger buttons will cycle through the different types, making it very easy to send all your marines in one direction and all your vehicles in another. Once you've had a few missions to get used to the myriad selection options, you won't even need to actively think about what buttons to press. It's a good system because it doesn't get in the way of the actual gameplay. Finally, the means of controlling your units and buildings are simple and intuitive as well. The X-button is your standard "go here," "attack this," "grab this" button, and the Y-button activates any special attacks your selected units have. One nice feature is that you can hold down the X-button for a few seconds and a unit will finish walking to where they were already headed before they go to the new location. This lets you set up paths to take the long way around if the short way isn't safe. Buildings have a radial context menu through which you activate upgrades or pump out new units. You can queue up multiples at a time, and you can cancel an order before it finishes. Essentially, all is as it should be, and you're left to focus on what's important.
Halo Wars starts you off about 20 years before the events of the first Halo game. They send you to Harvest, the first planet to be taken by the Covenant, to establish peaceful and cooperative relations with their leaders and diplomats after five long years of combat. Just kidding — they want you to kill stuff. You get to see cinematics after every mission, which are largely responsible for driving the plot of the game. Visually, they're quite impressive, though the first few are a bit slow. As the game goes on, the cinematics become progressively cooler and more exciting. The writing and the dialogue is less than stellar, but it's serviceable, and it provides some good context to the Halo universe. There are also minor plot points shown during the mission, rendered by the game engine. Those are usually what determine your specific objectives.
There are not many missions in the campaign — just 15 — but they're very diverse. No two are alike, and Ensemble does a decent job of creating interesting objectives and differing levels of resistance. In one, you have to defend civilians as they head for their evacuation shuttles, and you need to take care of the shuttles themselves. The mission is timed, waiting on a countdown to launch. Another mission has you faced with a large energy shield that needs to be taken down. Certain positions on the map are good attack points for a type of long-range tank, so you have to take each position one at a time and hold them all long enough to knock down the barrier. Later you fight a Covenant super-weapon (a Scarab), dodging its main attack while taking out its power supply. And, of course, you get a mission to just build a massive army and annihilate everything else on the map.
They give you a good mixture of offense and defense, though in some cases the amount of resistance you're likely to encounter is unclear. Decisions made early in the game in terms of build order and unit production can effectively eliminate your chances of winning if you guess wrong. This is important because of the way Halo Wars deals with building bases. The bases themselves can only be placed in particular spots. Once a base is built, a number of empty construction bays spring up around it, and you're only allowed to build additional structures where there are construction bays. This means that you're only allowed a maximum of seven structures per base. On top of that, resources aren't something you go out and farm; you build supply pads, which slowly get deliveries from your ship in orbit. So, you're given a tough decision early on whether you want to develop your army or your economy. If you throw down five supply pads, you'll get resources like crazy, but you won't have enough space left to build all of the other things you need to win.
On the easier difficulty levels, this works out decently well; a ton of early resources means that you can pump out enough basic marines to handle most threats until you get fully established and perhaps take a second base. On the harder modes, you're attacked earlier and with stronger forces. Another decision they give you is what type of enemies you want to defend against. Several units are particularly strong against one type of enemy — infantry, vehicle, or aircraft — and not as useful against others. When in doubt, diversify, but if you're playing at an appropriate difficulty level, you can expect to fail a few because you just don't know what to prepare for. The timed missions, in particular, force you into early decisions that simply may not work. Since there's only the UNSC campaign, it's worth going through and doing the side missions, and also trying for some of the difficulty-related achievements.
The AI in Halo Wars is solid; pretty standard for this type of game. Your forces are reasonably smart about picking a target to focus, but not too smart; they won't switch off a full-health tank to drop one that's already almost dead. The pathing is pretty good; you won't have to spend much time micromanaging where you want them to go, but the option is there if you need it. One complaint is that when defending, your troops like to chase attackers too far, spreading out your forces and making it easy for a smart enemy to score some easy kills. There are four difficulty levels — easy, normal, heroic, and legendary. If you're just looking for a quick play-through of the game, go with normal. If you'd like to work for it, go with heroic. If you're pretty good at other real-time strategy games and/or enjoy being punched in the face, legendary will fit the bill.
The selection of units is interesting. You often get a leader and a group of three Spartan soldiers. In addition to being quite powerful, these units are essentially unkillable in the single-player campaign. When they take lethal damage, they drop to the ground and slowly regenerate health. Once they've healed enough, you can revive them by bringing another unit close by. It can lead to some surprising shifts in power. Most of the units are upgradeable to a high degree, becoming significantly more powerful late in the game. For example, the standard UNSC marines begin as a squad of four men with machine guns and grenades. Successive upgrades will: add one man, trade the grenades for long-range rocket launchers, add a medic that will heal the squad after a battle, and finally upgrade all of the marines to Shock Troopers. Each side even has "uber units;" Scarabs shoot giant lasers that fry UNSC forces in seconds, and Vultures are airborne behemoths that can eradicate Covenant buildings almost as quickly.
It would have been great to get a campaign of Covenant missions, but you can still use them in multiplayer. Their buildings are similar to the UNSC selection, but with minor variations. They get shield generators of questionable utility, and their infantry are the ones specialized to fight against particular units, rather than the vehicles. The two factions are similar enough that they'll be well balanced. You can play multiplayer maps against the AI or online with other humans, and you can also play cooperatively with your friends. You select the faction you want to play and then the leader you want, each of whom brings a different unit, ability, or potential upgrade to the table. You can expect to see players using strategies that work in other RTS games. Rushes work well, but they can be dealt with. Selecting your opening strategy tends to be more important than out-managing your opponent in battles. You don't have to have a ridiculous number of actions per minute to do well.
