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Further Halo 3 Bashing…

Quick post…

If your not familiar with the Escapist online magazine you should check it, they have some good articles on gaming and what not. However, the best part of the Escapist is Zero Punctuation, a small video short where Ben Croshaw pretty much sums up his thoughts on recent games. Some his latest videos highlighted Bioshock and the on going console wars, of course what he says is his own opinion, but this time around he reviewed Halo 3.

And honestly I think his review is spot on and honest. Also I had a good laugh when he mentioned his frustrations of the AI and vehicles!

Well I better get back to work…

The Fight is Finished.

Within a few days I completed Halo 3 on Normal difficulty and my overall verdict on scale of 1 to 10, probably around a 6.5 to a 7. If the game did not have the solid multiplayer that it does I personally would have ranked it lower. So why the low score you say…

Well first off all there was nothing innovate about the Halo 3, it was pretty much a rehash from Halo 1. The gameplay was pretty much the same, you shoot the Covenant, they shoot you, then the flood comes in to pester you, you kick the flood’s ass, etc. Ok perhaps some of the new equipment pickups were cool, but I never felt that they added anything to the gameplay, those objects however do come in handy for MP. Though the game did have it’s moments where it felt entertaining, but for the most part it felt like a bad case of deja vu. On the topic of deja vu, at least the level design was better, only a few levels had passage ways that looked exaclty the same. In the pervious games it was hard at times to know where you are and where you were going becuase of the fact things looked exactly the same from one room to the next.

In terms of story, I sort of understood the basic premise of this iteration of Halo, but there were things that did not make sense at all. And in retrospect of the last two iterations, the story as whole does not seem to fit together, to me at least. If anyone can explain the entire story, then you are more than welcome to leave a comment explaining what I can’t figure out.

Let me back track for a second, I said there was nothing innovative about Halo 3, well perhaps four player co-op is a new thing. That’s probably the only reason why I’ll play the game again, the experience may be more enjoyable with friends to coordinate with instead of the dumb AI, and the fact that I would like to get my achievements for playing the game on Heroic and Legendary. Also the whole theater thing is cool, but really does not add to gameplay in my opinion, it’s just a fun way to watch how you owned everyone or how you got owned by someone else.

Speaking of dumb AI, on more than one occasion they decided that it would be a cool idea to drive the vehicle I was the gunner on, over the edge of a cliff. After the fourth time of experiencing their suberb driving skills, I decided to take the wheel. The result of which was that I got through checkpoints alot faster than the AI, but the hinderance was that AI were not that good at using the attached gun turret on the vehicle. So, whenver I had a chance to drive or pilot my own vehicle, like the Ghost, I’d take it and leave the AI to decided who would drive the others marines over the edge.

Now I won’t spoil the ending, but those that have finished the game may or may not feel the same as I do. But after watching the video at the end, I kind of felt shafted by Bungie for all that hard work and frustrations endured within the game, espically within the last two chapters, what was Bungie thinking when they made those missions! Oh well it’s over now, all that is left to do is enjoy the multiplayer. It’s odd how some games are single player focused with a tacked on multiplayer, Halo 3 honestly felt like a solid multiplayer game, with a tacked on single player for those that don’t have Xbox Live.

Bioshock Demo

Well I stayed up quite late last night to play the demo on my 360, and it was worth it. I think I started the download around midnight and got it done around 2 am or so. It was one of the longest demo downloads I have recently done, I assume due to the high ammounts of hits the demo was getting.

Anyways, about the demo. It was visually impressive, and fun to play. I would not say that the gameplay was hard, but rather challenging. But then again it was only a demo, so perhaps in the full game things may get hard. As for the gameplay it was neat to use both left and right hands of the character to perform combat actions. The only thing that felt a bit odd was shooting the guns. Not sure what it was exactly but for an FPS on console it felt natural to play but the visual feedback perhaps was not as responsive to the actual button input. Or perhaps it’s just my feeling since I played it during the early hours of the day. Need to play it again tonight.

I am quite sure I’ll get this game, but not on console. I’ll get it for PC, becuase that is why I built it is to play new games this fall.

New Level Under Construction

Been busy lately with a new death match level for UT2k4. This will be my last level for the game, and once UT3 is out I’ll be making levels for that and possibly Gears of War PC once that is released as well. Anyways, I think I got about a week’s worth of work left, need to setup the AI paths and do some more detail work, but for the most part the level is functional and is visually complete. Though it is not as ‘cluttered’ with meshes as compared to my other levels, this time around I really wanted to focus on the layout and gameplay. I’ll probably recruit some people I know to do some play testing on the level and offer up some feedback before I release it out into wild. To fuel the hype machine I present two teaser shots, enjoy!