Halo: The Master Chief Collection now on Steam

[Deleted member 7219]

Oh fuck off already. I don’t want your bullshit on my profile page, so I cleaned it, as one would clean their carpet when training a puppy (an apt analogy for you, furfag). I already told you to stop writing there.

And you are so pathetic that you let your butthurt spew into a thread about Halo.

Fuck off you degenerate.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Oh fuck off already. I don’t want your bullshit on my profile page, so I cleaned it, as one would clean their carpet when training a puppy (an apt analogy for you, furfag). I already told you to stop writing there.

And you are so pathetic that you let your butthurt spew into a thread about Halo.

Imagine caring about a Halo thread trolololo. If you want to complain about thread-shitting, why not consider your own posting history?

Fuck off you degenerate.

 

[baud]

if only ... I didn't dislike Brute weaponry!

I loved dual wielding Maulers in Legendary co-op, but their ammo pretty much doesn't exist and you can only dual wield them towards the very end of the game.

too bad all the games released after Halo 3 didn't had dual-wielding

 

[Dayyālu]

Finished ODST.

Spoiler

There's surprisingly little to say about the gameplay. I'd even argue that the gameplay is less refined than Halo 3, thanks to the lack of dual wielding and to the extremely weird choice of having a light magnification device giving you IFF on everything by default. I guess it was because Halo 3's foes weren't built to be fought in a low-light setup, and the IFF was needed.

The level design of ODST.... is a tad peculiar. One can cut it between the "hub" map of New Mombasa By Night and the flashback missions. Many of the flashback missions are the usual Halo stuff, not helped by being essentially Halo3 with a Call of Duty-esque opaque shield system (I looove hearing my guy pant when hit). I didn't dislike any of 'em but gameplay wise we're going through the moves, urban combat, Warthog combat, Scorpion combat, Banshee combat.... the last missions are admittedly superior and some nice variety even for Halo standards (I don't remember anything similar to the Hive). It works. It's a functional shooter, even if it's clearly just more Halo 3 in the end.

New Mombasa By Night, the hub level, feels weird. You're dropped into this night mission, alone, left to wander the streets and engage patrols as you like - I can clearly see what Bungie was going for, but tbh the Halo combat model isn't exactly built for stealth. It feels a tad..... mod-ish? Like trying to put something that wasn't planned into a combat system.

The new weapons are functional, I particularly liked the pistol trying to ape CE's Magnum but considerably weaker against shields. A headshot machine for low-tier enemies, but a fun one.

That said, ODST is.... a """storyfag""" Halo game, if there's even one? I kinda disliked the fact that they dumped the sorta afroscifi they had in Halo2 for generic almost-but-not-quite cyberpunk ambience, but the game truly appears to be slower and methodical. It's a pity that beyond the impressive visuals and moody music the game is .... empty, there are no real goodies hidden, no real depth and the terminals are an amusing distraction at best and a bore at worst. ODST's night cyberpunk theatre is good ambience, but it feels weirdly off. I still liked it, they tried something different.

Regarding something different, remember Firefly? The lineup for voice actors is so late 00ies to be amusing, a relic of other times. Buuut.... for Halo standards, ODST's writing is good and functional. Fun banter, attempts at story and DRAAAMA, clear objectives. I think there's probably more characters and writing in ODST's short campaign than in the entirety of the baseline trilogy. For sure Bungie wanted something different, and they kinda managed to.

I'm left with little to say. "Did you want Halo3 trying to be a "plot-heavy" pseudo sci-fi pseudo cyberpunk shooter? Here, get ODST."

Onwards to.... Reach!

 

[JDR13]

Finished ODST.

Onwards to.... Reach!

Eh? Why did you play ODST before Reach?

 

[Dayyālu]

Eh? Why did you play ODST before Reach?

I don't give a shit about the "internal plot coherency" and I'm playing them in release order to check what Bungie did different.

 

[JDR13]

I'm playing them in release order to check what Bungie did different.

Because you wouldn't be able to see the difference otherwise, right?

 

[Morenatsu.]

Release order is the only way to play.