Ensemble succeeded quite well at establishing a control system that is powerful yet doesn't fight for intellectual real estate with the actual playing of the game. It's not a ground-breaking new entry into the real-time strategy genre, but, in a manner similar to the first Halo shooter, it demonstrates how well this genre can work on consoles. And it does well by the Halo franchise in the process. It's too bad Ensemble themselves got split up after completing this game — DLC involving some Covenant missions or making the Flood a third playable race would make this game even better. Fortunately, a team of Ensemble members now going by the name Robot Entertainment will be providing "support." If they're proactive about tuning and balancing the game, Halo Wars multiplayer could become quite popular indeed, in part because there isn't much competition. While it's not likely to be suitable for the hardcore, competitive RTS players, Halo Wars is definitely the fun and easy-to-operate console RTS many players have been waiting for.
...same exact formula as a million other RTS games, just branded with Halo; ergo, if you like Halo, this is probably an excellent game - otherwise it's like many others that came before it. If you've not played many RTS games, this one probably has polish, so pick it.
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So they've switched to a keyboard/mouse?
I'd have to lose 30 IQ points before I'd try an RTS on a console. The only people I know who think HALO is a good game are the ones that have never played Half-Life. Do yourself a favor; buy a PC, and try a real RTS.
*sniff sniff*
Do I smell an opposing fanboi?!
Traded it in a couple of days after release... It's just cheap-ass Halo branding on everything. It's got the typical Microsoft hype machine running it, and little else...
This game takes a new, totally novel, 'Humans', 'aliens with advanced tech' and 'aliens with organic tech' approach to sides that I totally have never seen before in any space-based rts. It's good to see microsoft finally coming out with concepts that aren't direct copies of anything else.
oh wait
Bungie's trilogy of first-person shooters established a standard against which most similar games have been judged for the past eight years.
Yeah right. Actually the gave which most similar games have been judged is Half Life and before that Quake!
No, he's right. If you want a real RTS, go with Warcraft 3 or Starcraft. Halo Wars is just a fanboy franchise.
The article above said Halo is a game that has been used to rate other FPS's for the last 8 years. What it FAILS to mention is the only FPS's that it's compared to are CONSOLE FPS's. HL1, 2, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, etc are all far superior FPS's. The 2 standout console FPS's, IMO, are Goldeneye (Perfect Dark, too.) and Halo.
Yahtzee: "Back when Wolfenstein could still call itself '3D' with a straight face!"
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Redalert 3 was not a very enjoyable experience. And why should this one be any different?
I'll just wait for SC2.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
and before even Quake was DOOM.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Bungie's trilogy of first-person shooters established a standard...
Yes, they defined for us the exact bottom of the barrel.
It starts out with: "Bungie's trilogy of first-person shooters established a standard against which most similar games have been judged for the past eight years."
Uhm, no. Halo is a console game which was based on the rich and varied offerings from the PC world. To say that Halo is a standard really shows how little the reviewer knows about first pergames.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
With as much crap as I give Halo (and LOVE giving Halo fanboys), it's not a bad FPS, just generic. Fanbois make it out to be some revolutionary leap in gaming, which is laughable, but on its face it's an ok time killer.
He is only half right. Halo is actually quite good and I only really played PC FPS before I started playing it.
I have only played the third one and it is easily one of the most polished games I have ever played. The mouse is a better controller for FPS, but the Halo is a lot slower than say quake so it doesn't make as much difference (I played Quake III one day after playing halo and it was like flying, the speed didn't feel as right as halo does).
It is one of the few games of this type I have played where strangers actually communicated and planned properly in team based multiplayer. People actually talked!
Also the theater mode was fantastic. It was very interesting to play through a flag capture from numerous angles (I once replayed one where I thought I had done all the work, where in the replay it showed a sniper and others keeping people of my back).
So I would consider getting this if only for the polish, Halo doesn't break any new ground but from what I have seen what it does, it does well.
Having played both... Halo is the superior game. Yes, blasphemy, I know, but really, is there a story to Half-Life? No. I was amazed when playing HL2 that people make it out to be such a big deal. Most of it was listen to a couple minutes of conversation that suggests that there may be a story somewhere, OMG, something happened, you're separated from Alyx, now go through 2 hours of story-less FPS gaming to meet her somewhere else. Then it happens again. Oh, and occasionally there are massively long and boring vehicle sections.
About 25% of HL2 was actually interesting and fun.
Halo, on the other hand, has solid story throughout. Sure, there's nothing as cool as the gravity gun in the play, but the tank-driving sections are far more fun than anything in HL2.
In fact, the section of Halo 3 where you destroy the scarab with the tank was more fun than the entirety of HL2.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I got this game a few days after it came out and while the game mechanics are pleasing and the controls easy enough to learn for an RTS using a gamepad, I must say one thing has me very disappointed. The soundtrack.
Where the hell is my kickass soundtrack going on in the background? The game is visually pleasing, I especially like watching the warthogs drive around. I feel like the music was ignored, but this is just my opinion. That was one of the draws for playing Halo for me, the music that would swell up and seemed to tie in with the situations very well. I just don't have that in Halo Wars. Maybe I am knit-picking. Did anyone else feel let down by the musical score or lack there of?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
OK review... Could have used more multi-player details.
It's comments like this that prove how PC gaming is on a decline. Otherwise, it's proponents wouldn't be so sensitive and bitchy about anything that threatens the PCs homogeny over certain genres. These sorts of comments are like what we saw written about the original Halo. I'm sure the whining of 'you cant play fps/rts without a keyboard and mouse wtfbbq' are generally drowned out by the ringing of millions of tills.
Btw the parent comment is a lot funnier when you read it in a comic book guy voice.
but it remains a console RTS. Yawn.
I want my RTS to be complex, and far more open with more micro-management, I havn't seen an RTS I've liked since Empire Earth 2, since then, everything has been dumbed down again and again.
I've got, played, and liked Halo Wars. I like the Halo franchise, it's got a good storyline, and the games have been well made. This, true to form, is not a bad game. It's just not revolutionary.
