f13.net

Had to come sometime I suppose so here ya go.

Am I the only person who's fucking ecstatic that it's been released not because it's Robot Jesus on a stick, but because I'm so god damn sick of hearing about it that now, finally, I can read about something else on gaming sites?

On a lighter note, anyone played it? I've always personally felt the Halo series was one of the most overrated games on record, but to each their own I guess.

Halo deserves to exist because it gave birth, indirectly, to I Love Bees, the best radio play ever.

I have been looking forward to not playing Halo 3 for months now.

Heh, now don't get me wrong, it's a solid series. Mainly because of the presentation. But I could never get the super hype around it considering it did nothing that the PC hadn't done for years previous.

The only reason I even see the Halo franchise being a hit is because people who suck at videogames can be good at Halo.

I was gonna grab it when it went to the 360 "Greatest Hits" library, but I'm having my doubts I'll even do that.

Well, to quote my wife, the best thing about Halo was Red vs Blue.

TBH, I've always felt that Halo's presentation was bland, generic, and completely second-tier.

Not to mention that there's absolutely nothing cool about a fucking space marine.

A space marine that wears JT paintball armor none the less.

http://www.jtusa.com/catalog/visionsystems/7918/

He wears the JT X-Fire. I suppose that makes it even funnier.

Halo: The Future of Gaming (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gaming/halo-is-the-future-of-gaming-303156.php)

There's been a Halo3 cardboard Master Chief in my pizza place for a month now.

I enjoy Halo because of the co-op stuff and because I think it's a neat universe they have created. It's not "special" but it's fun.


This shit though is just as annoying as "Halo is the world's greatest game!!!!" And just as much bull shit. From a gameplay perspective Halo is just as challenging as most other FPS out there so this shit just comes across as posturing.

Is he significantly more awesome than the Halo 2 Master Chief cardboard cutout?

Settle down chief, I suck at videogames, but I was pretty good at Halo. Hence the comment. There's a perfectly valid reason why I'm not playing TF2 right now, and it doesn't have to do with my old crappy PC.

I went to my local ebgames today, Halo3 crap everywhere. Posters, multiple standees, a huge stack of the boxes on the counter. I asked about Hellgate:London preorder boxes, the guy started in on a rant of all the people asking for them, then started in on a rant on the glory of Halo3.

I think I'll just stop going there.

The console version does have a little bit of sticky aim, or aim assist.

I enjoyed the co-op, and the single player line..Multiplay?

Sucked.

I'll admit, I have a preorder on it. I'm a sucker for co-op shooters, and from what I've read, this time your buddies don't play MC clones.

Will it ever live up to the hype? Of course not. Will be a fun fragfest though.

Believe

So, it's currently ranked as the 5th best game ever, all platforms included. Hype machine success? I've also never understood what was so great with Halo, it's a polished good shooter, nothing more to it at fucking all. Going by the reviews Halo 3 is exactly the same shit as its predecessors, how this can earn 10/10 on a lot of pretty harsh sites is way beyond me. I'll be sure to give it a shot at my Halo crazy friends house this week though.

My only comment about Halo 3 is this:

DON'T DRINK THE HALO 3 MOUNTAIN DEW! It tastes like (what I can only assume) the Jonestown Kool-Aid must have tasted like.

I don't know, I'd have to say that the Forge sounds pretty cool, and would seem to be one of Halo 3's major selling points.

Edit: For those who don't know what the Forge is, taken from IGN's review:

11. maps.

I bet none are as good as 2fort or Dustbowl.

Had to say it, mostly because I hated the Halo maps. It was like amateur hour at Epic.

HA!

Found it here!  (http://gameinvasion.comcast.net/gameinvasion/news/article/1190748360341_halo_3_packaging_scratches_disks&cvqh=itn_haloscratch)

Halo was pre-hyped in a large part because it was going to be the next big thing on the Macintosh, a computer platform whose major games are ports of three year old PC titles. Microsoft bought Bungie based on the hype, and somehow managed to keep the noise going, despite the fact that Halo was never going to be technically ground-breaking, not least after the inevitable delay introduced by recoding the whole bloody thing for different APIs.