 

[baud]

To continue on the promethean weapons, the rocket launcher is fun. Powerful, it one-hit kills prometheans knights, nearly feel like a waste using it on them, since prometheans don't have vehicles or big enemies ala hunters. Also the projective has a big hitbox, which make it easier to hit jumpy enemies. To compensate, the ammunition is very limited, but I feel it's better to have 4 or 5 impactful shots than 15 than don't even kill an elite. The sniper rifle is also powerful but ammunition is similarly limited.
Another thing that make the drone annoying (beyond the fact they usually fly away when you drop their shield) is how they don't even drop a weapon when killed .

I finished all the Spartan ops.

Spoiler

It was a mixed bag and surely something that's better played with friends.
There was a lot of reused maps, but they got better at how they were reusing it in the second half of the ops, with adding some new parts to existing maps and new maps altogether.

The way you respawn as if playing coop instead of going back to a checkpoint makes it way easier, since there's little penalties to dying (apart from whatever weapons you were carrying, which can be an issue if you lose the last rocket launcher of the map and there's still some hunters around); it allow allow to grind through some tough encounters (I played mostly on heroic this time). Though the spawn are sometime either right in firing range of enemies or a hundred meters away.
Another issue is how weapons despawn too quickly, which is compounded by the starting weapon limitations (only carbines and assault rifles from all races available, no shotty or sniper).
Sometime, the game will spawn enemies (like a quartet of hunter or a squad of elites) all around you, leading in an instant kill before you've had time to react.
In the second half of the campaign, the encounters get more interesting, less 'let's spawn a few waves around the player to pad the map length'. There's one with big swarm of promethean drones attacking a position while you activate turrets to help you. Another is a tank session with a lot of promethean drones and knights, so you have to balance destroying the knights attacking you and dealing with the drones respawning the knights and additional turrets, though it is hampered by the stupid tank control (vehicles go where the mouse is pointing) and the very narrow corridors in which you have to drive. Some elites are given promethean shotgun, which is a nice touch, but usually make them less of a threat.

There's also a map with a big vehicle that feel a little out of place, more for something like Gears of War:

Spoiler

Story is also a mixed bag, since what's told in the CGI cutscenes has nothing to do with what you're doing for the first half, since the cutscenes are about a different squad than the one the player is part of. Though in the second half, the story picks up enough that what the player does things related to what's told in the cinematics and I was more invested in what I was doing.

I also started using the plasma pistol very often, just to drop shields and stun vehicles. I never though of using it that way until I read about it on the net (and despite getting my shields dropped that way many times...).

 

[Xelocix]

Imagine what could've been...

 

[Xelocix]

God I wish that was me...

Tfw no big tiddy Brute gf...

 

[Morenatsu.]

wtf? i thought this was supposed to be gaylo not soylo

 

[Dayyālu]

Comrade Xelocix , you need to be shot. No harsh feelings. I check the thread and I find the need to inform you of the fact. It's not personal, merely etiquette.

That said, after taking a break that may or may not have been caused by less gaming time and an ill-advised reinstall of Myth II Soulblighter, finished Reach.

Spoiler

I'm not entirely sure of what to make of Reach. From some perspective, it has some things I should love. For example, jetpacks. Exodus gives you the combo of jetpack and gravity hammer, letting you larp as a proper Space Marine bopping Brutes in the head coming from the skies, but there's something off.

The weapon selection, God pardon be, is bloated. There's simply too much crap for the two-weapon slot system, and while CE/2 had some finesse in what to get (helped by the dual wielding system that I sorely miss) there's so much stuff that's .... not that different from each other? I find myself hard pressed to even remember some Covenant weapons, and the ubiquity of the DMR rifle and the limited ammo loads made me choose the most boring options every time, because at least they're not some Hobart's Funnies with no ammo whatsoever. I understand that in MP this may mean more variety, but ... I don't know. Less is sometimes more, and cutting down grenade number/variety and deployables in exchange for pick-me-up abilities and a confusing array of weaponry left me cold.

Vehicle sections are more cinematic but also far more scripted and , I dare to say, boring as hell. Gone are the Scarab hunts or the riding with a Rocket Launcher marine of Halo 3, but even if ORBITAL WING COMMANDER LITE and HELO SECTION IN CRUMBLING CITY are visually stunning, they're dry as fuck, and even the usual Scorpion ride is nothing short of a short travesty. They felt like something built to look cool on trailers and on suits meetings, but they're so dry and basic (keep firing against HIGHLIGHTED TARGET, keep firing, keep firing....).