That said, I am tired of people slagging off Halo continuously. Sure, I prefer the Half-Life PC games to Halo, but the Halo games remain excellent - and the game type and map customisation have yet to be beaten for a simplicity vs power balence.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
It is clear Microsoft is not aiming for the regular, competitive RTS demographic. No Serious RTS fan is going to pick this up for the reviewers praise of the low APM(Actions Per Minute). I'll stick with C&C3 and Starcraft for now, until Starcraft II is released. :)
There's a reason Korea's economy is based around Starcraft. It is that good. Saying a game is amazing for it's genre isn't being a fanboy, ya know.
Starcraft/Warcraft made the RTS genre (fighting style, not Sim2000 style). Respect your elders.
I tried the demo on Xbox 360 when it came out. I realize that not all demos are indicative of the quality of the overall game. I have not played the full version.
From my experience, the game is like playing Starcraft, while drunk, with your toes, after a frontal lobotomy. The controls are dumbed down, as is the general gameplay overall. The "pretty graphics and sound" didn't really add that much compelling to the gameplay. Any Command and Conquer game, Warcraft 1-3 or Starcraft had much deeper gameplay. For the $60 you could spend on this game, you could probably find ALL of these other games in bargain bins, or on eBay.
I fail to see why in the world consoles have the inability to use keyboard and mouse at least as an option. The 360 has USB ports, the PS3 has Bluetooth and USB. Why can't I just take my keyboard and mouse combo and use it for these systems as an option?
Some people have given me the excuse that MSFT/Sony/Nintendo want 'consistent gameplay' with the controllers that people will already have. If that's the case though, why do we have things like weird huge joysticks for mech games (360), Rockband kits, the Wii-Fit board, or the Duck Hunt stype zapper for the Wii??? These aren't your standard controllers, but are more than fine. I'm guessing that 'most' households with a game system have a USB keyboard and mouse laying around somewhere.
For me, this would make the consoles perfectly equal gaming systems for me that I'd be totally happy with for RTS and FPS genres.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Having played both, you are a fanboy. Fun != Story. I had a heck of a time figuring out what the heck was going on in Halo. Halo 2 was even worse. The only thing i figured out was everyone was a wuss but Master Chief, and he had to backtrack so many times I almost fell asleep. My challenge to any halo player is to explain the flood, halo, and all that religious gibberish to anyone that's never played and ask them if it makes sense afterwards.
HL2 story wasn't the best either, definitely overrated, but at least I could kinda understand what was going on.
Btw the parent comment is a lot funnier when you read it in a comic book guy voice.
In fairness, that goes for pretty much everything. Every post here, Lincoln's second inagural adress, love letters you wrote back in high school...
I'm sure the whining of 'you cant play fps/rts without a keyboard and mouse wtfbbq' are generally drowned out by the ringing of millions of tills.
I've wondered this too before. People who crow about the mouse and keyboard being far superior often seem to hate console gamers, even if we are playing it with an inferior control scheme, why do they care so much that we get the best? I don't come into their houses and yell at them for eating cheetos and taco bell rather than steak.
Trolling consolers was fun for the last decade but they are so pathetic nowadays it is not fun anymore.
I fail to see why in the world consoles have the inability to use keyboard and mouse at least as an option. The 360 has USB ports, the PS3 has Bluetooth and USB. Why can't I just take my keyboard and mouse combo and use it for these systems as an option?
Some people have given me the excuse that MSFT/Sony/Nintendo want 'consistent gameplay' with the controllers that people will already have. If that's the case though, why do we have things like weird huge joysticks for mech games (360), Rockband kits, the Wii-Fit board, or the Duck Hunt stype zapper for the Wii??? These aren't your standard controllers, but are more than fine. I'm guessing that 'most' households with a game system have a USB keyboard and mouse laying around somewhere.
It has nothing to do with limiting the number of controllers people have. I bet it's actually that most people don't want to have to play against people with an advantage over them. No one reasonable, generally including even die-hard console fans, disputes that the mouse and keyboard is more precise. A lot of people do dispute, however, whether it's more fun to have a mouse and keyboard on your couch in the living room.
I know that as a console game player, I just wouldn't play any game online where a sizable percentage of the population is using a mouse and keyboard. They have an advantage over me, as surely as baseball players that use steroids have advantages over their clean brethren, and I don't want to adopt their tactics simply to remain competitive. I just wouldn't play, and the number of players like me is a lot larger than the number of players who want to use the mouse and keyboard, so it doesn't make sense to include the option.
Furthermore, and I'm not sure how widely held this view is, but at least for FPS, I actually prefer the lower accuracy of the game controller. The mouse makes it too easy to be unrealistically good, bunny jumping down the hallway while sniping people in the head with a high calibre rifle in mid jump. The fact that it's harder to do that on a console is a good thing to me. There's a reason we don't train our soldiers to jump all around while trying to snipe in real life.
Disclaimer: I don't care for FPSs in general, and absolutely hate FPSs on consoles. If you're going to play FPSs, keyboard + mouse is the proper control scheme. Period. But with that said, the original HALO was leaps and bounds ahead of any other FPS available for consoles at the time. That was what created the HALO fanboy club. /Didn't really care for HALO, played only because a friend was such a damn fanboy I had to see if it was really all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips //Didn't care enough to give -2 or -3 a try
I was going to mod this up, but thought I would add some additional thoughts instead.
I've been playing computer based FPS since Doom II. I didn't play a console based FPS until SOCOM 2 (or was it 3?) and then Halo 3.
The campaign of Halo 3 was good enough to captivate me through completion, but the campaign for HL2 was better; however...
Halo shines with respect to multiplayer. Not because of its controls. Not because of the multitude of 12 year old mic hogs. But because of its matchmaking.
I tried playing Team Fortress II, but felt like an idiot screwing over my teammates because I had no clue what I was doing. I tried playing L4D, but only rarely got a good evenly matched team together. The ranking system in Halo matchmaking, which is loosely based upon chess ranking system (IIRC), works fairly well. Pretty much every game I play in is competitive.
That's what keeps it interesting for me. No particular match is too easy and only the occasional match is completely overwhelming. And then there's grifball...