Here's a copy of Halo 3 for sale on eBay. (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220153729983)

You know what would be awesome?  If the Bill Gates signed Xbox 360 red ringed and had to be sent back.

i gave it a try at the world wide launch. I can't do the 'gamepad FPS' it's just retarded. It's funny how the console kids around me snigger and laugh when I fumbled on my gamepad. I just wonder how much crap they can take if I can whip out my USB mouse n keyboard n plug it in on a Halo competition.

You know, for its time, Halo was a really great console FPS. I still have nostalgia for those times, even though they were dampened by the lackluster Halo 2. I had some games sitting around that I traded in for Halo 3 so I only paid five bucks for the game ($ 30 credit for BioShock alone, nice) ... I haven't been able to connect to Live for some reason, but I played about an hour of the single player game.

Keep in mind I've been playing Half Life 2 for the first time the last several days.

Halo 3 single player plays and looks like some ancient relic by comparison. After an hour I wondered why I was wasting my time. I am still looking forward to playing multiplayer as a change of pace from playing at the PC ... but if this game is the "savior" of the 360 we are all in trouble. The Next Great Hope: Mass Effect, please don't let me down baby!

I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you want Mass Effect to be the savior. It'll probably be good and better than Jade Empire at least, but it's probably best to not hype it too much.  :-) The great stuff seems to always come out of nowhere.

No offense to Bioware, at this point it's Lost Odyssey or bust for me.

Big Game Hunters, Halo 3 style?

Or for those who didn't get the Starcraft reference: like Garry's Mod but shitty?

The original Bungie plans for Halo / Marathon IV had some really nifty features. However, it seems like a lot of them were jettisoned after MS bought Bungie out and turned them into the Halo Factory (says someone who wishes the Myth series was continued). I remember the early video showing units surrendering and players being able to set up ambushes against the AI.

If I can credit Halo with doing anything exceptionally well, it's the music. Haven't played Halo3, but Halo and Halo2 had fantastic music.

No console FPS has ever impressed me and I'm not a PC snob.

Gears of War impressed the shit out of me. That is all.

Console games have to start somewhere with this kind of thing.  I mean, do you seriously want to criticize them for not having something on par with Garry's Mod, when the extent of map customization in console FPS games before this was pretty much only being able to select what weapons you wanted available?

I played co-op campaign for a few hours tonight.  We had 4 people rolling around blowing shit up.  It was a lot of fun.  You can watch previous levels, view from any player, save, upload, all that junk.  Fun decimating each other in creative ways, while the mediocre AI keeps on plugging.  Watching the replays later (everyone watches the replay at the same speed, the game owner can fast forward/rewind through it), and flipping over to the more inept console-FPS friend is good for some laughs, teasing him for shooting at the ground.

Most of the fun is co-op itself, not Halo.  Halo just lets us play 4-player campaign :)

I think, at this point in time, PC snobbery is retrograde and outdated.  During the PS1 and, to some extent, the PS2 generations PC was for hardcore gaming and consoels were for lightweights.

I no longer think there is a serious argument that this remains the case. Now that consoles are very powerful and have HD capabilities, there's really no longer any justification to build the massively expensive gaming rigs that drive high-end PC gaming. Now that everyone has a PC, game devs devote a lot of PC resources to casual games, and scale almost all of them to play on very old hardware.  There is no longer a market of college students buying tricked out gaming rigs every year, because college students all get laptops now, and many serious gamers have discovered that services like Xbox live provide a pretty robust multiplayer platform, and see the need for PC upgrades as a lot less compelling.  Its a lot more tolerable to pay $400 for a piece of subsidized hardware with a 5 year lifespan than it is to pay a high-margin premium for cutting edge PC hardware that rapidly depreciates in value and is outclassed by the next thing in less than a year. So the number of people buying high-end PC hardware is not currently significant enough to justify the expense of developing games that are markedly more sophisticated than the AAA console launches, even if the hardware is commercially available. PC gamers now get console ports rather than the other way around.

The remaining vanity of PC gamers is the superiority of PC controls. I think an Xbox controller is a perfectly competent control mechanism as long as the weapon set and the map design is balanced around being played on an Xbox control.   

As for Halo, I'm working my way through the Heroic campaign right now. It's quite difficult, but the AI is not as sophisticated as Hardcore GoW, and as a single player experience, I am finding this less satisfying. I played H1 and H2 on normal mode and I remember spending a lot of time out of cover charging into groups of enemies. In Heroic, I find myself picking them off from long range with a carbine or a battle rifle, whenever those options are available.  The AI seems a lot dumber than GoW's, and I am not seeing a lot of flanking or covering maneuvers from the Brutes. They make up for not being smart by being a lot more durable, and it's really annoying to have to shoot one of the heavily armored Brutes three times in the face with the sniper rifle or beam rifle to kill him.

