Finally beat Halo (1) today!!....

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:49 am

Great game, and great ending! I beat on Normal. I just started Halo 2 tonight, and so far it seems a lot easier. Is the single-player campaign shorter?

World's worst Warthog driver!

junkeR · Post by **junkeR** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 1:54 am

Hey,

I managed to beat the first two myself a few months back. I would say the campaign is longer in the second. I would like to get around to playing the third, but I'm going to wait and see what happens to the Xbox 360 hardware (in terms of revisions) before I get to Halo 3.

Really cool games though.

The n00b · Post by **The n00b** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:42 pm

I think Halo 2 is just a great game all the way around, it's just that the ending really REALLY sucks. I even think it's better than Halo 3.

Also Kengou post incoming.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:49 pm

both halo 2 and three just ended on huge clif hangers. Even halo 3 which appeared to tie stuff up hinted at other goings on. it was abrupt ending to say the least.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:35 pm

junkeR wrote:Hey,

I managed to beat the first two myself a few months back. I would say the campaign is longer in the second. I would like to get around to playing the third, but I'm going to wait and see what happens to the Xbox 360 hardware (in terms of revisions) before I get to Halo 3.

Really cool games though.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of people complain about the single player campaign in Halo 3; I have no idea why. Maybe because of the ending.

In terms of hardware revisions, I think MS would have announced something at E3. If you're talking durability, the Jasper models are out in stores. I have no interest in online gaming, so I'll eventually get an Arcade model.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:58 pm

I thought Halo 2 was stupendously broken.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:36 pm

Skykid wrote:I thought Halo 2 was stupendously broken.

Do you mean broken in terms of technical glitches? Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil had some bugs, and so did some copies of Serious Sam.

Even though the XBOX has less games then the PS2, I've liked the ones I've played a lot better. Even in terms of RPG's, KOTR just owns any PS2 RPG (other then, maybe Dragon Quest VIII) that I've played.

ncp · Post by **ncp** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:58 pm

I like Halo 1 a lot. I can't stand 2 or 3. Both the sequels just dont do it for me, like they don't feel as solid as Halo 1 for some reason, I can't put my finger on it. It's enough for me to not ever want to play 2 or 3...

I still have the original warthog jump video on my HD, the one that started an era of halo physics exploitation...

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:00 pm

welcome to 2003

ncp · Post by **ncp** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:02 pm

jpj wrote:welcome to 2003

Surely, you mean 2001

Zaarock · Post by **Zaarock** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:07 pm

Lordstar wrote:both halo 2 and three just ended on huge clif hangers. Even halo 3 which appeared to tie stuff up hinted at other goings on. it was abrupt ending to say the least.

the full ending you get by beating halo 3 on legendary was okay IMO, though sort of a cliffhanger as well. I wasnt expecting much with the story anyway though.

The n00b · Post by **The n00b** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:31 pm

How was Halo 2 broken? I've played it numerous times and never noticed a thing. Is it the fact that Bungie took out the overpowered pistol?

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:30 pm

What turned me off Halo before ever getting into it was a distinct shortage of hitscan weapons. Does this get rectified after the first few levels, or what?

I don't like slow player bullets in 80's shmups, or in FPS games. Only blast damage redeems them to me, I guess.

ncp · Post by **ncp** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:40 pm

trivial wrote:What turned me off Halo before ever getting into it was a distinct shortage of hitscan weapons. Does this get rectified after the first few levels, or what?

I don't like slow player bullets in 80's shmups, or in FPS games. Only blast damage redeems them to me, I guess.

Every human weapon except the rocket launcher... ?

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:41 pm

Halo 2 pissed me off...

<SPOILERS> In the first game, the flood was scary because it lived up to its name. It was not some bad guy with an agenda; it was a force of nature. A plague. Deadly, mindless, unstoppable. Comes the sequel, and now there's Gravemind, an alien monster out of some tentacle hentai anime, controlling the flood. Suddenly it's not so scary anymore... borg queen, anyone?! </SPOILERS>

And that bullshit about requiring Vista - a fake requirement, as there was a hack that let you use XP. Who the hell uses Vista? Nobody likes that piece of junk!

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:51 am

The n00b wrote:How was Halo 2 broken? I've played it numerous times and never noticed a thing. Is it the fact that Bungie took out the overpowered pistol?

Immediate concerns with dual wielding. Having two machine guns that don't shoot straight and persist in heading north is worrying. Graphically, everything is brighter, cleaner and more detailed than Halo 1.