Halo 1 & 2 were infinitely better games than Half Life when it came to gameplay (multiplayer mostly) Half Life does win when it comes to story as they never really fleshed out Halo's storyline as much as they should have though
In TF2 it happens that in my clan when we play together somehow I become sort of a Lieutenant for all the offensive classes since I'm a doctor I end up commandeering them around. It happens naturally without we planning it. Though i see how you can feel like you're screwing your team when you've just started playing TF2.
You couldn't understand the story in Halo? Seriously?
Agreed. The gravitas of the Halo story (and music!) really put it a cut above.
Most of it was listen to a couple minutes of conversation that suggests that there may be a story somewhere
WTF... if you want a story go to the library and check out a book. You can look at the cool illustrations while your mommy reads it to you.
The only reason companies pander to you low-lifes is so they can sling replica Halo helmets and overpriced collector's editions, hahaha. Enjoy your stories and glossy inserts losers.
Games are about game play first and story second. Give me a polished shooter and I'll make my own stories... COD4, nuff said.
The stories I have from hunting people in COD4 are better than any boring pre-rendered crap with cheesy dialog.
BTW HL2 kicked ass. Let me guess, you couldn't appreciate Portal either?
If you didn't think there was story in those two hours you weren't looking around you
Halo/Halo 2 had some of the DUMBEST, most boring, and most repetitive cutscenes in any game I've ever played. I can't even begin to describe how simplistic and boring the story in these games was. Actually, I never really figured out too much of what was going on aside from various retarded looking aliens hissing at each other and posturing to show off how tough they are.
Halo/Halo 2 are some of the most overrated games ever in my opinion. They have fun moments but are so ridiculously repetitive. In each game you go through the same exact levels multiple times, just in different directions each time (and sometimes not even that, sometimes it's just 'do the exact same thing you did an hour ago over again'). That's how they filled out the content of those pieces of crap. My friend and I never actually finished Halo 2 because we got so bored playing it.
I'm not a fan of Halo... I HATED that whole Flood part, it's one of my most hated game scenarios. You go from fighting one kind of enemy, which look alright, to a grotesque ogranic thing with either worse AI.
All-in-all, it is over-hyped.
That being said, the storyline isn't that much gibberish.
- Aliens are attacking Earth's colonies, fortunately they don't know the location of Earth.
- Aliens are VERY religious, to the point of being zealous. They believe in ancient gods that left on a great journey, that they are chosen, etc.
- While escaping, MC and company come across a large ring-like world with its own ecosystem.
- We come to learn the Ring is actually a weapon. Several are spread across the galaxy and when activated release an energy way that destroys all biological matter.
- It was activated once before, when the rings' creators couldn't stop a parasitic organism called "The Flood" from absorbing all life in the galaxy.
- For SOME reason, samples of the flood survived on at least one of the rings and are unleashed by the humans/aliens when they explore the ring.
- Now humanity is fighting aliens that hate them, and aliens that just want to absorb them.
.
Of course you'd feel that way, it is their third try. I hope after the first two they would have gotten better.
If Fun != Story then all those people who read books must be crazy!
Throwing a guy off of a balcony with the gravity gun is more fun than the entirety of single player HALO 1-3.
The only draw for HALO is the multiplayer with friends in the same room and that it's an FPS that sort of works for a console. CS and TF2 are and always will be infinitely greater multiplayer FPS games than any flavor of HALO.
Being able to shoot people accurately and not feeling like I'm playing the game while stuck in a pool of mud makes the HL series infinitely better than HALO.
I didn't state "IMHO" or "IMO" to counter your statement of opinion as fact because well... you stated your opinion as fact.
HL2 Highlights:
Halo Highlights (from 1 and 2, unfortunately don't have a 360):
I would tend to give Halo the edge due to multiplayer being so fantastic, but I haven't given the HL2 partner games a fair shake - CS or TF2.
Totally agreed on this comment.
It may be because I didn't play Halo 1 (though I didn't play HL1 before HL2 either), but when I went through Halo 2 I didn't think the story was that good. IMO, HL2's story is way better.
Wow, I can't believe someone found the Halo story hard to follow. I haven't played the original Halo in almost 3 years, but I'll give your challenge a shot from memory:
1) Humans are at war with covenant (bad guys)
2) Story starts with Pillar of Autumn (a big colony ship) being pursued by covenant. The ship comes out of hyperspace in an unknown location, and covenant are still in pursuit. There is a large ring shaped artificial planet nearby.
3) Covenant manage to board the ship, and you (Master Chief) are asked to take Cortana (the ship's AI) to protect it from capture. You are to flee from to ring planet.
4) Once on the planet, you regroup with everyone else that escaped.
5) You learn your captain was captured by the covanant, so you rescue him and several other shipmates.
6) While captive, the captain learned that the covenant believe Halo is not just a planet, but a super weapon. He also learned the covenant are attempting to gain control of Halo so they can use it.
7) You try to find out where the control room is
8) You head for the control room so that YOU can get control of the weapon first.
9) On the way there, you run into the flood, which is a sort of parasitic creatures race. They were apparently in containment on Halo and accidentally released by the covenant in their attempt to get control of Halo.
10) You run into Guilty Spark, who is a service bot responsible for caring for the installation (ie: Halo). When he learns you are there to activate Halo, and he wants to help you because he needs to stop the flood, and activating Halo will do that (he can't activate it on his own because of security protocol).
11) He leads you to recover the activation index...the key you will need to activate Halo.
12) You then proceed to the control room to activate it. However, as you activate it, Cortana discovers that Halo is not a weapon, but a device to purge the galaxy (or maybe just some large portion of it) of life.
13) You try to abort, but Guilty Spark tries to stop you by sending Halos defensive system against you. You succeed anyway.
14) You now decide that leaving the Halo intact is too dangerous (in case someone else activates it) so you are going to destroy it. You head back to the crashed Pillar of Autumn to have it self destruct (taking Halo with it).
