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My CS teacher knows someone who works for Microsoft, and claims that Halo 2 is more of the same and doesn't really improve that much on Halo. Then again, he also rants against the HL2 engine, and I have pretty much zero credibility on anything related to Microsoft/consoles, so take that as you will.

If he rants against the Source engine, you can consider his stuff BS, the source engine might not be the Quake 1 engine in terms of leaps, but its damn good.

Ace Pace wrote:If he rants against the Source engine, you can consider his stuff BS, the source engine might not be the Quake 1 engine in terms of leaps, but its damn good.

He's comparing it graphics-wise against Doom 3 mostly.

Pu-239 wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:If he rants against the Source engine, you can consider his stuff BS, the source engine might not be the Quake 1 engine in terms of leaps, but its damn good.

He's comparing it graphics-wise against Doom 3 mostly.

Doom3 has set a big stick up in terms of graphics. Given what I saw in that game, they didn't use the full potential of that engine, which I think is cool.

Fact of the matter is that Source can deliver great looking graphics with much lower hardware requirements than the Doom 3 engine.

Doom 3's graphics focus on lighting. Source engine focuses on physics.

Ask your CS teacher how he can see gravity or proper momentum in a screenshot.

SPOOFE wrote:Doom 3's graphics focus on lighting. Source engine focuses on physics.

Ask your CS teacher how he can see gravity or proper momentum in a screenshot.

He does acknowledge the superior physics, but evidently does not place as high as an importance on it- besides, didn't Valve simply license someone else's physics engine? And yes, he did acknowledge gameplay failures with Doom 3 (I think), which he considers irrelavant since it's the engine that matters.

Anyway, this thread is supposed to be about Halo 2.

Halo 2 is going to pwn everyone. Every single preview and pre-playing has gotten nothing but amazing reviews.

StormtrooperOfDeath wrote: Halo 2 is going to pwn everyone. Every single preview and pre-playing has gotten nothing but amazing reviews.

So did XVII.... But we'll not talk about that.

And this is as good a place as any. It's time for a confession. I don't 'get' Halo. The original was just a shooter; sure, it had nice moments, and a decent backstory, but how many games can boast that? Hell, Tribes, way back in the day, could boast both of those. You don't see me bouncing up and down about how Tribes: Vengeance is now going to scour the industry(Though it does look hella sweet).

What is it about Halo that's got people so rabidly in tune with it?

SirNitram wrote:

StormtrooperOfDeath wrote: Halo 2 is going to pwn everyone. Every single preview and pre-playing has gotten nothing but amazing reviews.

So did XVII.... But we'll not talk about that.

And this is as good a place as any. It's time for a confession. I don't 'get' Halo. The original was just a shooter; sure, it had nice moments, and a decent backstory, but how many games can boast that? Hell, Tribes, way back in the day, could boast both of those. You don't see me bouncing up and down about how Tribes: Vengeance is now going to scour the industry(Though it does look hella sweet).

What is it about Halo that's got people so rabidly in tune with it?

The multiplayer. Anyone that has played Halo multiplayer with friends and can honestly say it's no fun, well, you are fucked in the head.

StormtrooperOfDeath wrote:The multiplayer. Anyone that has played Halo multiplayer with friends and can honestly say it's no fun, well, you are fucked in the head.

Could you possibly say what's so awe-inspiring about it? Tribes series multiplayer has serious team effort, vehicles, turrets, and varied character 'classes' to allow for superior combined-arms to the Halo experience from what I've seen. Dozens of other games offer varied, exciting, and enduring multiplayer twists, with my personal fave being C&C Renegade's What about it makes it so great, exactly?

SirNitram wrote:What about it makes it so great, exactly?

Well, I know the reason why me and my pals enjoy it so much is we all just pile into the room and we're ready to go. Same thing with GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, before Halo. And occaisonally you can get another two or three people with XBoxes around, you can get 8-16 people in.

Well, I can see how that might suit the console-shooter crowd and dorm crowd. Perhaps I should reword my question.

As someone who doesn't give a shit about console shooters, why should I give two shits about Halo and Halo 2? They're obviously coming to the computer with the sequel eventually, and is there any reason why I should go with Halo 2 instead of Half-Life 2 or Tribes: Vengeance?

I've played Halo with 4 people (max most of the time), the maps are too big and the weapons are painful.

