Halo 3 'Feels' Like Halo 1 133
1up reports on comments from Bungie, who has come out to say that their next title Halo 3 will 'feel' like the first Halo: Combat Evolved. From the article: "'I have been playing through Campaign mode purely for kicks. Exploring, in fact,' [Frank O'Connor] says. 'There's lots of the feel of the original Halo, where you'll find yourself in a huge (dangerous) and intrinsically fascinating environment and just want to go tool around and check things out.' At the same time, O'Connor is quick to dismiss that Bungie's developing a sandbox, Grand Theft Auto-inspired shooter."
I've often wondered.. (Score:5, Funny)
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I suppose it must feel like an old HDD platter.
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Re:I've often wondered.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Over anyone else? *shrug*
How should I react? These things happen... to other people
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Re:I've often wondered.. (Score:4, Funny)
Honestly, that was always my favorite part of Halo 1, the sense that everything was operating under reduced-gravity, with a bouncy shroud around it. I called it "squishy physics." Made the Banshee a helluva lot of fun to fly.
Un-nerf the Magnum, please. (Score:5, Funny)
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Best weapon in Halo 1, replaced by the sucky SMG and "Battle Rifle" in Halo 2.
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Granted, the SMG's only useful for dual wielding (and not worth sacrificing grenades for even then), but how can you prefer the assault rifle to the battle rifle? The assault rifle is inaccurate, low damage, and pretty much forces either spray-n-pray or knife range combat. The battle rifle is accurate, reasonably high damage, and has a scope thrown in for good measure.
The only possible drawbacks to the BR compared to the AR are no full-auto and a limited ammo capacity. I wouldn't mind having a full-auto
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The BR is powerful, but a pain to use. eg. When a brute charges you, you get a maximum of 3 bursts (9 shots), which is not enough to take it down.
With the AR, the rapidly closing range would mean that the accuracy issues would be less important and you would almost certianly take it down.
It is the best possible weapon against hordes of flood, the inacuracy actually helps here. Although the shotgun is great against individual flood bipeds.
And f
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Your point about the inaccuracy vs. hordes of facehuggers/headcrabs/whatcham
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The Brute Shot (the "cannon/blade thing") doesn't seem all that useful...'till it's all you've got and have to get used to it. A friend of mine and I wanted to switch things up in multiplayer a bit, so we did a "Slayer" with Brute Shot's being the only weapon available. He's a sniper, I'm a "John Wayne", and the Brute Shot turned out to be a perfectly balanced weapon for both of us, allowing for ranged fun, as well as the "sneak up and stab 'em", and al
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The beam rifle had it trumped if you were in a position where a rampaging Brute couldn't come and get you but those situations were few enough that you were better off engagin
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Because that weapon was a great equalizer to heavy weapons like Rocket Launchers and Fuel Rod Cannons. If that pistol was in Halo 2, I would die a lot less because of the sword because I would be able to kill the swordguy before he got to me. With the Halo 2 Battle Rifle, I can't pull of the shots fast enough to kill the swordguy. The pistol in Halo 1 makes the game a first person shooter (not a first person s
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I think maybe you just need to play with the battle rifle more. All those things you mention are pretty easy with a battle rifle. Sure, it takes more skill than the pistol, and a little bit longer, but it's not that hard to take out someone with a sword if you back up while firing and get headshots, or taking on someone with a rocket launcher if they're using it properly, trying to get splash damage on the ground, you can do some timely jumping and firing to dodge two rockets. The battle rifle is easily the
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Although, to be fair, the SMG is actually really effective in a dual-wield scenario, if you alternate bursts from hand to hand. Fast bursts = no recoil climb. Fairly deadly then.
Re:Un-nerf the Magnum, please. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I don't belive your assessment of the pistol as being unbalanced is accurate. It wasn't overpowered, it was simply the most versitile of the light weapons. There are many situations where an AR, Shotgun, or PR would be preferable, and would defeat a pistol. Also, the heavy weapons will all defeat a pistol unless improperly used. Then there is the fact that in any properly set up multiplayer match, everyone has a pistol to start, which should solve any perceved unfairness.