Level design is also dry. I don't know if it's burnout, but the only specific fight that stuck into my brain is the last one in Pillar of Autumn, where constant waves of Brutes force you to use to the fullest the environment and a rapidly diminishing amount of resources. Most levels feel like inferior and cookie-cutter versions of previous Halos (Nightfall for sure is thematically similar to Truth and Reconciliation). I mean, the arenas are bigger and more complex, yet the combat feels so.... unsatisfying? Maybe it's really burnout. The enemy variety is also theoretically good, but so rarely used at its fullest! 3-4 Engineers in the entire game, two bug encounters, and the Elites have become squishy as fuck and far less mobile. No boss fights whatsoever, not even an attempt. Meh. Every big arena is better approached by aggressive sniping, and drop spawns are sometimes outright asinine. Yes, it's you, Nightfall. Specifically.

About the graphics, nothing to say. Pretty, yes, nice designs, yes. Brutes look different in every goddamn game, and now they're hairless apes, what the fuck has Bungie against the retarded apemen for mutating them in every goddamn game.

The soundtrack is perfunctory. Sound design is adequate, at least you understand what the fuck is happening around you clearly, and it amuses me that the Covenant in roughly two months learn good English. Smart aliens.

I have almost nothing to say about the plot, it's perfunctory too and I don't legit give a shit about anyone, at least it's not ALL heroic sacrifices and some of your mates die a dog's death and that's it. I'm starting to think that Halo 2 and the Arbiter were legit the only half-assed attempts to a narrative that Bungie ever made. Whatever.

I'm a bit baffled that Bungie's Halos end with a bit of a .... bloated whimper. It's bigger, it's prettier, it has a shitton of more stuff, but sometimes less is more. At least, gut feeling after finishing it.

Time to see what 343 threw out with Halo 4. They can't write worse than Bungie, right? Right?

 

[Xelocix]

Comrade Xelocix , you need to be shot. No harsh feelings. I check the thread and I find the need to inform you of the fact. It's not personal, merely etiquette.

That said, after taking a break that may or may not have been caused by less gaming time and an ill-advised reinstall of Myth II Soulblighter, finished Reach.

Spoiler

I'm not entirely sure of what to make of Reach. From some perspective, it has some things I should love. For example, jetpacks. Exodus gives you the combo of jetpack and gravity hammer, letting you larp as a proper Space Marine bopping Brutes in the head coming from the skies, but there's something off.

The weapon selection, God pardon be, is bloated. There's simply too much crap for the two-weapon slot system, and while CE/2 had some finesse in what to get (helped by the dual wielding system that I sorely miss) there's so much stuff that's .... not that different from each other? I find myself hard pressed to even remember some Covenant weapons, and the ubiquity of the DMR rifle and the limited ammo loads made me choose the most boring options every time, because at least they're not some Hobart's Funnies with no ammo whatsoever. I understand that in MP this may mean more variety, but ... I don't know. Less is sometimes more, and cutting down grenade number/variety and deployables in exchange for pick-me-up abilities and a confusing array of weaponry left me cold.

Vehicle sections are more cinematic but also far more scripted and , I dare to say, boring as hell. Gone are the Scarab hunts or the riding with a Rocket Launcher marine of Halo 3, but even if ORBITAL WING COMMANDER LITE and HELO SECTION IN CRUMBLING CITY are visually stunning, they're dry as fuck, and even the usual Scorpion ride is nothing short of a short travesty. They felt like something built to look cool on trailers and on suits meetings, but they're so dry and basic (keep firing against HIGHLIGHTED TARGET, keep firing, keep firing....).

Level design is also dry. I don't know if it's burnout, but the only specific fight that stuck into my brain is the last one in Pillar of Autumn, where constant waves of Brutes force you to use to the fullest the environment and a rapidly diminishing amount of resources. Most levels feel like inferior and cookie-cutter versions of previous Halos (Nightfall for sure is thematically similar to Truth and Reconciliation). I mean, the arenas are bigger and more complex, yet the combat feels so.... unsatisfying? Maybe it's really burnout. The enemy variety is also theoretically good, but so rarely used at its fullest! 3-4 Engineers in the entire game, two bug encounters, and the Elites have become squishy as fuck and far less mobile. No boss fights whatsoever, not even an attempt. Meh. Every big arena is better approached by aggressive sniping, and drop spawns are sometimes outright asinine. Yes, it's you, Nightfall. Specifically.

