The Gamer's Quarter

[Lestrade]

After my Perfect Dark "moment" I forced myself to sober up a bit, and lacking anything particular to do, I decided to play some Halo 2. I don't have Live anymore, and since my Xbox is a second-hand one (and not my original 'box), there's a half-complete campaign save on the hard drive. I'd picked it up before, and I thought I'd give it another go.

Man. After playing for a while, it really started to dawn on me (sorry if I'm late to the party) how goddamn boring the single-player campaign is in this game. There are some great moments, to be sure, but they are so few and far between that even though I want to keep playing, I don't.

The thing is, I really, really like Halo: the universe. You all know how hardcore I was over ilovebees and its story. I enjoy so much about the series: its mythology, its characters and foremost its music. But I just can't bring myself to replay the games with any sort of vigour. The gameplay—the core mechanics—are just fine, and a lot of fun. However Bungie seems so dead set on creating epic games that they consistently bite off more than they can chew*, and leave us, the player, with not a lot to keep us interested as we plow through battle after battle after battle on the way to nowhere in particular.

I know that I should have cottoned on after playing the Library in Halo 1 (I never finished Halo 1), and it's not like I haven't played through Halo 2 before. It's just so disappointing, in retrospect, that the game just doesn't hold up. It started off so strong, and then resorted once again to the same repetitive, lifeless corridors for hours. I understand that the alien settings of the series make the incomprehensible layouts seem justified, perhaps even natural, but as both a playing field and a backdrop they are absolutely mind-numbing.

My problem with Halo, now that I've tried to replay it from time to time, is the same I have with a lot of games: it doesn't have any drive. It's just 20 hours of repetitive corridors and The Flood. It's a seven-hour game stretched unnaturally to almost three times that. There are those occasional moments of greatness (as I mentioned), when you look upon some sprawling vista and you realize why you're Master Chief and why you're the only one who has a chance at ending this terrible struggle. And then it's back into the corridors. God. Nevermind the Arbiter; I thought I liked him; I realize I don't, even though he is played by a voice actor I admire. But Covanent corridors are even more boring than human corridors, and really, I just want to save Earth, not help destroy it—or rather, get continually distracted on the way to doing so.

How can I love and hate a game so much at the same time? I suppose it's because I feel utterly inspired by its potential and then completely gutted by its reality. Please. Bungie, hire some decent project managers and make sure you don't blow your schedule for Halo 3 the way you did for Halo 2. Please, don't be afraid to make the game short if it removes several hours of tedious hallway-crawling. (Also, please play Half-Life 2.) Thanks.


* as evidenced in the behind-the-scenes disc that comes with Halo 2.

[Mr. Mechanical]

I know what you're saying about Halo 2, but I can still play the first game over and over again. Literally, there's no stopping. I've probably played through it seven or eight times by now, many times on Legendary.

I started up a game of Halo 2 a week ago, thinking it'd be a good game to plow through after having taken a break from the series. Playing it on Heroic the singleplayer campaign to Halo 2 feels like it's trying to emulate the multiplayer portion of the game and failing miserably because the AI just can't keep up with how awesome I am (cranking it up to Legendary doesn't really work as well, because then it feels like the AI has an unfair advantage over me. Fucking sniper enemies.). I got to the part where the drones fly up at you in that giant elevator and had to turn it off because I'd been playing for an hour at that point and was starting to get into the groove of it and then they throw you in with enemies that have almost no intelligence (which makes sense, seeing as they are drones) and just swarm you. I just didn't have the patience to shoot my way through that spot.

But yeah, honestly not a whole lot of it is really that memorable. A few parts stick out, sure, but the rest just sort of blends in with the scenery. I also really hate how they neutered the sense of scale, how the areas just always feel crowded. I'm sure this had something to do with the way they were designing the multiplayer because they obviously play a lot of Halo multiplayer while they're designing the game and a lot of the multiplayer levels toss you into rooms with all sorts of crates and shit you can duck behind, but seriously, what happened to the giant open areas of the first game? It just made the game feel a lot smaller than it should have.

