mozidesign.com Unorganized Thoughts of a Game Designer

Finishing the Fight…

First off I would like to aplogize for the site being down lately, experiencing some techinical difficulties…hopefully all is now well and should be online from here on out. Fingers crossed.

Moving on to Halo 3. The hype is now over and the game is here, and it is pretty much what I expected it to be. Single player thus far of what I played seems alright, though the narrative elements again fall short as they did with Halo 2. Fellow AI still act as cannon fodder and still can’t drive vehicles properly. Multiplayer on the other hand is awesome, I am pretty much addicted to it. Been playing alot of the ranked games, mostly free for all, but occasionally I’ll play a game of team deathmatch or CTF. Though what is really impressive this time around is the video recording. It is always fun to go back and watch a recent death match game and see the fun and crazy things other players did, or laughing at the way your own character died in mid-air. As for the so called ‘level editor’ tool Forge, have not messed with it yet, but it may be interesting to use. It would be neat if a proper level editor was released whenever Halo 3 comes to PC.

At the moment I really can’t judge if Halo 3 is indeed a true improvement from 2, aside from the graphics, Bungie really did a good job there, but it does not look as good as Gears of War, then again they are two different games but still it brings up the possibility that Halo 3 could have done more than they already have in the graphcis department. Or perhaps I am jaded as an Unreal tech fanboy and have gotten used to the level of detail seen in Unreal engine games like Gears, Bioshock, and Stranglehold.

Speaking of which I recently completed Stranglehold as well as Bioshock last month. Both were great games, I really enjoyed Stranglehold, pure over the top John Woo action! And yes, I shot thugs in the balls quite often with the precision shot upgrade…

A quick note about the Dethalbum I mentioned last time. I got it and I have to say it is quite heavy and “brutal”! Brendon Small the creator of Metalocalypse, actually did all the guitar tracks, lead, rhythm, and bass! On drums he got Gene Holgan, I never heard of him before, but damn that guy has some fast feet. His double bass work on songs like Awaken and the Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle, are amazing! And if I am not mistaken I can swear that James Hetfield did the clean vocals on the song, Hatred Copter. So if your fan of heavy metal you got to get this album!