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To be fair regarding the arbiter a lot of people bitched about playing as him in 2 and not the chief.

Though also of course you can play as the Arbiter the whole way through.. you just need to play co-op and let your partner play as the Chief.

*What happened to the rest of the Covenant?

Maybe I should rephrase that question: is Truth in command of all non-Elite Covvie forces?

Pretty much yeah aside from whatever grunts teamed with the Elites (grunts being grunts they probably followed along with whoever was around) and whatever Hunters stayed with the Elites.

Panzer Grenadier wrote:Yep tribes did predate perfect dark. Also tribes had vehicles, which is another thing people sometimes mis attribute to halo. Two real innovations I think halo had though

*rechargeable health: Reduces the need for health packs and thus streamlines the action allowing you to worry about the best part of an FPS which is shooting the crap out of stuff. (Halo didn't totally have rechargably health but the trend got popularized with it)

*A dedicated button for grenades: This has become almost a standard for a lot of newer FPS games. I don't know about you but I would rarley use grenades in a game like half-life because it force me to be totally vulnerable for 3-5 seconds changing to grenade and back. This added a whole new dimension to the firefights of halo.

Huge leaps? No, but it really made halo stand out IMO

Firearms had a dedicated grenade key back in the late 90s. Rechargeable health is also nothing new.

SylasGaunt wrote:To be fair regarding the arbiter a lot of people bitched about playing as him in 2 and not the chief.

No kidding?

That's interesting. (I had no idea!) As I said, I had a blast playing as The Arbiter. Keith David's voice alone is worth the price of admission But beyond that, the cloaking ability and very slight differences in tactics mixed things up enough to make H2 always seem fresh.

Though also of course you can play as the Arbiter the whole way through.. you just need to play co-op and let your partner play as the Chief.

Cool! I didn't know that, either. Many thanks, Sylas

*What happened to the rest of the Covenant?

Maybe I should rephrase that question: is Truth in command of all non-Elite Covvie forces?

Pretty much yeah aside from whatever grunts teamed with the Elites (grunts being grunts they probably followed along with whoever was around) and whatever Hunters stayed with the Elites.

That's what I figured.

I wouldn't have minded seeing some Grunts and Hunters still loyal to the Elites but, again, that's really the stuff of an Arbiter campaign level.

Haven't played it on Normal at all, but I'm sure that anyone who does that will not be impressed by the AI at all.

Completed the game on Heroic first time through. I've got to say, I had quite the time with it. Halo's story and characters are nothing incredible, but that's ok. It's still pretty good sci fi fare.

Story wise, what I did like about Halo 3 was how dramatic it was in presentation. Throwing in a little extra characterization for Cortana and the Chief was welcome. And watching the Chief pep talk Cortana out of her little rut on High Charity was cute.

Also, Marty O'Donnel still kicks ass. I MUST have this game's soundtrack.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Haven't played it on Normal at all, but I'm sure that anyone who does that will not be impressed by the AI at all.

I generally find that with any game with "good AI" you never see it unless you turn the difficulty up, because the enemy dies before they have a chance to do anything clever otherwise.

Vendetta wrote:

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Haven't played it on Normal at all, but I'm sure that anyone who does that will not be impressed by the AI at all.

I generally find that with any game with "good AI" you never see it unless you turn the difficulty up, because the enemy dies before they have a chance to do anything clever otherwise.

Oh, I don't know. I've had a grunt or two (and one jackass Elite) kamikaze on low difficulty levels when I stick a plasma grenade on them - running dash straight into me.

Molyneux wrote:

Vendetta wrote:

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Haven't played it on Normal at all, but I'm sure that anyone who does that will not be impressed by the AI at all.

I generally find that with any game with "good AI" you never see it unless you turn the difficulty up, because the enemy dies before they have a chance to do anything clever otherwise.

Oh, I don't know. I've had a grunt or two (and one jackass Elite) kamikaze on low difficulty levels when I stick a plasma grenade on them - running dash straight into me.

They don't even need to be stuck. Grunts will on occassion, instead of panicking like normal, whip out two plasma grenades and run straight at you, screaming stuff like "My light will be a beacon for the Covenant!" before exploding.