15) You then escape in a small ship before Halo explodes.
That's just from memory. Might have missed a few points, but that covers the basics. Nothing very complex or confusing there. If you want to argue that the story is lame or otherwise not compelling, that's fine (your choice). But to say it's difficult to figure out what's going on....well, if that's the case, I suggest "Hello Kitty Island Adventure" is probably a better match for your intellect.
Its to control the market. They control what controllers the system can use, and because of that they control who makes the controllers. Once you start allowing mouse and keyboards, your opening the door to more third parties making things for your console which means lower profits. Since they can only use the one (or very few) the makers and thus flow of money can be controlled.
I fail to see why in the world consoles have the inability to use keyboard and mouse at least as an option. The 360 has USB ports, the PS3 has Bluetooth and USB. Why can't I just take my keyboard and mouse combo and use it for these systems as an option?
The PS3 has keyboard and mouse support out of the box. However, in order to use it in games the games have to be written to use them. A few games do this already - notably you can get Unreal Tournament 3 for the PS3 with out of the box mouse and keyboard support.
The 360 should follow this fine example. They could crush the gaming market if they did this and found a way to make it so you could use the keyboard and mouse for any game regardless of it's implementation. There is a lot of speculation as to why they have not done it. Most people say that the xbox team does not want to hurt microsoft games lab's PC division. Others would say that it has to do with the fact that it would create a gameplay rift - since a keyboard and mouse for many genres is far superior to a gamepad. More still would say that it breaks "ease of play" and "comfort" since having a mouse on a couch is generally not ideal.
I can't say for sure why they didn't do it. What I can say for sure is it does make certain genres of games less fun and more tedious.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Looks exactly like Starcraft 2. I'm not supprised if it's the same engine that Microsoft somehow got their hands on.
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
It is perfectly natural to want a story to be there. Why are books the sacred realm of stories? What is so special about a book that they should have a story, but not a video game? Some people don't enjoy reading (I generally don't), so we'd like to experience stories differently (interactively). It's not a necessity for every game, but it helps.
PS. I'm not the person you replied to but: I didn't like HL much but I loved Portal.
Oh, Portal was absolutely incredible. One of the best games I've played in a long time.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I personally didn't like matchmaking. I personally liked going into pubs ala PC FPSes. Trying to find a match at midnight (CST) was usually hell because nobody could be matched with me. It was slow when I was already falling asleep.
Not to say that matchmaking doesn't have its pros, but I want to play a quick big team battle game on a specific map with a specific setting or goto a custom setup quickly, but not necessarily need to have any pals on XBL. One plus, though, is that if I climbed the ladder up, there would be natural communication between mates, and I'd say in some instances it does outweigh the cons.
http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun
I really want to like RTS games, but was ruined by playing Myth II. Managing resources always feels like doing chores rather than engaging game play - the tactics side.
Now, if someone would come out with a Myth II mod for Halo, that would be perfect.
I think you're exactly wrong. Halo Wars is specifically NOT made for fanboys, but for the general audience, while Warcraft 3 is specifically for a niche audience. So is Starcraft, but it had a weird breakout.
All three are 'real' RTS's. Just different types.
Not very many highlights for Halo 3, unfortunately. It's also home to the worst level design ever (Mission 8, AFAICT). Shallow story, but it wraps it up in the least. Well, there's also killing more Scarabs, which is awesome.
Both the Halo series and the HL series have their merits, but it's hard to compare them, imo.
http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun
Warkhawk for Sony Playstation 3 is a better game than Halo.
haha, I used to love Warhawk for the original Playstation, amazing game. That and Wipeout.
"Final Fantasy Tactics" and "Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions" are also better than HALO, wtfamazing games.
I will say, HALO is the best single and multiplayer FPS I've ever played for a console, by a long shot. Whatever that means.
So ... They accidently come out of hyperspace near a massive doomsday weapon? Why are the two factions at war? When does the story actually have any kind of substance?
The problem with the storyline is they give you a tiny piece of something that seems much larger and fails to elaborate on anything. Now, in Halo's defense, HL2 is just as bad. Trying to grade either of these games based on plot is ridiculous.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
"You are a fanboy" has never, ever meant anything other than, "Your tastes do not match up with mine completely, therefore my vast array of crippling mental deficiencies demand that I apply a childish label to you in the vain hope that it will distract me from my lack of confidence in my own tastes".
This time was no exception.
I agree that it would be nice for Microsoft to release one but...
http://www.consoleshop.com/product.php?productid=20688
http://www.ddrgame.com/xbox-360-accessory-keyboard-mouse-adapter.html
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/xcm-brings-pcstyle-gaming-to-your-360-217332.php
Thank you OP!
While I enjoy HL2 and the Episodes that follow, Halo 1-3 still win in my book.
I guess it could be because the one thing I CAN NOT STAND in a game that is supposed to have a story is a mute protagonist. On top of that you are forced to watch all the events from the same first person perspective.
Gorden Freeman just felt so empty. I would not even know what he looks like if it were not for the box art.
Both Halo and HL's story is fairly typical. Aliens invade earth. Some aliens are good, some are evil. However the way it is presented in Halo is much better. I actually disappointed with Halo 3 and not being able to see things from the Arbiter's point of view. It really added some perspective to the series in Halo 2.
I had to force myself to get through the water boat parts in HL2. It just felt extremely pointless. At least in the backtracking parts of Halo Cortana would sometimes reveal some more story (intercepting a transmission or what ever).
Personally, HL2:Episode 1 and 2 were much more fun then HL2 and I'm looking toward Episode 3 but not nearly as much as I was looking forward to Halo 3.
It is one of the few games of this type I have played where strangers actually communicated and planned properly in team based multiplayer. People actually talked!
Also the theater mode was fantastic. It was very interesting to play through a flag capture from numerous angles (I once replayed one where I thought I had done all the work, where in the replay it showed a sniper and others keeping people of my back).
