Review: Halo: Reach

The launch of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001 vaulted Bungie to the top of the game development industry and helped provide a stable foundation for the success of the original Xbox. Nine years later, having completed a trilogy and a standalone expansion for the Halo universe, Bungie has returned to the IP one last time for a prequel called Halo: Reach. They clearly wanted to do right by the fans and the franchise with their final sendoff, and the effort they put into the game reflects that. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

• Title: Halo: Reach
• Developer: Bungie
• Publisher: Microsoft
• System: Xbox 360
• Reviewer: Soulskill
• Score: 8/10

The game gets its title from a planet named Reach, which is under siege by the Covenant a few weeks prior to the events in the first Halo game. Your character takes the role of new member to a team of soldiers who are trying, without much hope, to keep the planet from falling into enemy hands. If you play many shooters, it will be a familiar scenario, and Bungie doesn't spend much time crafting a detailed backstory or exploring character motivation. In that way the narrative shares the perspective of the characters — they're here to fight, and so are you.

This demeanor is maintained throughout the campaign, and it provides an odd contrast to other games in the genre. Most recent games try to set you or another character up as a tragic hero, using side-plots, sub-stories, and untimely deaths to provoke an emotional reaction. Halo: Reach handles this in a more detached, military way. When a character dies, the others acknowledge it with a moment of grief, but then move on, because they have a job to do. While I found it to be an interesting mind-set, I also never particularly cared about any of the characters, and never really got engaged in the story.

But, this is Halo; gameplay is paramount. The game engine was retooled and updated for Halo: Reach, and it shows. The feel of movement and combat is the best I've experienced on the Xbox 360. It's smooth and responsive, and it handles jumping, turning and aiming very well. As someone who typically prefers to play shooters on the PC, I was pleasantly surprised. The maps are consistently excellent as well. They maintain the Halo feel of being set on enormous backdrops, filling as much of the sky as they can manage with distant mountains, towering ships and structures, planets and moons. The layout of the fighting areas manages to avoid being constrictive while keeping you moving along the path necessary for the plot. Areas in which you fight typically have several different available routes, so that the direction you feel comfortable traveling while attacking or defending will take you where you need to go without having to double back. It's one of those subtle things about level design that's very often ignored, but does wonders for immersion when it isn't.

The AI isn't particularly good or particularly bad (unless your teammate is driving you around), and you'll quickly come to recognize enemy behavior patterns. The campaign combat gets a bit repetitive because of this, but Bungie planned ahead and created ways to spice it up. In addition to four standard difficulty levels, you can turn on "Skulls," a set of minor gameplay modifications that add challenge to the campaign. For example, one makes enemies toss more grenades, and faster. Another requires you to melee enemies to recharge your shields, and one makes enemies more lucky with events based on a random roll. You can also play the campaign cooperatively with other people, which is great if you have a couple of friends also playing the game. If you're the type to play a shooter's campaign once before retiring it to the shelf, this game probably isn't for you. But Bungie built in a lot of replayability. If you enjoy going through it multiple times, challenging yourself to do it the hard way, and playing through with buddies, there's a lot of potential entertainment to be had.

The available weaponry is a mixed bag. Modern shooters tend to have "superweapons" become available only infrequently, and with restrictions; limited ammo, slow movement speed, etc. In Halo: Reach they are perhaps too restricted, often with long wind-up times and a slow recharge. I found myself switching away or simply dropping those guns because they weren't much fun to use. By contrast, I found the pistol-type weapons to be the most satisfying to use, perhaps because they didn't inconveniently need a reload just as I brought down an enemy's shield. One thing Bungie definitely did right was the visual depiction of the projectiles shot out of the guns (bullets, plasma bolts, grenades, etc.). The bolts coming at you all have distinct colors and graphical effects that go along with distinct velocities and trajectories. Dodging enemy fire adds a lot of depth to the gameplay, and it's very easy to see what's being shot at you without having to focus on it.

Throughout the game you can ride in a variety of vehicles, and even perform multiple roles within the vehicles themselves. This suits co-op play very well, and solo play somewhat less. The guns on a tank or Warthog are big and satisfying to use. Driving takes some getting used to, using one analog stick for the throttle and the other for steering. If you're used to a game that uses one stick for both, it will feel awkward. There are a set of helicopter missions that fare better — once you're at an altitude you like, you can press a button to hold there, leaving you only 2-D movement to worry about while you aim, which isn't so different from ground fighting.

There are also a set of space missions, where you grab a fighter and fly around, trying to out-Star-Wars Covenant spacecraft. I was skeptical of their ability to pull this off, but the missions are a lot of fun. It's not tremendously complex; you've got lasers, which can knock down shields, and rockets to finish things off. The targeting system is generous, and you can evade enemy fire with rolls and flips. But the engine is just as smooth and responsive as it is for other forms of combat. It reminded me of playing old arcade space shooters. These missions are followed by the boarding of a ship that's had its atmosphere vented to space. As you trudge through hangars and corridors, shooting wildly at the waves of Covenant trying to block your progress, the familiar sound of gunfire is conspicuously absent, while your controller shakes softly in your hands. Its a nice touch.

If you played Halo 3 or ODST, you're probably familiar with Forge. It's the built-in map editor (or at least, map customizer) that lets you tweak items, vehicles, and objects while leaving the geography unchanged. You can't remove a cliff or make a hole in the ground, but you can move, add, and delete weapons, spawn points, buildings, ramps, giant rocks, Warthogs, and more. It's very simple to use; it'll be nice for groups who play on a regular basis to be able to easily change things about their typical maps, and there will certainly be a dedicated few (in fact, there already are) who create some really impressive levels in spite of the limitations. Spacious, mostly empty "Forge World" maps provide a relatively blank canvas for building something new or remaking something old. At the time of writing, one of the most popular maps has you jump your four-wheeler pointlessly but entertainingly through the air, and another is a pseudo-platformer.

The multiplayer experience is integral to the Halo games, and this one is no exception. There are about 40 different ways you can play this game with other people. We've come a long way from the days of "Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and CTF" being the multiplayer standard. You get about a dozen game archetypes to choose from, and each of those may have several different variations. For example, there are four kinds of CTF, a couple different racing modes, three "bomb your opponent's base" modes, and even two different ways to play King of the Hill. It would be really tough not to find a few gameplay modes you enjoy from this huge list, and the name on the box guarantees there will be enough players to keep finding matches. Halo: Reach also brings back Firefight, Bungie's version of the industry standard "get-swarmed-until-you-die" game. Even here there are seven different versions, including one in which you attack or defend particular objects, and another that gives you a rocket launcher and unlimited ammo.

Of course, with all these options, the matchmaking system needs to be up to the task of putting players in games they want to play. Like Halo 3, the system uses "playlists." You select from several groups of game types, and once enough players are found for a match, they vote on which particular map and mode they want to play. While this has the benefit of finding games very quickly, the downside is that if you really want to play a particular map or mode, you may get voted down and stuck with something else. A simple browser would have been great, if not particularly elegant. In addition to the skill-based matching, you can also tweak a few options that narrow down whom you want to play against: chatty vs. quiet, competitive vs. casual, prioritizing skill, or a good connection, and so on. It remains to be seen how many players will use this as intended, but it's a step in the right direction toward filtering out some of the players who rub you the wrong way.

Bungie has built a huge fan base over the past nine years. For many, Halo: Reach will be the last true Halo game, now that Microsoft is taking over development of the series. Knowing this, Bungie really went all out to make this a game that gave players everything they could ask for. It stumbled a bit in the storytelling and the weapon design, but the heart of the game is in the multiplayer, and there they provided such a wealth of game modes, preferences, customizations and settings that even the most hardcore players will have difficulty running out of new ways to play. It'll certainly be a tough act to follow for whoever Microsoft puts in charge of the next Halo game, and Bungie knows it.

Comments

Advice

[Pojut]

Read the books. Seriously. The Halo series is decent and fun, and certainly has its moments...but it's hardly deserving of the legendary status people have applied to it. The books, however...the books are amazing. The storyline makes for a great series of sci-fi novels, and are all page-turners.

The best Halo experience isn't on a TV screen, but in a book. Just a bit of advice.

Re:Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because squeakers totally want to sit down in front of a book and read about Halo, not pwn n00bs and insult the fuck out of people 20 years older than them when they make a kill.

Re:Advice

[iainl]

If you want to read an SF novel with an Orbital in it, you _really_ should be heading straight for Consider Phlebas...

