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| Halo 3 (draft 2) by Jhoh Clbbl O_____O 09/30/2007, 1:19pm PDT | ||||
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| [NOTE TO JSO, I think we can lose a bunch of these parts. I cut a few parts because they were redundant or who cares, like the spoke grenades throwing faster or some shit whatever. Also I think we should lose your talking about the multiplayer. Some of the beginning stuff about the graphics being good could probably be cut. Let's not try to blow this game for anything except coop play and some of the cool single playur lavols if this review is going to be overall mixed to negative. WE WILL TALK ABOUT THIS LATER o_o but try to cut down some of your paragraphs.]
Pros: Awesome new graphics. The xbawks 3shitty makes Halo look totally new. Almost every old asset from the first two games are gone, replaced with new higher detail stuff. There's also some blewm and motion blur, but one of the most frequently used new-fangled type of effects is when they do some of that tunnel vision insane stuff when Cortana or the stupid flood little shop of horrors plant use their telepathy on you. It's sorta like a Bioshock or FEAR kinda fps whatever thing as seen in a ton of recent MORE ORIGINAL games, where the game stops so some characters can taunt you while you are forced to listen. Is that a pro? The weapons are more satisfying. They finally fixed the Assault Rifle, altho it seems like it needs a few more games worth of development. They reduced the clip size but increased everything else (damage/accuracy/general usefulness over the smg). The needler got changed again but now the needles are super fast and can never miss unless they hit a wall. The shotgun, which was amazing in Halo 1, and ruined in Halo 2, is slightly buffed. You can now pull a heavy stationary weapon off it's mount, giving you an extra temporary weapon. It loses the infinite ammo and you walk slower with it out, but it's undeniably powerful. There is of course a billion new weapons, most of which just do the same sort of things other existing weapons already did, like the Spiker (NOT THE NEEDLER, it's a totally different weapon, yep these guys sure are creative) and Gravity Hammer. However there is a new change to some existing weapons that hasn't been seen before: two new grenade types and a new "equipment" item. The new grenades are a brute type of spike grenade, and a napalm grenade. All the grenades have unique characteristics now, like the plasma grenade can be thrown the highest, the frag can now detonate in midair, and the incendiary grenade which flies the shortest and lowest but burns shit. The new "items" are a lot like the camo and overshield pickups, except you can choose when to activate them and even trade one for another just like how you would pick up different weapons. They invented a lot of new devices for you to use, most of them are thrown onto the ground such as the deployable cover, shield grenade, grav lift, flares and emp bombs and whatever. They put a lot of work into all these things, and they are a very nice idea, altho you can only carry one at a time. Also the flare is completely fucking worthless, it only really blinds you when you throw one. The objectives in most of the missions don't feel like the arbitrary "reach the fucking map transition did we forget to replace this text with something more descriptive oops?" filler notes like Halo 1 and 2, or Doom 3. Similar to the second map in Halo 1 where you are suddenly outside in the most amazing looking gaem EVAR running under the waterfall and riding around rolling hills and inside a giant metal tunnel, you actually get the feeling that you are doing something by completing the objectives. Maybe you don't get to choose which ones you take and complete dynamically like an emergent sandbox Stalker ripoff I mean uh homage, but it's better than the previous Halo games. The outdoor locations are incredible. They added a human made flying vehicle called a hornet or whatever, can't fucking remember. The point is, you get to fight those massive scarab walking tanks, in real time, from VTOL helicopter type gunships, and you can carry 2 people with you. The vehicle portions are even better in coopertive, where you can usually find a whole lot of various jeeps and ATVs and tanks and alien transports and whatever. This was some of the most fun parts of the entire game, and you wish they could go on for the whole game. Also, the vehicle areas now have more vehicles driving around and shit at one time, as opposed to the Xbox games where you'd maybe see 3 max, you can now see 10 vehicles (in legendary difficulty anyway) all riding around, enemies and friendlies, all fighting it out. I don't even have to mention how well made multiplayer is (because I don't care about it much, especially after years of TeamDM and Battlefield Awesome now TF2 being out overshadowing everything else in existence), but it is very quality and decent (no wait it SUCKS). One of the best ideas was stolen from the UT of old, where the server host could add mutators to change the entire game style, without having to load different mods or anything. Aside from many fine details, the overall game is well designed and polished. Despite any negative comments I would still say it's a decent or ok game. Better than Timesplitters and Perfect Dark Zero and FURsona 3 and Warhawk/Heavenly Sword(s)/whatever the fuck. 