I feel a lot less like I am progressing because I am a super-powered, ten-foot-tall, cyborg demon and a lot more like I am, in each encounter, executing a highly precise set of maneuvers to achieve a staggeringly improbable outcome (especially since I usually fail several times before getting it).

One example: I am dealing with two Brutes on their Chopper hover bikes partrolling on a road. The road leads into a cave that is blocked by a shield that I have to disable. There is a Grunt in a shade turret on a ridge, covering the road, a sniper on a sniper platform covering the road and the ridge, and a second shade turret at road level facing out of the cave, also  covering the road. I have a beam (sniper) rifle and a shotgun. So I have to juke the two Choppers and the turret fire, run across the road, flank the turret on the ridge. and beat the grunt to death. Then I have to countersnipe the sniper on the platform. Then I have to snipe the Brutes off the Choppers. Now I can charge the remaining turret and stick it with a grenade.

This causes a bunch of wasp guys to spawn in the cave, and they fly through the shield and kill me, because I can't cover from them out in the open.

So I start at the checkpoint and repeat the process a few times, trying to shotgun all the wasps before I die.  Then I figure out that there's a structure up on one of the hills that I can cover in from the wasps to let my shield regenerate, so this time, I stick the turret and book for that, which allows me to kill the wasps and progress.

The difficulty primarily stems from the fact that Master Chief can take very little punishment, the brutes can eat a lot, and I either never have the ideal weapon, or never have enough ammo for it, and have to make due with whatever is lying around.

Team Fortress 2 says hello.

Everyone here knows I'm a PC Gamer second, and I'm sorry, but this sort of gameplay is simply not possible on a console. The scout will be a marginalized piece of shit with analog sticks and the entire experience will be trashed.

It's not favoritism, it's just the reality of it. For nearly every other genre, I'd go console first. But not FPS. No. Never. I also don't see console companies getting the balls to make keyboard/mouse a standard. I fear UT2k7 and the PS3 with it's kbm bluetooth/wired capabilities may be a one shot deal.

Yeah, now that I think about it GoW makes Halo's single player gameplay feel really outdated.

Halo 3 multiplayer feels rather oldschool too. I played online a couple hours once Live came back up for me. I did have fun - it's considerably more enjoyable than the single player campaign of course. But the whole scenario of everyone spawning the same then running around a small environment collecting weapons and shooting each other was basically what we were doing in Doom. Aside from the vehicles it just feels like some kind of throwback.

As far as console FPS controls, I have no problem with a controller because that's how I started playing these games - I was a console gamer long before I got a PC. Doom, UT, QIIIA - all these I played on console. When I first got a PC the mouse/kb contol set up was incredibly unintuitive and it took me a long time to get used to it. You can adapt to any control scheme, it's just a matter if you are willing to. I do now prefer mouse/kb for games with more precise aiming mechanics like Call of Duty or Battlefield ... but for something like TF2 I think it could be done with a controller just fine for the most part ... Scout and Sniper might just be a bit more challenging, but people adapt.

You must be all thumbs. You know, the old saying. For being clumsy. Because you use your thumbs for things requiring precise manual dexterity that is far more prevalent in the other four digits. Three of which are relegated to holding the controller.

Just sayin'. It's not some vanity.

Also, reducing a UI for viewing on non-HD sources is still a hobbling point for consoles, as is reducing the control set for a few face buttons and a couple triggers.

Back to Halo. My dad almost beat the game on Legendary before he got tired of it. My dad, who is in his mid-60s. And only started playing console shooters a couple years ago. Who is basically a non-gamer. My dad. So, yeah. Probably not the toughest game in the world.

A friend of mine who has never played any version of Halo asked what it brought to the table, other than graphics, that Doom didn't... and I really couldn't answer him except for the vehicles part, which isn't necessarily a plus.

Well, the real issue is that digital control (i.e. it's pushed or it ain't) is considered better for movement in shooters than analog control (it's pushed a little bit), and a gaming mouse has a more precise range than an analog stick. These things are useful in games that require you to use a railgun or a rifle while strafing or possibly flying through the air. If you want to rocket jump, turn 180 degrees in midair and rail a guy in a game like Quake where characters run at 60 mph, you can't do that with an Xbox controller. However, in Halo, where you run slower, and nobody is jumping around in moon gravity, and most of the weapons are heavier with auto fire or spread fire, a lot of that advantage dissipates.