Re:Advice

[Pojut]

Or Ringworld.

The thing is, most of the Halo novels don't focus on the titualar "Halo" orbital.

Re:Advice

[snakegriffin]

It's not legendary because people have applied that status to it, it's legendary because of its success it's had in the market. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that the Halo games are a technical marvel, but as far as I'm concerned, Bungie's work with multiplayer and matchmaking is unparalleled on a console. The overall experience is fluid and the evolution from Halo CE to Reach has adapted very well to the rapidly-changing gaming world. IMHO, the best Halo experience is with all the media - games/books/graphic novels/movies. A couple of the novels are pretty pedestrian and are essentially recaps of Halo CE and Halo 2, but The Fall of Reach and some of the other supporting canon is great. I really hope someone can get fully behind a movie and that Nylund is the screenwriter, or at least the main consultant.

Re:Advice

[HaZardman27]

I always considered Halo to be a mash up of Ringworld, Aliens, Ender's Game, and Starship Troopers. As far as an homage to these sci-fi heavyweights goes, I think they did a pretty good job.

Re:Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

The Halo books are for children, not for adults. They're only page turners because the words are small, easily comprehended, and the plots are thin and spotty.

For a good SciFi novel, pass all the rest and pick up Robert A. Heinleins' Starship Troopers.

Re:Advice

[tophermeyer]

I was surprised. I borrowed "The Fall of Reach" from a friend expecting it to be barely readable garbage. It was really well written, and happened to also tell a pretty cool story.

Re:Advice

[FinchWorld]

Back in bungies marathon days, the terminals kind of represent what you get in the halo books. However this game seems to go against what was written in Halo: Fall of reach (what other spartans?) and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, which features...

SPOILER

Spartan 3s launching a more or less suicide attack against a covernant world in which 2 spartan 3s survive. These spartan 3s were, again, recruited from kidnapped children with promising DNA, not elite soldiers (which were the spartan 1s).

Re:Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because squeakers totally want to sit down in front of a book and read about Halo, not pwn n00bs and insult the fuck out of people 20 years older than them when they make a kill.

I take it you've had your ass handed to you by youngsters quite often.

P.S. Get off his lawn.

Re:Advice

[AndrewNeo]

They shouldn't, either, because all three times a Halo has been visited.. guess when it was? While you were playing Master Chief in the Halo games. You were never on the structures for a long period of time (no more than a couple of days) and were the only Spartan alive, so I assume stories about being on Halo (unless from the Covenant side) wouldn't be very interesting (See the second book, Halo: The Flood.)

I'm happy with the time spent on the Halos being explored inside the games. There is so much else out there in the "Halo universe" that can be covered in writing, or even more games.

Re:Advice

[tlhIngan]

Read the books. Seriously. The Halo series is decent and fun, and certainly has its moments...but it's hardly deserving of the legendary status people have applied to it. The books, however...the books are amazing. The storyline makes for a great series of sci-fi novels, and are all page-turners.

The best Halo experience isn't on a TV screen, but in a book. Just a bit of advice.

I will agree with this. The books are quite good, especially the ones by Nylund.

Halo Reach itself is in an interesting spot because a lot of prior details have been fleshed out by the later books (which explore earlier parts of the Halo universe), and it has to take place before Halo: The Fall of Reach (the first book, and the prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved (game), which is also in book form as Halo: The Flood).

I suppose the part I wish to have is Halo 2 and 3 done up in book form (the first three books cover the events just prior to Halo: CE (The Fall of Reach), Halo CE itself (The Flood) and the period between Halo: CE and Halo 2 (First strike).

Just FYI for anyone considering getting the books, Microsoft is re-releasing the first three and Evolutions with more backmatter and other content (but not altering the main story itself). The Fall of Reach was released last month (August 3rd), while The Flood is due to be released at the end of this month (Sept. 30 according to Amazon). October and November will see the re-release of Halo Evolutions as a split 2-volume set (volume 1 in october, volume 2 in november), while December sees the re-release of First Strike just before the holidays.

Greg Bear's books on the Forerunners is due to be released in January. So if you haven't got the books yet, you might want to wait for the new editions. No word on whether or not the 4th through 6th books in the series will be re-released though.

Re:Advice

[tophermeyer]

Bungie's people talked about some of their inspirations during the press around the release of the first Halo. As far as I remember Starship Troopers, Ender's Game, and Ringworld were big sources of inspiration (Ringworld for obvious reasons).

Re:Advice

[Pojut]

I did a little happy dance when I found out Greg Bear was handling the Forerunner stories. He's easily one of the best Sci-Fi writers out there today.

Re:Advice

[tophermeyer]

For a good SciFi novel, pass all the rest and pick up Robert A. Heinleins' Starship Troopers.

So your suggestion is to skip every other sci-fi novel that is not itself a wildly successful classic and the book to which most other sci-fi combat stories are compared? Your bookshelf must be pretty bare.

The Halo books are for children, not for adults...For a good SciFi novel, pass all the rest and pick up Robert A. Heinleins' Starship Troopers.

...aaaaand in case you weren't aware, some of Heinlein's best work was his children's stories.

Re:Advice

[bluefoxlucid]

Halo is an FPS. It has a "story," meaning we tell you something for 5 minutes and say "GO KILLING. BY THE WAY, GRAPHICS!!!" The story explains why the pretty pictures involve glowing shit and space ships, that's all; most of the story is imaginary, and the game really has just about no plot (in the same way a Megaman game has just about no plot... try the whole Megaman X series, yeah the characters talk and there's a situation but it's so god damn thin... it's not a page-turner, it's a "get the fuck out of my way, Zero's Z-saber is awesome and I want to kill more shit").

The books for many, many sci-fi games like Doom/Doom3, Myst, Halo, and Starcraft are epic. They actually weave a story, and the story's usually written by someone not involved with the games: they find a scifi writer, say "this game has this little framework so have fun," and they run through the whole gambit of writing an interesting sci-fi story.

Interesting with the books is I don't think they can actually take on an epic-level quality like Age of Misrule, The Gap Cycle, or The Templar Chronicles (or story-heavy games like Xenosaga in particular). Yes you can write good books, good stories, etc; but in some cases the characters are alive, flat out. They have a story to be told, and the author sits down and conveys that. This isn't "I want to write a story, let me use literary strategy;" it's just this... feeling... that something is supposed to happen, so it happens in the book. That's why some stories are "Lord of the Rings all over again" and others are "Amazing, epic, and a refreshment in an endless sea of people trying to be Tolkien." Sure, a Lord-of-the-Rings-alike is interesting, maybe even well-written and a good read; but hey, nobody said they had to be bad.

At least they're not pushing crap, though, eh?

Re:Advice

[bluefoxlucid]

The Gap Cycle. You have to work through the first book and a half; it gets interesting in the second half of the second book, and then gets epic less than a hundred pages into the third book. It burns hot right to the end and then resolves cleanly and satisfyingly. I think there's a new story to follow (this one's complete), but Donaldson has no ideas for where to go and so has chosen not to write at this time. He has acknowledged to me (I queried him, because I can see the topic and the flow from here but no details) that the characters definitely do have a lot open to them; but he has no plans on this because he doesn't have a story to write.

Re:Advice

[Requiem18th]

Sorta, but you have to admit that "Highly Advanced Ancient Human Civilization" is a) Totally cliché at this point, b) In dire need of some serious explaining why there isn't any evidence on the fossil registry that any of this happened. Any story with this template is relegated to Sci-Fantasy genre.

Re:Advice

[HungryHobo]

"Halo: The Fall of Reach" was a fantastic book, it would have stood perfectly well on it's own as a sci fi book without any games.
Similarly First Strike Was a great read.
Eric Nylund brought those two books to life.
Ghosts of Onyx was pretty good but not quite as memorable.

Halo: Contact Harvest while it didn't have quite the same flair and consistency of the above was a solid book and I enjoyed it.
For me Joseph Staten focuses a bit much on the feelings of the characters but it's still a good read.

The Flood is more of a walk-through of the Halo game.
I couldn't even finish it.
a book has to be pretty bad for me to put it down in disgust.
If I wanted a game walkthrough I'll go to gamefaqs.
It put me off ever again buying any book by William C. Dietz
Skip it and you lose nothing.

if they make a movie they better hire Nylund for the script.

To anyone who's not familiar with the books I have to say, the halo series of books actually stand pretty well on their own. (except "The flood")
They're not just crap shoveled out the door to cash in on a franchise like some game/movie book adaptions out there.

