Halo Reach

[Patters]

Seeing as it's 10 days from release I thought it would be appropriate to start a thread on the game I am looking forward to the most.

The campaign from the little I have read sounds like Halo, which is a great thing. This means it'll have fun co-op, fast and fun infantry and vehicular combat. Along with this there is an improved and customisable successor to ODST's firefight.

I am most looking forward to the new version of forge, which looks to be the most complete as well as usable console map editors. With the fantastic things people made in the original forge, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on this along with seeing what others make.

XCcmrL29WII

[Irishjohn]

It's funny, this game has really snuck up on me somehow, despite being Halo. I suspect with football season back in this weekend there'll be some "go get your Halo and pwn dudes bra" commercials around.

Yet again, I delude myself with the idea that I'm not that bothered, then I will play a Halo game and the Halo fanboy will return. It's weird but I like it; I get all the excitement of fanboy love while I'm playing it, and than once I finish the game I forget all about it and thus don't do the other fanboy thing of getting into arguments on forums about storylines and such.

Halo also have an Apple-like way of getting me into stuff that other people have invented (ie Firefight). You know, the same way Steve Jobs does the whole "company a tried it, company b tried it, but they didn't get it right. We did" and then announces something that has totally been done before. I was never tempted to play Gears 2 online but I will probably play Firefight on Halo Reach.

[Wubbles]

I am tremendously excited for this game. Forge World is mainly fueling that excitement. I can't imagine what sort of maps my friends and I will be playing on, knowing how absurdly extensive and diverse the Halo community is. With the global file-sharing infrastructure that's been implemented, I'll be playing nothing but custom games.

[Noyb]

I'll be playing nothing but custom games.

Especially when they start requiring the purchase of DLC map packs to enter most ranked matches.

[Wubbles]

Eh; I'll probably buy the map packs. They don't usually cost much money.

[Moelman]

Got it on pre-order at Amazon, looking forward to it. I have not really stuck with a multiplayer game on 360 long after release but I could see myself spending some time with this one.

[Salacious Snake]

I just pre-ordered this last night; it kinda snuck up on me too. I totally feel what Irishjohn was saying with the analogy to Apple. Halo is generally not all that original, but it's just ridiculously well-crafted. Bungie and Blizzard are similar in that they'll take sort of conventional design concepts and polish the hell out of them.

Of course, I don't want to minimize the advances that the series has made. Halo was the first console shooter that didn't control like shit. Smart developers have used the same acceleration curves that Bungie came up with, and it still feels great. Also, the game was designed around the controls, so the movement speed, physics and weapon characteristics all mesh together in a way that you don't find with less well-tuned games.

Halo 2 brought online play with consoles to a new level of flexibility and manageability with the party system. I know there are a lot of die-hard pc gamers on this forum who would probably rather have a Quakespy-style server browser any day, but I think the party system was a brilliant piece of engineering that solved a very real problem.

Halo 3 had Forge and the awesome replay editor. You only need to look at Youtube to see what great additions those were.

The setting and plot generally do nothing for me, but you can't have everything. I'll keep playing just for the sheer quality of the overall experience.

I skipped Odious Tea... should I go back and play it at some point?

[Patters]

I just pre-ordered this last night; it kinda snuck up on me too. I totally feel what Irishjohn was saying with the analogy to Apple. Halo is generally not all that original, but it's just ridiculously well-crafted. Bungie and Blizzard are similar in that they'll take sort of conventional design concepts and polish the hell out of them.

Of course, I don't want to minimize the advances that the series has made. Halo was the first console shooter that didn't control like shit. Smart developers have used the same acceleration curves that Bungie came up with, and it still feels great. Also, the game was designed around the controls, so the movement speed, physics and weapon characteristics all mesh together in a way that you don't find with less well-tuned games.

Halo 2 brought online play with consoles to a new level of flexibility and manageability with the party system. I know there are a lot of die-hard pc gamers on this forum who would probably rather have a Quakespy-style server browser any day, but I think the party system was a brilliant piece of engineering that solved a very real problem.

Halo 3 had Forge and the awesome replay editor. You only need to look at Youtube to see what great additions those were.

The setting and plot generally do nothing for me, but you can't have everything. I'll keep playing just for the sheer quality of the overall experience.

I skipped Odious Tea... should I go back and play it at some point?

ODST is worth getting for the complete Halo 3 multiplayer experience. Firefight is a blast,though I can't completely recommend it with Reach due in 3 days.

[Wrestlevania]

Having not been overly enamoured with Halos 1-3 over the mid-term (I skipped Odious Tee for this reason), I'm really enjoying Reach so far. I played roughly 4hrs of the campaign last night, and the claims of depth and grace in Halo combat are finally starting to become apparent to me with this instalment.