Frankly, I think at least half those opposed to the pistol's performance in Halo 1 simply have a problem with the smallest of the light weapons being the most powerful.
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On the other hand, nerf the energy sword, or at least make it run out of "ammo" in multiplayer.
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GTA: Ringworld sounds like a blast though! (Score:5, Funny)
"I swear Arbiter, it wasn't me! The guy that did it was in a green jeep, not a red one!"
Besides if you ever get lost, just keep drivin, you'll come back around in a while
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Didn't know anybody reads quality writing like that any more...
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I am E.E. early 80s UBC. Mostly I take care "that the switches lock." but sometimes I get to "piece and repiece the living wires." I first encountered Kipling's poem a few years ago and it resonated strongly and emotionally with my "self-image". I can see why engineers have adopted it as their own.
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Actually, I use it more of a code word to mean "have you participated in the Ritual of the Calling of An Engineer" (aka "The Iron Ring ceremony").
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One of my favorite lines in literature.
(And yes, my name is a form of "Gray Lensman".)
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It's great that there are some of us readers still out there!
Looks like it's time to reread them all again.
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I want to see what Jack Thompson does with that.
Because no one wants a radically new game. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just can't stand Halo fanboys who act like their game which has had about the same improvements that madden gets in a year is radically different. I can respect a new story, but I'm also expecting changes to the actual gameplay too. Just because Doom 2 didn't have any major improvements doesn't mean that you can get away with the same type of leap nowerdays. I hope Halo 3 does something new, rather then just hanging onto the name, because for my money even Perfect dark zero was more unique than Halo was. If I really wanted the FPS games I'd have stayed with my PC.
And this wasn't meant to offend Halo fans. It's just that people act like Halo is a great series, and it's really hasn't shown anything to prove itself to be that unique. Even Half Life 2 has amazing physics, Doom 3 has the creep factor, Fear had the graphics to kill even the hardiest machine's framerate. Halo didn't have anything that it really called its own.
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The key with Halo (and 2) is that they had enough of everything but not too much of anything. They were basic, first person shooters in the tradition of 007 Goldeneye. Something easy to play while absorbing and entertaining. PC FPS tends to get a bit too complicated for my tastes. While I like games that allow
Not every game needs a gimmick. (Score:4, Insightful)
Halo had a plotline, which IMO is severely lacking in the FPS genre. True, the technical improvements in the game between 1 and 2 were minimal (and in some cases regressed; see my comment about the Magnum, above), but I don't think that's as horrible as you're making it out to be.
If they can continue to refine the gaming experience that people have gotten used to with Halo 1 and 2, I'd take that as a success. I'd rather they continued the plot, refined gameplay, and took basically conservative steps than if they changed something radically for the sake of change, and messed up a good thing. Not every game needs some kind of "hook" that's been cooked up to make it artificially unique: particularly if the appeal of the game is that it's just a really good shooter.
The Halo games at this point are a known quantity; there are other games you can buy if you want something gimmicky (or "innovative," the difference between an innovation and a gimmick being rather difficult to tell without the benefit of hindsight). I think it takes a certain amount of balls to realize when you've got a good thing and should just stop changing it.
With that said, unfortunately I doubt Microsoft will ever let Bungie just stop making new Halo games; they'll flog the franchise as long as they possibly can, until it becomes ridiculous.
Re:Not every game needs a gimmick. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Young woman agent works for secret agency happens to be involved with aliens, evil megacorporation, go to Area 51. It was SO contrived.
Halo is worse.
And of course both games suffered from having the shittiest control systems on the planet. Why nobody came up with a better controller for FPS on console systems before the Wii, I have no idea. I mean other than a PS/2 keyboard and mouse attached to an adapter on your PS2
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Hey, you forget the part where that guy died in the end and all that rescueing turned out to be pointless.