It's not long before you realise that the new and improved single life bar is really annoying, considerably fucking up the flow of combat and forcing you to duck and cover when you'd rather just be firing, killing and smacking heads a 'la Combat Evolved.
Enemies are thicker than the first - in both body armour and AI. Sometimes they just stand there like sitting ducks while you paste them, which helps because bullets seem to bounce off most of the time. There's not much indication of them taking hits, which is frustrating as ammo generally seems to be at an all time low, and a lot of the weapons seem a bit redundant.

That said, the game itself picks up almost immediately in pace. The land on earth is awesome, the vehicles are miles better, and the set pieces are nice and grand. Things are looking up. Diversity arrives when you're given control of the Arbiter for some covenant fun, before switching back to the Master Chief - who for some reason has the more basic of the mission selection.

Then it goes bad. Bad, broken, broken game. All the difficulties that raised their head initially come full circle to royally ruin you and your experience as you head toward the end of the game.
Black, bothersome death. I recall being stuck in some kind of time warp in 'Gravemind' where trying to get through a doorway into a room filled with hundreds of warring enemies set to 'one hit kill' mode was a seemingly impossible task. Unlike the first game, the environment left no room to breathe. Gone are the open spaces, instead I'm in a tight corridor or a bridge, floating around trying to fire and avoid incoming at the same time to no avail. It was frustrating - even more so when you realise that often the best course of action is to run past the ridiculous number of armoured enemies and hope for the best. Flawed game design.
This difficulty only provided the game a further inconsistency when the last level was so stupidly easy it came as a bit of a shock to find it was all suddenly over.
Oh well.
All in all: Better scale, better ideas. Broken gameplay.

The third is much better, but unbelievably short.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 1:12 am

That's interesting. I'm only to the part where I've crossed into the city on the scorpion tank, but so far, it seems a lot easier then the first Halo. Unless there's something like the Flood later on in the game. I agree 100% that the vehicles are better. Graphically, I don't think it's as good as 1, although some details, like on the "wings" of the ghost as you are speeding along in it, are very nice touches.

AFIK, this was the most played game on XBL on the original XBOX. Right before Halo 3 came out, I heard that 50,000 people were still playing 2 online!

Mortificator · Post by **Mortificator** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 1:40 am

I agree with a lot of what Skykid said, as well as the criticisms in this article (though it fixates too much on cosmetic details). The vehicles in particular were a mixed experience; they're better in Halo 2, but since enemy vehicles are so good at killing someone on foot, a lot of the time it feels like your ass is glued to your ride.

One thing that was improved a little over the original game was the repetitive scenery, though. "Assault on the Control Room" started to feel like a haunted house, with identical room following identical room following identical room.

Criticisms aside, I really enjoyed playing through the series. The enemies complement each other probably better than any other FPS between Halo and Doom.

msm · Post by **msm** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:01 am

dave4shmups wrote:Right before Halo 3 came out, I heard that 50,000 people were still playing 2 online!

i don't know about the figures but i was one of thoes people

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:01 am

The only thing that irked me about Halo 2 was the one-hit sniper kills. I read somewhere that this was one point of contention among the devs. I was very glad to see that changed in 3. Dual-weilding at first felt pointless, until I learned of the SMG/Covie overcharged pistol combo.

msm · Post by **msm** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:07 am

Damocles wrote:The only thing that irked me about Halo 2 was the one-hit sniper kills. I read somewhere that this was one point of contention among the devs. I was very glad to see that changed in 3. Dual-weilding at first felt pointless, until I learned of the SMG/Covie overcharged pistol combo.

guess the sniper thing only effects single player? as the snipers in multiplayer are pretty much the same. plasma rifle with either a pistol or smg are also really good combos

E. Randy Dupre · Post by **E. Randy Dupre** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:07 pm

Sniper rifles are only one-hit if you go for the head. If you hit any other part of the body, it takes two shots to down somebody - the first removes the shield, the second kills them.

Add me to the list of people who didn't enjoy 2's single player campaign. Not only for the reasons Skykid's mentioned: I also found the environments to be no fun at all to play through, the graphics engine (on the Xbox version, anyway) had worse texture pop-in than Unreal Engine 3, the plot was absolute bobbins, and on the whole I was bored stiff by the experience. So much so that I've still not finished it.

The multiplayer was fucking awesome. On the Xbox. It's shit on PC.