And don't get me started on the invisible walls they put up all over the place to herd you from one plot point to the next...

[GSL]

So, am I the only one who was pissed off--repetitive corridors notwithstanding--at the utter fucking tedium that goes with fighting the Flood in both games? Seriously, they both would be HALF as long as they are if your weapons--which have been perfectly effective on every Covenant enemy in the game--actually did any damage. But no, you have to scramble around for the goddamn shotgun or burning laser thingie to actually make it through.
Am I the only one who thought the Flood was just a cheap way of keeping the players from getting too irate at the repeating corridors? Because once you encounter them, the fun of the games--and I did have fun in the first Halo--go right out the window.

I'm with you, Lestrade, in that I find the story behind the Halo universe fascinating--and utterly let down by the games used to convey it. Halo 1 wasn't bad--it was nowhere near the groundbreaking title all my fanboy dorm-mates led it to be, but it was pretty solid. Halo 2 was a disgusting disappointment; an utter failure on so many levels. From the "We pulled the whole thing out of our ass in the five months after E3!" alterations to the story and game itself, to the shoddy graphical programming that allowed for bump maps to render a few seconds into the cutscenes, to the infuriating cop-out non-ending right when the game seemed to be hitting its stride--well, Halo 3 is seriously going to have to be an epic on par with or exceeding Half-Life 2 for me to regain my faith in the franchise. And I still want to know where the second half of Halo 2 went.

[dessgeega]

i think the solution is to replay marathon.
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[The Great Unwashed]

Halo 1 & 2: The List

+ Originally developed for Mac
+ Fucking excellent soundtrack for Halo 1
+ First game to smoothly implement and popularise vehicular combat in an FPS
+ Red vs. Blue
+ This one time my brother got knocked off a cliff and he lobbed a sticky grenade up and hit his friend in the chest and then died, only for the grenade to go off a few seconds later and kill his friend, it was awesome totally liek.

- Halo 2 hyped beyond belief
- Corridors
- Fucking awful soundtrack for Halo 2
- Vehicular combat extended to aerial combat is a bad thing
- Corridors
- One hit kill sword whoring in Halo 2, seriously the worst idea ever. Who compensates for making melee combat so useless in an FPS by making the only melee weapon a point-and-kill deathstick. I will never understand.
- Corridors
- Red vs. Blue
- Corridors

I'm with the general consensus that Halo 1 was a solid and mildly awesome FPS, but nothing special, and that Halo 2 was an utter disappointment on every level.

By general consensus I mean "consensus among non-Halo fans".

Who are just about the most rabid franchise fanatics short of Kingdom Hearts players.
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[J.Goodwin]

I fall into the "own both and have only played a few stages of Halo" camp.

I got my brother a 360 for his birthday this month, and I basically never see him playing anything but Halo2. Which hurts me, deep inside. It's painful.

Typically, if I log in and see that one of my friends is on Halo2, I just remove them from the list right there, because the Xbox world is divided neatly into those who play Halo2 and those who play everything else. I happen to like a little variety in my gaming.

Naturally my brother stays though. Family is family.
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

[Lestrade]

[Dracko]

I had the exact same problem. I find that Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity have better maps (not to mention weapons, plotlines, audio effects and obviously graphics) than the original, and you might want to start with the second one as a result. I had similiar issues with the original Halo, but it seems that level design isn't Bungie's forte. I understand generally what they're trying to achieve, sure, but they're not quite there yet.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[SuperWes]

[Shapermc]

[Lestrade]

[Dracko]

Making variants is fun times. As I'm still on holiday, I've been meeting up with friends for mos of the time, and as they own an X-Box, it's been a Halo 2 and Def Jam (Which as a fighter game, holds up pretty well, if you look beyond the STREET foolishness) fest.

