You mean Halo 3 bloom? Well the whoole package was, how’d you put it… colourful. And despite it’s repetitiveness, it was still great. Good outweighs Bad unless there’s too much bad.
But “Reviewers” on forums always tend to fixate on one or two disadvantages just so they can hate. Then they progressively pull shit out of their arses on just about every aspect of a product until they have completely no ground to continue defending their moronic claims. The sad thing is, some of them are not really trolling.
I’d like to think of myself as being above trolling.
However, all opinions on games are subjective, and my Halo 3 experience was subjective enough to the point where it’s still on my shelf, but I haven’t touched it since I last played SP on Legendary. At least a year, maybe more.
Point being, my opinions on Halo 3 are mine, I just happen to think you’re forgiving too much of the game’s subset of flaws in your rush to classify the game as being good. I think of Halo 3 as merely slightly below mediocre.
Hah, Forge, more creativity than hammer editor? My head is about to explode. That’s like saying copy and pasting an essay online and then editing it a little is more creative than writing your own essay from scratch.
I played it for about 5 hours. 5 painful hours.
And no I do not think the Halo series is overrated, Halo 3 and 2 were really good games (I haven’t really played 1 much). Not even Halo Reach is overrated; everyone else thinks it’s shit too.
It’s completely okay.
I simply got ever backtracking, cheesy storyline and hiccups in level design. These didn’t really bother me and I probably wouldn’t even notice if it wouldn’t be pointed out all over internet. But this is only because the art direction, it’s execution, plot, visuals (yup, visuals. I understand that they seemed flawed to some, but I’m not a total graphic whore.) sound, gameplay and overall quality of production outweighed all the possible flaws. And despite the gameplay being “quite old”, it was proven to be great in my view. And while someone may argue, it saw great improvement over the previous iteration.
You just have to let yourself go not to let your false expectations get in the way. If by mediocre you mean “just another high-echelon game, one of many out there”, then I would agree with you. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be great.
Gamers are just spoiled by huge variety of HQ games. I wonder what you would think if Halo was the only FPS series you’ve ever played.
You can shout “biased” and “sellout” all you want, but to get over 90 on metacritic is not that easy.
What else can one say.
And everyone else would be a tiny bunch of basement dwellers like Garthbartin. wELL DUH.
I actually thought the sound design was all over the place. Discrete noises and the feel of combat worked allright, but the guns themselves sounded underwhelming. I guess playing Black and CoD4 spoiled my sound design tables. The gun effects in those two games were simply amazing to listen to.
I wasn’t harping on visual design much, but the hype naturally said “Oh, we have a twelve mile draw distance.”
That’s the SKYBOX. It wasn’t revolutionary. The levels were open but a bit on the sparse side in places. The look and feel of the levels were indeed allright, but I just didn’t feel engaged by the game at all. I guess the story’s lack of emotional weight simply turned me off the game. Even after spending two games with Cortana I was annoyed that I had to venture into the obligatory organic Flood level to rescue her artificial arse. And Master Chief himself is so obsessed with his gruff tough guy monotone that he makes the Doomguy look like a well rounded character.
Another bit I hate about Halo is the Flood. They’re annoying enemies to fight because their sheer numbers make you burn through your automatic weapon ammo so fast that the Covenant getting the drop on you later in the level manage to massacre you when you’re out of ammunition. Some of the Flood use weapons but those are typically the more ineffectual Human arsenal and plasma rifles. Weapon-wise in the game I either prefer long range weapons like the Sniper Rifle or explosive weapons like the Brute Shot and missile launcher. They sound and function best, and frequently put down enemies in a single shot. Naturally you have to track down the aforementioned automatics whenever the Infestation Flood enter the picture, you’ve got a recipe for many angry restarts due to lack of ammo and a veritable cornucopia of enemy Covenant shoving plasma grenades up your rectum.