I think that's kind of the point. It's supposed to be the most polished online console deathmatch game, refined over several iterations. It's like asking what Madden 2008 brings to the table that Madden 2003 didn't.

Except the PC has had more solid, polished deathmatching in multiple genres for years predating Halo.

I think I am the last person who should comment on this, seeing as I am not a very big FPS player, but I really cannot get into Halo. I really, REALLY have tried. I just think that its draw is much like other casual friendly examples of any given genre. (I'm looking at you DOA) I think that Halo offers accessible game play and a large player base grouped into skill levels so you don't get the inevitable beat down that you deserve. Unfortunately that "beat down" is what makes good players, and what cause good players to push the boundries of what advanced play is. When these new levels of skill are reached, developers can build around the new techniques and add other things, further advancing the game play experience. It seems like Halo doesn't allow for this because it caps everyone off, then when techniques are discovered, they are done away with. (all that L,B,L stuff and mellee combinations were taken out from what I am told) Halo 3, from what I played and saw, just feels freaking dated. The truth is, as a lot of people pointed out here, NONE of this is stuff we haven't seen on PC. Seems like Halo is exactly what it sets out to be, accessible FPS on console with a huge player base and balanced, albeit dated, game play. Whether this is good or bad is debatable, but as for me, I would much rather play other FPS games on PC, heck I actually think that Timesplitters owns Halo all over the place, but that is just me.     

I can see autoaim fucking with the 360 version of TF2 when it comes to demoman.  Killjoy will be getting the 360 version so I'll be able to tell you more about it later, perhaps.  If you don't have autoaim in TF2, well... it should be an option if it is in there at all.

As for the scout, how would someone run across the top of the bridge in 2fort to hit a homer with someone's skull using a gamepad?  R3 = jump?  Taking your thumbs off the sticks is not an option.  On the 360, I figure Halo 3 would be a better choice than TF2 thanks to gamepad-oriented design/tuning, but I can't say until I get some time with those versions.

To be honest, the reason consoles have closed the gap with PC's is because they are copying them in more and more ways. Online activity, hard drives, downloadable content and patches etc. etc.

The only differences between PC's and consoles as of now are the controls and the ability to upgrade the hardware. Neither of these differences are going to last much longer either.

I wonder what sort of reaction I'm going to get when I go into EBgames tomorrow and ask them to put my Halo 3 preorder money towards Beautiful Katamari.  Maybe I should avoid buying Soul Nomad at the same to make sure I'm getting the "wut u no liek halo?" look and not the crazy jap gamer look.

Go for both, start walking out and then turn around and be like "Oh, let me get Soul Nomad."

And then when they counter with, "WHY NO HALO?"

You can respond with, "CAN YOU KILL A MOTHERFUCKING GOD IN HALO, DICKCHEESE? NO? OK THEN SOUL NOMAD STAT THX."

No, I don't criticize them for not having Garry's Mod.  I criticize them for pretending that what they have is bold and revolutionary and fun.  "HALO 3 ALL WEAPON MADNESS SERVER LOLOLOL!"  It sounds like all they've got is the very worst aspects of the sort of customization that's been available in PC games for more than a decade now.

I mean, sure, it's important to take those baby steps, but you don't get to pretend you're the first person on the planet to ever think of putting one foot in front of the other.

And hell, it's not even a console vs. PC thing.  LittleBigPlanet is a PS3 game and from what I've seen it looks awesome.  Halo in all its iterations is just grossly overrated is all.

It's gonna break $250M this week.

Hollywood and music industry pwned. Yes, even with my vile hatred towards gaming mediocrity, this makes me happy.

I always like how mitigating factors like "We're charging 6 times the amount a movie ticket costs" aren't mentioned.

Uh? That's because it doesn't matter? You don't think movie theaters would charge $60 if they could get away with it?

Meh. I'll wait for Left 4 Dead.

If we charged you $60 a ticket, we wouldn't be able to get you to buy any of our overpriced food.

You do know the derivation of Forge in regards to Bungie, yes?  That was also the name of one of the two editing tools Bungie released (and supported) with Marathon Infinity in '96.