I expect the graphic novel will be worth it only for the artwork (I'm a sucker for Tsutomu Nihei and Moebius), though, but I can't say that the idea of playing as Master Chief, stranded on Earth, surrounded by an alien theological covenant is entirely unappealing, so Halo 3 is a title I'll be keeping an eye on, more so than the past two games, which I didn't really care to discover until presented to me. Maybe it's because I didn't have any expectations at all, that I found myself enjoying Halo 2. I loved the in-city combat (Which they should have done more of), and found myself caught up in exploring alien installations. I honestly didn't have much of a problem exploring those sorts of places, and having had the opportunity to replay it at least 3 times during my stay here, it doesn't really feel old.

The level design is flawed and some parts don't deliver, true, which stops it short of being a masterpiece, but the feel is though, it's a stellar example of a console FPS done right, and the Hollywood blockbuster ambience is present all the way through, even though I can't say that I find the story itself very interesting.

I do have my hopes up for the conclusion as a result.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Lackey]

I've only ever played the campaign in both games co-op. I think that's the way to do it, really. Corridors aren't bad with a friend!
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[Lestrade]

See, ilovebees made Halo 2 relevant. Once the game got here, though, the story was a huge letdown. Blah blah blah clichéd alien-religious nonsense blee blee.

At the end of ilovebees, you (as a listener) feel eerily connected with the world of Halo. The pure weight of the game's notion—the Covenant finding Earth—is palpable and inspiring. And yet a few levels in, you're off talking to a giant Piranha Plant and playing as the enemy. I don't care about the internal feuding within the Covenant. I do care, however, for the lives of all the characters in ilovebees, as well as the human populace in general, and the fact that they're being faced with such horrifying destruction.

Halo 2 started off as a really, truly convincing take on the "alien invasion" storyline, and then got distracted for 20 hours. Come on, Bungie! Show me the emotional, human weight of what this poster prepared us for:



That's a pretty powerful image, and it was completely, utterly unfulfilled in the actual game. The unspeakable challenge of fending off such a violating invasion is great fodder for a story, and a great reason to keep on shooting. Talking to a giant plant and listening to religious sermons by a British alien is just comic-book nonsense that doesn't feel meaningful in any way.

With any luck, Halo 3 will stick to Earth, and be something we as players can both related to an enjoy, every step of the way.

[Dracko]

Moebius' story in the graphic novel is supposed to tell the tale of a war chronicler living in New Mombasa, just moments before the Covenant invasion.

When you put it that way, though, your irks are quite understandable. I was under the impression too that Halo 2 was supposed to deal more with Earth than anything else (Again, I hadn't been following the hype at all, however), and those first few missions were by far my favourite, though Gravemind was quite the romp.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[J.Goodwin]

I find the entire "viral marketing otaku" phenomenon to be ... completely incomprehensible.

The closest comparison that I can make is those people that collect antique Coca-Cola advertsements (the metal thingies, the trays, the whatever).

If someone can shine some light on why the advertisement for Halo2 is better than the game (which I have no specific attachment to), then I would appreciate that.
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

[dhex]

ilovebees was:

1) mysterious
2) dynamic
3) participatory
4) creative

so in that sense it was an excellent campaign.

(disclaimer: i have never played halo 2 and will probably never play halo 2. but i appreciate good marketing)
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[Lestrade]

I have the entirety of ilovebees on CD, and it adds up to over two hours of really good radio drama. The fact that much of it was fueled by real-life participation is fascinating, especially the final week's message.

(I emailed one of the principal voice actresses to tell her how much I enjoyed her work, and she was nice enough to respond.)

[Lackey]

I found Gravemind sort of undermined the horror of the Flood as well. It was downright chilling in the first how it was just an unstoppable force of nature without reason or motivation. Giving it a giant anthropomorphic representative kind of kills that notion.

