Halo 4

[Sno]

0MwjoFNYu_w

First glimpse of the game.

Doesn't reveal much, but what they show looks nice.

However, some of the other details coming out are incredibly frustrating to me.

There's talk of loadout and progression systems in the MP, which is absolutely not the direction Halo should go in.

With every other shooter following in CoD's footsteps, the way Halo kind of set itself apart was adamantly refusing to simply fall in line with all of that. It kind of ended up being where you went if what mattered to you was balanced and level fields of play dictated only by personal skill.

It will be incredibly upsetting if 343's first game with the series eschews all of this.

Rrrr! Fan rage!

[Chaddicus]

I agree that it was nice having Halo continue to be its own thing when most others were following CoD. I wonder if they put in Ranked and Un-ranked (old Halo style) playlists, would enough people play the old style or is the allure of unlocks too great?

[a purple future]

it's not really their first game though, is it? didn't they make ODST? That was a good, and refreshingly different take on the series.

That said, if we're continuing the Master Chief story, I'd kind of prefer they didn't get too clever with it. Save that for other Halo-universe games.

[Sno]

it's not really their first game though, is it? didn't they make ODST? That was a good, and refreshingly different take on the series.

Nope.

Halo 1/2/3, ODST, and Reach were all Bungie.

Halo Wars was Ensemble.

Halo Anniversary was actually kind of stealth-developed by Saber Interactive. (They made the very underrated Time Shift.)

Halo 4 will be 343's first game. (Apparently been in development for close to 3 or 4 years.)

[Lu]

How?

[Sno]

What is the problem there?

[Lu]

How can he see where he is going?

[Sno]

Maaaagic?

[Sno]

I think that shot is just at a weird angle though, like the Warthog is going up an incline or something.

[shammack]

There's clearly a camera on the front of the vehicle and the image is being displayed on the inside of his helmet visor thing. Or a wizard did it.

[SiN]

Woah, Holiday 2012. That's pretty close!

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out. From a production perspective, it looks incredible (epic, even), but everything else is on unproven/unknown grounds. I sure it'll turn out well, but it'll be exciting to see how 343 approaches the gameplay/level design/narrative differently than Bungie did.

[Sno]

I'm actually really excited to see what they do with the story.

They're doing some pretty crazy things in the novels to set groundwork for the 343 trilogy, and some of the details that have leaked out about Halo 4 itself sound really cool.

[Korax]

I was already quite apprehensive about the prospect of a non-Bungie Halo, but now the CoD-ification of multiplayer has dumped all interest down the drain. The reasons I enjoy Halo multiplayer are in fairly direct opposition to how things are done in CoD.

Can't wait to see the story mode that skips between Master Chief, Nameless ODST who gets glassed halfway through the game, and Badass ONI Operative who has to make a slow-mo kill on the big bad to win the game.

[Sno]

Can't wait to see the story mode that skips between Master Chief, Nameless ODST who gets glassed halfway through the game, and Badass ONI Operative who has to make a slow-mo kill on the big bad to win the game.

Your imagined worst-case-scenario is a thing Bungie kind of already did. (Twice!)

I hear you though, nobody wants scripted and linear corridor shooting in Halo.

When they choose to reveal details about the campaign, i hope it meets expectations.

[Korax]

Your imagined worst-case-scenario is a thing Bungie kind of already did. (Twice!)

Mmm, I suppose. I guess Bungie just did a better job of contextualizing each story, tying them together, and giving characters some depth and personality that I could actually care about.

[Orv]

I hear you though, nobody wants scripted and linear corridor shooting in Halo.

Uh... is, is Halo not... that?

[Sno]

Uh... is, is Halo not... that?

That would seem to be what i am saying, yes. Individual battles in Halo games are enormously dynamic and set mostly in large, open spaces.

Playing a Halo game is not like playing a CoD game.

The CoD games do occasionally open up into larger battles, but frequently funnel you down much narrower paths than Halo ever would.

It probably sounds like splitting hairs if you aren't way into one or the other, but it's statement i'll stand by.

[Orv]

My experience is admittedly limited to Combat Evolved. Which I liked, actually. But I still felt it was linear. Yeah the battles were more dynamic and open, but ultimately I feel it's still a corridor shooter. The corridors are just really big.