Because it's irrelevant? Marginal Utility is what it is. Your average unit price is irrelevant when measuring revenue this way. Now what they're not saying is that any of those movies will destroy them over a couple years due to DVD rentals, sales and 3rd market releases. But arguing on unit price is stupid.

EDIT: Actually, only Harry,  Spidey and Pirates are likely to do so. But then they're the only ones that had opening days/weekends that compare. Keep in mind a film like Pirates 2 made around $350 million pretty quickly. But yeah, impressive numbers for a 360 game no doubt. Personally I consider it a mediocre game, but w/e i didn't like Spidey 3 either.

I never bought into or paid attention to the hype or the game's meta-politics so Halo 3 came off as a solidly fun and compelling time with some really fun firefights and great multiplayer. I try to have my attitude towards games be equivilant to how they would be if I had never heard of the game/series before but had just thrown it in my console to see what it was like.

Of course sometimes this has been exactly how I've found a game to like (Prince of Persia) but other times you have to wade through hype and expectations and fucking game fuel and ignore it all in order to not be playing the game with a perma-scoff on your face.

I did not know that, but it makes any claim that this is bold new technology all the more silly.

Not that I've seen Bungie themselves making that claim -- I refer mainly to the knob-slobbering IGN review that Vel posted on the last page.  "Spawning lots of ammo" != "near limitless possibilities".  /sadf

It's new for consoles, and is likely about the best we can expect for any sort of map customization or editing in a console game for now.  Despite vague promises of allowing mods for UT3 on the PS3, fear of Hot Coffee type situations pretty much kills the chance of modding ever being allowed on consoles to the extent that it is on PC's.

I don't plan on picking up Halo 3 anytime soon, so I haven't had a chance to mess around with Forge at all, but I think giving players a way to mix things up on the map a little bit can only be a good thing.  Sure it's not going to seem exciting to the PC gamer, playing Team Fortress 2 on a dedicated server, messin' around with Garry's Mod, or trying out the Crysis beta, but then it's not really meant for that crowd so much as it's meant for the 9 million people that bought Halo 2.

I played the first campaign mission again on the higher difficulty, Heroic, and I have to say it was more enjoyable. The Halo games have always had more rewarding gameplay on higher difficulties and this one is no different. It turns a run and gun experience into something much more tactical.

I'm pretty sick of hearing about Halo 3 on TV now. Jesus Microsoft we get it, Halo 3 is out and it's all you have to push your piece of shit system now that everyone has forgotten about Gears. Stop it with the goddamn CNN/MSNBC stories.

Also, can someone kindly burn down Kotaku and kill all their hack writers? I looked at the place for the first time in quite a while and half their stories for the last week are about Halo 3.

I've been playing this with my friends online and my god is it fun Co-op on heroic. You really do have to pick your battles wisely and utilize the fact that you can actually guide other people who aren't as dumb as the AI.  The best part is that you can have a friend log into your xbox while you're playing co-op online and play with you while you play with other people on XBOX live. I hate to say it, but at least Bungie acknowledges that co-op is something people want and really making an effort to add it in every way possible.

This is the one thing that will probably make me consider Halo 3 when I get a 360 (after the new hopefully non-explodey build comes out). Halo 1 and 2 were incredibly mediocre (and Halo 2's multiplayer blew nuts compared to uh, every online PC shooter ever), but the coop was a gas, especially when you were trying to make the game do things it didn't want to do.

I bought it. Played for about an hour or so. So far I am extremely unimpressed. But, I bought it for the coop. Still, I some how thought iot would be a lot more cooler. Gears of War is a MUCH better game IMO. For people who bought this instead of Gears, I feel pity.

If the console companies and publishers writing for them weren't being stupid cocks about keyboard and mouse control, yeah, a console FPS would be dandy.  As it is, the Metroid Prime series is the only console FPS I can stomach.

uh, can we even plug in a keyboard and mouse on 360 to play Halo 3?

I did the first two levels online with my friend last night and it was a really good time.

Playing this game alone is really almost pointless.

Just an FYI, the first level is pretty bad compared to the others for some reason.  I noticed that I had a much more fun time from the 4th level on.

I kinda think Forge just sounds lame. I mean, Timesplitters 1,2, and 3 had a pretty damn decent level builders and would let you place items and weapons anywhere. Not only that you can make all kinds of silly game types and single player missions. TS3 was the damn shit...