About the graphics, nothing to say. Pretty, yes, nice designs, yes. Brutes look different in every goddamn game, and now they're hairless apes, what the fuck has Bungie against the retarded apemen for mutating them in every goddamn game.

The soundtrack is perfunctory. Sound design is adequate, at least you understand what the fuck is happening around you clearly, and it amuses me that the Covenant in roughly two months learn good English. Smart aliens.

I have almost nothing to say about the plot, it's perfunctory too and I don't legit give a shit about anyone, at least it's not ALL heroic sacrifices and some of your mates die a dog's death and that's it. I'm starting to think that Halo 2 and the Arbiter were legit the only half-assed attempts to a narrative that Bungie ever made. Whatever.

I'm a bit baffled that Bungie's Halos end with a bit of a .... bloated whimper. It's bigger, it's prettier, it has a shitton of more stuff, but sometimes less is more. At least, gut feeling after finishing it.

Time to see what 343 threw out with Halo 4. They can't write worse than Bungie, right? Right?

 

[baud]

snip

I agree with a lot of what you said. In particular

Level design is also dry. I don't know if it's burnout

Interestingly, I played Reach first (as I played the game following their Steam release) and I also felt that, so I don't think it was burnout.

Time to see what 343 threw out with Halo 4. They can't write worse than Bungie, right? Right?

at least they did try to write .

 

[Dayyālu]

at least they did try to write .

I'm just at the beginning and the writing is already hysterical

SPARTANS ARE THE NEXT EVOLUTIONARY STEP OF HUMANITY

I'M GETTING RAMPANT MASTER CHIEF YOU NEED TO SAVE ME MASTER CHIEF

why the fuck Cortana looks like a fidgety rape victim

I've played Marathon, Cortana. Trust me, gettin' your Rampancy on will improve you massively, you'll get a sense of humour and cultural references. Maybe you'll get to crack jokes about orbital bombardments and how humans are clueless, slow apes

 

[U-8D8]

I'd say that the Halo game’s I’ve played suffer from their own, unique fatal flaw that holds them back from being really good. For Halo 1 its the limited weapon sandbox that incentivizes one of the two fix-all weapons for all encounters; the magnum for the first half and the shotgun for the second. Halo 2 I feel fixed this problem yet made new ones like their solution to the previous game’s same-ish areas is having elevators or moving platforms you just stand on for five or ten minutes. And Reach’s problem is sprint. That might seem like a simplification, but I honestly think most of Reach’s issues stem from it.

Areas within levels are on average larger than say Halo 2 but they seem to be less "big" and more "long." They fall into the design philosophy of “sprint from defensive position to defensive position on this side of the map and shoot at enemies on the opposite side of the map.” You only have to try and play with one of the other armor abilities and endure the horribly slow player speed to see that the game was mostly designed around using sprint. And you can also see how they disincentivize fighting in close quarters with how they reworked the Elite melee, which changed from a powerful attack that the player could strafe around to a near instant kick that one shots you on higher difficulties. Because they can't have you melee an elite to death like older Halos because you can close the gap much faster now. Unlike duel wielding or the utility grenades, sprint bends the game design around it to a shape much more similar to modern-day cover based shooters than the old-school FPS philosophy where Bungie always seemed to keep one foot in.

I still like elements of the game. I feel like it definitely picked up at the start of the city missions in no small part due to the brutes. They went from mediocre in previous games to one of the bright spots of Reach’s campaign; turned to brawlers who are generally easy to take down but can still screw your shit up if you aren’t careful. Probably like them more than the Elites in Reach actually.

I understand that in MP this may mean more variety, but ... I don't know. Less is sometimes more, and cutting down grenade number/variety and deployables in exchange for pick-me-up abilities and a confusing array of weaponry left me cold.

Part of the problem with the weapons in reach is that some aren’t even designed to bring variety to the weapon sandbox but instead to mimic another weapon in the sandbox. Reach launched with a multiplayer mode built around the idea of Spartans versus Elites and instead of having asymmetrical weapon balancing, they decided to make reasonable facsimiles of human weaponry. That’s how we got something like the needle rifle which is meant to fill the DMR role in the covenant arsenal.