Also, the Covenant were cooler when you knew nothing about them. Are they going to explain why they all speak English? At first I assumed the dialogue was being dubbed in the Covenant scenes but...nope, they're definately speaking English.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[J.Goodwin]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Lestrade]

I played some more Halo 2 yesterday evening. I was in the mood for it, so the game was much more pleasant this time around. I didn't feel as bored as I did before I wrote my initial post here. My thoughts on the subject are a little clearer:

My biggest complaint still remains: that the level design isn't up to par. Now, allow me to elaborate: I watched the behind-the-scenes featurette again and still found it fascinating how unorganized and broken Bungie's development on the game was. I mention this again because of two things:

1) This fact is clearly indicated by the lazy level design

2) Despite this, Bungie managed some truly amazing things within their game-world

I found myself enjoying the level design much more this time around, probably because I was feeling less rushed to get through the game. I let it sink in a little more. I have to admit that while levels still seem confusing at times because of their endless repetition, the alien nature of them doesn't bother me as much. I get—I suppose—that these environments should feel alien and unwelcoming.

However, the aforementioned scheduling issues are apparent in just how much the Covenant levels re-use not just the same textures as other areas, but exact room layouts. This is my number one complaint of the Halo series. I hate going from Curvy Hallway A to H-shaped Room A to Curvy Hallway B to H-shaped Room B to... you get my point. Furthermore, most of the Covenant levels don't feel like real places in the least; with their clinical, unwavering cleanliness and their lack of any seeming utility, I have a hard time believing that Gun-metal Grey Corridor #43 is in fact a Sentinel processing plant (or somesuch.)

Remember FPSes on N64? Now they used a lot of repetitive architecture and texturing, by necessity; I don't feel that Halo 2 has such an excuse.

All that being said, the final moments of the "Gravemind: Inside Job" mission are truly breathtaking. Standing on a walkway, watching the Covenant engage in a civil war, with the Forerunner structure in the distance and the haunting music playing—wow, it was really something. I had forgotten how powerful that moment was.

And yeah, now I'm back to being the Arbiter, in a level I remember as being utterly brutal, so I'm less eager to pick up the controller again right now.

[Lackey]

They did a good job of making the Flood completely hellish to fight. Not in difficulty but in sheer unpleasantness. Every time I went up against them I started wishing I was fighting the covenant again.

I saw the making of documentary too, and some of the aliens they decided not to include were really interesting. Like those strange tripod shaped ones.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[GSL]

[Dracko]

Here's the famed gameplay footage in question.

You've got to admit, with the wounded soldiers and medical facilities, the battles occuring right next to you even before you start getting in gear, the Jackals moving in formation (That would have been amazing) and the car chases in the streets, this had potential.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dhex]

that was pretty cool. too bad they never ported it to the pc.

call of duty 2 does this well, btw. the city in hellish chaos thing i mean. far cry, to a lesser extent, does as well. sorta.

since i am a fan of the single player fps genre/mode of interaction, i will say this; it needs more epics. it's great for placing you in the moment, as it were. i don't like band of brothers very much, but i think it's a step in the right direction in terms of scope.
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[J.Goodwin]

So, let me get this straight, Greatsaintlouis.:

Your position is that ilovebees is better than Halo2, not because Halo2 has game balance issues, gameplay issues, poor level design, or because it's filled with 10 year olds and MC Chris on live. But because ilovebees advertised a game that wasn't going to be coming for another couple years, if at all, not just because Microsoft decided to draw a line somewhere, but because Bungie's development process was in disarray, the Xbox has certain finite technical limitations, etc.

Halo2 as envisioned was never going to be released on the Xbox, the timeline for completion was still measured in years when Microsoft really started getting antsy. As a product, it faced a lot of production problems, and the game that finally made it out the door wasn't just half finished, but a different game. In fact, I would say that the Halo2 that was released was exactly what Microsoft wanted Bungie to do in the first place (Halo on Xbox Live).

The kind of sad part is, I wonder if Bungie, having created Halo CCE, would still be two or three years away from Halo2 now, given that they would have had a platform change in the middle. Listening to you, I don't know what's worse, creating Halo2 on Xbox as released, then working on Halo3 for 360 from the ground up, or creating Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Conker Live and Reloaded on Xbox then releasing Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo on the 360.