But yeah, the story of Halo is really nothing to be proud of, it was for most part simply pointless, nothing ever had meaning, since the next mission would basically cancel out everything you did down to the point that the last mission takes places right at the same point whe
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Having played a lot of both Halo 1 & 2, I find it hard to go back to the original now. While the original is still fun, it just feels like something is miss
Re:Because no one wants a radically new game. (Score:4, Informative)
Here's what I've seen in Halo, but rarely anywhere else:
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The fuck are you talking about? Prince of Persia and Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame were at least as good as SoT--I'd argue dramatically better. Maybe instead of "predecessors" you mean "single, immediate predecessor"?
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PoP had an absolutely horrible control scheme.
Maybe it's just that I'm bitter because I was unskilled, but it was entirely too easy to be killed by even the lowliest swordsman, it was too easy to fall to your death doing simple things like climbing back up, timing jumps was near-impossible, and it felt sl
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Side question : Do you write for Edge magazine? The people there seem to have an eternal boner over this game as well.
Vehicles that can be more fun than moving on foot.
The only valid point you have. For it's time Halo did FPS+vehicles quite well, even if it did go to a third person perspective and somewhat break that feeling of 'being' the character. At least you
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Polish...yup, no other game has polish.
Again, what about GTA? That made the ps2 in those ways in which you said other games except Halo couldn't.
Story...yeah...Thief, SystemShock...no story.
Character...you gotta be kidding me. Halo is not the only FPS with a decent (yeah, MC is only decent) lead character...there are many FPS' with better ones.
Artwork...oh, jeez. The FPS is the opne single genre which lives on it's graphics...which means the application of
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Besides which, not all those games you mentioned necessarily were the first to bring something forth... Have you ever played System Shock 2? You want creep factor... that game just freaks me out especially l
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Preposterous! (Score:1)
Actual marketing slogan (Score:3, Funny)
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Foreigner - Feels Like the First Time
Cut + Paste? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Too bad, it would have really been better that way.
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And the library ROCKED! Yes, I know there are some malcontents that will complain about it, but it was probably the only map that actually got me confused enough to get a bit lost... and I think that was the point.
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I agree, i think it's something about every square inch looks exactly like every other square inch I just traveled for the past 5 miles that seems to confuse my sense of direction.
Exploratory reflection (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're not the only one by far. I've often wondered why FPS designers insist on bounding playable areas with items that I, who am not any kind of cybernetically enhanced soldier, ubermarine, hazard-suit wearing professor, or whatnot, could easily get over in real life. Call of Duty did a pretty good job of have realistic-seeming boundaries, but aside from that, it's always seemed to be a problem.
The other fairly minor thing I'd really like to see is a game that
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I stopped playing Fallout Tactics when I realized that my team couldn't get over a three foot high pile of sandbags at the base of some stairs because the level designers willed it. I tried jumping, moving, knifeing to let the sand out, TNT to blow the damn things up, then I realized that, no, it's not a puzzle, it's just a stupid barrier, and the designers want you to go all the way around the GD map to get to the roof of that building.
I didn't like Halo (Score:5, Insightful)
I enjoyed the expansive environment for the first hour or so, then it just became annoying. If you miss one thing, then you have to run around making sure you didn't miss a small path that leads to the next area - or you need to perform a perfect jump to get onto a ledge and you aren't sure if you're supposed to jump to it or find a different way up. While I don't claim every game has to be linear, don't hide the route you have to go.
Also, I found a lot of the levels boring and repetative. (Library anyone?) Sure, it's realistic to go through a few levels, get something, and fight your way out - but if I wanted realistic I wouldn't be playing a game. Why not make another way out so the levels are different? Or, if it isn't necessary for gameplay, give an elevator/shuttle/monorail/teleporter/cutscene so I don't have to do the same thing twice!
If I wanted to see cool environments and just "tool around and check things out" I would play the Myst series.
I don't mean this as a troll, but I didn't find Halo to be a game that should be repeated in a sequel. Of course, I haven't played many games where I want a sequel that is very similar to the original - I like diversity in my games. Why should I pay $60 for the same game that has added a few new weapons and enemies and updated the graphics a bit? Why not call the new game what it is - an expansion pack.
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As for the similarities between game 1 and game 2, I like sequels to be mostly plot sequels, but that me. My opinions notwithstanding, the second game was geared more towards team combat and less about single-handedly owning.