 

[Dayyālu]

Your analysis is devastatingly spot-on and it explains the sense of... weirdness. I had about Reach. It feels cover-shootey, and even the rare jetpack doesn't help. I did stick to Sprint almost by instinct because all the other armor abilities were underwhelming.

It also instantly came to mind that yes, all Elite close combat in Reach is stunningly lethal, and the stealth kills are incredibly rare because the maps are too scattered for their own good, you can get stuck in that godwaful animation.

My hat to ye, you nailed some of the weird feelings I had about Reach.

(Also, I don't consider the pistol/shotgun combo in CE to be a problem: they're incredibly fun weapons to use despite being overpowered.)

 

[Borian]

Halo 4's writing is dogshit. Just plain old garbage, not a single thing more. Maybe the worst I've ever encountered in a video game. I never skip story in games. I never have, ever, before. But I did for Halo 4. Pussies might even find the writing insulting, but I'm no pussy. God-awful.

Spoiler

I only play these games on Legendary because they become something else on that difficulty. The wack-a-mole gameplay changes into a puzzle of attrition, especially in CE, 2, and, I have now discovered, 4. Halo 4 lost me at the very badly written and needlessly long intro, where I immediately noticed that it was just the Halo 1 intro again, but decline and with needlessly long stretches of nothing happening. Then you're thrown into QTEs where nothing happens. I immediately knew the developers weren't able to come up with anything good on their own. Little did I know that this wouldn't manifest fully until later. However, it won me over again once we got to the regular Halo gameplay with Grunts and Elites. The first thing I notice is that it's dramatically easier than the other games, the second thing I notice (after a few more encounters) is that 343 did a good job copying Bungie's style. But Bungie's enemy placement and level design is very distinct. It's missing here, despite the attempt at verbatim copy. That's neither good nor bad.
And then 343's contribution to the series, 343's fanfiction, manifests upon you like a desperate man in the prison shower: Prometheans. The antlions are fine, but the Knights are not. The Knights are not Halo enemies and you can tell by the second encounter. You can tell that few people from 343 were able to beat the other games on Legendary. You'll notice that Knights do next to no damage to you with any of their weapons compared to others. This is wildly out of line with every single other weapon and enemy in every other Halo game on Legendary. There was a problem, and that problem was that the Knights have way too much health. The solution was to reduce their health or add greater weaknesses. Complication: We can't reduce their health because that would completely ruin our encounter design and trivialize this new enemy. To fix our encounter design, we would need to redesign the game with Legendary in mind. They obviously didn't do that. Instead, their weapons do the same damage to you on Legendary that Covenant weapons do to you on Easy. I presume, since I haven't played on a lesser difficulty. Let me make it clear: It would be almost impossible to beat Halo 4 on Legendary unless they did this, because this enemy is a scuffed, bad design and their level design does not take them into account properly.
I can have fun dying over and over again on Legendary in the other games. That's due to Bungie's mastery of their own formula. It's simple, but it worked, and Bungie knew not to mess with it too much. They knew what they had by Halo 2 and they simply repeated it for the next three games.
I am not having fun with Halo 4 on Legendary. That's not due to a lack of skill or lessening grit for difficulty, it's due to 343 making poor decisions in game design. Encounters have become a slog of backtracking just to find enough guns to shred some of their shields away. Hell, you can get shot over and over and over again by their weapons when your shields are down but still survive. I don't think I actually died in a direct fight with them, only by their grenades instantly killing you when your shields are down and you're behind cover. Otherwise, every single one of my deaths was an attempt to exploit their AI by abusing checkpoints so I wouldn't have to backtrack to find more ammo.
Halo 4 has, honestly, made me appreciate the Halo games even less. I didn't know that it was such a balancing act to make them fun at all, at least on Legendary. I guess I never knew that the Halo games were only barely fun in the first place. Perhaps Bungie needed to repeat the formula, because it otherwise didn't work?

Edit: I got gud. I was rusty after returning to Halo from a long absence. There's still occasional backtracking to find more guns because of the shear amount of health these fuckers have. Knights still aren't fun to fight. Promethean encounters are linear; they have to be dealt with in a specific order. That order is thus:

1. Dogs
2. Covenant
   
3. Drones/Turrets(Turrets if the designers didn't give you enough cover, or you need to kill them to draw out the drones, to shoot them as they revive turrets)
4. Knights

It's even worse now that I'm breezing through the game. The Covenant parts are so much more fun, but not as fun as I remember from previous games. It's too easy. I'm curious about Bungie's level design. Some of the problems stem from numbers, but I think most of the problems with the difficulty stem from level design.