Yeah, Tribes 2 was awesome. You could jump into a game, see what was needed, and pick up that role. Spotting a wingman behind you when you were going for the flag was awesome. And the replays really helped when we played competitively.
But why are you calling Tribes 2 "the third one"? Oh, you were talking about Halo? They copied that too? Well that's cool, I guess.
HL is just as bad about the whole mystery thing, but it's still a hell of a lot more interesting. Something about "Oh shit, the world just exploded around me at work leaving aliens all over the damn place and all I have is this crowbar" is a bit more compelling than "Me and this army have to fight those aliens."
Well, the kb+m combo *is* far superior for FPS games, but that doesn't stop me from playing them on s 360 anyhow. Playing on a PC was good...but the first FPS I spent a lot of multiplayer time in was Goldeneye, and the controls in that are crap by today's standards. People get used to whatever's available. If it isn't the fastest, but it's comfortable, then what does it matter? Everyone else is fettered in the same way anyhow.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I would have to disagree on both counts. I greatly enjoyed Halo 2's multiplayer (never played all that much of Halo 1's, so I'll reserve judgment on that), but TFC and CS were both *amazing* Half-Life multiplayer modes. And I've always thought Halo's storyline was clearer than Half-Life's *ever* was...although I still maintain that Half-Life had better gameplay, especially for when it came out.
Halo was a competent series, but Half-Life was revolutionary.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
and before even Quake was DOOM.
And before DOOM was the hunting sequence in Oregon Trail.
Maaaaaaaan. I *really* wish that Sierra/Vivendi would have released one last rev of T2 that didn't attempt to contact the update servers upon startup.
*doesn't wanna be bound to LAN matches for the rest of his life*
Being a slow game doesn't mean that a mouse isn't needed. Even a slow game like Counter Strike requires a mouse for one to be competative. The reason halo works with a controller is because the enemies aren't nearly as skillful as they would need to be to make an equivalent mouse controlled game similarly challenging.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Hegemony?
Unfortunately large chunks of the story are only explained if you read the books for it. If you read the book "Contact Harvest" for example, you learn that the aliens are annihilating humanity because their leaders find out that humans ARE the "gods" of their religion. And finding out that your so called gods didn't actually ascend to another plane of existence sort of ruins a good religion don't you think?
To answer one of your other points... accident? Coming out beside the ring was intentional (the AI did it).
Also, the GP was wrong on several points. One, the enemy is not aware the rings are weapons, they think they're religious artefacts which will launch them on a "journey to another plane of existence".
Second, you don't rescue your captain, he gets absorbed by the nasty Flood, so you kill him.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Calling COD4 a polished shooter is a joke, only when fixed by mods is it playable... Sway bug, nuff said. Still its more fun than halo any day of the week.
From the article: ..."It's about as close as you can get to the ease of use that comes with a mouse and keyboard."
So why not just use a mouse and keyboard? I notice that this game is for the XBox. Why not make a PC version? Doesn't Microsoft have some stake in PCs as well as XBoxes?
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's interesting. I find the Half-life story more compelling, but I liked both.
Both seemed pretty clear to me.
I've been playing FPS since the original Doom and Pathways Into Darkness. The first FPS games had barely any story.
To me, the FPS with the best story was the Marathon series, also by Bungie. The story was largely told by scripts in various computer consoles you looked at. But the story was amazing.
To me else has come close. Part of the problem I think is that nobody would tolerate reading the amount you had to for Marathon. The story now is generally played out through short cutscenes and you can't relay as much story that way without it being intrusive into gameplay.
But I still very much enjoyed Half-life series and feel it's a distant second in terms of story, followed by the Halo.
The problem with the storyline is they give you a tiny piece of something that seems much larger and fails to elaborate on anything.
A lot of good science fiction does this. Authors are entitled to expect the reader (or player) to do some imaginative legwork.
In fact, I think one of the cardinal sins these days in entertainment (all media) is OVERTELLING the story. Given the choice, I prefer developers err on the side of not spoon-feeding absolutely everything to the consumer.
Disclaimer: I've never played the original Halo. Trying to grade it on plot may well be ridiculous, but complaining that a story is a discrete part of a larger series of events seems like a strange accusation to level at a fictional work.
If posts on the web being sensitive and bitchy about anything that threatens X proves that something is on the decline, then I think everything is on the decline.
Really, one person's ramblings means that PC gaming is on the decline? I think all it proves is that you are one of those weird people who have a bias against PC gaming.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
why do we have things like weird huge joysticks for mech games (360), Rockband kits, the Wii-Fit board, or the Duck Hunt stype zapper for the Wii??? These aren't your standard controllers
Even as a Wii fanboy I must admit that the "zapper" and other gun devices for the Wii are not controllers except by a dishonest stretch of the imagination. These plastic pieces of junk hold the controllers in uncomfortable positions and do nothing else.
To answer one of your other points... accident? Coming out beside the ring was intentional (the AI did it).
In the game, it's made out to seem that it was accidental. The book seems to imply that Cortana kept it secret that she used the discovered coordinates for the jump.
I was looking forward to playing Halo Wars, especially since I started playing Red Alert 3 at Xmas. The game is fun to play and the control scheme in some ways is better than RA3 but in others its worse. The best part about RA3 is that you have access to everything from anywhere on the map. With HW you have to go back to your base, which is easy to do with the dial pad but then you lose your place.
I'm sure there are little tricks that could make the game move faster but thats just my personal experience.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Wonderful to see that my personal opinion and the fact that I've never played Halo is considered "trolling".
You can't take the sky from me.
1) My memory of Halo 2 is much fuzzier than my memory of Halo 1, but I thought the Halo 2 story line touched on that somewhat, about why the covenant brought the battle to earth. Maybe not.
2) I thought the covenant did believe it was a weapon. I thought it was in Halo 2, with the prophets being the one leading the covenant to believe they are embarking on a journey. But again, my memory is fuzzy on that. It's been about 3 years since I played Halo 1, and even longer since Halo 2.
