ohnobruno

Halo: Reach definately seems like its going to be squad based. "You can leave that lone wolf stuff behind," "I like your skill set." I hope they change it up some but am afraid that giving Spartans a personality might be the biggest change they can muster. Yeah, really. I like Green Day but they were the gateway band for me that got me into punk rock back in the day. Harmonix's next game should be about all those other bands. It should be called Rock Band: Fuck Your Heroes, feature Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and Minor Threat and the cover should be a middle finger with the word "hate" tattooed down it. Although I doubt you would be able to get your "T for Teen" rating with that. Also, I would hope that most of the bands I would want on it would say "no."

You don't have to shoot at the beginning (I didn't), but when the cops show up you have to. The game simply won't proceed until you get past the cops. I tried sneaking past them without shooting several time, hoping that I would hit a threshold which would make the NPCs move foward and I made it pretty far, but I kept getting shot and killed without any progress. If there is way without shooting the cops, I didn't find it.

So I played the game through and I liked it. Multiplayer is awesome, beautiful enviorments. The reviews are out. But that one mission? I don't know why the game calls it "potentially offensive" because it is offensive. It's supposed to be. What IW claims it is trying to accomplish with that mission is entirely dependent on you being offended by what is going on. And it works. For maybe ten seconds. And then the mission becomes an utter failure. I was giving IW the benefit of the doubt on this but it just didn't work. It is one of the few instance of gameplay where being in the first person completely removed me from the narrative. I still believe IW could have done something amazing with this, but the pressure to do what IW wants you to does not come from the narrative - where it has to to be affecting - but from mission mechanics. I was aware that I was on rails to a degree that even surpassed Operation Wolf, and soon enough everything they made me feel in those first few seconds vanished. Can I not shoot? No, the NPCs won't move foward if I don't clear the area. Can I try to stop them? No, they kill me and before I restart the game tells me I did not "prove" myself. The second half of the mission becomes a standard COD mission which I played at such an emotional distance that it was completely pointless. If they had found a way to do this like they did the execution in COD4 - where you can look around but are not really in control - I think it would have worked better. I admire their ambitions, but I feel like they never thought past generating that initial sense of "Oh shit, that was fucked up."

I was listening to the podcast this morning at work and when I heard that line I started laughing my ass off so hard that my co-worker - nice but game ignorant - began asking what was so funny. Just how do you explain "Space Asshole" to forty-something woman who once commented on my reading with, " I don't like things that make me think"?

Favorite - Tie Fighter. I borrowed the discs from a buddy and only knew one of the 30 or so responses you needed to be able to prove you owned the game. It is a testament to my love of this game that I would sit there every day after school and input this one reponse until it worked. Best - Portal. I'm continually impressed with how well designed that game is. Desert Island - Civ 4. Maybe I'll finally have time to get good at it.

I just played two multiplater matches and I had a pretty good time, but I did notice things I didn't during the campaign like being able to use the spotlights as cannons if they attack your stage. I got slaughtered in my first match but during the second match I was able to use the spotlights to beat back an assualt on my stage and ended up winning. That Six Degress of Schaefer achievement must be everywhere now because I got it after the first match. I did find it strange that during the first match we were both Drowning Doom and during the second we were both Ironheade because it was tough - especially when I was flying - to tell the difference between sides.

I finished this afternoon and overall I had a great experience. After reading the Giant Bomb review, I was scared as to the length of the game (I believe they said the story missions could be finished in only four hours) but it turns out that it took about 11 hours for me to finish it. I agree with this. Although I explored a lot towards the end, it did feel like you were being funneled towards the end. Narratively, it makes you feel like you have to chain smoke missions and the design of the forest keeps bringing you back around to spotlight. When I went off to explore I felt like I was abandoning everyone. There were a few times I did a mission only because I was tired of driving past the camp for then tenth time in as many minutes. But I don't want to complain too much. Was I expecting more? Yes, but I wouldn't be able to tell you what more I was expecting. The game is fun and makes probably the best first impression of any game I have played this year. It never topped those first impressions but it never made me regret playing it. It got its hooks in me and probably unleashed the latent love of Metal that I have always suspected was in me. No game before has made me write down a list of bands I wanted to check out. I'm pretty sure this was part of Tim Schaefer's evil plan all along.

Here go. It's basically the title screen, and I'm considering finding a price sticker to put on the top of it so that it matches. I wonder who the artist is. It reminds me of artists like Boris Vallejo, Frank Frazetta, and Richard Corben which I'm sure is entirely intentional. It is about a quarter of an inch shorter when I put it against some real vinyl albums, but it still looks nice. Thinking about the game, I find myself impressed by the frequency of the underpass. These were the places where I first encountered things like the anarchy symbol and pentagram and when caught one of my guys spray painting the wall of one, it was a great touch.

That part blew me away. I just thought, of course it would rain down sulfar and fire in this world. My expectations had been tempered by some of the reviews, but the three hours I've spent on the game so far has been a blast. I think I was sold when the guy at the Game Crazy gave me a Brutal Legend album sleeve because I had pre-ordered it. Normally I rush home to play a game, but instead I sat in the parking lot and stared at this record sleeve. At that moment, It seemed guaranteed I would love the game. How could I not love a game in which so much obvious love had been poured?

I never had a problem with the buggers until this game. I played through Halo 2 and Heroic and Halo 3 on Legendary but until this game, I always thought the threat of the buggers was minimal but in this game I began tearing my hair out during Data Hive. I was playing on Heroic and had no strategy to get through them, simplying restarting again and again until I finally lucked out and got through. I had no idea what I did differently. I just started a Legendary game but have no idea what I will do when I get to them again. Hate those things.

This Kotaku post goes into why there is no matchmaking.

I've been having a lot of fun with this game but I have noticed that the smooth jazz soundtrack can create some surreal combat experiences. My deperate rushes to get behind a Hunter never felt so ethereal. In those moments, the game becomes something much different than what it was, but these moments are brief. Everything else is the Halo I know and love. Playing through Halo 2 and 3 with my room mate were some of the best gaming experiences of my life, so Firefight and the cooperative experience was a major draw for me, but that room mate has moved far away and doesn't own a 360. My other friends don't have the game yet, so when I discovered there was no matchmaking it made Firefight an almost useless feature for me. I tried playing it by myself a few times, but it only made me wish for others to play with. But the campaign is tons of fun and I plan on spending the rest of the afternoon finding the few audio logs that have eluded me. I find the narrative in those logs far more gripping than the campaigns/

Hey, I've never really been on a forum before but over the last few months I've been playing a lot more video games, and since most of my friends don't play many games this course seemed natural. So Hi there!