Straight out of Halo 2, but stinkier. I thought this gondola level would be a nightmare. I'm pretty sure I had a PTSD flashback because of my almost-literal prison days spent with Halo 2 as my metaphorical top bunk.
It was easy. Promethean weapons don't do enough damage. Prometheans are hard countered by open spaces, like this open layout. You see two platforms, and 343 clearly wanted you to go through both because your gondola will troll you by moving to the next platform, but your gondola has multiple long ass-spikes that you can jump to from the first platform without effort. There's two of these platform fights and you only have to fight half of the platforms to activate the switch.
Honestly, I don't have the energy or desire to complain about this game anymore. The story is still revolting. Cortana has been fanfictioned and her out of character behavior has been waved off with a common, base conceit - the kind of trite you'll find in the Walmart YA section. The second Cortana threw a temper tantrum and started screaming, I skipped a cutscene out of second hand embarrassment. Same thing with what they did in the story.
Uh... Fisher Price Pelican. Knex Broadsword. I had a good laugh about the Phantoms in the Fisher Price Pelican level. There would be no challenge at all if you fought banshees or regular Phantoms. There would be extra effort involved in putting a gun on the Covenant troop carrier model. So what do I, the 343 studios level designer, do? Well, I mouse over a number and make it bigger. So now the Phantoms fire FIVE BILLION CONCUSSION ROUNDS A SECOND. It's pretty funny to imagine what that would look like on the ground. Reminds me of early Halo 2 PC gameplay where people put the Scarab gun in multiplayer. Again, just lazy. A lazy solution to an unnecessary problem. Also the bad guy's ship design looks like the ME3 Leviathan. Is that ship shape the soy glasses of bad games?

Let's get some positives for a change. I liked some of the music from the first few levels. It makes me appreciate what O'Donnell accomplished. I haven't noticed any well-placed music in the later part of the game, though. Or, at least, I haven't remembered any, not like what I still remember from the music in Halo 2.
The weapons and sounds feel nice. I like the new Warthog sound. Promethean weapons are decline UNSC weapons. ModDB reskins. Ctrl c ctrl v F2. Why is the Plasma Sword worse?
The multiplayer is fun. Out of all the multiplayer matches I've played in the MCC (albeit that number is rather low right now) I'd say I had the most fun in Halo 2, with 4 right behind it.
I guess it's Halo. The regular gameplay is good. It's good they designed with multiplayer first. Popamole is getting boring. This campaign is starting to feel like I'm spending too much time watching Marvel movies. I think I'll have to give this series a very long break before I can play any more of it.

I'm going to beat the game because it entrapped me into doing so. I'm done talking about it. Hopefully.
Why does this game make me want to play Dark Souls?

 

[Dayyālu]

Finished Halo 4. Burnout was a thing, I was kind of sick of it by the end. Needed months to finish it.

Spoiler

Borian nails a shitton of problems with Halo 4. I'll add my limited experience, as I'm not a particular lover of Halo nor I tried MP, and I don't play on Legendary because I'm lazy. Heroic it is.

I'll start with the .... most amusing part, the writing. Yes, Halo has never been a storyfag game. Attempts were made. Halo 2 is still somewhat good with the Arbiter and the two perspectives, the Covenant is a good foe with all their politicking an' shit. It's ugly, but it just work.

Halo 4 made me laugh often and heartily. It's..... embarassing. Everything is so clumsily written to be almost endearing, the simple facts of the narrative collapse so often on themselves that the writers needed to desperately add lines to jury-rig their own game (Cortana knows what the Infnity is before we even have the foggiest idea, Mr. Generic Friendly Officer becomes the Captain of the Infnity because ???, we're supposed to care about redhead Spartan that does nothing because ???)... and that's the small things. The overall "plot" is hysterical, with a giant orc in space armour saying some of the worst lines known to Man - I'll have to admit that Szarabajka does a killing job in delivering them tho, it's not a mistery that the man was the celebrated YOU HAVE DIOMEDES in DoWII Retribution - and the entire mess is.... amazingly laughable? It feels like they feed drugs on the writing team and told them to ape a JRPG. Cortana's plotline is .... a thing of wonder.