Re:Advice

[Requiem18th]

And Consider Phlebas isn't really much more than a Tresure Island/Pirates of the Caribean IN SPACE!

It is just an excuse to introduce The Culture, the most interesting details are in the addendums. Remarkably, in that the titular Culture is introduced as the antagonists.

Re:Advice

[oldmac31310]

YES! Iain M. Banks is great.

Re:Advice

[oldmac31310]

Sir, you are discounting Bank's remarkable writing ability.

Re:Advice

[AdamThor]

I don't think anyone has ever claimed that the Halo games are a technical marvel, but as far as I'm concerned, Bungie's work with multiplayer and matchmaking is unparalleled on a console.

The limitation of 4 player / console games supporting system link ensures that the Halo franchise will be the most popular of relatively few games available on XBOX.

Assuming that even HALO itself continues to support this mode...

Re:Advice

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

You forgot to add Sentai show. This applies both to the Covenant forces in single player, and the general livery seen in multiplayer.

Personally I think this is the secret sauce. Disparage it all you like, but Halo is one of the few major shooter titles to really flood the screen with a striking spectrum of colour. It's an under-appreciated design choice; Colour is visually interesting element and most modern games are disgracefully desaturated.

Re:Advice

[AdamThor]

Interesting. I thought the first book was the most interesting, with it's "the real story..." take on events. After that it became a fairly straightforward 6 Million Dollar Man antihero story.

Re:Advice

[saintofsaints]

The vast majority of people disagree with you.

Re:Advice

[AmigaMMC]

I second that, I read all the book and they add a lot to the series, especially those written by Eric Nylund which includes the Fall of Reach (my favorite). "The Flood" is the weakest one as it mimics the game step by step, written by William C. Dietz, at times it can even be boring because of the writing style. Anyway, any fan of the game Halo would appreciate the books because they expand on the Halo universe and John's (master chief) past and how it all came to be.

Re:Advice

[MintOreo]

I share all the same sentiments. Don't even bother with The Flood, and read Fall of Reach and First Strike if you're at all interested.

Re:Advice

[Killall -9 Bash]

When the 17 year old Mountain Dew addicts get you down, switch to playing on servers with friendly fire==on. That shit is a whole other ballgame. You'll feel so much better when twitchy-McFastFingers can't tell red from blue.

Re:Advice

[lattyware]

I agree, I think the Halo books are the best adaptations I have ever come across - normally book->film, film->book, game->book, film->game, etc... they just all fail miserably, not the case with the Halo novels. As to not deserving of it's legendary status, I think that's a matter of dispute. A lot of people love to hate Halo because it's so popular, but it did some great things. I think it's greatest feat is unfortunately missed so often due to matchmaking - Halo, since the original, and now we are at Reach, even more so, has always been amazingly good at letting you customise the multiplayer experience. Get out of matchmaking and play 'Custom Games' - even better, do so in a LAN setup with some friends. The gametypes are amazingly customisable, and since Halo 3, so are the maps (Reach's map editor has been fine tuned) - the ease at which anyone can create content is great, and it means that you can make amazingly different and interesting games very quickly. Unfortunately, Matchmaking makes you play predefined setups, and totally bypasses all of this. Good for the mindless masses, but not nearly as much fun as the custom games you can make. There isn't a game around that matches Reach's ability to configure maps and gametypes, to a huge extent, very easily. It's impressive and fun. As to the campaign, maybe I am biased because I have read the books, but I have always found the plot engaging and interesting. And I have always found the campaign fun. As to this article, I find it odd he mentions the smoothness of the engine, I found the complete opposite, I felt like I was playing at 20fps or lower half of the time, and had a lot of stuttering. Maybe it's just a bad sign from my console - but I definitely didn't feel that it was smooth. It looked excellent for a 360 game, but it felt like trying to play a game on a slightly older PC that can't quite handle it. On a final note, Bungie really did put a load of stuff for the fans in there. When I noticed that one building in the campaign was a complete remake of a Halo 2 multiplayer map, I laughed. It was a surreal moment when I suddenly recognised my surroundings, and was able to navigate it perfectly, despite this being my first time through the campaign. Was also happy to see my favourite Halo 2 map (Ascension) remade faithfully. I sunk a lot of hours into Halo 2 at LANs with friends, and although I probably won't play Reach as much due to me not gaming as much now, I can say that it really does appear to be an excellent game.

Re:Advice

[bluefoxlucid]

You weren't paying enough attention to what was going on on and around the Earth then. The first book was pretty horrible... not bad writing, but brutal and a harsh read if you're not emotionally ready to handle that kind of thing in fiction. A lot of people turn away pretty quick there; the rest get bored with the second book (but at least Morn's actions make sense; without The Real Story, she'd be an overblown and unbelievable character, fake and lifeless).

Re:Advice

[HaZardman27]

You know I never really consciously noticed it before, but you're absolutely right. The diversity of color that the environments and players display really allow battles to stand out in your memory. This may even add a sense of pleasantness when recalling past battles, which may in turn add something to the "addictiveness" of the games.

Re:Advice

[Chaos Incarnate]

While you're correct about the rereleses of the three novels originally released by Del Rey, the Evolutions rerelease shouldn't be expanded; it'll just be the same content as before, but in two mass-market paperbacks instead of one hardcover or trade paperback.

Re:Advice

[Agent ME]

The Spartan 1 program is rarely mentioned at all in the Halo stories (unless it's in the last two books).

Spartan 2s were kidnapped children who were trained and then augmented to be stronger. The Spartan 3s were similar, but their training and augmentations were quicker and a bit shoddier than that of the Spartan 2's. They also aged at an accelerated rate IIRC.

I didn't see much in Halo Reach that went against what happened in Fall of Reach - there were plenty of Spartans in Fall of Reach - just Master Chief was the only surviving one up for fighting left on the Pillar of Autumn. Though Halo Reach may have changed some details about where the Pillar of Autumn and Cortana were at some parts of Fall of Reach but I can't really remember too much of Fall of Reach.

Re:Advice

[FreonTrip]

ALL the rest? So we just toss Peter Watts, Charlie Stross, Stanislaw Lem, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, Alan Dean Foster, Harlan Ellison, and all the rest aside just to read Starship Troopers? I'm not even sure it's one of Heinlein's very best...

Re:Advice

[Agent ME]

>Halo is an FPS. It has a "story," meaning we tell you something for 5 minutes and say "GO KILLING. BY THE WAY, GRAPHICS!!!" ... that's all; most of the story is imaginary, and the game really has just about no plot

I don't see how these things really connect. Of course what the player does is killing. Just because the player is doing things besides exclusively pondering the story just make the story imaginary and make the game have no plot. The main Halo trilogy games are intensely story-driven.

>The books for many, many sci-fi games like Doom/Doom3, Myst, Halo, and Starcraft are epic. They actually weave a story, and the story's usually written by someone not involved with the games: they find a scifi writer, say "this game has this little framework so have fun,"

Bungie worked closely with the writers of the different Halo novels to flesh out the path that the novels should take, and made sure that they matched up well with and continued the Halo canon.

Re:Advice

[tlhIngan]

While you're correct about the rereleses of the three novels originally released by Del Rey, the Evolutions rerelease shouldn't be expanded; it'll just be the same content as before, but in two mass-market paperbacks instead of one hardcover or trade paperback.

They're actually expanded.

In an interview with Frank O'Connor (head honcho at Microsoft's 343 Industries (MS's Halo IP division, essentially)), he mentioned the books were split to make them more affordable and there were two new short stories in them.

I can't remember which interview it was said though - but it was mentioned...

Re:Advice

[Com2Kid]

You really need to throw in a recommendation for some sort of antidepressant before your recommend anyone read The Gap Cycle.

The most depressing series of novels...

Re:Advice

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I always found I enjoyed the novels and stories written by Eric Nylund the most. Many of the other novels were pretty shallow and unoriginal in my opinion. That's just me though.

Re:Advice

[FinchWorld]

What about the spartan 2s left fighting on reach that fled into the underground complex, to be saved in first strike?

Then lost again in ghosts of onyx.

Re:Advice

[Wyatt Earp]

Or Player of Games, theres nearly as many pages devoted to life on the Orbital in Player of Games as there was in Consider Phlebas.

The time on the island and the time at the game of Damage don't really have anything to do with Vavatch, they could be anywhere, but the first chunk of Player of Games talks about the Orbital.