Ok, so thinking maybe I was missing some thing, I went looking for some reviews. This section of the gamespy review made me want to seriously punch some thing. I actually clenched my fist and looked around the room for some thing to hit.

That reads like it was created using tips from the Republican Propoganda machine, except applied to Microsoft.

All down hill from there then right?  :-P

Oh snap, Halo 3 stoled ur pixelz. (http://www.gamerawr.com/2007/09/28/halo-3-only-runs-at-640p/)

To say the least, Halo 3 never was and never will be the benchmark for anything visual. All 3 were ugly as sin and the art was just a hair better than the Area 51 arcade game.

Bungie sucks at art and optimization. I think all the Halo fans got over that a long time ago.

Bigger is not always better? (http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12821)

Wow...what a fucking joke of a defense. Basically makes himself look like a complete ass by talking shit to people who are exactly right.


Of course it is, just not a standardly supported one. And of course, the interwebs are exactly right: Halo 3 runs at 640 and is upscaled.


Using multiple buffers has been around for decades.


Yes, using multiple buffers for graphical effects is very complex and unorthodox, having been widely understood for decades but only commonly used for the last many years or so.

 

I bet it scales almost 340p pretty well too.


Bungie: high resolution makes zero difference. Interesting stance.


But they did mention that in runs in 720p which is an outright lie. I suppose admitting that they lied about the resolution and that the flagship game on an HD system wasn't HD would have been distracting.

I like how the people who are 100% correct are tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists. Those crazy tinfoil hat wearers, next they'll claim that the moon isn't made of cheese!
---

The entire tone of the piece is "fuck you, we lied, suck it bitches."

I love the whole "It's not 640p, that's just crazy talk. It's almost-720p!" angle. That and the GameSpy review are retarded to point of causing physical pain.

I have this feeling in my gut that 640p is the resolution at which the soul-crushing lag went away. They simply couldn't figure out how to code it away at 720p. Bungie sucks.

I'm a pretty big Halo fanboy, but this spew is just bullshit. 

Does anybody understand why they have the render the same frame twice to support HDR? That doesn't sound right on modern GPU hardware.

They are rendering the same frame twice because of floating-point precision and cap issues.

HDR is still somewhat new and the hardware support for it is not standard yet. Basically to render something in HDR you need to be able to store color/light values above 1.0. What happens in a typical setup is that you have a really really bright light, that might realistically be 500, but it gets capped at one because floating points are capped at zero and one. Which means that if you then cut the light in half you get .5 when what you should get is 250, which if capped later on would still cap at 1.

To render high levels of light you need to delay that capping until right before you render to the screen. If the hardware can't support that (for technical or efficiency reasons) you need an alternate strategy. Probably the second buffer is still capped at zero to one but they do some translation of that range during the compositing of the two buffers. That's pretty much how all HDR implementations worked at first. Capping floating points between zero and one allows for greater precision and greater efficiency, so it's likely that even if the 360 hardware technically supports HDR rendering via GPU directly that it isn't the best strategy.
---

I see this happening a lot now - some customer spots a legitimate problem and a spokeperson for the company then mocks them. It's incredibly stupid, insulting the consumer. I guess this is why marketing departments don't like to let non-marketers speak non-marketing.

So I played a bunch more this weekend. Did coop with my friend, and after level 4 the game really gets better. The Vehicle combat is fun as shit. Its still a generic SciFi FPS, but once you get in to the meat of the game, its pretty well done.

They really didn't help themselves by being cocks about it.  When people asked the Warhawk people if the game would be out in 1080p, the Warhawk devs gave an honest, straight answer of 'We're doing it in 720 so we can keep the framerate up on big maps.  It'll upscale to 1080, but the native is 720'.  If the Bungie people gave a similar answer, that'd be fine.  But instead they had to behave like a pack of assholes about it and then ice the cake with bullshit about how the second frame in the buffer means it's at double resolution.

The gaming public won't give two shits and when Halo: The Lost Levels comes out it'll sell just as well.

Fuck it.

It wasn't groundbreaking, it's not revolutionary. It's not even spectacularly scintillating in its implementation of multiplayer. (TF2 does indeed rock at that)

But goddammit, I like the fucking storyline. I never got my Marathon 4, so I'm happy I got this. That said, some of the multiplayer maps are pretty sweet. Dustbowl being one. Others? Not so much.