Regarding Hunters, at least, I think the mere fact that you encounter a grand total of five pairs in the entire game probably shows that the majority of them have gone over to the Elites. Hell, in Halo CE the wormy bastards are everywhere compared to the later games.

Peptuck wrote:

Molyneux wrote:

Vendetta wrote: I generally find that with any game with "good AI" you never see it unless you turn the difficulty up, because the enemy dies before they have a chance to do anything clever otherwise.

Oh, I don't know. I've had a grunt or two (and one jackass Elite) kamikaze on low difficulty levels when I stick a plasma grenade on them - running dash straight into me.

They don't even need to be stuck. Grunts will on occassion, instead of panicking like normal, whip out two plasma grenades and run straight at you, screaming stuff like "My light will be a beacon for the Covenant!" before exploding.

Regarding Hunters, at least, I think the mere fact that you encounter a grand total of five pairs in the entire game probably shows that the majority of them have gone over to the Elites. Hell, in Halo CE the wormy bastards are everywhere compared to the later games.

Er...I was talking about Halo: CE as far as retributive kamikaze behavior was concerned.

I've had brutes kamikaze me a few times after being stuck. One happened just earlier today in fact. Stuck him in the chest with a spike grenade and he promptly leapt right at me and blew up.

I finished the single player campaign in one sitting of about 6 hours yesterday, though admittedly it was on 'Normal' difficulty.

I was beautifully cinematic at points, particularly the Ark which had some gorgeous matte painting style backgrounds. Some of the cutscenes used a depth of field blur effect that was very convincing, probably the best I've seen in a game so far. Also the HDR lighting was implemented very nicely (best seen when a Scarab explodes), I take it this is because they used an additional frame buffer for lighting effects and combined it with the primary in post processing.

-Spoilers follow-

There were a few confusing or unsatisfactory points in the story though.

The lead up to meeting Cortana is handled well and was emotionally effective. She was such a light hearted character in the previous games that hearing her obviously distressed really did make me feel that I wanted to race ahead to save her. The fact that it's heavily implied that Gravemind has (in a sense) violated her and already done extensive damage adds a sense of dread at what what state you may find her in. She implies she can't be trusted and is not even the same person any more ("I'm shadow of my mother") and when you do find her she says "Parts of me feel so wrong".

But don't worry, then she's fine! Seriously, after you plug her right back into your helmet *great idea Chief) she delivers about two lines of dialogue where she sounds distressed and then the old Cortana is back and is just chipper. I guess she must have run the Chief's built in anti-virus scanner on herself and cleared the whole Gravemind thing up. They obviously wrote themselves into a corner with that one, as you can't really stop the action in a game like Halo to have one of your characters explain to the Chief how she was virtually raped and enslaved by an insidious alien intellect - the core audience will start eating each other if the Chief doesn't kill something every fifteen seconds.

One thing I thought was funny is during the early parts of game Commander Keyes stands in for Cortana's while she is missing. It's almost as if Bungie was so terrified of changing the winning formula (remember guys, everybody hated the Arbiter bits in Halo 2!) they decided they just had to have an attractive-young-female on the radio to you barking orders at all times. Hilariously as soon as Cortana shows up in her old role Commander Keyes is quickly done away with by a Brute. Oh and why didn't the flood infect and re-animate her body just as it did for every other dead body all around her? It even starts infecting the Prophet while he's still alive.

And another thing! What the hell is with the marketing for this game?

The awesome huge The-Master-Chief-is-Jesus-Christ diorama depicts a scene which apparently never happened. That's right, that striking image of the Master Chief's limp body being held aloft by a triumphant Brute Chieftain in a scene evocative of dramatic renaissance paintings of battle? Yeah, not in this game sorry, not even anything close to that happens.

The video shorts where the old soldiers hauntingly recount their feelings about battle and the horror of war don't make sense in context either; all the Marines I met in the game were having great fun. There was a total of one Marine who was upset, and that was because he saw the Flood transform his Officers into monsters in front of him. Otherwise everybody else just yells "Yow that smarts!" when they take a plasma round to the face and then continue to drop amusing one liners. Even the severely injured Marines just lie there in dutiful silence, trying their best not to give the impression that war is anything but a bit of a light-hearted romp.