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The outside leves of Halo where very impressive. The indoors level were complete and utter crap. They felt flatter (IMHO) than the levels in Doom/Duke3D.
They put it well in a Penny Arcade strip "No the level design is the genious of it. It's like the Coven
Re:I didn't like Halo (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, you are not alone, I am not much a big Halo fan either. Especially the Flood levels where just boring and repeating over and over and over again, Library of course too. There was also a bit running around in circles to find out how to continue, but I didn't found that much worse then most other games. My main problem with Halo was however the story, it was just so very damn pointless, run around in circles for a few hours till everybody of your comrades is killed just to then return to where you started and blow your own ship up, well great, so why again did I play this game? The last level was also extremly annoying, actually one of the worst I have ever seen, not sure if there actually is a way to drive around that track in anything remotly fluid, but I certainly didn't manage to and it turned into a try&error where the outcome was more luck then anything, certainly wasn't fun.
Art direction of Halo on the other side was quite good, the large bright outdoor environments are certainly a lovly change compared to all those games that try to be all dark and ugly. Enemys tend to look a bit to much like Muppets here and there, but that aside they looked nice and colorfull stuff. Vehicles and transporters also looked great.
Can't say anything about multiplayer, but the singleplayer mode didn't hold up to my expectations, it wasn't the worst I have seen, but neither was it anything I would bother to play again, never touched Halo2.
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Feel free to dislike the game as much as you want, but this is unwarranted. Yes, with good enough driving skills, you can make it through the last level in a quite fluid manner. I've played through t
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Then I learned just how important a game designer really is. The game started to suck when I had ot ross the bridge, fight through 3 large rooms full of enemies, then cross another bridge and fig
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The Covenant has nearly wiped the human kind to extinction, with only the presumably hidden Earth still untouched by the war. Our heroes are on a mission to find out what interest the Covenant has with that Halo thing. One crash lan
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$
KFG
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More open environments in the future (Score:1)
Halo 3 isn't going to be the only new game this generation with bigger, more open environments. This is because the size of environments was one of the few gameplay elements that was restricted last generation due to hardware limitations. Granted, there were some games like GTA where you had a large area to explore, but they had to make some major graphical sacrifices as a result.
This sounds foreboding (Score:5, Insightful)
If it "feels" like the beach segments than I'm all for it 'cause that felt great. If it "feels" like the cheese grater on my kneecaps that was The Silent Cartographer and everything after, then it's good that I know this now so I can prepare for absolutely no anticipation for this game.
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No One Cares (Score:1, Insightful)
There are easily 20 space marine in bumpy and shiny metal armor games coming out for the 360 between now and the end of next year. Halo will be just another one in the crowd with a larger marketing budget from Microsoft.
Take away that stupid green metal effect and no one would even talking about this dreadfully medicore series. There are fantastic fps games coming out between now and 2007 -
Huh? (Score:2)
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Peanut Butter and Jelly (Score:1)
So long as it doesn't feel like Halo 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, good! Because I got fed up with Halo 2 well before the end of the game and have never been back to it since, whereas I played Halo right up to the finish, infuriating as some parts of it were.
I got the impression that all the effort in Halo 2 went into the multiplayer and the single-player game was kind of an 'oh yeah, we need to throw this thing in too'. H1 had an interesting story (in an interesting environment); H2 was just a series of events.
As far as multiplayer goes, I don't have Xbox Live; I don't want Xbox Live. I don't want to drop into a game to have a bunch of fat American teenagers call me a fag in disguised voices. To me, that's not entertainment. (YMMV.) But there seems to be this shift towards making online multiplayer the core of a lot of titles at the expense of the one-player game, and if that's going to be a continuing trend then frankly I'll be keeping my money for things that are actually, y'know, fun. Even by MS's own figures, Xbox Live players are still very much the minority of Xbox owners, so why is 40-50% of the gameplay that people are paying for only available to them?
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LAN co-op? (Score:2)
How about Halo 0 ? (Score:3, Insightful)
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