3) Actually, I believe you do succeed in rescuing the captain. It's later in the story that he gets absorbed by the flood and you kill him
I was still teaching when HALO got big. A bunch of my students played it and knowing that I was a FPS fan, they wanted me to check it out, so towards the end of school, one of them brought in his xbox (this was May 04) and we hooked it up to the overhead.
Being a Quake, UT, UT2004, JK, JKII, etc. kind of guy, I was really curious to see what all the buzz was about.
Truthfully, I didn't see anything special, but after hearing the kids talking about it, I thought it was really odd that they sounded exactly like me back around the time the QuakeWorld mod/ patch came out, and that's when it hit me-
HALO wasn't great because it was particularly innovative in it's design or it's setup for controllers- it was the first console FPS that got multiplayer over the net right.
UT2004 was superior in every way to this game, but that was the key- the multiplayer. All they needed was their xbox, a copy of the game, and their DSL or cable connection. There wasn't the normal pain associated with PC multiplayer- are you patched to the same version as your opponent? Can you run RogerWilco (or Skype, or YIM, or whatever) while you're running the game or does it bog down too much? Do you have your firewall/ anti-virus/ spyware programs off? Hmmm. Well, do you have your video card patched? etc. etc.
HALO was the first multiplayer over the net experience for a lot of people. That's why so many think it's such a great game.
manekineko2 was right. But also why MS,Sony don't want to put keyb/mouse support for RTS games or any other games is that when the general pop gets to try keyb/mouse control, they become used to/familiar with it.
When people are used to the keyb/mouse config, then they won't be discouraged when an exciting new game comes out for PC. This means potential future loss for console makers.
Put simply, if gamers in general, including new gamers, have experienced playing with PC games such as HL/CS, AOE/Warcraft/Starcraft, Halo wouldn't be as successful as it is today. Halo stole the new generation gamers, MS just can't afford to let them go just by providing keyb/mouse support. It's a huge risk.
My grandmother could understand the halo plot:
1) Crazy high tech aliens are trying to eradicate humanity
2) A human ship running from the aliens crashes on a giant space station thing. Only a handful of soldiers survive, along with a big strong bio-engineered soldier who is good at killing aliens.
3) There are endless waves of zombies on this giant space station thing. There is also a super-awesome big laser on the space station that can wipe out all life in the galaxy.
4) The evil aliens want to use the laser to kill all the humans and fulfill some fire-and-brimstone prophecy of theirs.
5) The humans stop the aliens, mostly because of the big strong super soldier and his hott AI friend.
6) But no! The zombies have infected an alien ship, and could escape into the universe, turning all of us into zombies
7) The super soldier uses the reactor on his crashed ship to destroy the space station, all the zombies and the remaining aliens, and the big bad laser for good. Him and his hott AI friend escape in a shuttle.
THE END
I agree here, Halo is a good FPS, not really up to the HL level of game play (graphics not withstanding, HL 1997, Halo 2001). Halo had very simplified gameplay (console I know) but thats not inherently a bad thing, but Halo was really at Doom/Quake level of game play sophistication with 2000 era graphics. That being said halo was a good game, it didn't have a particually good story (see System Shock/Deus Ex for good stories) state of the art PC graphics or great gameplay but it scored above average in all, whilst this alone does not make it into a good game the fact that all of these elements were tied together so very well is what turned Halo from a mediocre game into a good game.
It's a real shame MS killed the rest of the series, making Halo 2 Vista only was a huge mistake, I played Halo 2 on a friends Xbox and didn't finish it as it became too repetitive, they lengthen the game and didn't add any new gameplay depth from Halo 1. Spending hours doing the same thing was not enough to hold my attention, by the time I'd gotten halfway through the covenant homeworld level I simply gave up as I was too frustrated by the console control and the repetition made me think my time was better spent playing Halo 1 again on my PC. Add the fact that MS was trying to kill me with bloom and there was no real brightness or bloom control I pretty much gave up on the series then and there.
Halo is a lot faster then most of the Tactical Shooters I play, but its a hell of a lot more forgiving. Personally I don't like the Halo health system but then again I mostly play Tactical FPS, Half Life is the biggest exception here.
Voice communication has actually been around on the PC for a while, as I understand it WOW players use it a lot but PC players are still reluctant. Most of us have just gotten our nations broadband to the point where we can play on a 32 or 64 player map with no lag, with Halo the limit is 16 Players.
All that being said I would not play a strategy game on a console, after playing C&C3 on the PC which I am told is very close to the console version I can say that I don't want to play a strategy game that limits what the player can do that badly. C&C3 required you to tank rush, its interface could be built with two buttons, 1. Build tank 2. Send all tanks at enemy base and doing anything else would see your base being crushed in the next tank rush. There was no real strategy involved anywhere with that game especially compared to Supreme commander where you would spend minutes arraying forces and planning assault routes (this is what I call strategy), you could rush but unless you were playing on a small map but on a large map the distances made this prohibitive or easy to defend against. Supreme Commander also came out on Xbox but was universally hated due to the poor control scheme, GPG tried to put all the functionality of a PC RTS into a console RTS.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Here's the brilliant thing about HL's story, it isn't spoon-fed to you, you have to look at the environment to see it, stand around and listen to scientists talk, remember what is said and put the clues together? HL1 had a good story, It took me 3 replays before I got the whole thing (14 at the time, cmon) HL2 was even better, half the story was spoon-fed to you but the amount of back story that could be found in Vance's or Kliner's labs was astounding (didn't get this until the replay, due to the low resolution I had to play on the first run through)
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's like winning the award for effort, rather then for achievement
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You couldn't understand the halo storyline?
Tell me, do you also have troubles with the instructions on shampoo bottles?
The fact that this comment got a +30% "Insightful" scares me. A lot.
Slashdot's going to have to change their slogan to "News for idiots. Stuff that's simple." if this trend keeps up.
balance is not the only thing that makes a game fun. artificially limiting the controls puts a cap on the upper end of any skill curve present. Imagine playing quake 3 cpm with a one button controller from a 2600. right.
huh Pikmin?