The general dislike of 3 baffles me, because I loved it. Totally loved it.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 6:16 pm

I was referring to how many hits it takes to kill the player in SP on Legendary.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:42 pm

How do you guys like the first Resistance game for the PS3? I've heard opinions across the board on that one, from "you have to be too close to your enemies to shoot them", to "it's reason enough to buy a PS3".

E. Randy Dupre · Post by **E. Randy Dupre** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:26 pm

It's shit.

Well, it's not *shit* shit, it's just deeply mediocre. The highly positive reviews were largely from people blown away by the gfx and/or who bought into the hype about it being the PS3's answer to Halo. Shame, because the idea was cool enough.

Lloyd Mangram · Post by **Lloyd Mangram** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:23 am

E. Randy Dupre wrote:Add me to the list of people who didn't enjoy 2's single player campaign. Not only for the reasons Skykid's mentioned: I also found the environments to be no fun at all to play through...

Same here. One of the great things about Halo 1 were certain wide open levels that offered a degree of freedom - freedom in the sense of things like "Hey, if I could commandeer one of those Banshees, I could take on these suckers from the air...", or in the case of the Silent Cartographer level, "Maybe I'll go around the island this way!" etc.

In Halo 2, even the outdoor levels felt quite constrained, as if the attempt to upgrade the graphics placed a greater strain on the engine and so required the devs to restrict the player's ability to roam. The few times you get your hands on a banshee, you find yourself locked into a small area (and the one slightly larger area is just in a bunch of goddamn clouds). I felt like the game much preferred to see me crawling along in a slowarse tank along clearly defined routes.

Also, in later levels you all too often find yourself locked in a single room with a bunch of enemies you need to kill before Cortana can 'unlock the door', so you can proceed to the next enemy filled room. I remember thinking that in it had turned into the FPS equivalent of Final Fight in terms of the flow of the action. At least in Halo 1 you could try sneaking/bolting past the enemies when progressing through room after room.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 10:11 am

E. Randy Dupre wrote:It's shit.

Well, it's not *shit* shit,

Mediocre is being kind, I thought it was pretty shit too.

Let's not so lax on these new games!
I played through Resistance when I got my PS3 because it was the only title I had. It was boring, bland and one of the most unsatisfying FPS's I've ever played.
I sold my PS3 off about two weeks later, and it was because Resistance was being hailed as the best the PS3 had to offer at the time.

The n00b · Post by **The n00b** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:17 pm

Lloyd Mangram wrote:
E. Randy Dupre wrote:Add me to the list of people who didn't enjoy 2's single player campaign. Not only for the reasons Skykid's mentioned: I also found the environments to be no fun at all to play through...
Same here. One of the great things about Halo 1 were certain wide open levels that offered a degree of freedom - freedom in the sense of things like "Hey, if I could commandeer one of those Banshees, I could take on these suckers from the air...", or in the case of the Silent Cartographer level, "Maybe I'll go around the island this way!" etc.

In Halo 2, even the outdoor levels felt quite constrained, as if the attempt to upgrade the graphics placed a greater strain on the engine and so required the devs to restrict the player's ability to roam. The few times you get your hands on a banshee, you find yourself locked into a small area (and the one slightly larger area is just in a bunch of goddamn clouds). I felt like the game much preferred to see me crawling along in a slowarse tank along clearly defined routes.

Also, in later levels you all too often find yourself locked in a single room with a bunch of enemies you need to kill before Cortana can 'unlock the door', so you can proceed to the next enemy filled room. I remember thinking that in it had turned into the FPS equivalent of Final Fight in terms of the flow of the action. At least in Halo 1 you could try sneaking/bolting past the enemies when progressing through room after room.

dammit now I'm going to notice this shit the next time I play the game. These are all valid complaints.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:23 pm

Well, I LOVE the sword you get in Halo 2! It's great for going postal on enemies!

(ahem) Just like the chainsaw was in Doom 3.

I'm not criticizing the large environments in the first Halo, but there were times when I thought it they were too large-more specifically, when I couldn't use a vehicle, I found myself wishing that there was a button to make Master Chief run.

Oh, BTW, I have the collector's edition of Halo 2-should I wait until the end of the game to watch the DVD? Spoilers are my concern.

I'd like to get a used N64 for FPS's. Quake II is supposed to have all new levels on the N64, and I'd really like to play Quake and Perfect Dark-although I've heard Perfect Dark dismissed as "Goldeneye with a chick".

BIL · Post by **BIL** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:06 pm

Quake II 64 is pretty cool. The levels don't have the PC version's scale, but they make up for it with lots of concentrated action. Plays very smoothly with the RAM Pak too.