I can definitely tell you which team sold more copies of their Xbox games, and there would have to be something pretty drastic happening between now and December 2007 for Bungie not to outsell Rare's launch games.
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

[GSL]

[Mr. Mechanical]

For the record, guys, I already know I'm buying Halo 3. Probably not at launch like I did with Halo 2 (fucking hype machine, goddam lines) but close to it. I'm pretty sure it'll be a better game than Halo 2 was because: a.) I'm not anticipating it daily for a year like I was with Halo 2, b.) Bungie has had considerably more time to develop it, assuming they've been working on it since Halo 2 development wrapped up (though if they spend all their time noodling around with things and not actually making the game like they did with Halo 2 then Halo 3 might disappoint me. Though really, noodling around is the Bungie way. Has been since they started making games, pretty much. They play around with a gameplay concepts until they get enough that are interesting enough and work well enough together, then they make a game out of them.), c.) I'm pretty sure they know what the response to Halo 2 and it's aggravating cliffhanger, and would thus try to do their best to "make it up" to those who were disappointed.

So, yeah, those are my reasons/speculations. I still have faith in them as a developer because, after all, they gave us Abuse, Marathon, Myst, Oni (flawed, but it had some good ideas) Halo 1, and eventually Wideload Studios which had that Stubbs the Zombie game that everyone said was alright and then promptly forgot about. So in my mind they've proven themselves as a developer, they just need to learn how to work within the corporate machine (ie: get their shit together). But if you look at it, they might not be suited for a corporate environment. They spent almost two years on Halo 1 before Microsoft snatched them up right? And it went from being an RTS to a Third Person Shooter to a First Person Shooter during that period, so they had ample time to noodle around and try different things during their design process. They had time to actually play their own game as they were making it (and important distinction here and one I feel more studios would benefit from if they could only make the time to do so), and I don't mean play as in "playtest". They spent two years making and remaking a single game and playing it amongst themselves the whole time. So when the rush for Halo 2 started up and Microsoft started laying down the law, they realized they didn't have that kind of timeframe to mess around anymore. They had to get shit done, and somewhere along the way they panicked or realized that they at least had to spend a considerable effort making use of Xbox Live. I mean, if Halo 1 sold the Xbox then Halo 2 sold Xbox Live.

Anyways I forgot where I was going with all this. Enough of my Bungie apologetics, have at you!

[J.Goodwin]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Cycle]

Also they made Myth, not Myst!

I enjoyed the original Halo! I think if they had more time to work on it, it could have been a true masterpiece. I had high hopes the second would be the game the original should have been, but alas, they had no time once again and I really did not like the sequel.

[Mr. Mechanical]

What the...?! Holy Embarrassing Typo, Batman!

[Dracko]

Myth I remember being a somewhat interesting series, but I can't say I ever played through them much.

The Marathon series holds a weird place in my heart. I can't quite put my finger on it, but despite its flaws, the variety of which I'd truly despise in any game (Unclear objectives, confusing level design, etc...), I really can't forget it.

I fully expect Halo 3 to, finally, be the game Bungie really wanted to make. I'm opening myself to disappointment, but the concept seems to hold more promise than the last two. The idea of being a stranger in your own land is endearing to me. But yeah, when it comes to Halo 2, it's definitely the first three levels which I find easily replayable.

And Abuse's name is well deserved. Addictive little game, that. And I remember enjoying Oni for what little it was worth, in spite of the cyberpunk anime trappings.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Lockeownzj00]

Why was there even hype surrounding Halo 2? Oh yeah, console gamers finally realised what an "FPS" was.

I have to say, though, despite my inner corrosive attitude towards Xbox and Halo, I love Halo 2 multiplayer. Not for the people; as a game. I found myself quickly grokking the game and loving the mechanics and levels. I may enjoy PC FPSes more, but damned if I don't think of it fondly and my favorite levels and hiding spots.

If I ever get off my ass and buy an X (did I really just call it that?), I'd definitely get Halo 2 as well. I'm not a huge fan of the controller layout, but hell, I can get used to that too.

But...yeah, Halo gets a lot of lame unnecessary praise by the same rabid industry reviewers who are otherwise fairly level-headed.

[Scratchmonkey]

Myth was incredible, for what it was doing, which was tactical RTS combat with no resources beyond what you were given at the beginning of a level.