Re:Advice

[thunderclap]

Have you considered that the powers that be found evidence on the fossil registry and covered it because it embarrassed them? So it isn't totally cliché. Its just that all the good writers have done it and are bored with it.

Re:Advice

[dcam]

Life is too short to read books spawned by movies or games, particularly sci-fi. I'd prefer not to us my min to go sifting for diamonds through raw sewage.

Re:Advice

[sew3521]

I will 2nd this. I am a huge fan of the books and own all of them. Start with Contact Harvest and work your way up from there.

Re:Advice

[iainl]

Good point. PoG is a better introduction to Banks-in-M-mode than CP on a more general level, too. Mainly because it's a better book.

I see a lot of Ringworld references above, but the Halo Orbital always seemed to be quite explicitly around the size of a Banks one, rather than a Niven.

Re:Advice

[Requiem18th]

Nah I'm tired of these grand conspiracy theories that sound too much like creationist propaganda.

If paleontologists found big shiny plasma guns they'll bring them to museums for sure, exactly what religion are they covering up to?

But really, the problem is not that there aren't sings of the forerunners on the ground, but that there is *everything* but signs of the forerunners on the ground.

From Mammals to birds to frogs fish and plants, the ground is *made* of fragments of history telling us a big epic tale of aeons of development and evolution that simply don't have room for much reworking. It really isn't possible to say: "oh and by the way we developed FTL travel for a while but forgot how to pass that on".

About the only "realistic" way to achieve that would involve time travel of some sort.

Re:The more important question

[elrous0]

It's going to be day-and-date with the release of Uncharted 2 on the 360.

Gotta Say

[zombieChan51]

The game does look beautiful. Almost makes me want to get an Xbox to play this.Is there any chance of this coming out for PC.

Re:Gotta Say

[iainl]

Doesn't exactly seem likely to happen, given there's no sign of a PC release for Halo 3 or ODST yet.

Re:Gotta Say

[ciderbrew]

If they did, you would need a live account. I think that would stop 90-99% of the people that post here from playing it.

Re:Gotta Say

[bertoelcon]

The game does look beautiful. Almost makes me want to get an Xbox to play this.Is there any chance of this coming out for PC.

Not a chance.

Re:Gotta Say

[Haffner]

/rant

As an enthusiastic fan of multiplayer gaming, let me be the second to say that Windows Live is perhaps the stupidest, most awkward, piece of crap to have ever been designed for gaming. It is inane, it removes functionality, it insists on running in the background while providing no added value, and it screws up everything. Until microsoft realizes what a useless, stupid, infuriating platform this is, they are essentially shooting their pc games in the feet, knees, stomach, and at least a few other vital organs. Please fix this, as some games (Batman Arkham Asylum, Bioshock 2) are actually worth playing were it not for the idiocy that is Windows Live.

/rant

Re:Gotta Say

[tlhIngan]

Doesn't exactly seem likely to happen, given there's no sign of a PC release for Halo 3 or ODST yet.

Highly unlikely there will be a PC release. First of all, Microsoft has the rights to the Halo universe (they acquired them when they bought Bungie, and when they spun off Bungie, they kept Halo). Secondly, Bungie and Activision have an exclusive 10 year partnership. Thus, it's highly unlikely that Bungie can license Halo but not have it published by Microsoft Game Studios.

Third, well, I think Halo 2 on PC didn't do terribly well, mostly because it required Vista. So with potential returns like that, it's not likely that Halo 3, ODST or Reach will ever make it to PC.

It isn't the last Halo game ever - after all, Microsoft owns the rights to Halo and you can be sure they're going to capitalize on it, but this will probably be the last Halo game from Bungie for a long while.

Re:Gotta Say

[VGPowerlord]

How does it compare to Steam?

Then again, Steam offers things like in-game IMs, Steam cloud support for game settings (and with certain single-player games, saved games), etc...

And achievements. I have over 360 of them in Team Fortress 2 alone.

Re:Gotta Say

[imakemusic]

It doesn't.

Worst are the games that you can get through Steam that also come with Live. GTA IV came with Steam, Windows Live and Rockstar Social. Utterly ridiculous.

Re:Gotta Say

[TheRaven64]

What about for the Mac? You know, the platform that Halo was originally written for...

Re:Gotta Say

[VGPowerlord]

You only have 322. Must you always lie, Ross?

I was guessing, as steamcommunity.com is blocked where I work. I know I have most of the TF2 achievements, minus about 40-50; I was under the impression that TF2 had about 400 achievements.

A just as pertinent question is:
Why did you take the time to look that up?

Re:Gotta Say

[elrous0]

They should make a Halo game that's more like the real military--where Master Chief has to spend most of his life doing boring tasks, standing in line, training, sleeping in the field, and filling out bullshit paperwork.

Re:Gotta Say

[PyroMosh]

I'm playing through Halo 2 for the first time on the PC right now. Why is it a worthless game because? Because it's no longer brand new? Please.

Halo is About Multi-Player

[RobotRunAmok]

Like it or not, judging any title in the franchise around it's single-player "campaign" is like passing judgment on a car based upon the music system and seat comfort.

And, sorry, call me old school or just plain old, but whenever I read a review that disparages a videogame's "story" I chuckle. That said, there is a whole series of "Halo" books for people who confuse space marines with Hamlet, or just want their science fiction literature in BFG-sized bits.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Darkness404]

The full benefits of multiplayer don't last forever on console games. Yeah, it might be fun for a few years but then either the servers get shut off or the matchmaking system doesn't work well and you are waiting 15 mins to get into a game.

Yeah, there always is system-link or physical multiplayer but most games now for multiplayer focus it online.

25 years from now, the single player mode will still be available along with local multiplayer but Xbox live will not. If you want a game you can enjoy 25 years from now, the single player mode is important.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Pojut]

whenever I read a review that disparages a videogame's "story" I chuckle

Sometimes, a story is integral to a video game. Video games provide a medium that enables stories to be told in a way that would otherwise not be possible.

Other times, a story doesn't matter at all. Some games are hugely successful with literally no story.

Dragon Age and Tetris will both suck up hours upon hours of your time, but for entirely different reasons. One keeps you coming back for the depth of its narrative, and the other keeps you coming back for sheer simplicity. Each type of game has its place in the culture, and both of them are equally important.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[ductonius]

"Halo is About Multi-Player or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Car Analogy"

With that attitude the last thing I would call you is "oldschool" or "old". Videogames have always had to stand on something other than multiplayer and graphics, and anyone who was actually "old school" will run out of fingers and toes counting videogames that had mind blowing stories. Story can be done as competently in videogames as anywhere else, the designers just have to care.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Haffner]

What about, say, Starcraft 2 - a compelling single player story, with totally unrelated excellent multiplayer game? The two are not mutually exclusive. It's just that all too frequently the way the devs go about writing it is either "Let's get this multiplayer thing down and then add some story" or "Let's take our single player stuff and make it online."

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[NoZart]

I guess that depends on taste. I played through H2 and H3 Campaign and really liked the pacing and soundtrack and how it flows and climaxes like an action movie (especially H3 with the last "driving away from destruction" - level).
Then you go online to meet Killer marines with childs voices (that often have necrophilia for my dead mom) and pretty repetitive twitch shooting - which is not such a fine thing when playing with a joypad; Gears handled this part a lot better with its deliberately slow flow.

Coop Campaign was the sweet spot for me. Just 3 friends, and some ongoing gameplay with some flow instead of killing the same people over and over in a confined space for 10 minutes. So for me, reviewing the campaign was actually the best thing that could happen. Everyone else talks about "forges" and "playlists" and whatnot in their reviews anyways so i actually am quite happy to read such a review for a change.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Pojut]

Starcraft 2 is an excellent example of a compelling narrative combined with compelling gameplay...practically the epitome of an amalgamation of the two. However, Blizzard also spent lord knows how many years and how much money producing it...not many developers have the money or the talent to do both in the same game. Most have to choose one or the other and go with it.

Still, I agree...sometimes, a game can have both. Ikaruga is a great example of a game that has immensely fun gameplay, with a deep yet wholly unnecessary storyline.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[timeOday]

I've played the Halo 3 campaign a couple times now and don't understand the narrative at all. The Princess Leah hologram quietly muttering unintelligible things, the "hungry belly" voice grumbling unintelligible things that shake the screen, the little flying robot that turns from good to bad over and over (as do the zombies at some point)... it needs subtitles at the very least.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Hatta]

judging any title in the franchise around it's single-player "campaign" is like passing judgment on a car based upon the music system and seat comfort.