That guy, I wonder if he's well-paid or just enjoys being a cock-puppet.  He basically wrote out that Halo 3 doesn't add much beyond Halo 2 and yet says it's a game worth $300.  Talk about buying into the hype!

EDIT: Oh, hey, context: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10963.msg347553#msg347553

I'm weak and lame and picked it up at 7-11 Sunday because I could.  I played through level 6 coop with a friend and it was quite entertaining.  One thing I noticed right off the bat is that the controller issues I had with games like Bioshock are nonexistent in Halo3.  I can actually jump, spin 180 mid air, and blow heads off before I hit the ground.  Of course the game feels slow as molasses after TF2 so there is that.

I played a couple games of 4 player death match too.  I'm ashamed to admit I thought it was fun.

Oh... and Gravity Hammer? Most fun, unbalanced FPS weapon. EVAR.

**MILD SPOILER**









So far my favorite thing I think is the big ass spider walker things, that you have to bring down at the leg, and then climb inside and blow the core. Fun shit.

Wait 'til later...  :-D

I agree, I have to take back my initial impressions of the campaign because it does get a lot better as you progress. More open environments and vehicles break up the corridor action, and just a ton of opportunities for cooperative strategies - it really feels like the campaign was built from the ground up as a coop experience, I've been having a blast playing with my friend online. Just a ton of "oh that's fucking cool" moments.


Probably the most fun I've had in the campaign yet is the part where ... well I guess I don't want to spoil anything if you've only fought the first one?

I did enjoy jumping on the first one from the top of the crane with the minigun I'd pulled from the emplacement and just ripping shit up. Go for the knees? Fuck that. Death from above.

Zero Punctuation reviews Halo 3:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2304-Zero-Punctuation-Halo-3

That review is Win.

"pants on head retarded". Heh.  :-D

I don't care about Halo 3 the game one way or the other. Sorry. I am not your market.

But Halo 3 the soundtrack? I'll be all over that.

Yeah, Marty's work was amazing as usual.

Are there any spoilers, as Im getting close to the end, but even though its not great, dont want spoilers.

Small spoilers. Wait 'til you're done.

I only played the second Halo, but is there a storyline? I hear rumor of it, but then everyone tells me I have to go read the books. That seems like a less than optimal solution. Did Halo 1 and 3 actually bother to put a plot in?

Guys, you should really listen to I Love Bees.

There is. It's not on the level of an RPG really. Basically, it's an action movie storyline with a few really cool characters: MC, Cortana (by far my favorite character), Sgt Johnson and Mirana errr...can't remember her last name at the moment. She's the daughter of the captain from the first Halo.

BTW, if you have the collectors edition it is worth watching the 2nd disc for two features:

Bungie's 7 steps to world domination which is basically a history of bungie with alot of silliness
and the mini-doc where the voice actress who plays Cortana travels around the country and meets hardcore Halo fans. (website masters, the red vs blue guys, a guy who makes his own Spartan armor and a few others). It's priceless to see the lead singer of Barenaked Ladies reaction when he realizes who this "woman from Bungie" is. Lol. The voice actress is really cute and seems genuinely nice and amused by how fanatic the fans are. Most of the time she doesn't tell the people she meets who she is and just drops Cortana's lines into conversation until they figure it out.

I had already read Ringworld and pretty much ignored any story elements that nagged me in Halo.  It was harder to ignore in Halo 2, but not impossible since I had already played Advent Rising.

Link please, good sir, for the internet searching disabled.

http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/ilb_reordered/

I guess bungie is being spun off. (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-microsoft-bungie.html)

They've run out of old ideas.

Halo was the result of polishing old ideas.

I don't think it's possible to argue that Marathon or Myth were not incredibly innovative.  Even Pathways into Darkness, the first FPS-RPG, and Oni, third person shooter/fighter, couldn't be called retreads despite mediocre execution.

If anything,  it gets the Bungie founders out from under Microsoft's thumb,  where they would have been tasked with churning out iterations of Halo for the next decade.

I hope this means we get a new Myth one of these days.  I think Take 2 still owns the rights though.

Ringworld !=Halo. Two different constructs entirely.

Halo is much closer to the Orbitals in Iain M Banks' Culture novels.

I was mostly joking but I'd love to hear the list of differences between the Halo and the Ringworld.

