Halo Reach Perfect 10! WTF?

[Teh Ty]

Gamesradar gave it an 8.
From reading some reviews, most of them surprisingly not 10/10, it seems that the campaign isn;t what it should be. I haven't really been believing much of what most reviewers say that give 10/10s.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Its the "last" game in a very popular series and it isn't shit. Did you expect anything else.

I don't really care that much about what exactly critics rate a game, if they say its good I'll check it out. If I hear that a game isn't good I won't buy it. Other than that I figure the only way to figure out if you like a game is to play it. Even though tons of other people may not like it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.

 

[The Lost Big Boss]

As the thread starter I feel it my duty to try and justify my position. This being the internet that's somewhat more difficult to do in a reasonable way, so here goes...

As I said before I do not recognise the validity of a 10/10 score and nor do I believe that this represents an opinion that the game is "Godlike" to borrow a term. Instead I'm in agreement with you and Eren Murtagh that 10/10 is not necessarily perfect. What I would say though is that even with the advances in game design, the craft and detail present in graphical and audio work has been largely lacking from the story telling aspect of games.

I'm not saying either that every game should be Great Expectations or War and Peace (although I would like a game to attempt Kafkaesque, would be, interesting... ) but for a well read and widely circulated review site like IGN to explicitly belittle this part of games production is deeply disappointing to me as I believe games have the capability to be much more than the Summer Cinema Bonanza that I see currently.

And yet, despite not being particularly original and having mostly stock characters, the story is at least engaging and provides reason enough to want to progress other than "these guys are bad." I think it's the best story (or at least, the best-told story) in the series.

It doesn't get in the way of the game, it's functional, the characters are likable, and there are some definite "oh shi--" moments. By FPS standards, it's fantastic. Why should it be marked down thusly?

K, back to the film references: Inception or perhaps The Matrix. Both fantastically fun, but simultaneously fantastically ambitious in terms of ideas and concepts. Where is the equivalent in games? Maybe in the works of auteur designers like Hideo Kojima and the numerous indie studios.

But the mainstream games industry has developed like cinema's retarded little brother in terms of marketing this trite, uninspired and (to me) utterly unsatisfactory garbage with the way in which it plays it so totally safe with its ideas. Whilst I still play games like MW2 for a little light relief I would hate to see the industry continue utilising these emotionally and intellectually sterile period/future/modern war environment, with none of depth that other mediums have brought to these settings. I mean for Chris's sake, even Starship Troopers had a pretty potent black comedy heart about the bleak pointlessness of war, and that was fun as hell.

I'm going to spoiler tag this; do not click on this spoiler if you do not want to be spoiled for Halo Reach.

No, seriously, I'm going to mention the ending. Don't click on it if you want to avoid being spoiled.

Spoiler

One of the things that's interesting in Halo Reach - particularly when compared to other games in the series - is that you have a very definite reason for fighting here. You're defending your home from invasion, rather than being told "here be aliens, go kill them."

But the thing that worked very well for me is that... you're fighting a losing battle. Sure, if you're familiar with Halo canon you know ahead of time that Reach falls - it was mentioned in the Halo 1 manual and there was an entire book about it - but that doesn't really undercut the impact of Noble Team (and the rest of the UNSC) steadily realizing the magnitude of what they're up against.

There's a feeling of melancholy in the Reach campaign that the other Halo games haven't had. One by one, Noble Team's numbers dwindle, and I thought it was actually very well-done how Bungie presented things. You're fighting a losing battle; there is going to be no last minute rescue or deus ex machina. Can you have victory in defeat? Even knowing that you're going to die, can you pass the torch to maintain hope that somewhere, your allies will win?

The finale is superb in this regard, and actually ties gameplay in very well to story. There are two arguable "finales," but mentioning the first one - you're manning a railgun turret to try to protect the launch of the Pillar of Autumn (the ship from Halo 1). There's a Covenant cruiser closing in on the Pillar; but you also have smaller ships firing at you. I found myself trying to ignore the smaller ships to fire on the Cruiser; trying to accomplish my mission even if it meant my own death.

To me, that's a very interesting tie-in between gameplay and story. It's why Reach is my favorite campaign in the series.

Must... not... click...