[miffy495]

What difficulty did you play it on? That was my opinion of Halo back when I was still playing them on Easy. The AI doesn't get a chance to shine when you're killing it right away. I stepped it up to Heroic around Halo 3, and have really enjoyed the last ones that way. Amazing how much a difference upping the difficulty level in that series makes for enjoyment of the game. A lot of people will tell you that games aren't meant to be played on Easy, and for the majority of games I consider that bullshit. Play on Easy if you want, what the hell does it matter to me how you enjoy your game? Halo though, it really changes the dynamic of it. If you still enjoy playing Halo on Easy, there's nothing wrong with that. When someone tells me that the games are too simple for them, the first question I ask is "what difficulty did you select?" That criticism really does disappear when you ratchet it up a bit.

[Sno]

I'm in agreement with Miffy.

I try to be careful around it, because i know it always seems really shitty when people take the "you played it wrong" position with games, but Heroic and Legendary do profoundly change how you play Halo. (Heroic is labeled on the menus as "the way the game is meant to be played" for a reason, those games are balanced around the Heroic difficulty.)

You don't just have less health, Bungie did good by their difficulty levels. Enemy compositions change, enemies are smarter and more aggressive, damage and resistance values are changed in very comprehensive but subtle ways. So you actually start having to think about using energy weapons to bring down shields, and then using a rifle to finish them off with a headshot, taking care to not waste ammo on the physical armor they're also wearing that has its own unique resistance values.

So it's the above considerations, happening within Bungie's "combat triangle" of guns/melee/grenades, while you're surrounded by dozens of combatants both friendly and hostile, as vehicles careen around the edges of the battle governed by their own interactions and rules.

They're linear a to b games, but when the battles happen, they are allowed to actually just happen, and the systems that are there are able to support some really dense and interesting gameplay. CoD, in comparison, i always just feel like it's trying to shove a specific narrative of action beats down my throat.

I would recommend ODST for seeing Halo at its most emergent and open-ended. (Speaking personally, it's also my favorite campaign in the series.)

Edited March 6, 2012 by Sno

[Orv]

I don't own an XBox, so any Halo I'd play would be 1/2 on PC. I'll see if I can get 2 for a reasonable price somewhere, as opposed to the 30 I think they're asking on the Microsoft site. That said, if I manage that or to find the disk and key for CE, I'll give it a shot.

[Sno]

I don't own an XBox, so any Halo I'd play would be 1/2 on PC. I'll see if I can get 2 for a reasonable price somewhere, as opposed to the 30 I think they're asking on the Microsoft site. That said, if I manage that or to find the disk and key for CE, I'll give it a shot.

And now that you've said this, i have to say that Halo 2 has kind of a terrible campaign. That game was infamously rushed out the door, and it shows. Bungie has openly regarded it as a mark of shame. I mean, and 2 is where a lot of the mechanics the series is built around really coalesced, and its huge innovations in the online space are rightly well regarded, but it's buggy and its campaign is really disjointed and unpolished.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Sno

[Orv]

And now that you've said this, i have to say that Halo 2 has kind of a terrible campaign. That game was infamously rushed out the door, and it shows. Bungie has openly regarded it as a mark of shame. I mean, and 2 is where a lot of the mechanics the series is built around really coalesced, and its huge innovations in the online space are rightly well regarded, but it's buggy and its campaign is really disjointed and unpolished.

It's also bloody fucking impossible. How the hell do you get anything done on Legendary when you die in one shot? I'm hoping the initial combat room isn't entirely indicative. Note that I'm bad at shooters compared to some people, but holy shit.

[Sno]

Yes? Yes. 2 has often been cited as the hardest game in the series, but not for the right reasons. That game is kind of a dick, and I wouldn't bother trying to struggle through on Legendary. (To that point, it's the one game in the series i've never finished solo on Legendary.)

I wouldn't encourage diving into legendary first-thing on any of those games though, there's a fairly significant jump between heroic and legendary.

Heroic generally has everything kind of smoothly balanced, those games make the most sense there. All of the mechanics are impactful enough to be clearly surfaced and observable, and all of the available tools are significant and valuable.

Legendary starts making you second guess things, standard battle tactics aren't as useful, understanding the systems in play and how you can take advantage of them is the only way to realistically stand a chance. (The plasma pistol becomes the most important weapon in the game.)

Edited March 6, 2012 by Sno

[Orv]

So basically Legendary is Tomb of Horrors. Fantastic. Guess I'll swap down the difficulty and see if I can't find my disk for the first one.

E: Hahahaha. The first room goes from a rush of about 20 guys in three waves to 7, going from Legendary to Heroic. What artificial horseshit.