Assuming the car gets from point A to point B, those are the next most important qualities of a car. I'll take a 15 year old buick with comfy seats and nice sound over a cramped, noisy sports car anytime.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Pojut]

Why not? There are hundreds of little side stories, all of which make up the world of Dragon Age. There are many games like this, but Dragon Age truly succeeded in making a world feel as "real" and fleshed out as the Star Wars universe. "Depth of narrative" isn't a reference to the paper-thin main plot...it's a reference to the number of (and size of) different stories in the gameworld itself.

Much like Star Wars, there's enough history, backstory, and goings-on in Dragon Age to fuel dozens of books, games, and movies. You could have an entire series on Dwarven politics and history in the Dragon Age universe alone.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[natehoy]

If you want a game you can enjoy 25 years from now, the single player mode is important.

Yes, but also if you want a game you can enjoy 25 years from now, you'd better buy 10 of whatever runs it and hope to hell that one of them lasts 25 years. Most video games released in 1985 years ago were arcade games. Sure, you could have bought "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" for DOS on an 80286 that year, but only on 5 1/4" floppy, and I'm not sure if you could successfully emulate DOS 3.1 on an 80286 using modern hardware very well. I don't know about you, but my last 80286 didn't make it to 1990. Neither did my TI 99/4A or my Apple IIe.

I have books that I've owned for more than 25 years and still enjoy. I don't even have the hardware to run the games I bought 25 years ago.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha. I haven't played more than 15 minutes of multiplayer in the past 5 years, and most of that was the Reach Beta. With all the griefers and racists, it's a waste of time.

Story is the most important thing... i.e. WHY am I trying to kill that blue alien, and why is he trying to kill me? Give me something to believe in and to engage my interest. Otherwise it's just a pointless series of reaction-time tests.

Heck, I still play the original HALO a LOT. The original has something I've not seen much of in ANY game... two sets of enemies that hate each other as much as they hate you. Some of the most fun is had mixing it up or watching them beat crap out of each other.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[bluefoxlucid]

Xenosaga.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Darkness404]

Um, I've got a ton of NES games from 25 years ago and they still run perfectly fine. I even have a working NES, it might be a bit temperamental at times, but it works. I also have one of the remake top-loading NES/Famicom systems and all my games play just fine there. Heck, I've got a working 2600 system and games from the 70s!

Yeah, cartridges are going to be more reliable than CDs/DVDs but DVDs/CDs are easier to rip. But I still have some CDs from the late 80s that still work just fine after 20 some odd years.

Due to the ease of making universal disk drives, the optical disk isn't going to go away anytime soon unless SSDs become cheap enough to put "buyable" software on and movies.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[NeutronCowboy]

Be thankful you didn't have to play the Halo 2 campaign. Only single-player game I never finished. It was brutal in its asinine gameplay and completely disjointed story (or lack of it, rather).

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Fwipp]

Maybe that's true. But when I put down $60 for a game, it's not for the enjoyment that I'll get 25 years from now.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Darkness404]

But if you are going to pay $60 for a game, wouldn't you want to be able to pick up and play it, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years from now and it be just as fun as it was the day it was released? Quite honestly, I think that is the mark of a really great game, if you can't do that, its not that great. For example, Super Mario Bros. is a great example, its just as much fun today as it was when it was released. Final Fantasy VII is also another great game that stood the test of time, barring the load times, its a very fun game. Same thing with Yoshi's Island and Doom. If you have to see the game in rose tinted glasses with a qualifier with "for its time..." the game failed. Super Mario Bros wasn't a great platformer for its time, it was a great platformer. Final Fantasy VII wasn't a great RPG for its time, it is simply a great RPG. Etc.

If I'm going to buy a game for full price on launch day, it better be a classic or close to one. and not a tech-demo style game emphasizing graphics or temporary features over long-term fun. I'm not going to be impressed with HD graphics 20 years from now, I'm not going to be enjoying a multiplayer feature that no longer exists, however, if the game is fun, it will be just as great as when it came out.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[TheRaven64]

I take it you've not heard of DOSBox. I can still happily run pretty much all of the games from before 1995 that I own using it. Slightly newer ones that didn't include DRM also work nicely with WINE. I don't have a 5.25" floppy drive anymore, but I copied my old games onto my 8086 PC's 40MB hard drive, then to my 386's 60MB drive (via LapLink) and then on to subsequent machines.

My 8086 ran at 8MHz (it was actually a NEC V30H, not an Intel chip). My current machine has a dual-core 2.16GHz chip, and each cycle it executes considerably more instructions than the 8086 ever managed. Emulating a platform that old takes a tiny fraction of its CPU power. Even if it had to emulate the 8086, using a naive interpreter (no dynamic recompilation, just fetch-decode-emulate), and took a couple of hundred instructions per 8086 instruction, it would still be considerably faster than the old DOS machine. The video hardware back then was an EGA frame buffer - little more than a blob of memory with a DAC attached. Emulating that is also trivial. Sound came from the PC speaker.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[karnal]

Yeah, but the storyline in Ikaruga isn't at all in your face during the game. If you want to read about it, you have to pick up the instruction manual for the game or read wikipedia.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[kevinmenzel]

My favourite was the Halo 2 "cut-scene commentary" that was included on the DVD accompanying the upper editions of Halo 3 - where essentially the Developers were like "So the jump here in the plot doesn't make much sense... to be fair, that's where sections 7 through 11 were supposed to go..."

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Bemopolis]

Luckily Microsoft has solved this problem, by making a console that self-destructs after a few months of heavy use.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Pojut]

That's what I was getting at. Knowing the story behind Ikaruga is completely unecessary, and has nothing to do with why Ikaruga is such an awesome game...but the story itself is still really interesting.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[shutdown -p now]

Videogames have always had to stand on something other than multiplayer and graphics

On the contrary, it was the realization that games can be focused primarily or even solely on MP (remember UO, Q3 and UT?) that brought the revolution of MP gameplay that was so sorely needed. This isn't to say that SP games are worse - I still enjoy Fallout 2 more than any MP game I play these days - but the point is that SP and MP are simply two vastly different worlds, and drawing comparisons between games from each is just pointless

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Tuidjy]

You have a point. I have two cars. One is a 2005, immaculate, 460hp Volvo S60-R. The other is a totaled 1990 Toyota Supra. Both have bucket seats, but before a cop on a cell-phone smashed the Supra, I had installed a $2500 sound system.

Guess what, I still drive the Supra to work. I pay about 25% more for gas, and the ride is way rougher, but I enjoy the surround speakers, and there is something to be said about being able to push your right of way to the hilt (and then some) No one cuts off or rides the ass of a totaled car.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[BJ_Covert_Action]

The Halo 3 story line was a poached piece of shit. In order to understand 90% of what is going on in Halo 3, you need to read the short story in Halo: Evolutions by Karen Traviss, which, incidentally, is one of the better sci-fi short stories in that book. It touches on and develops some of the interesting bits of science that may go into developing and sustaining a smart AI, such as clock cycle length, and sensory input.

But yeah, Halo 3 was a rush release by Microsoft to milk the last $$'s from it's flagship product. Considering that they butchered the canon and time line established by Nylund in the original Halo trilogy of books, and simultaneously disrupted continuity through various weapons and technologies being present in Halo: Contact Harvest (part of the Halo 3 marketing campaign), I would wager that either Bungie, or Microsoft didn't give a damn about the story of Halo 3 at all. They just wanted to try to recreate the glory of Halo: CE as best they could.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Turiko]

If you want to play a game 25 years from now, you should buy it on an open system. Unless the xbox360 completely gets cracked and emulated in that time, only pc games will still work, if popular enough.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[MooseMuffin]

Interesting. While the flood were a cool change of pace initially, that wore off quickly and I missed the more tactical encounters with the elites. They brought the flood back for halo 2 and 3 and those were easily my least favorite parts of those games. I'm happy they won't be making an appearance in Reach.

As for how important single player is, I've bought games without single player modes and games without multiplayer modes. I don't consider it a deal breaker if one of those components happens to be weak or missing as long as the other part is strong enough to make up for it.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Burning1]

Like it or not, judging any title in the franchise around it's single-player "campaign" is like passing judgment on a car based upon the music system and seat comfort.

And judging a game by it's multi-player is like passing judgement on a car based on how comfortable it is to screw your wife in the back seat.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[ion.simon.c]

I don't know about you, but my last 80286 didn't make it to 1990.

