Halo Reach Thread

[Hedon]

That's poor. You can't possible spin that to be good.

That's your opinion.

[.KICK]

That's your opinion.

Which they are entitled to. :)

I have to say, I'm not impressed by most of the MP maps either.

[Hedon]

Which they are entitled to. :)

Yes, yes they are.

[Sethos]

Which they are entitled to. :)

I have to say, I'm not impressed by most of the MP maps either.

Indeed, most of the maps are very poor. Whilst running through the Single-player campaign with a friend, we saw a lot of levels that would be fantastic as multiplayer levels yet Bungie seems to have picked a lot of the rubbish parts. Not to mention those cheap forge created levels, they are so bland and uninteresting. These are probably some of the most generic, boring maps I've seen in any multiplayer game for a very long time.

[Ayepecks]

I don't remember Pinnacle, but I'm amazed you guys like Reflection. It's so boring. As for Hemorrhage, it's alright. Far better than the original, which I have no idea how people liked.

I agree that the Forge world maps are crap, though. I'll have a better list of which ones I like once I get more rounds in.

[ramsy66]

some people make playing on XBL a chore. fortunately you can mute them, but it's hard when they're a friend of a friend in the same party. this guy sticks my ghost because i got to it before him, so i boot him for betraying me and he gives me all the hate hidden deep down inside of him. :laugh: in all fairness if anyone was to be dishing out hate, it should've been me. he got what he deserved.

anyway, played a few matches of Invasion slayer. starting off as covenant is pretty unfair at times, as you don't get a ranged weapon unlike the spartans who have the pistol. after you get the next tier of weapons and get the needler carbine though things pick up and it can be a blast!

[Alladaskill17]

I don't remember Pinnacle, but I'm amazed you guys like Reflection. It's so boring. As for Hemorrhage, it's alright. Far better than the original, which I have no idea how people liked.

I agree that the Forge world maps are crap, though. I'll have a better list of which ones I like once I get more rounds in.

As far as the remakes go, yes Reflection is bad. Others seem to be slightly improved or the same, which is fine.

I do like 'The Cage' though. Especially for a simple 'Stockpile' game type etc.

[ramsy66]

As far as the remakes go, yes Reflection is bad. Others seem to be slightly improved or the same, which is fine.

I do like 'The Cage' though. Especially for a simple 'Stockpile' game type etc.

I've noticed reflection is a bit of a love or hate map. I've heard a pretty even amount of "screw reflection!" and "omg reflection yay!"

[neoadorable]

just want to go on record to say this is by far the worst single player experience i've had in a shooter in a while. it's like pulling teeth - run around, get to a point, hold it against wave after wave after wave AFTER WAVE of brutes, jackals, grunts and everything else these Bungie morons decided to throw at you, then rinse and repeat. with the exception of some impressive backdrops, there's NOTHING appealing about this single player campaign, it's garbage. i mean TimeShift and Singularity were infinitely better, and those are some average titles.

Of course the idiots couldn't be bothered to code properly functioning checkpoints, so when the play and charge kit cable MOVED IN FRONT of the over-sensitive tray button the geniuses at Microsoft so kindly included in the new console i just bought from them, yes, you guessed it, i got that obnoxious, too-loud chime and an hour plus of trudging through the quagmire that this campaign is went poof without trace.

so i'm not going to even bother with the single player, but i'll stick with the multiplayer out of whatever loyalty i have to the brand and because it's decent. not great, but decent. this is a real disgrace, and for someone like me to come out and say shame on both of them for unloading this turd on us - well, that's something.

[Hedon]

Amazing how people have the exact opposite experience from others. I guess that's nature :)

[neoadorable]

yeah i know you like this one, but there's no two ways about checkpoints that aren't save points. pardon the pun, but what's the point of even having these then? it wasn't funny with Halo 3 and ODST, but at least those were solid campaigns. this one is crap, so a huge glaring fault like that can't be dismissed. i can't believe i paid AND THEN LINED UP for this piece of refuse.

[Hedon]

Well, you can't please everyone. For me, the previous Halo's (besides CE) were an abomination compared to this one.

[Sethos]

just want to go on record to say this is by far the worst single player experience i've had in a shooter in a while. it's like pulling teeth - run around, get to a point, hold it against wave after wave after wave AFTER WAVE of brutes, jackals, grunts and everything else these Bungie morons decided to throw at you, then rinse and repeat. with the exception of some impressive backdrops, there's NOTHING appealing about this single player campaign, it's garbage. i mean TimeShift and Singularity were infinitely better, and those are some average titles.

Jesus, that's got to be the first time I agree with you.

I think it's the magical "Halo" name that makes people so forgiving.