Taken from wikipedia's description of orbitals:

Banks has described Orbitals as looking like "a god's bracelet" hanging in outer space. Orbitals are ribbon-like hoops of a super-strong material (see also unobtainium) reinforced and joined with force fields. An Orbital is similar to a ringworld but is much smaller and does not enclose its primary star within itself, instead orbiting the star in a more conventional manner, making it much more intrinsically stable than a ringworld. Many different civilizations are known to use Orbitals sized according to the preferences of the builders; the Culture's Orbitals are approximately ten million kilometres in circumference and have widths varying between one thousand and six thousand kilometres, giving them a surface area of between 20 and 120 times that of the Earth.

A lot of Bungie guys, especially Jason Jones are fans of Banks' works. I'd suggest picking up "Consider Phlebas", or the better "Use of Weapons" if you can find a copy. Good stuff.

I'm not really a reader.  Thanks for the info, though, I had forgotten about the Halo not circling the sun for some reason.

From reading that it sounded like MS handled the whole situation very smoothly. It basically sounded like Bungie was leaving one way or the other, probably for more freedom, and MS said "cool, tell you what, we'll keep a stake in the company and the rights to Halo but other than that best wishes."

I'm sure Sony would have firebombed their offices if they were in the same situation.

I have played and beat Halo 1 and 2 and am currently on the last mission of 3.  I also just read Ringworld this summer :)

The only real similarities between the two are big inhabitable space rings and ancient mysterious architecture.  Halo is a big interactive action movie.  It plays out like Rambo in 2400.  MC races from objective to objective mowing down Covenant, a race of religious fanatics who believe the Halos are the pathway to their salvation, and Flood, a spore that turns flesh into horribly pissed off zombies.  The Flood remains a mystery for most of the series and I’m not going to post spoilers, but they are an integral part of the story.  In summary, MC is trying to stop the Covenant from firing the Halos and causing massive damage to the known universe while the Flood seemingly wants everyone dead.

I’m assuming most here have read Ringworld.  It is much less action packed and focuses more on the social interactions between 3 races, their influence on each other, and getting the fuck off of a giant space ring.  Ringworld has a much more fleshed out back-story and is more introspective than action.  Also, there are no zombies, just crazed primitive people.

That’s my take on it anyways.  I’m by no means good at literary analysis though.

So the MC is the antichrist, mowing down the true believers? Someone should twist Pat Robertson's panties with that one.

Yes actually.  Well, in the eyes of the Covenant anyways.  They even refer to him as "The Demon" in Halo3.  It's great.

I want both Myth and Oni back. The latter's death is my only non-MMO axe to grind.

And I love how this release (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3163429) talks about the freedom for Bungie "to embark on a path to become an independent company". You meant to say re-become a creative self-driven group with powerful enough ideas to get purchased (again) right? ;)

But Pat hates aliens as well, so it's OK in the end.

I forgot that the Halos were also weapons.  I seem to have forgotten a lot about it.  Probably because it was dull.

I have been playing a lot more Halo 3 recently and I am liking it more. I like it much more than 1 and 2. The multi-player stuff is pretty fun but the pace is unbearable sometimes.

As in slow?

I went back to UT2k4 the other night. After over 100 hours of TF2, UT feels slow.

I'm a sad panda. TF2 just set the bar and it is fucking high.

I cant even get into any of my shooters anymore. Damn TF2, Damn it to hell. :x

Oh god it was a mistake to buy TF2 the weekend before midterm week. :(

I guess none of you played Quake3Fortress.  It was just as fast as TF2, if not more so.

What an awesome game.

As for Halo 3: I wouldn't mind playing it if I didn't see it's advertising in every fucking place I go to, and I'm not too keen on participating with the xbox live crowd.  Fuck them, they give online gaming a bad image.


...well, they make the bad image worse anyways.

Halo 3 has some silliness in it man. The assault rifle needs to be toned down and the melee issue needs to be resolved. And for God sakes make team Shotty/Sniper and team rockets show up less....It is freaking annoying.

They changed the Shotty Snipers bug, but its still a broken game. It's always been a broken game. Doesn't take away from the fun factor.  And on a side note Hammer where the hell have you been?

Cory: at home, working and playing 360.

Man I am starting to enjoy Halo more and more. I enjoy just messing around with the ai in single player, they behave really cool. I know there are better games, but I do have fun playing it.