Vehicle handling is typically good, but the friendly AI is utterly incompetent, both behind the wheel and behind the minigun. I think the reason for the AI problems is inherent to the game’s open level design. Take F.E.A.R. for example- best AI in the business- the Replica soldiers leap and crawl under obstructions, take cover quickly and supress you with volumes of fire, use grenades to flush you out, and generally kick your ass by flanking you when you least expect it. Why? Because F.E.A.R.s world design consisted of office corridors, back alleys, and secret government bunkers. The more space you give your AI to work with, the less efficient it budgets itself and the more often it cocks up it’s logic and winds up standing in the open hoping not to get shot.
Covenant AI is improved from the first two installments, but this is mostly due to the updated arsenal. Brutes are typically out in the open, waiting to be shot or run over. They’ll toss down a bubble shield if they’re feeling smart that day, and wait for the Jackals to snipe you down from afar, or rush you in a L4D Tank-like melee charge that can easily be dodged by jumping over them due to the game’s ridiculously low gravity setting. (For reference, this is taken from a Heroic Difficulty playthrough.)
Backtracking is one of the oldest tricks in the level design book. Known as a “bounce,” the concept is used to conserve level textures, load zones, and in general make a mapper’s life easier by cutting down on the amount of work they have to do. Which is exactly why gamers like me hate it when people execute a “bounce” badly. Halo is notorious for bounces, particularly of the “spawn entire army in area you just cleared” variety. Sometimes it’s justified by the story, sometimes not. Either way it’s annoying.
The above essay demonstrates precisely to me why Halo 3 does not belong above 90 on Metacritic. I’m simply not seeing what everyone else sees in the game. The campaign is as short as Mirror’s Edge and is twice as repetitive, the multiplayer is populated by whiny voiced 12 year olds, people trying to cybersex me in the middle of a match (I am not making this up, shit like this actually happens), and a master race of “That Guys” to use a Yahtzeeism defined liberally. Couple this with uninspired Forge creations that consist of lining tons of container props up to create mazes and deathmatch cages and you have a recipe for one hell of an overrated game.
(Occasionally I’ve run across the odd good modification but generally Forge isn’t flexible enough to justify my time toying with it. Far Cry 2’s level SDK is better than this, and that game wasn’t even all that great.)
It may sound like I’m condemning Halo 3 to the bargain bin now, but trust me, I’ve skinned games alive worse than this before.
Yeah, flood was annoting to say the least. Especially on the subsequent playthroughs.
But you are still nitpicking way too much.
Don’t know about you, but I loved the sounds of the weapons in all games, because they were original and distinguishable; and not too sharp, maybe even muffled a little bit. especially UMSC weapons - like, pistol, sniper and SMG in Halo 1.Also grenades :jizz:
And I had no problems with immersing into the game. Beaten the game in exactly 3 sits. Dunno, maybe I’m easily engaged, but I don’t see how it would be a problem on my side. All those “frustrating” enemy battles, I took them as a challenge. Much easier that way, and much more rewarding in the end.
Positive mindset is the key. I play a game because I want to have some fun, not because I’m bored and want to search into little details and flaws and nitpick it to shreds. And obviously not because I want to see if it lives up to the hype.
There are games that simply don’t deliver. Halo 3 (and every game in franchise I’ve played) is not one of them.
Same with DMC4, for example. I can brag and whine here about it’s repetitiveness, shit story, nearly nothing really new in terms of combat and that Nero punk for ages, but I know I will have some good fun actually playing it.
God damn I’m having fun with this game. Playing the SP on Heroic and the game hands my ass to me every now and then, but it’s so much fun. Love the story too, everything just seems to hopeless, but you just keep on pushing. The covy AI in this game is fucking awesome on the higher difficulties, Elites are amazingly awesome to battle against.
The MP is also really good, Australia doesn’t seem to have as many 14 year olds with mics playing, has been pretty much 100% 20-40 year olds who all point out enemies and work together in team games.
Halo will die after Reach. This is coming from a long-ish time Halo fan.
There is nothing left to milk after this game. The franchise will eventually go downhill after Reach and the later games will eventually become the below-mediocre games that blind and/or ridiculously biased haters make the series out to be.
If it doesn’t, then I would be surprised to say the least.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