[+Mystic MVC]

Why did Noble 6 stay on the planet and let himself get killed? Is it supposed to be something about honor and dying where the others did or what? Either way it seems kind of odd that he voluntarily kills himself.

[Sethos]

Why did Noble 6 stay on the planet and let himself get killed? Is it supposed to be something about honor and dying where the others did or what? Either way it seems kind of odd that he voluntarily kills himself.

Correct me if I'm wrong as the Halo story is a snooze fest to me, didn't he stay to operate that rail-gun mah-thingy to save the pillar from the corvette and the other covenant ships - As the operator had been killed?

[neoadorable]

it's the end times. either that, or a really over-hyped, lazily produced and acutely poor game done by people who actively sought to destroy the franchise. they're like the passive aggressive Infinitey Ward. they don't quit or get fired, they just make the crappiest game in the series as a send off. but thanks for letting me know you agree, i don't really think this is a minority opinion on this one, there's already a backlash building up from what i can tell.

[Hedon]

I would have to say, you are in the extreme minority with your opinion (not that there is anything wrong with that).

[Sethos]

it's the end times. either that, or a really over-hyped, lazily produced and acutely poor game done by people who actively sought to destroy the franchise. they're like the passive aggressive Infinitey Ward. they don't quit or get fired, they just make the crappiest game in the series as a send off. but thanks for letting me know you agree, i don't really think this is a minority opinion on this one, there's already a backlash building up from what i can tell.

It's the laziest send-off I've ever seen. Looks like a content update to Halo 3 containing a few graphical improvements. I thought the Call of Duty franchise had the copying recipe down to tee but in comes Bungie and sets a new low.

[Boz]

I would have to say, you are in the extreme minority with your opinion (not that there is anything wrong with that).

I don't think he is.. I think that a lot of people were very dissapointed with campaign but are such huge fans of the series they don't really want to say bad things about it.

I have already stated my opinion on this.. the campaign was simply put, a preparation for firefight. There was absolutely no story to be told.. There was no emotion, it was just as neoadorable says wave after wave of enemies and go run from this point to this point. And there should have been plenty of emotion considering Halo Reach is where Spartans die, where the whole planet and the last hope of humanity is destroyed.

The deaths of spartans were completely unemotional and really cheap. I was expecting people to die on this one in the blaze of glory where we actually feel sad to see them die, especially since we knew what was coming before the game.

I think people are forgiving because Bungie slapped everything but a kitchen sink into the multiplayer. Sure, it's not much different from previous multiplayer games but damn the amount of modes, challenges, super advanced Forge that will allow people to play this game forever. This is why I think people don't criticize this game as they should.

I'm a huge story guy. I need my games to be awesomly scripted, great story etc.. I do play multiplayer sometimes but my main experience is still singleplayer. Bungie dropped the ball on this one. It was just done so it's in there, there was no attention to making this the best game of all.

Halo 1 was great campaign, Halo 2 was ok but a bit disconnected, Halo 3 was ok - not to great, but not too bad and definitely better than Reach, Halo:ODST was very solid. It introduced a very unique way of story telling and i liked how the story unveiled. It was fresh. Halo:Reach.. well it's nothing really.. a group of spartans starts of to investigate weird beacons on the planet and covenant is everywhere.. From that point on, it's firefight every step of the way.

You can even see by their achievements, it's more like practice for multiplayer than anything else really.

I already gave my scores on this one:

Singleplayer 6/10 (this Halo is visually the best one. Unfortunately the promise of massive fights is nowhere what they promised in VidDoc videos. I really didn't feel so much of invasion on a planet as they were hoping for. It just felt like a few ships here and there and a few groups of covenant forces on the ground as you go through levels. There was no 100s of banshees, thousands of covenant storming cities while the a few huge spaceships are burning and glassing everything under them. This is the visuals I was expecting to be perfectly honest.).

Even ODST had better sense of desperation and invasion than Reach.. Remember in ODST when you a driving through the city and on the freeway and you see these giantic robots burning everything in the city and around you while covenant was everywhere? That's what I expected in Reach but on even larger level because they were invading the freakin' planet.

Multiplayer 9/10

Also, very disappointing is that they have not at all explained where Master Chief is coming from, how he got on the Pillar of Autumn from Halo 1 beginning etc etc.. A lot of plot holes they obviously didn't have time to do right because they spilled all their time into multiplayer and firefigths and modes and forge etc.

I am pretty sure that we will see Gears of War 3 introduce the campaign that will be truly emotional. Something Reach should have been as well.