Having played both, Halo is superior to HL1 but inferior to HL2. Is there a story to Half-Life? of course there is, it's just easy to miss it because it's told much more 'realistically' than in other games where the entire world revolves around your character, such as Halo or HL2. The problem was that half the puzzles were too simplistic and the jumping sections made me wish for bloody murder upon Valve developers.
Halo, however, is inferior to HL2 simply because it has no atmosphere at all. It feels like a series of interconnected levels rather than an actual, living world while HL2, even with the more 'cinematic' story and all those f'in physics puzzles, managed to preserve a very convincing atmosphere during the entirety of it and that made for a much richer game, in my opinion.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
I'm guessing that 'most' households with a game system have a USB keyboard and mouse laying around somewhere.
But most don't have a table around that they can put those on to play comfortably. There is also the issue that implementing a mouse/keyboard interface costs time and money, since now you have two interfaces to worry about. In the end its however simply the issue of "because Microsoft said so", thats what you get with a closed game platform, what you gain in standardization and ease of use, you lose in flexibility. Sony on the PS3 allows keyboard and mouse, but still, very few games make use of it (Unreal3 is the only one I can think of).
The real problem however starts long before keyboard and mouse. Why do an RTS game in the first place? Why clone something that was developed for different hardware and different input devices and that hasn't changed in 15 years, why not do something original instead that fits the hardware you have at hand. Full Spectrum Warrior for example was a great real-time tactics game that played great with a controller, merge that with some of the depths of XCom:UFO, throw in a bunch of new ideas and you could have a kick ass game that would be quite different from almost anything out there today.
Game developers have sadly started to think way to much in genres, instead of thinking about what would be the best gameplay to fit the story and settings, they take a predefined and done to death genre and paint it with a new theme.
A lot of good science fiction does this. Authors are entitled to expect the reader (or player) to do some imaginative legwork.
The problem I had with Halo is that I could never shake the feeling that there was much more interesting stuff going on somewhere else then the stuff I was forced to play. The story around Master Chief did never really do anything that was very interesting and the whole flood thing was just annoying and out of place, I guess thats what you get when you player as the indestructible hero instead of a human being. Now at least with Halo you later got comics and books and stuff, so there actually is more going on, to bad that none of that ever made it into the games.
Half Life on the other side has the G-Men, which sadly just feels like a walking deus ex machina with legs. You never get a satisfying conclusion or backstory or anything. You play a clueless character who saves the earth by accident and nothing ever feels like an accomplishment, because you just stumble around in the world shooting dudes. Half the story of Half Life 2 is just transporter malfunction and then having to manually walk the way by foot, not exactly great storytelling.
That said, when it comes to video games I don't think overtelling a story is a problem, I think quite the opposite is true, most games these days try to avoid explain anything. Thanks to the first person view you are quite often limited to exactly that which you see through the main characters eyes, which sadly just isn't much. So instead of story, you simply get a few sad piece and pretty graphics thrown at you, maybe with a little dialog thrown in to connect things. Its kind of ridiculous when one looks back, the first 10 minutes of story and dialog in Monkey Island have more variety and interesting stuff going on then most todays games manage to cram into 10 hours.
I tried playing Team Fortress II, but felt like an idiot screwing over my teammates because I had no clue what I was doing.
You don't need to know what you're doing to have fun. I've lost repeatedly on certain TF2 servers and still enjoyed myself. It's all about what your mindset is coming into the game.
Find things to do on the map that make you happy. My personal favorites:
Or if you're still hung up on the whole "I need to be effective to have fun" thing, Engineer is a great class for less skilled players. Set up a turret, set up a dispenser, and learn the map as you find effective places to set up your teleporter. Yeah, you'll have to deal with skilled players sapping you, but it's a significantly less "twitchy" class.
and before even Quake was DOOM.
And before DOOM was the hunting sequence in Oregon Trail.
I was a bad ass at Oregon Trail hunting. The girls would always get me to come and do it for them, 3rd grade playaaa!
Yeah right. Actually the gave which most similar games have been judged is Half Life and before that Quake!
Funny you should say that, because in a lot of ways Quake 1 was relentlessly bland. Monochromatic palette; flat and lifeless weapons compared to Doom's big, loud, animated guns; less plot even than Doom. Its engine was amazing in every way, and set the bar for years afterward, but the game they built on that engine was bog-standard.
I still loved it, because the audio and video immersion really sucked you in, but even at the time I was disappointed to come over from Doom and see the almighty BOOM-click-click of the shotgun and the howl of the plasma rifle replaced by a barely-animated popgun and a crackly little lightning thing.
Halo 1 = a year of straight enjoyment. Halo 2 = a few months of good straight enjoyment. Halo 3 = played for maybe a month then started anticipation for Gears of War 2. I like the franchise but I find the game that started shooters fresh really hasn't changed much of their formula. I understand why they don't but I wish they did. AND SO Halo Wars has come out. Overall a fun RTS but like others on this thread have pointed out, its tame. They really haven't tried anything new. It is almost an overlay of they tons of other RTS games I've already played...but in the Halo world. I bought it, I've played it and had fun with it. But like the rest of my continuing relationship with the franchise I've stopped playing it after a few weeks.
IMHO when "large chunks of the story are only explained if you read the books for it" then someone failed miserably in the story telling department. Having a book that expands the story from a game with a complete story works fine, but a player of the game shouldn't be expected to have to read extra novels just to get the whole picture. Especially for an FPS. Although, I don't like Halo due to how ridiculously slow it is for an FPS (I'm more of an Unreal kind of person), I do give them credit for trying with a story. FPS games as a whole have always had weak plots so Halo managing to get something that was passable is fine. Half-life isn't exactly a work of art in the story department, but it's interesting and very successful as far as FPSs go.
I believe you speak truth on the third one there - my memory is also a bit fuzzy on the details of Halo 1 / Book 2.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".