I can't tell if it's the level design or the AI refinements or the changes in the weapons - very probably all of it - but I'm finding Reach less frustrating and genuinely creative, as a player, compared to previous experiences with the series. Progression is smoother, scenarios less "choked" or prescriptive, and the opportunities to work through each engagement however you want are more apparent.

I've started a new thread for Halo: Reach multiplayer, so shout out if you're up for some blasting with other Thumbs.

[Drath]

I always dismissed Forge as a "stupid console map customization tool", but I never stopped to think about it. What PC game allows that type of dynamic on-the-fly generation of world objects? Especially with how Forge looked like in that video... WOW!

[Coldkill]

Picked up a copy 2 days ago, completed it yesterday with Wrestlevania. I was very surprised about this, I was expecting it to be a lot like ODST which was shite. But in fact, it was rather enjoyable.

I liked the armour modules, although disliked the fact that sprint wasn't an innate ability of the player. I also quite liked the character customisation and the ability to play the campaign as my own character, rather than John Doe 118.

The weapons feel decent as well, which is another plus. The assault rifle seems to have been given some love, which has made it my favourite weapon.

The story isn't bad, but the cut scene camera angles could do with a lot of work.

As for multiplayer, well it's Halo through and through. Which means it's mostly a bunch of kiddies bunny hopping around hoping they'll get a kill and yelling "newb" into their microphones when they do.

Overall

[F4T C4T]

Loved going through the campaign in 4 player co-op the other night. I'd only done the first couple of missions alone so I got to experience the bulk of it with mates and I think that actually added a lot to the spectacle on offer. We didn't complete it but so far it's a big from me.

I'm also really enjoying the multiplayer too. I haven't experienced the kiddies shouting "newb" too much, mostly because I tend to team up with people I know in party chat and just take on whatever the matchmaking throws at us. I also really like the new armour modules. I can't tell you how much fun I've been having with the hologram!

Also making things in Forge world is some kind of therapy I never knew I needed. I only had a brief go in the Halo 3 version and got frustrated trying to jam things together. Now, making my own forerunner structures is easy and awesome (even if they play like crap).

[Wrestlevania]

Picked up a copy 2 days ago, completed it yesterday with Wrestlevania.

I just finished it myself on Saturday. I didn't realise I left our co-op game with just the final two stages left to do--sorry about that.

Took me quite a few tries to get past those three Elites guarding the gun platform, not to mention getting repeatedly blown up on the mass driver.

Overall I enjoyed the single-player campaign on Heroic. There were a couple of frustrating points - leading to a lot of replays - over the last level. The enemy AI might be clever and inventive, but the "friendly" AI is dumb as bricks; a support squad would land, panic, bunch together and then explode in a human firework from a single plasma grenade hit. Over and over and over...

So, joypad-snappingly infuriating at times, but still a lot of fun (once I learnt to ignore friendlies and just keep plugging away with solo tactics). I really want to replay the game on Legendary with three other Thumbs at some point soon; I think that would be pretty special.

[JonCole]

I beat Reach a couple days ago and loved it... released a podcast today that had some of my thoughts, if anyone's interested:

http://www.castmedium.com/2010/09/20/castmedium-reachcast-09-20-10/

[Noyb]

Played through on single player Heroic. The friendly AI was so pants that I started relying on the hologram powerup just to be able to flank enemies. Ground battles were as fun as ever, though they started getting tedious by the end, apart from

the tower defense section

.

For the final

railgun

section, I kept getting destroyed...

I thought I had to perfectly memorize a correct sequence of ships to perfectly shoot. I then tried hiding in a corner until the big ship came in range, quickly getting on the turret, and then took it down in one shot.

Might just be me, but the constant switching between first and third person in the cutscenes really undercut the immersion of the CoD-style first person "events."

[Irishjohn]

Yeah, I was a little frustrated by the section right at the very end. Loved this game though, my favourite Halo game, easily. There were spots here and there were I kept dying at the same point (damn fuel rod guns!), but the fights were great, and I thought it was the best story of all the games.

It was helped really by the fact that a true Hollywood Ending was pretty unlikely, given the fact the game is up front about how Reach ends up.

[Coldkill]

I just finished it myself on Saturday. I didn't realise I left our co-op game with just the final two stages left to do--sorry about that.

Took me quite a few tries to get past those three Elites guarding the gun platform, not to mention getting repeatedly blown up on the mass driver.

Yeah I had that problem, took me a few tries to get through.

[twmac]

I beat Reach a couple days ago and loved it... released a podcast today that had some of my thoughts, if anyone's interested:

http://www.castmedium.com/2010/09/20/castmedium-reachcast-09-20-10/

Wow you guys certainly love Halo, it was a nice podcast with some pretty serious talk about the mechanics, the exploits etc. I am surprised you resisted the urge to call out 'Odious Tea' but then again when you are discussing the game with some one who has read all the books then it might go down as well.