Halo 4 announced

[KhorneFlakes]

I don't understand how anyone can think Halo 3 and Reach were the weakest games in the series when they finally did away with Bungie's patented level repetition, illogical balancing, corridor strolling, and the Flood. Reach even started emulating features of more modern FPS games and finally started giving the SPARTANs super powers.

I'm referring to the story, mostly. The Reach bit is mentioning that while breaking away from the piece of crap that was the other games, it's story was so terrible that it didn't really make much of a difference.

[Vendetta]

I've always considered story to be a garnish on an FPS. It makes the thing feel complete, but it's not why you ordered the meal. This is one of the reasons I'm skeptical about CEHD, because it'll play like Halo CE, which will feel old horrible and clunky because it's 10 years old. I'd prefer if they just ported Halo 1 into the Reach engine and redid the campaign AI so it wasn't transparently just the Firefight AI. (Really, go back and play Halo 3 then play ODST and Reach, the AI behaves completely differently, and has really lost a lot of character.

[Stark]

That's how I feel about Perfect Dark; the SP is fine, but I don't give a shit about the story. I'm playing it for the skirmish/multi/etc, and the story's primary goal in most shooters is just 'make the player feel like a big hard man', which makes them pretty boring. Reach's story was bad and the storytelling was bad, but from a shooter feature perspective it's a step in the right direction.

Do you mean the different AI guys act the same now, or that they're just bullrushing you like in horde rather than having anything else going on?

[Vendetta]

Do you mean the different AI guys act the same now, or that they're just bullrushing you like in horde rather than having anything else going on?

Mostly the latter. It makes Legendary more annoying than ever, because enemies on Legendary can tank infinity bullets from most guns, but can just run you down if their AI decides that it feels like it. And it frequently does.

[CaptHawkeye]

I'm referring to the story, mostly. The Reach bit is mentioning that while breaking away from the piece of crap that was the other games, it's story was so terrible that it didn't really make much of a difference.

Oh, well on the aspect of writing I agree. Halo 3 had been written into a corner by the shittiness of Halo 2's many plot points and Reach just damn well sucked in all aspects of writing. I generally don't hold these against a game as long as the gameplay is good or at least making strides to be good. Problems occur when the writing becomes primary over the gameplay. Which at the very least Bungie has not frequently done. Though they do tend to use their crap writing as a selling point, one can't really single Bungie out for doing that.

[StarSword]

Is it too much to ask for them to make a PC version? Porting from Xbox to PC and vice versa is pretty straightforward.

[Stark]

I'll assume you're not fucking stupid and figure you just don't know that Microsoft owns both the 360 and Halo. Join the dots.

And then buy a console and quit whining.

[Mr. Coffee]

Stark's gonna make fun of me for it, but I'[ll probably buy another 360 shortly before Halo 4 comes out because I'm totally gay for Master Chief...

[aieeegrunt]

Is it too much to ask for them to make a PC version? Porting from Xbox to PC and vice versa is pretty straightforward.

In fact you can use the same editing tools to monkey with the xbox version of Combat Evolved as you can to monkey with the PC version, if you have a 360 hard drive transfer cable.

I had grunts that caught on fire and exploded years before Reach, but only if hit with plasma weapons. How the fuck did it take Bungie that long to notice the lulz potential in methane tank on back of squaking gremlinoid? Right, forgot, they're idiots with golden horshoe luck.

[Molyneux]

I've always considered story to be a garnish on an FPS. It makes the thing feel complete, but it's not why you ordered the meal.

That's how I feel about Perfect Dark; the SP is fine, but I don't give a shit about the story. I'm playing it for the skirmish/multi/etc, and the story's primary goal in most shooters is just 'make the player feel like a big hard man', which makes them pretty boring.

Completely, absolutely disagree. If a shooter makes the point of having a story - actually telling the story in-game, that is, rather than putting it all in the manual like the original Doom - then it has no right to insult players with a stupid plot.

I quite enjoyed the story of Perfect Dark, and Elvis is still one of my favorite FPS characters (though I'd never play as him, due to the headshot problem).

[DPDarkPrimus]

Well 343 announced the Title Updates they're bringing to Halo Reach in a couple months, and they're turning the multiplayer all to shit, changing most of the armor abilities and adding an "option" to disable reticle bloom. So not only will I not be playing Halo 4 but they're making it so I won't play a game I previously enjoyed, either.