I had a Tandy 1000TL with a 20MB "Hard Card" (read: harddrive bolted on to an IDE expansion board) that made it past Y2K. I booted the fucker up after the turn of the millennium. There was nary a bug in sight. Midnight Rescue! and Castle ran without a hitch. :D

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Mike Mentalist]

But if you are going to pay $60 for a game, wouldn't you want to be able to pick up and play it, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years from now and it be just as fun as it was the day it was released? Quite honestly, I think that is the mark of a really great game, if you can't do that, its not that great. For example, Super Mario Bros. is a great example, its just as much fun today as it was when it was released. Final Fantasy VII is also another great game that stood the test of time, barring the load times, its a very fun game. Same thing with Yoshi's Island and Doom. If you have to see the game in rose tinted glasses with a qualifier with "for its time..." the game failed. Super Mario Bros wasn't a great platformer for its time, it was a great platformer. Final Fantasy VII wasn't a great RPG for its time, it is simply a great RPG. Etc.

If I'm going to buy a game for full price on launch day, it better be a classic or close to one. and not a tech-demo style game emphasizing graphics or temporary features over long-term fun. I'm not going to be impressed with HD graphics 20 years from now, I'm not going to be enjoying a multiplayer feature that no longer exists, however, if the game is fun, it will be just as great as when it came out.

Whilst that would be nice it doesn't work like that in reality. Games evolve too fast for me to be concerned about playing it in 5, 10, 25, etc. years time and I really cannot think of any game from 25 years ago that I still want to play. Super Mario Bros may still be a fun game but the desperately aged graphics would put me off and I would probably choose a different game to play instead.

FFVII isn't great either and I would get bored of Doom fairly quickly.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Narcogen]

The Halo 3 story line was a poached piece of shit. In order to understand 90% of what is going on in Halo 3, you need to read the short story in Halo: Evolutions by Karen Traviss, which, incidentally, is one of the better sci-fi short stories in that book. It touches on and develops some of the interesting bits of science that may go into developing and sustaining a smart AI, such as clock cycle length, and sensory input.

What?

I think I understand Halo 3's story pretty well, and I've never read that story. I think having played and paid attention to the cinematics in the previous two games is a lot more helpful and relevant. It may not be everybody's cup of tea-- even a lot of the fans are in it for the multiplayer and not the campaign-- but the games are the primary movers of the story here, not the spinoffs and the add-ons.

But yeah, Halo 3 was a rush release by Microsoft to milk the last $$'s from it's flagship product. Considering that they butchered the canon and time line established by Nylund in the original Halo trilogy of books, and simultaneously disrupted continuity through various weapons and technologies being present in Halo: Contact Harvest (part of the Halo 3 marketing campaign), I would wager that either Bungie, or Microsoft didn't give a damn about the story of Halo 3 at all. They just wanted to try to recreate the glory of Halo: CE as best they could.

Halo 2 was the rush, not Halo 3. Halo 3 was actually finished early.

Nylund is in no position to establish canon. He was hired to write novels for an established property. Bungie created Halo; now Microsoft owns it. Where the games and novels differ, the games are canon. Somehow I doubt Bungie went begging to Microsoft to get permission to publish some spinoff novels. Nylund did a great job and Fall of Reach is easily the best of the novelizations, but accusing the games of breaking established canon is putting the cart before the horse. Which came out first isn't the issue.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Narcogen]

That's the way I feel about it. Halo's soundtracks have all been exceptional, and campaign coop is my favorite way to play.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[Narcogen]

Hahahaha. I haven't played more than 15 minutes of multiplayer in the past 5 years, and most of that was the Reach Beta. With all the griefers and racists, it's a waste of time.

Story is the most important thing... i.e. WHY am I trying to kill that blue alien, and why is he trying to kill me? Give me something to believe in and to engage my interest. Otherwise it's just a pointless series of reaction-time tests.

Have to agree. I don't necessarily need an epic, but some context is nice. I also like to know why I'm supposed to be shooting things. I know not everybody cares-- some people just want the action of shooting things, and the reasons are irrelevant. However, I like to have at least enough fiction to hang my hat on-- a reason why I'm supposed to be performing the actions the game wants me to perform.

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[xtracto]

I've got an Atari 2600 from around 1980 and is still working. I specially like playing "Warlords" game with other people.

The quality of today's consoles suck (except Nintendo, I've got a "release day" Wii which is quite solid).

Re:Halo is About Multi-Player

[BJ_Covert_Action]

It's not about which came out first, it's about whether or not the cart is of higher quality than the horse. Frankly, the continuity and overall universe written by Nylund is and was a more complete product than the games. The games were developed to appeal to gamers. I get that. However, in terms of environment, the games really suck-failed at keeping things continuous. Take, for instance, the pistols in all three games. The pistol in Halo 1 was overpowered and basically ruined the multiplayer aspect. However, in terms of the story, it made perfect sense. It was a high-powered, compact, useful killing machine which is exactly what marines would need in an all out space war.

Now comes Halo 2 and, for reasons unexplained, standard issue pistols could fire faster, but had the scope removed. Now the pistols are less useful for marines. In an actual war, technology tends to progress forward, not backward.

Then comes Halo 3. Now the pistols not only lose their scope, but they also fire significantly slower, but somehow have more penetration depth (damage done). Again, what was once a useful tool for space marines is artificially gimped to appeal to gamers. The same thing happened to the shotgun (reduction in number of rounds in magazine).

I can understand that the games needed to do what they did to make the game fun. That's fine. However, in terms of continuity, which is important for establishing a canonical universe, many of the details of the games did not make sense. Thus, it seems better, to me at least, to make the printed texts at least some source of official canon, while the games are acknowledged as being a prime source of canon as well, but deviating where necessary in order to make the games more appealing.

That's my gripe. I'm not saying Nylund should be canon because his stuff came first. I am saying his writing should be considered part of canon because it was more robust, complete, and sensible in the larger scope of the Halo universe.

Re:The more important question

[iainl]

If we get wipEoutHD on the 360 in exchange, then I'm quite absurdly happy.

Bungie in 1996

[chebucto]

Just for the heck of it, here is a video of the Bungie world headquarters from 1996, back when they were Mac developers, and before they moved to the dark side and joined Microsoft.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFbrfmqOtbE

Re:Bungie in 1996

[LanMan04]

Yep. Halo was supposed to be a Mac title.

Re:Bungie in 1996

[msormune]

Yes, they were stupid as they could have made a lot more money from selling the game on Mac, as opposed to the PC and Xbox platforms. Stupid I tell you.

Re:Bungie in 1996

[elrous0]

I guess they'll just have to console themselves by sleeping with many beautiful women on giant piles of cash.

Re:Bungie in 1996

[elrous0]

I could be crazy, but I think I sense a little sarcasm here.

Re:Bungie in 1996

[Raenex]

I maxed out at 3 minutes. Man that was boring.

Re:Bungie in 1996

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I get your joke, but I wonder if they could have made more money by releasing for Playstation instead. I get the feeling Halo is 90% of the reason the original Xbox even got as big as it did. If it had never been released for Xbox, I wonder what kind of console-scape we would have today.

Too bad they can't put some effort towards testing

[Seakip18]

Anyone who bought a new 4GB slim version is screwed when it comes to co-op and multiplayer.

Having the flash drive does nothing.

How the hell do they release a title like this without some sort of testing, even when it was known way back in expansion pack Halo:ODST?

sooner or later...

[Thud457]

derp?

the Xbox is a just another Von Neumann machine, right?

Re:One last time?

[Darkness404]

No, Halo probably won't be done anymore by Bungie because its too restrictive. Essentially MS owns all the IP related to Halo meaning MS can do whatever they want to restrict Bungie. So if Bungie wants to make a Halo game for the Wii/PS3/DS/PSP/iPhone/etc. it all has to go through Microsoft which can reject it. Bungie as an independent company doesn't want those restrictions because they threaten its success by preventing it from expanding. So if Bungie develops a new series, its a lot better for them and MS will turn to another developer for Halo.

Re:Too bad they can't put some effort towards test

[Seakip18]

Whoops. That should have been "co-op and firefight". Multiplayer works fine with/without a hard drive.

Re:One last time?

[Kemanorel]

This is the last one for Bungie. Microsoft, if I recall correctly, is already planning on working with a new developer to "continue" the Halo series. I expect quality to drop...

Bungie, on the other hand, is taking their reputation and starting something new without being tied to being a first-party developer (again, from what I can recall... I have no links to back that up right now).