All that said it's still a very enjoyable game, the combat (as always the main draw in Halo) is just superb. There's many ways to approach each combat situation and even if the differences do eventually boil down to how many bullets you shoot at the enemy and how fast, it still leads to some enjoyable tactical nuance that had me frequently trying trickier sections with different weapons rather than continually assaulting with the same ones again and again.

On dual-wielding, was there a shooter before Marathon that had it? I'm trying to remember if there was but I can't.

Question to you lucky people who are playing Halo 3 by now. I am twitching in pain as I hear Elites make a mockery of themselves in the abomination that is Halo 2. Since I am trying to get an xbox 360 this time rather than wait and be dissapointed years later like Halo 2 this is my question.

Does the Covenant speak english like Halo 2 in this game ?

Spoil me if needed, Halo's gameplay matters more for me than the plot and I would not be in this thread if I cared about spoilers.

yes but they do that in Halo also (IIRC it was explained master chief's armor as auto translator that translates at least some of the covenant speak into english).

(opening cinematic (least version I saw in Youtube) has the arbiter speaking in understandble english).

Has anyone been having a problem on the level The Storm? When a specific music track plays, about 30 seconds in it starts to skip; it's only on the one track. The disc is immaculate so I'm pretty sure that's not it. The only possibility I can think of outside of the disc is maybe the stuff I'm downloading off of marketplace is creating some lag, but that would cause a frame-rate drop too...

CycloneRider052 wrote:On dual-wielding, was there a shooter before Marathon that had it? I'm trying to remember if there was but I can't.

Rise of the Triad?

Mobius wrote:

CycloneRider052 wrote:On dual-wielding, was there a shooter before Marathon that had it? I'm trying to remember if there was but I can't.

Rise of the Triad?

D&D. I jest.

RotT came out after Marathon--94 versus 95. Unless dual wielding wasn't in until Marathon 2? I wouldn't know.

I mean, hell, even in the history of console shooters, Goldeneye 007 had dual wielding in it. I don't know of many halo fanboys who really do try to say it invented dual wielding though, or even 'popularized' it, but it was one of those things that was bandied about as revolutionary new stuff when it was anything but. I just think it's funny when people bring these things up as unpredecented advances and then you can look back and see it used hundreds of times previously. Re-using a good idea doesn't make it a bad idea.

Well it's never Bungie saying the 'invented' these things, just Halo lameboys would need to elevate their pet twitch shooter above all others. Using good ideas is actually a fantastic thing, and Halo certainly took a lot of good ideas and used them in one game instead of ignoring them. Sadly, ever since they've basically ignored all new good ideas and kinda just patched over the original problems... but meh, I hated Halo anyway.

Aaron Ash wrote:And another thing! What the hell is with the marketing for this game?

The awesome huge The-Master-Chief-is-Jesus-Christ diorama depicts a scene which apparently never happened. That's right, that striking image of the Master Chief's limp body being held aloft by a triumphant Brute Chieftain in a scene evocative of dramatic renaissance paintings of battle? Yeah, not in this game sorry, not even anything close to that happens.

The video shorts where the old soldiers hauntingly recount their feelings about battle and the horror of war don't make sense in context either; all the Marines I met in the game were having great fun.

Because the ad department that was hired to do the commercials were given broad guidelines from Bungie for what to do, but they were not allowed to make anything specific to the actual game's storyline.

Also, how much of an idiot are you? "Oh the marines were having fun!" You idiot, war is never "fun". Realistically, the majority of the marines are not going to look back at their actual time fighting the Covenant 50 years later as a very positive experience. Friendships made, etc etc sure maybe, but not the actual combat.

I suspect that the ads will tie into the forthcoming volumes of the Halo: Uprising comic. It seems unlikely to me that Bungie would leave them completely without context.