[Stark]

Completely, absolutely disagree. If a shooter makes the point of having a story - actually telling the story in-game, that is, rather than putting it all in the manual like the original Doom - then it has no right to insult players with a stupid plot.

I quite enjoyed the story of Perfect Dark, and Elvis is still one of my favorite FPS characters (though I'd never play as him, due to the headshot problem).

Too bad you're not the industry, I guess? Story-heavy shooters are generally hoist for being 'linear' or having 'low replayability'; just look at Metro, a shooter with a great story that got nothing but complaints.

People 'like' the story in MW2 or Halo3 because it boils down to 'wow you're amazing!' and 'whoa an explosion'. Reach rubs this right in, with the amazingly lame emphasis on Cortana 'choosing' the player, in a truly disturbing psychosexual need to feel super-special.

Then again, people think 'nonlinear' means 'the end of the game puts you in a room where you can push one of four buttons', so...

[CaptHawkeye]

You can literally listen to developers talk about how "badass" and "awesome" and "powerful" they want the player to feel in production videos. Apparently the video game industry is stuck in the era of corny action movies.

What Reach did with Cortana was really the epiphany of all this stuff. That feel-awesome masturbatory bullshit about her conveniently selecting the player...instead of Noble 1 or Master Chief when both of them objectively would have been far better choices.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Noble Six was chosen... to deliver Cortana to the Pillar of Autumn where she would hook up with John 117. Whoo-hoo.

[Stark]

It's amazing hwo something sounds really trivial when you leave out unimportant details like 'on a planet under attack by unstoppable alien hordes and while involved in a suicide mission', right?

[DPDarkPrimus]

The point being that Hawkeye phrases it as though the MC was Cortana's second choice because Noble Six didn't hitch a ride onto the Pillar of Autumn, because if MC was her choice he would have picked him up in person.

[aieeegrunt]

Well 343 announced the Title Updates they're bringing to Halo Reach in a couple months, and they're turning the multiplayer all to shit, changing most of the armor abilities and adding an "option" to disable reticle bloom. So not only will I not be playing Halo 4 but they're making it so I won't play a game I previously enjoyed, either.

A big part of the stated reason for this is because they want to use Reach's engine for the Combat Evolved Anniversary's multiplayer, so they don't "split the community".

Bravo assholes, you've managed to annoy both the Reach AND the CE players with this. As far as "splitting the community" goes, the people playing the "CE" playlist are still not in Reach's normal matchmaking hopper anyways, so all this does is artificially inflate the playercount for Reach.

[Molyneux]

Completely, absolutely disagree. If a shooter makes the point of having a story - actually telling the story in-game, that is, rather than putting it all in the manual like the original Doom - then it has no right to insult players with a stupid plot.

I quite enjoyed the story of Perfect Dark, and Elvis is still one of my favorite FPS characters (though I'd never play as him, due to the headshot problem).

Too bad you're not the industry, I guess? Story-heavy shooters are generally hoist for being 'linear' or having 'low replayability'; just look at Metro, a shooter with a great story that got nothing but complaints.

People 'like' the story in MW2 or Halo3 because it boils down to 'wow you're amazing!' and 'whoa an explosion'. Reach rubs this right in, with the amazingly lame emphasis on Cortana 'choosing' the player, in a truly disturbing psychosexual need to feel super-special.

Then again, people think 'nonlinear' means 'the end of the game puts you in a room where you can push one of four buttons', so...

Metro? I haven't beaten it, but I quite enjoyed what I've played of it. The only complaint I had was that the controls felt a bit floaty.

I don't give a fuck what "the industry" says. I say what I consider to be good or bad, and fuck 'em if they think different; I'll vote with my dollar.

Never played a MW game, never played a CoD game, can't say I'm all that attracted to either one. I liked the original Halo in large part because I liked the goddamn story - military scifi, ringworlds, aliens embroiled in a religious war against humanity - it may have been linear, but the story moved well (mostly) and the gameplay didn't bog it down. That sounds like a success in my book.

Of course, things like the Library are a notable exception. Halo is far from a perfect game.

Would you call the original Portal a "story-heavy" game? I certainly wouldn't - but what story we do get is finely crafted and enhances the gameplay. It would have been fun as just a basic puzzle game, but add in the crazy AI and the implied apocalypse and it gets so much better. The same goes for the original Half-Life, to a lesser extent.