Re:One last time?

[LordKronos]

True. Halo: ODST even left a sort of cliffhanger at the end to make it seem like there will be an ODST2. However, the statement was not that this will be the last Halo game, but that "Bungie has returned to the IP one last time". This is clarified in the last paragraph of the review:

Bungie has built a huge fan base over the past nine years. For many, Halo: Reach will be the last true Halo game, now that Microsoft is taking over development of the series. Knowing this, Bungie really went all out to make this a game that gave players everything they could ask for.

Orginial Title

[Herkum01]

Halo: The Reach for more Money!

They will beat this horse to death, and then render it and send it to glue factory while trying to find any more value in it

Re:Orginial Title

[masmullin]

No it was Halo: Reach Around.

Re:Orginial Title

[elrous0]

They're not even in the same *league* as the jedi masters of milking franchises. And yes, Nintendo, I'm looking at you.

Re:why a $130 250gb HDD why M$ lock out 3rd party

[VGPowerlord]

why a $130 for 250gb HDD. Why M$ do you lock out 3rd party HDDs? why ban for USING YOUR OWN HDD?

One word: Greed.

Which also explains why they charge fift... whoops, sixty dollars a year for a glorified IM and game matchmaking service. Yes, it adds Twitter, Facebook, and NetFlix support as well, but all of those are also free for the PC and every other system they're on.

Obligatory

[Yvan256]

Just like that.

Re:One last time?

[grayshirtninja]

It's interesting to note that Bungie has a job position open for a "Software Development Engineer in Test (PS3)". A hopeful sign of things to come.

Mouse and keyboard support?

[Yvan256]

All the latest consoles have USB ports and yet companies keep releasing games that only support the gamepad with those silly small analog sticks. Halo, being a first-person shooter, would be much better with keyboard+mouse support.

Re:Mouse and keyboard support?

[saintofsaints]

That's really not going to happen, it makes little sense at all for them to put money into that when you break it down. They make Halo for the PC, though it takes a while, they do. Also there is a way to rig your keyboard and mouse to the xbox I've heard, but its kinda gay to need a desk while playing video games...

Re:Mouse and keyboard support?

[AdamThor]

Someone told me something funny, I don't know if it's true:

MS tried to make XBL a service for PC and Xbox combined, and let people from either platform play together in the same gamespace. The plan was scrapped though when all the keyboard + mousers mercilessly slaughtered the xbox joystickers.

The two control schemes are too widely disparate in performance, they'll never exist together in the same ecosystem.

Re:Mouse and keyboard support?

[Fumus]

With a mouse you will be able to aim way better than any other console player. This will give the mouse players an unfair advantage and as such, unless there is a match-making system for "pad-only" games, you won't be allowed to use a mouse.

Re:Mouse and keyboard support?

[Yvan256]

I wish they did allow it, just to prove to those console players that a gamepad really does suck for first-person shooter games.

Re:Mouse and keyboard support?

[Osty]

MS tried to make XBL a service for PC and Xbox combined, and let people from either platform play together in the same gamespace. The plan was scrapped though when all the keyboard + mousers mercilessly slaughtered the xbox joystickers.

They did that, and they released it. The game was Shadowrun and you can still play it. I never did, but IIRC they did a lot of tweaking to balance gamepad vs. keyboard and mouse players, and ultimately were criticized that they made the mouse aiming too sloppy to compensate.

Xbox Live still exists for PC gamers as Games for Windows Live and uses the same gamertag, achievements system, DLC, etc. However no other game besides Shadowrun has tried to get console and PC players together.

Re:Mouse and keyboard support?

[PyroMosh]

With Halo, this is easy to prove.

Find someone who is good at online Halo multiplayer on the XBox. This is obviously subjective, but you don't want to blame the results of this test on just having a poor player.

Take two PCs running Halo 1 or 2.

Get a wired XBox 360 controller.

Create a new game just 1v1. You take one PC and use KBM controls, while the XBox player uses a 360 controller on the other PC.

After you dominate the other player, go online on a public server and watch as he or she is dominated by virtually every player they encounter.

I did this test with Halo:CE 5 or 6 years ago, and I just felt sorry for the guy, really.

Splitters!

[TheMiddleRoad]

They're not members of the People's Halo Liberation Front. No, the Front for People's Halo Liberation. No, the Liberation of Halo People's Front. Never mind.

But seriously, I was so pissed when those SOB's went to the Dark Side. I remember watching them demonstrate Halo at MacWorld in '99. Then the knife in the back...

Damn you, Bob.

This is a good review, thanks for it.

[Silvercloud]

n/t

Re:This is a good review, thanks for it.

[NeutronCowboy]

Just in case you give too much credence to the review - there is one factually incorrect item in it. The skull (or gameplay option) that Soulskill thinks turns on some random benefit is called Tough Luck, and just means that the AI will always dodge headshots and grenades when it sees them coming. Makes me think that Soulskill played little Halo, because this is a fairly obvious change.

Re:The more important question

[Theoboley]

Probably the same day they port Duke Nukem Forever to the PS3.

Somehow DNF jokes aren't that funny anymore.... It makes me a little sad inside.

Isn't this supposed to be happening anyway?

Re:One last time?

[The Moof]

Bungie has returned to the IP one last time

They've been returning to the IP one last time for a while now (Reach being the 3rd time by my count). I believe the orignal Halo was going to be stand-alone, but it did well enough to warrant a sequel. They decided instead of a sequel, they'd do a trilogy, and Halo 3 was going to be the last one (announced during Halo 2's development). Then ODST came out as a result of making an expansion pack to Halo 3 (which turned into its own stand alone game). And now we have Reach.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the games, but them quitting Halo is like Brett Favre retiring from football.

Re:One last time?

[The Moof]

That's debatable since Bungie's Halo games pull in more cash in the course of a week than most game series see in their life-cycle (I think they said they're up to $200 million already). While Bungie may branch out and make some new games for other platforms, I wouldn't call it a stretch for them to come back and make another Halo game for the Xbox. Especially if 343 Studios doesn't do a particularly good job on the next one.

Re:why a $130 250gb HDD why M$ lock out 3rd party

[spire3661]

I would like to add 'a glorified matchmaking service for games THAT THEY DONT EVEN HOST. I would be FAR more willing ot pony up the money for Live is MS was actually doing something other then connecting clients and passing off the bandwidth to one of them.

Re:The more important question

[jorgander]

or PC. My first gen Xbox, Gamecube, and Wii haven't been used in a long time, and with the possible exception of the Gamecube (because Metroid is just that good) I regret buying them.

Don't give me that crap about developing for the PC being hard. We all know that MS/Sony/Nintendo pay game developers to make games only for their system, else there wouldn't be a reason to buy it. If they didn't have exclusivity, they wouldn't have anything.

I recall when I saw Halo 2 for PC on the shelf and was elated to finally play it. I didn't care that I had it months after the Xbox owners. But then I saw that the requirements included Vista - they may as well not have released it for the PC at all.

Re:One last time?

[Darkness404]

But they are tied to the success of a certain brand. I see Bungie as being a lot like Rare who made a video game based on IP they didn't own (Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye 007) and that forced them to essentially make another game with the same engine in the case of Goldeneye to really have a failproof plan. Investors and CEOs don't like uncertainty, Halo for Bungie is filled with uncertainty because for one its tied into Microsoft's platform which at this mid-way point seems rather sturdy but could, like the Mega Drive be filled with failed products that don't catch on. Plus, what about the successor to the 360? The Halo franchise is pretty much tied to the success of that if it comes down to it. And everything changed this generation. Sony, which was at the top before fell to last place and Nintendo which was last the previous generation has climbed to first place.

Developing your own IP allows you to take things in your own direction. Because, Bungie owns a lot of the Halo code much like Rare owned the game engine for Goldeneye but just didn't own the IP used in there. So it is better in the long term for Bungie to make a Halo-like game and establish their own independent IP than to continue using Halo which the future is uncertain.

Re:Sucks

[JohnnyComeLately]

And yet, you post up. I guess that makes you the Joe Biden of posting.

Graphics are moving in the wrong direction

[thrift24]

Does anyone else think the newer style graphics in ODST and Reach have actually gotten worse since the original?

The first Halo had a lot of luminosity and sort of a glossy sheen over structures in the environment giving the alien world a unique and strange feel, the world was bright in a building or outdoors keeping the mood lighter but also allowing you to see your enemies, and the back drops appeared to fit into the level giving epic views of the ring world you were fighting on.