Did I tell you that I miss Marine banter and Sergeant Johnson telling jokes? That's good Halo writing. Don't try to write a love story in Halo. Please. I could not stop laughing at the ending, when after a goddamn QUICK TIME EVENT BOSS FIGHT Master Chief KAMIKAZES WITH A NUKE and he's saved by THE POWER OF AI LOVE and BLUE AI TIDDIES. It just happens.

Graphics! They're there. I liked 'em, even, the USNC areas are very good. The Forerunners structures and designs aren't, and they clash utterly with the Halo "ambience". I understand they went for the big Apple-style insects with energy lines, they look like shit.

Gameplay! Halo 4 has essentially two types of foes: baseline Covenant (and I mean utterly baseline, we're back to the Halo CE lineup of Grunts-Jackals-Elites-Hunters) and Prometeans. First of all, Halo 4 is laughably easy. There's like two .... moderately difficult fights in the entire game. The greatest difficulty is to find enough DMR-equivalent ammo. Covenant lineup is the usual, copied 1:1 from the Bungie games. Why the heck the Covenant are even there and hostile? It's never explained. It just happens. The Prometeans aren't enemies, they're roadblocks: they do pitiful damage and they have amazingly complex scripting - teleporting grenades resurrection charges weapon switches - that means nothing because they do shit damage, their AI to take cover is shit and you simply headshot them all from range. That leads us to...

Map design. Halo 4 worsens the Reach problem that you're given to, much fucking space. DMR everything. Everything. Run back to find more DMR ammo. Trying to fight close is an annoyance because all close-range weapons bar ARs have shit ammo and they're shit. Every goddamn encounter is at range, sprint from cover to cover, headshot everything. It's difficult to even use properly grenades because there is so much range. And the AI can't cope. It's like playing a bad Half Life 1 mod where the modders didn't realize that the HECU AI isn't built for long-range engagements.

It becomes boring. Fast.

Music is adequate, I guess.

I can't fault 343 too much tho, if I was given their job I'd piss my pants in terror. "Make more Halo" after the baseline system has been extensively exploited to death by Bungie must have been a daunting task. They went for the cheap way, not building new or old (duuuual wieeeelding) but marrying an unholy matrimony of Old Halo with contemporary cover-shooter MP mechanics. It works.... badly, I guess?

It's also mediocre. Halo for me then ends with a whimper, and it seems that it has already.... become gaming history: in the 00ies Halo was essentially huge and it's a relic of its times, as Half Life 1 is a relic of the late 90ies. It was a fun romp with some mediocrity.

Also, two questions for the thread:

1) Are the Spartan Ops thingies worth a run? I tried one of 'em and they look like more Halo 4, just worse.

2) Why does everyone and their dog seem to hate Halo 5? I mean, can't be worse than 4.

 

[what am i doing]

I think I actually have Halo 4 installed, but I have not played it. Just looking at the armour in the customization screen is vomit-inducing. I've heard a rough summary of the plot and all the ways it shits on the established universe and I just don't want to tarnish my fond memories of the Bungie games with it.

 

[baud]

1) Are the Spartan Ops thingies worth a run? I tried one of 'em and they look like more Halo 4, just worse.

it depends on how much you're starved for more Halo 4 combat. There's a lot of maps reused and the environments are mostly reused from the campaign.
I'd say most of the better levels are in the second half of the ops

 

[wahrk]

2) Why does everyone and their dog seem to hate Halo 5? I mean, can't be worse than 4.

Believe me... somehow it manages to be worse. I don’t even know where to begin. If that’s how you felt about 4 then I wouldn’t touch 5 with a 10 foot pole.

 

[Justicar]

Gay game.

 

[Dayyālu]

I've heard a rough summary of the plot and all the ways it shits on the established universe

It's not bad in the rage-inducing sense, it's.... cringe-worthy? You feel honestly embarrassed by proxy for the writers that had to write space orcs using Internet Rays to melt people into Apple insects.

I'd say most of the better levels are in the second half of the ops

Worth a test run, then.

I don’t even know where to begin.

I need to hunt down some postmortem. How you can dig deeper than Halo 4 must be fascinating