Which wound up feeling much more like "strategy" than say, Advance Wars or Starcraft.

[GSL]

It also served to make the characters more than simple chess pieces. While there wasn't much character development in the plot per se, the extremely limited quantities of your forces served to imbue them with a certain personality. Warcraft didn't really catch on to the whole idea until the third installment years later, when you had the Heroes as well as your disposable minions, but man--in Myth, you really cared about that dwarf you had in the level. The fact that he was the only one you would get certainly has a good bit to do with it, I'd imagine.

[dark steve]

I wasted so much of my life playing myth online.

[Cycle]

I would have liked my dwarf better if he didn't keep throwing bombs in the middle of my own troops. That as seriously a major flaw. It was fixed a bit in the second, thanks heavens, but then they added the flaw of indoor missions which were pretty boring.

[dark steve]

Man you gotta be careful with those dwarves.

[Dracko]

So, I bought the first Halo for PC cheap a couple of days ago, and it's honestly amazing. Hyped up beyond belief perhaps, but still amazing.

I just love how emergent some of the set-pieces are: It's in the level design and AI, not scripts. You pretty much have to play in Heroic first though to get all its depth. The story is nothing special, but the writing is fairly solid and Guilty Sparks' motives are amusingly endearing. It's also a disgustingly replayable game to me.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[GSL]

Personally, I consider the PC version to be the final word where Halo is concerned. Sure, the XBox version did a decent enough job at the whole 'make a FPS work on the console' thing, but to actually play the game in the way the genre was meant to be played is a wonderful thing.

[dhex]

halo pc is pretty good, ai wise, on the harder levels.

obligatory "but fear is better" phrase here.
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[Cycle]

[Lackey]

[OtakupunkX]

[Mr. Mechanical]

I was playing the first game last night on Heroic, and kicking some major ass I might add, and I was having a blast. I was on the first level, The Pillar of Autumn, when I encountered a group of two or three elites and a fuckton of grunts. I was coming down a corridor and going through one of the darkened corner rooms that led to another corridor when I encountered them. It was awesome to see everyone start moving and getting into position when they saw me coming, they barely had time to react. I bum rushed one elite, a blue one, dropping his shields then bashing the shit out of him up clase. I stickied another with a plasma grenade, which elicited a lovely death howl from the elite as it exploded, then started working on everyone else in the group.

Since it was so tightly packed some of the groups were killed by the blast from the elite I stickied, and they dropped more grenades along with a few others along the corridor that I took out in my killing spree with my assualt rifle. The cool part happened when I threw another grenade, but rather than hitting anyone it just landed on the ground... next to a cluster of grenades that had just been dropped by a grunt. Those grenades blew up when mine exploded, which caused a fucking awesome chain reaction down the entire corridor as every other grenade exploded. It was literally the biggest chain reaction grenade explosion I had ever seen in the game. It was like explosions cascading down the corridor, shaking the screen, going off all around me as I moved trying to take out the final elite. In fact, the explosions ended up taking out the elite I was after plus the remaining grunts. All of this took place in less than a minute.

It was a real hero moment, for sure, and I was pleasently surprised to see that after four or five years the game could still accomplish that for me and be so satisfying.

[GSL]

I reinstalled it on my PC the other night and was horribly disappointed to discover that it runs about as fast on my 2GHz Athlon64 with 1GB of RAM as it did on my old PIII 866 with 512MB. I still have the same 128MB GeForceFX 5200 graphics card, which I would almost blame for the problem except for the fact that the game requires a paltry 32MB, and I think it doesn't even care if that happens to be onboard video memory. If anyone knows of any specific performance tweaks for the game, I'd love to hear them.

Also, I was reminded of how totally boring the Pillar of Autumn level is, and how it essentially foreshadows the utterly fucking dull level design at the very end of the game. My fond memories of Halo were all made on the surface levels.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yeah, half the levels are pretty dull but they're a blast to try to speed run, based on how fun it is to interact with the AI.

[dhex]

the 5x series from nvidia has a lot of problems with halo, period. did you turn the pixel shader settings down?
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