Cons: The motherfucking controls are as unresponsive as BF2142 when you are surrounded by 3 people and trying to set down some roller mines or health/ammo and getting shot at and pulling out your weapon-o fuck you just died. That should just never happen, ESPECIALLY as a super cyborg Marine asskicker from hell like the Master Chief. While playing on heroic, my top 2 causes of death were trying to wrestle with the controls and getting instasniped by the newer better beam rifles (which I never actually got ahold of in normal mode, ever). One thing I can't figure out is why you aren't allowed to switch between a dual-wield setup and another weapon or even a second dual-wield set. It's like going from Diablo 2's alternate weapon selection on your character screen to World of Shitfuck where you have a bag full of alternate fire resist gear that only helps you raid and had gay bullshit stats but enough about that before I go off on another surprisingly-angry Wow tangent. Even if you use a piece of equipment it throws down your offhand weapon, causing you to lose half your firepower while you run tiny circles hoping you find what you dropped. This is the third game in a row where the needler has been changed. Can't they decide what to do with it? You can't dual-wield it anymore. On the subject of weapons, it always seems like you have too much ammo or not enough. The AR can hold a large capacity of extra clips, but the brute shot can only hold 12. Even with the AR you might find yourself surrounded by ammo until you have been using some of it, then you realize "hey where is the fucking ammo?" By this point in the life of the Halo series, the ability to only hold 2 actual weapons really frustrates me. It would be so nice to store a double plasma pistol AND a rocket launcher while I burn up some plentiful carby ammo before throwing it on the floor for whatever else is around in the giant pile of slaughtered enemies. Carrying a mounted weapon is a slight crutch, but they are rare in the end game maps, and you can't put them "away," but rather throw them on the ground with the rest of the fuckin mess of other shit. This could be considered another control issue as well as a weapon issue, but I hate having the "reload/weapon switch" button be the same, but only depending on how long you hold it, and if you are standing in a heap of guns good luck picking up the best ones. Halo PC let's you bind a key specifically to swapping weapons, Halo 3 needs to at least bind something else to the d-pad other than the flashlight (equipment or grenade selection). In my humble o, the two female main character voice actors are fucking horrible. Cortana whoever was always kinda fucking shitty since day one, and Ayussnteets Keyes is even worse. You hear them CONSTANTLY. It really hurts the presentation of the story, especially when things get very serious. However, the nameless female soldier characters are very well done. Too fucking late to fix that tho, bungie is going with the "original" cast members from the previous games. Wouldn't want the faggy dumb jocks who made Halo 1 and 2 multi-platinum sellers to feel "betrayed" by replacing the inferior voice actors with superior ones. One of the most disappointing negatives to me was the game's opening level. I was pretty excited about starting up Halo 3, THE FINAL HALO GAME FOREVER OF ALL TIME HULAGUAGUALA, until the first minute of gameplay. We followed some npcs around a fucking hallway-with-a-skybox. An ok looking one with plants and some water and a nice sky and HDR, but it's a fucking hallway with a fucking skybox. Crazy shit doesn't happen, paradigms are not changed, you aren't blown away by the first few minutes or really the first few entire fucking levels. 