All and all, I enjoy the game immensely. It was beautiful, even on an ancient TV, and the gameplay was great. I'll admit, the campaign was shorter than I would haveliked, but what was there was phenomenal. The new weapons and vehicles were very fun to use, and both the enemy and ally AI seemed to be nicely improved; combined into some of the most impressive battle sequences of the series, especially the Scarab battles and the massve dogfight on the Ark. The Flood were also better excuted than in the previou game, even if the "spine" varient was quite obnoxious.

The cutscenes were also very well done, and the plot was solid, although I think that the game could have used a bit more establishing at its beginning. I do wish that the status of the Hunters had been clarified a bit more (and, indeed, I wuld have enjoyed having them as allied NPCs), but that's obviously a minor quibble. The ending of the Cortana arc did seem to be a bit rush, but I was sufficiently impressed by the lead-up not to really mind.

I'm a bit annoyed that I accidentally clicked past the credits and missed the ending video, though. Watching it on Youtube isn't the same. I guess I'll just have to play through it again.

Sarevok wrote:Question to you lucky people who are playing Halo 3 by now. I am twitching in pain as I hear Elites make a mockery of themselves in the abomination that is Halo 2.

Does the Covenant speak english like Halo 2 in this game ?

That's your standard for making a mockery?

But yes the Arbiter for certain can speak english. I don't know if the other Elites aside from the shipmaster are speaking English or if it's being translated through the chief's suit.

The Elites converse directly with humans during certain parts of the game, including cutscenes. Yes, they speak English.

SylasGaunt wrote:

Sarevok wrote:Question to you lucky people who are playing Halo 3 by now. I am twitching in pain as I hear Elites make a mockery of themselves in the abomination that is Halo 2.

Does the Covenant speak english like Halo 2 in this game ?

That's your standard for making a mockery?

But yes the Arbiter for certain can speak english. I don't know if the other Elites aside from the shipmaster are speaking English or if it's being translated through the chief's suit.

Sangheili are known to carry translation devices with them; for example, the infantry detachment deployed by the Truth and Reconciliation to locate the Pillar of Autumn's command crew in The Flood carried such a device with them. Its not a unreasonable to think that Elites who know that they are likely to fight alongside humans would equip translators beforehand.

Obviously, this explanation does not hold for much of the first two games. However, it is possible that Cortana is able to translate Covenant speech for the Chief, and that the Arbiter has a translator incorporated into his armor.

SylasGaunt wrote:

Sarevok wrote:Question to you lucky people who are playing Halo 3 by now. I am twitching in pain as I hear Elites make a mockery of themselves in the abomination that is Halo 2.

Does the Covenant speak english like Halo 2 in this game ?

That's your standard for making a mockery?

But yes the Arbiter for certain can speak english. I don't know if the other Elites aside from the shipmaster are speaking English or if it's being translated through the chief's suit.

Elites were animalistic and scary in Combat Evolved, I got Predator vibes from battling these aliens. That is how they should be. Anthromorphising them is unacceptable even if you get somone unbelievably good such as James Earl Jones to voice them.

Anyway instead of going on a tangent here I am just curious what language do they use in combat. They might as well speak in Chineese or Hindi in cutscenes I dont care. But not saying wort wort wort is a big minus.

DPDarkPrimus wrote: Also, how much of an idiot are you? "Oh the marines were having fun!" You idiot, war is never "fun".

With all respect, DP, I think you're a bit harsh here Aaron's review as a whole seems insightful aside from said quibble.

Speaking of:

It's an obvious leap to think the Marines prone to funny one-liners and shit-talking means those guys are having a blast. Scared people can just as easily do the same.

And that's to say nothing of all Marines, everywhere Most of the smack-talkers we see are all jacked up to fight alongside the last Spartan. We all know Chief's rep -- and him doing most of the fighting -- boosts morale.

On the other hand, I also get the sense that Aaron's reasoning has been lost in the mix a bit. He mentions a guy taking a grenade to the face, surviving and being a smart-ass about it. That makes me wonder ...

Aaron: you suggest the NPCs' behavior vs. the video-showcased older gents' is a bit inconsistent. Did you mean to say that you wished the game showed the horror of war in a more realistic manner?