[Ayepecks]

Boz, I would have to disagree with you that it's Firefight (in the campaign) from the beginning. If anything, that was how the previous Halo games operated (well, maybe not so much the original), and that's how the second half of Reach plays out -- it just starts throwing enemies at you, which is lame and tedious. The first half is actually rather unique, even if the storyline does suck. I don't know how you can say Halo 3's gameplay was any better -- it was like Firefight the entire way through. I don't remember a single point in the campaign that wasn't "let's throw enemies at you and see how long you last!" in Halo 3.

[mail]

Are these people who enjoyed previous Halo titles but find this one disappointing, or they just hate halo in general?

If the latter it's pretty pathetic to complain, if not then that's a little worrying.

[Boz]

Boz, I would have to disagree with you that it's Firefight (in the campaign) from the beginning. If anything, that was how the previous Halo games operated (well, maybe not so much the original), and that's how the second half of Reach plays out -- it just starts throwing enemies at you, which is lame and tedious. The first half is actually rather unique, even if the storyline does suck. I don't know how you can say Halo 3's gameplay was any better -- it was like Firefight the entire way through. I don't remember a single point in the campaign that wasn't "let's throw enemies at you and see how long you last!" in Halo 3.

How is Reach not like that? From the very beginning the missions are like Firefight.. you go to investigate the beacon, you face a bunch of covenant.. you go further you need to save the squad, the drop ships just drop covenant in front of you and all you really need to do is clear that area. And that's how everything goes.. the only difference is .. oh you gotta go and take these towers down.. yep, they have 3 of them up.. let's go and clear everything there and we go on..

I mean there's no story line at all.. it's just one firefight after another.

Halo 3 was MUCH better in that that you were defending the Earth.. you kept going on and trying to prevent for Covenant to actually spread out and you had very clear objectives with storyline in there.. then somewhere in the middle of Halo 3 you have the twist and the Flood starts coming to earth too..

The simple truth is that they bothered to explain a few things in Halo 3. They had descriptions of what Covenant were, their main prophet and so on and on.

I mean in the overall scheme of things the story progressed very nicely. And there were moment where it felt hopeless, especially when Flood starts arriving and so on.. Then the last level where you are in the middle of the flood lair and then in the end the race to the plane..

I liked Halo 3.. it was better than Halo Reach from the story line perspective. It was a nice conclusion to what we expected. It was desperate fight to save Earth.

I don't know.. maybe I should go and start writing scripts for games because it seems that most writers in gaming industry are complete idiots and have no clue what they are doing.

[Ayepecks]

Boz, you're talking about storyline. I'm talking about gameplay. I don't think anyone in the thread has said Reach has a good story, because it simply doesn't. They had a lot to work with, and yet the storyline is still crap.

Of course there's going to be some sections where you have to clear out enemies -- that's how it is in every single first-person shooter known to man. But don't say, "oh, having objectives doesn't matter." In Halo 3, it was literally wave after wave of enemies, which was extremely annoying and tedious. The flood level? Pathetic. The level where your base (forgot the name) gets attacked and you go around cleaning up waves of increasingly difficult enemies (which has another Firefight staple of dropships dropping in those enemies generally)? Come on, man, Halo 3 had an extremely weak campaign even if the storyline was better.

[Hedon]

I don't think he is.. I think that a lot of people were very dissapointed with campaign but are such huge fans of the series they don't really want to say bad things about it.

I would have to disagree, and there is plenty of back up on the forums to prove that it would be a minority thought. In addition, I am not forgiving for a bad title. I am still bitter over the failure that ODST was. It was a cringe worthy addition to the story and IP. I was almost embarrassed for Bungie. Bungie didn't get a dime from me for that, I rented it and thank god I did.

Halo 3 was good, but was still a short coming compared to Halo CE. Halo Reach makes up for that in spades. The attention to detail in the graphics, the improved enemy AI, the larger scale and additional AI, the epic plethora of features and stats, the smooth gameplay, the long waited improved cut scenes. I am all about story (it's one of the main reasons I game besides gameplay), and Bungie finally got their ducks in a row with this game. It's not the best story on the market, but it exceeds recent Halo's.

I am really glad Reach has been a huge success. It's not every day that I pop in a game and my cheeks hurt after smiling from ear to ear for such long periods of time playing. The best part is sharing all this with others online as well. Everyone I have been playing with has just been raving about this game. Yeah, we all have nitpicking (mostly been clamoring for improved playlists, which Bungie said is coming).

My next complaint is Forge. It's just so damn big this time, it's gonna take up a lot of free time before I push out the exact map I have drawn out in my mind. That's ok though, I will set aside a good afternoon to work on it with my son.

[WastedJoker]

ODST grew on me - I kinda liked the way the game flowed as you picked up the story by following in your colleagues foot-steps but I just wish it wasn't so bloody dark. The Rookie levels were just annoying.