It's almost funny how hard they worked to dress up the interior maps. The result is that Halo 3 still has some of the worst indoor levels in game history since fucking I don't know what. The amazing outdoor areas look better than ever which just exaggerates that problem. Just like Halo 1 and 2. The vehicle portions are over before you know it, because it's such a relief from the usual gameplay that you seriously enjoy the game until you return to slogging everywhere on foot as usual. Last thing I can think of: remember the TV commercial where the kids are talking about outer space or some shit and then Master Chief wakes up in the middle of a battlefield? That doesn't happen. Once again, the yappity version of Gordon Freeman is given a voice and yet no personality at all. I had hope for something actually interesting to happen, ANYTHING AT ALL BUNGIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE. Nope, nothing At the very least I wanted one of these things in the main character, in descending order: 1. a real personality with a real soul 2. some back story 3. more badass one liners Bungie and Halo 3 strike out with a whopping NONE OF THE ABOVE. It's a fucking shame. It shows the obvious superiority of Half Life 2's characters. Despite the fact that you are mute, to immerse you into the game's universe, all the other characters have well developed stories and personalities. You can feel what that person is like just from the dialog. The final post-credit cutscene in Halo 3 defines the game's "story." This might be considered a spoiler, if it was at all important to the "lore" of the Halo universe, but the only substance to be found is how astoundingly little substance there is to the plot of the whole series and Halo's 2 most primary characters. MC and Cortana arrive somewhere in the middle of the empty vastness of space, unharmed but alone. Everyone on Earth thinks they died. It will be years before they are discovered. Master Chief enters a cryo chamber and says "wake me up when you need me." Cortana: "I'll miss you." Chief: "SHUT UP BITCH DON'T WAKE ME UP UNTIL SOMEONE ELSE IS HERE." That perfectly captures the emptiness of the game's story. Multiplayer doesn't allow browsing for fucking coop games. FUUUUUUUUCK!!! FUCK YOU BLIZZARD FUCK YOU EA. Verdict: I dunno. I always liked the Halo series, but I was disappointed the moment that I found out it wouldn't be a tactical squad based third person combat and command game for the PC. It looked good on the ecksbawks and they had a lot of good ideas, but it's ultimately just another run and gun shooter not far removed from the FPS genre's infancy of Doom and Quake. During the vehicle portions which are fun already joh would be leaning on the mongoose horn, which sounds like the Faggio from Vice City. Then we would all laugh at the stupid ass horn sound as jhoh machine gunned it like it was some kind of weapon. He was determined to kill at least a brute with the Mongoose horn. One other thing I should have mentioned is that you can toggle crouch now finally but if you get hit you stand up again, basically making ducking behind cover totally fucking pointless. :( Multiplayer: Multiplayer is mostly the same old deathmatch since Quake 2, except a couple maps have vehicles that are basically pointless to use because everyone just runs around shooting anyway. That is what deathmatch is, a bunch of people running around shooting. Only the biggest newbs in the world haven't gotten tired of this, and all of them are playing Halo 3 right now. Built in voice chat would be convenient for a game that can use it. In Halo 3, voice chat fits the stereotype to the end of a bunch of lisping angry white nerds calling everyone nigger faggots and saying you are a faggot for dual wielding or someone is a faggot for using grenades, and they become very upset. The scoring system for Halo 3's multiplayer sucks. You get a point per kill. That is it. So you don't get recognized for doing anything else other than the final shot. Team Fortress 2, the better multiplayer game that makes Halo 3's rinky dink small time deathmatch obsolete, has the scoring system that all other games should be ripping off. In TF2, the scoreboard just says "score," and you get points for doing things. That is it. It is simple but correct in every way possible (and even some ways that are essentially impossible). But to fuck things up even more, Halo 3's score system is even worse for the boring unplayable and unplayed "team objective" modes, where one team gets a bomb which a player has to pick up, making them slower and completely unable to use weapons or grenades OR VEHICLES(!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to really suck any last bit of fun possible out of their concept, and then you're supposed to "plant" this bomb at the enemy base, and only after you do this successfully without the other team defusing the bomb do you get one singular dinky little fuckin point on the scoreboard. Okay so it's like Counter-Strike, but not as good. Except this mode makes CS players look competent because if you grab the bomb, your teammates (all 3 of them, wow 3 whole teammates what an online blitzkrieg this Halo 3 multiplayer is, PSH) will just continue running around, bunny hopping and shooting randomly at other people, while you get killed easily from running at half speed unable to attack. Shit even Counter-Strike did this mode correctly, IN CS BETA 4 LIKE 6 YEARS AGO. 
Dual wielding is almost a good idea, ruined by incompetence (as a result of age combined with dreeeeenk). But when you have your weapons all akimbo with whatever combination you have chosen, if you melee you drop the offhand weapon. If you get in a vehicle you drop it, if you jump you drop it, if you duck you drop it, if you throw a grenade you drop it, if you switch weapons you drop it, if you explode you drop it, if you hope that you don't drop it you drop it. Apparently, someone may have told bungie developers, "hey make it so you don't drop your dual wield offhand every time you do something, that's not even necessary to have in the game." But they were ignored, probably because for every one of the people who said that, there were 5 or 10 other people saying ANYTHING YOU DO IS PERFECT, JUST DO ANYTHING YOU WANT (NO MATTER HOW DUMB). They may not have put it like that, but they might as well have because that's what they did. The design and development decisions are as incompetent as blizurd's. They FUCKED it up those stupid motherfuckers. Just like they fucked up online coop. And again, other companies did it better previously, so there is no excuse for bungie to fuck these things up, but they still manage to yank defeat out of the jaws of victory. Overall: 5/10 |
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