Halo: Reach is dark almost everywhere making it very hard to recognize the difference between an enemy brute attempting to rip your face off or a random civilian you are supposed to be protecting. I attempted to resolve this by tuning my TVs picture mode to dynamic and upping the video brightness configuration in Halo: Reach to the highest setting, but lighting becomes uninteresting and also appears washed out while not making it much easier to identify targets. The sheen and lighting of the original Halo is not there at all, just as in ODST structures in the environment look cartoonified. Spartans and Elites are about the only things that retain some interesting lighting effects, everything else can catch a shadow, but doesn't seem to reflect light in anyway. The 2D backgrounds are non-immersive, obviously drawn, and separate from the 3d world.

Some of these lighting issues seemed forgivable in ODST as this was mainly an expansion pack and the real feature in ODST for me anyway was firefight which never seemed as dark. The use of VISR in ODST also helped to make up for the terrible lighting conditions, but at least so far I haven't seen anything like VISR in Halo: Reach. There is a night vision ability, but this just adds to the general brightness, effectively washing out everything in green.

Aside from all this at least on my xbox 360, the engine stutters(although infrequently), textures can be seen loading in even during some cut scenes(again infrequently), and there seems to be a total lack of AA which creates so much flicker at edges that after a few hours of play my eyes were left almost bleeding. Fortunately my 360 decided to commit suicide about 6 hours into gameplay saving my eyes from melting out of my skull.

I'm sure with smaller better lit levels in multiplayer or firefight the issues aren't so egregious, and the better luminosity on Spartans and Elites must make it easier to track enemies in multiplayer. For the campaign though, one word sums up my experience: unplayable.

Re:Graphics are moving in the wrong direction

[PhotoBoy]

I agree, Reach seems to be missing the more colourful and bright look of the previous main instalments. As well as the texture and frame rate issues you mentioned I noticed quite frequent AI bugs, with characters getting stuck and not moving, just popping out of existence and on one occasion Kat just teleported into the passenger seat of the Warthog after I left her behind. I often see the AI in Halo games used as the gold standard, but I wasn't that impressed with this one. Makes me wonder if maybe the game was a bit rushed to hit the launch date MS set for it...

SWAT and BRs in multiplayer

[Suddenly_Dead]

By far the most annoying thing about this game's multiplayer are the playlists they chose. SWAT (no shields, one or two shots to kill, COD-style) is included in the normal deathmatch playlists now. Halo 3 had it segregated to its own playlist, so players who wanted to play can do so. Now, any time it comes up as a voting option almost everyone votes for it. It's gotten so that you practically need a sizeable party if you want to play anything else.

It's a tad ridiculous; I don't really want to play COD if I'm playing Halo. I want to play Halo, where it takes awhile to whittle down an enemy's shields and where you're able to get right in their face while doing so. If I wanted to play "one-hit-kills from the other side of the map", I'd be playing something else.

Re:SWAT and BRs in multiplayer

[Shane112358]

+1 for you. This is really annoying. I keep being forced to play SWAT or Snipers. If I wanted that I'd have COD.

Re:SWAT and BRs in multiplayer

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I never understood the draw to the 'realism' in COD type games. It's annoying. If I am playing a video game, I want to pretend to be a 9 foot tall space cyborg that can jump 20 feet in the air and kick a motorcycle a half-mile at an enemy. I don't want to pretend I am in Iraq getting shit on by insurgents with RPG's. Video games, at least the way I figure, at about a certain suspension of reality. It's funner to be a fire-breathing raptor and think about why on Earth I would be so interested in hunting down laser wielding zombies than it is to pretend to be fighting a real war with real people.

Re:SWAT and BRs in multiplayer

[Supurcell]

I'm the same way. I can't understand why anybody likes anything that I don't like.

[citation provided]

[starglider29a]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqFJ5pPu2g

In an alternate universe, Microsoft didn't buy Bungie, and the iMacs became the ultimate game platforms. I will never forgive Microsoft for perhaps the smartest move they ever made. It was, to quote Cutler Beckett from POTC III, "just good business." :(

DLC: Glue Packs

[TheNinjaroach]

After processing at the glue factory, they'll sell you downloadable packs of it for $20 a piece. And if you don't buy all of the packs you will suddenly find yourself locked out of many of the matchmaking playlists.

Re:Too bad they can't put some effort towards test

[DreadPiratePizz]

Too add to this, many of the titles and HUD elements are outside the action safe regions. I could not read the chapter titles in the cinematics for example - they were half off the screen. Putting text inside the viewable area is pretty basic stuff Bungie... not everybody plays your game on an HDTV.

Re:The more important question

[Noitatsidem]

When hasn't it been "supposed to be happening?"

Re:The more important question

[Theoboley]

When the project was officially canceled by 3D Realms a few months back.

Re:The more important question

[kms_md]

When is this arriving for the ps3?

oh - i see what you did there ...

Re:The more important question

[Spy der Mann]

I thought the project had been retaken a couple of months ago.

Hail to the king, baby! 2K Games and Gearbox Software today announced that Duke Nukem Forever will make its long-awaited debut in 2011, when it will ship on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Attendees of this weekend's Penny Arcade Expo will be able to go hands-on with the game at the 2K Booth (booth #3417), and see that it is very much alive. With this news, we are closing our Duke forums. However, fear not, as you can continue to talk with your fellow Duke fans in the new Dukem Nukem forums on GearboxSoftware.com.

Source: http://www.3drealms.com/

Re:why a $130 250gb HDD why M$ lock out 3rd party

[Pojut]

I see. So the games have nothing to do with it? You're giving up on a console, while completely ignoring the games it has in the process?

I believe there's a word for people like that...

Re:Most overrated series of all time.

[pandrijeczko]

I actually did play Halo I all the way through and it had a few good points.

But the Disney-like giggling aliens in it were really annoying and isn't a patch on Unreal Tournament, the Half-Lifes and the Quakes.

At the time it came out, console owners were starved of FPS games so I do accept it got a good reception from them - but compare it to many FPSes on the PC and it's just an average FPS.

Re:The more important question

[Theoboley]

Thats what im getting at, Unless I Missed something in the parent post stating "the day they port DNF to the ps3"

Re:The more important question

[macshit]

When is this arriving for the ps3?

I don't think that deserved the "flamebait" mod...

I have a ps3 but not an xbox, and I'd certainly be interested to try out the halo games -- but not interested enough to buy an xbox. I don't think I'm the only person in this situation.

Yeah, MS would probably never allow it, but it's not an unreasonable thing to wish for...

Re:One last time?

[Narcogen]

True. Halo: ODST even left a sort of cliffhanger at the end to make it seem like there will be an ODST2. .

I'd beg to differ. Both of the ending cutscenes in that game show how the ending of ODST leads towards the opening of Halo 3.

I suppose Microsoft's new in-house studio for handling Halo, 343 Industries, could pick up and make a sequel to ODST, showing what those characters are doing at a later point in the Halo 3 timeline, I don't think there's anything about the way that game ends that suggests there should be or needs to be such a sequel-- unlike, say, the ending of Halo 2, or even the "we're just getting started" remark at the end of Halo 1.

I think it's more likely, however, that 343 will pick up where Halo 3 ends and do Halo 4. That, Bungie left wide open-- no doubt at Microsoft's request and in full knowledge of what the future plan was-- to trade the franchise for their freedom, and do two more Halo games (ODST and Reach) for Microsoft and call it done.

Re:Too bad they can't put some effort towards test

[Azarman]

Hello and htank you for your informative post

This is very much correct, with a 4gb Xbox elite you can not play co-op as it requires a real hard drive and flash dont count. To add insult to this problem MS are not selling the hard drives for the elite as stand alone, meaning new console.

Well thats untill i found a video, (which i can not locate so i will decribe)

The old Xbox 360 hard drives have the same connector (on the phyical drive) so if you can get the hard drive out the shell (cut my hands lots without the correct keys but possbile) you can simply slot it in to the new elite. Fits well with a little force, and does not break or void warrenty on the new console only the old hard drive. I now have an elite with a 20gb storage which is easily enough for Co-op

Hope this helps /b/rothers

Re:The more important question

[JarinArenos]

I'm assuming that AC up there missed the memo.

Re:why a $130 250gb HDD why M$ lock out 3rd party

[webheaded]

Hate to break it to ya, but Microsoft is spread pretty thin on the exclusives. There are very VERY few games to be had on the 360 that aren't also on PS3 or the PC.