What the "Halo"?

[Tanukitsune]

Halo 3 is out.... Every decent game site said it was overhyped and not really that great and yet, now that it's officially out...

Everybody is giving it TENS!

Either M$ payed them or they're afraid of the army of Halo fans retribution, but I could tell something is wrong...

Most of the sites that give it a 10 say it has flaws, and some even say it's far from perfect... YET THEY GIVE IT A TEN?

This is why I say... WHAT THE HALO?

[toblix]

What, that's today?

[Tanukitsune]

Or maybe tomorrow, but apparently it's already the BEST GAME EVA!...

[BooJaka]

Tomorrow in US, the day after in Europe, according to IGN who gave it a 9.5

They said the single-player was far too short and the graphics were below par but the multiplayer more than made up for it, how they can really know that for sure since it's not officially out yet and so no one really online to play against I don't know but... maybe that's why I don't write reviews

[Tanukitsune]

They said the single-player was far too short and the graphics were below par but the multiplayer more than made up for it, how they can really know that for sure since it's not officially out yet and so no one really online to play against I don't know but... maybe that's why I don't write reviews

They say it because people only play Halo for the multiplayer teabagging action?

[BooJaka]

Selling on teabagging potential I guess

[netmonkey]

I'm really hoping that one of you Idle Thumb/Shacknews folk can write a proper review for this game because it seems like everyone reviewing it is assigning the writing to their 7-year old son.

For example, here's Bungie's summary on metacritic:

Halo 3 is the third game in the Halo Trilogy and provides the thrilling conclusion to the events begun in "Halo: Combat Evolved." Halo 3 picks up where "Halo 2" left off. The Master Chief is returning to Earth to finish the fight. The Covenant occupation of Earth has uncovered a massive and ancient object beneath the African sands - an object who's secrets have yet to be revealed. Earth's forces are battered and beaten. The Master Chief's AI companion Cortana is still trapped in the clutches of the Gravemind - a horrifying Flood intelligence, and a civil war is raging in the heart of the Covenant. This is how the world ends...

I think I wrote a report like that when I was in the 2nd grade.

And Gamespot's summary of the review:

Halo 3 builds upon the concepts of Halo 2 in ways that you'd expect, but there are also new modes and options that send the series in exciting new directions.

Thank you so much, captain obvious!

So please, if you guys have written a decent review about this game, link me up!

[Nappi]

Well, you can find Chris Remo's campaign and multiplayer reviews of Halo 3 at Shacknews.

[DanJW]

Something just occurred to me, after having read you pointing this aout and then PA Tycho's consideration of a 10 score as kind of system error.

That something is the realisation that game review scores have become logarithmic!

It all makes sense now - the way that 7 is average and 5 is poorly mediocre. The way a huge chasm exists between an 8 and a 9.5. It is because for every whole number in the score the quality of the game, as scientifically measured by the reviewer, increases by a whole magnitude. It is not 1 point better but a whole order better. It is the difference between 10xn7 and 10xn8, and possibly more digits besides!!!

Or maybe game review scores are just wank.

And yes, it was likely given a ten to avoid rioting. The US government probably advised them to do this.

[SpiderMonkey]

I haven't played the game, so I can't really say whether it deserves a 10 or not. Either way, these things are immensely cyclical in today's internet world. Who wants to read the guy taking a shit in your cereal and giving it a 7, when instead you can read the guy who's gonna make you even more excited than you were before. It's not in the interest of the games press to give bad reviews to heavily hyped games. It costs them pageviews and magazine sales, which in turn costs them money.

[Nachimir]

Perhaps that's only viable as a short term strategy though? Being crapola hype-machines costs review sites *my* page views.

[Cigol]

They are raving about its multiplayer component as if it were some saving grace but multiplayer is the easiest thing to get right as a developer. I mean is there anything more pathetic than glorifying playing with other people as some kind of achievement? I could play two-player pong or something equally absurd and derive social interactive amusement. It's that fucking simple.

What I want to know is why Halo even has legion of fans to begin with. It's utter shit. In ten years time nobody is even going to know who master chief is, that is unless Microsoft continues to endlessly pump money into the hype machine of course. There's nothing intelligent about Microsoft's strategy but god knows it works.

[Thrik]

I like to compare Halo's popularity to feeding third-world children a decidedly mediocre but filling meal.

[DanJW]

What I want to know is why Halo even has legion of fans to begin with.