SirNitram wrote:

StormtrooperOfDeath wrote:The multiplayer. Anyone that has played Halo multiplayer with friends and can honestly say it's no fun, well, you are fucked in the head.

Could you possibly say what's so awe-inspiring about it? Tribes series multiplayer has serious team effort, vehicles, turrets, and varied character 'classes' to allow for superior combined-arms to the Halo experience from what I've seen. Dozens of other games offer varied, exciting, and enduring multiplayer twists, with my personal fave being C&C Renegade's What about it makes it so great, exactly?

Halo 2 will have that, except the different characters. Pretty much, it's the fact that it's on the console that makes it so great.

SirNitram wrote:Well, I can see how that might suit the console-shooter crowd and dorm crowd. Perhaps I should reword my question.

As someone who doesn't give a shit about console shooters, why should I give two shits about Halo and Halo 2? They're obviously coming to the computer with the sequel eventually, and is there any reason why I should go with Halo 2 instead of Half-Life 2 or Tribes: Vengeance?

If you're not into console shooters, then don't bother really. Consoles are cheaper than PC's, and allow for the instant multiplayer without fear of lag.

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:I've played Halo with 4 people (max most of the time), the maps are too big and the weapons are painful.

You were playing the wrong maps then. But yes, the weapons are limited. They're being fixed in Halo 2, and all should be useful

I dunno, but whenever we had a multiplayer-session, it ws always fun to play HALO.
Really hilarious, really Not so serious, just having a good time <g>

SirNitram wrote:Well, I can see how that might suit the console-shooter crowd and dorm crowd. Perhaps I should reword my question.

As someone who doesn't give a shit about console shooters, why should I give two shits about Halo and Halo 2? They're obviously coming to the computer with the sequel eventually, and is there any reason why I should go with Halo 2 instead of Half-Life 2 or Tribes: Vengeance?

You shouldn't. As far as console shooters go it's fairly good, but compared to most PC shooters it's average. The only reason it's hyped is because it was the first half decent thing on the X-Box.

The co-op mode is ok though. One of my mates has an x-box and we (and his housemates) were playing co-op and had some fun moments, such as when i picked an aircraft out of the air with a tank shot and it landed slap bang on top of him.
But even in the hour or so i played there were at least three times where i asked if we'd already gone through a certain section as it looked like the designers had just copied and pasted the same room to double the length of the level.

One of the fun things in Halo is taking vehicles where they don't belong. Getting the Warthog into situations where it utterly stomps the enemy is a nice thing.

Alyeska wrote:One of the fun things in Halo is taking vehicles where they don't belong. Getting the Warthog into situations where it utterly stomps the enemy is a nice thing.

Ramming an Orca into a Hand Of Nod was equally badass. When it actually fit through the windows, it was better.

Alyeska wrote:One of the fun things in Halo is taking vehicles where they don't belong. Getting the Warthog into situations where it utterly stomps the enemy is a nice thing.

I've never pulled it off, but I've seen it done. Through clever application of grenades, in Assault on the Control Room it's possible to blast the tank through those vertical pipes that are intended to force you to leave it behind. Let's just say that having a tank on an open field surrounded by Elites with Ghost landspeeders just lets you pwn like there's no tomorrow.

Pu-239 wrote: He's comparing it graphics-wise against Doom 3 mostly.

Doom 3's biggest advantage is the lighting system, which is the advance which might get it over, however, Source blends together effectivly many other things, physics, AI and more, all with lower requirments.

I just don't see how people get excited over a game like this. Multiplayer sci-fi shooter #46,521. Woot and stuff.

Penny Arcade said it best- they have a piece on Halo 2 including remembering their underwhelmed reaction to the original. It's probably because for a lot of people it was their first encounter with anything remotely LAN like- because they're console n00bs. This doesn't speak for everyone of course, but we all already know Halo isn't a spectacular shooter by equivalent PC standards.

And yes, he did acknowledge gameplay failures with Doom 3 (I think), which he considers irrelavant since it's the engine that matters.

But the engine and the game content are totally separate things. The engine doesn't need the game "Doom" to exist... you can plug it into any old game. You can put the Doom 3 engine into a crappy game. You can put it into a great game.

Doom 3 is not a better game, in my opinion, than the original Half-Life. This is despite the blatantly obvious graphical improvements. This is simply because a sufficiently fun and well-designed game will succeed on its own merits, not whether or not it looks very pretty.