That's an easy one. It was the first FPS that was properly designed to be played on a console, making proper use of the anolgue sticks and with gameplay pacing that better suited the Xbox memory requirements. And as a result of this it was enjoyed by many Xbox kiddies who had not grown up with Doom, Quake, System Shock or any of the other fine examples of the history of FPS. All the hyperfandom since then has just been a case of momentum.

Incidentally, before it was brought out by Microsoft, Halo was intended for PC and had a concept somewhat similar to STALKER or a single player Battlefield - massive open areas with AI conflicts devloping on the fly. That sounded really cool.

[Thrik]

Pity they missed out on GoldenEye too.

[DanJW]

Goldeneye was rubbish if you happened to have been playing Quake for a while. But yes, it too was a step forward for console FPS. cf your own filling meal anology

[Cigol]

You what?

I grew up playing Doom/Quake (et al) and Goldeneye was pure gold. It was one of the first FPS games to have objective based gameplay that wasn't as overtly banal as 'find this key' and 'shoot these people'... Of course the underlying mechanics were pretty much identical but the way it was dressed up and structured helped differentiate it.

Singelplayer was a riot, whilst it quite possibly the best multiplayer you could have packed in front of one screen. Man... I still have wet dreams about the Facility level. It was just so cathartic going through trying to be as quick, and flawless as possible

Goldeneye is a classic.

[Thrik]

Nonsense. GoldenEye's heavily scripted gameplay and NPC interaction was a very important step forward for first-person shooter games in general, and indeed pre-dated the first truly astounding implementations of such elements on the PC. It can hardly be compared to the relatively primitive gameplay of Quake.

Edit: Holy crap, can I ever get a post in first on this forum? But yes, GoldenEye really is a classic, and made far more significant steps forward than Halo ever did. The comparison is mental!

[Roderick]

I haven't played Goldeneye, so I really can't say anything about it. But Halo, nice multiplayer notwithstanding, was really nothing special if you had already played the likes of Half-Life, Sin, No One Lives Forever and a bunch of others on the PC.

I should also be very surprised if Halo 3 turned out to be even remotely better than something like Gears of War, which brought amazing, subtle nuances to the FPS genre on consoles that you can easily take for granted even now. I won't be surprised if Halo 3 would actually already feel a bit old-school because of current genre advances. Still, it's probably a decent shooter, though the hype is annoying and shallow.

[Ben]

Gears of War, which brought amazing, subtle nuances to the FPS genre on consoles that you can easily take for granted even now.

I don't know why everyone insists on referring to Gears of War as an "FPS". It's not. So stop it. Everyone. You are correct about it being a highly polished and nuanced evolution of third-person shooter based game play though.

As for Halo 3 I haven't played it yet; but if you're looking for reasons and an actual concise explanation of why its multiplayer is being lauded I would suggest reading Chris's multiplayer review on Shack.

[Roderick]

I don't know why everyone insists on referring to Gears of War as an "FPS".

I guess it's because in practice it feels so much like the direct approach of FPSses. There's a sense of immediacy that is often lacking in 3rd person shooters, where you can clearly feel some distance between you and the avatar you are controlling. So, I think it's not a fluke that everyone accidentally calls it an FPS. Regardless of how you call it however, I am keenly tempted to group it with FPS games because apart from the perspective, the game plays much the same.

Only betteer, of course.

[toblix]

Speaking of Gears of War, should I get it?

[Thrik]

MetaCritic says so, and as you know we here at Idle Thumbs fully endorse basing any and all purchasing decisions purely off of MetaCritic ratings.

[ThunderPeel2001]

It's also very good.

[Ben]

I guess it's because in practice it feels so much like the direct approach of FPSses. There's a sense of immediacy that is often lacking in 3rd person shooters, where you can clearly feel some distance between you and the avatar you are controlling. So, I think it's not a fluke that everyone accidentally calls it an FPS. Regardless of how you call it however, I am keenly tempted to group it with FPS games because apart from the perspective, the game plays much the same.

Only betteer, of course.

Yes but... it's not an FPS. [sorely tempted to use the "disapproval cat" image again.] It's a very simple concept, let me summarise:

First-Person Shooter = played in the first person perspective.

Third-Person Shooter = played in the third person perspective.

It's very black and white my friends. Control mechanics, game play feedback and immediacy and so forth are all very well and good; but you can't change the laws of the English language and its definitions just because something feels like something else.