 

[Eipok Kruden]

I don't plan on getting into this argument. I find it to be a petty one at best. That said, I believe I do have an explanation for why people find 5/5 to mean "damn good," and 10/10 to mean "perfect," despite them technically being the exact same thing.

It's because ten sounds official. Ten sounds important. Ten is the basis of the decimal system. Ten is a psychologically pleasing number. When people see a ten, they immediately think more of it than when they see a five.

Regardless, even if it's based on percentages, 10/10 can mean anywhere from 91% to 100%. In terms of reviews, which are inherently subjective, it should probably be considered around the 95% mark, but people get up in arms because it says 10/10, so they assume that it must be 100%. A five out of five on the other hand can be anywhere from 81% to 100%. In this case, there's an extra bit of breathing room, so people are okay with the 5/5 being interpreted as, say, 84%. It also doesn't have that psychologically dominating "10" there to distract people with its "glorious" double digits.

(The percentages obviously being rounded up to the flat score in this example.)

I guess it might be that the number 10 is just so awe inspiringly awesome that it automatically wipes people's brains of all common sense, but that paints a horrible picture of the human race. I guess I have to agree with you, though.

Using the number 10 is like distracting an animal with a particularly shiny object, except humans have a tendency to stupidly over-analyze the wrong thing and ignore everything else, which makes it considerably more difficult to control people by guiding them with shiny objects. They're more prone to smack you in the face with a hammer and piss on their own shoes than follow the pretty lights to the candy. *sigh* We're awful creatures, aren't we?

 

[ReaperzXIII]

No. just no. completely misunderstood what I was asking. How can you possibly say that war, ESPECIALLY for a 'footsoldier' type grunt level, is not involved? Hell they're the most involved mothas in the whole business. Look at any war and find moments of incredible heroism and emotive courage from ordinary soldiers. Have you ever seriously found a truly emotive moment in a shooter? No, you're too busy mowing down faceless enemy nonames whilst stepping over the dead bodies of your fallen comrades, because you are a super soldier (or might as well be in most shooters)

Which brings me to a quick point. Now, these Spartans (Master Chief especially, but for the sake of argument, Team 6 as well), quite important aren't they? Quite likely to be highly briefed and knowledgable on enemy intel and the setting in which they find themselves fighting as well as probably fiercely loyal to each other and human enough to give a damn about the true grunt levels humans dying around them... any sense of this in any Halo game up till ODST (again, haven't played Reach)? Thought not.

Spoiler: Wall of text

Ok now you misunderstood my point, which is the mooks don't always know a whole bunch of what is going on, how it started, why the other side is doing what they are doing. They have been called upon to serve and they serve, sure they have questions but they are willing to put that aside for now to protect something important to them.

Thanks for asking me a question then answering it for me, I don't find a lot of things moving nor does anything make me cry emotional tears but there are games where I can empathize and appreciate/respect what the character has done, MW2 for instance, the betrayal from Shepard made me hate him and empathize with Ghost and Roachs' confusion. The way Ghost tried dragging Roch through the grass, protecting his comrade only to be turned against by his superior IMO is moving, I didnt cry but I could empathize with the characters.

Just as in Halo I liked the atmosphere, the Cortana moments, Chief and Cortana's trust in each other, seeing the world around you burn, I liked the atmosphere, the scenery and moving to the point I wanted to join Air Cadets to be stronger like the spartans (not because I try to emulate games but because the games show what I want to be). Furthermore, destroying a Covenant fleet and retrieving information/whatever I need to despite them being more advanced and outnumber us isn't a feat of heroism? Then what is? Seeing characters sacrifice themselves because they deem you important enough to protect with their lives isn't moving?

Also Spartans are sent to retrieve information, the humans state that they do not know a whole bunch about the Covenant or their motivations until they find out about the Prophets, they are facing a new enemy that came from nowhere, the fall of reach happened quite early for instance before humans had as much knowledge as they do by Halo 3, they knew one thing "Aliens are attacking, Reach is a technological landmark to Humans, protect it with your life".

They do give a crap about the people dying around them but John 117 is told this in the books and I'm paraphrasing here "Soldiers do their duty, we just have to hope their sacrifice is worth it" which is why you don't see him stopping every 5 seconds to cry about his comrades.

 

[cystemic]

lol ign, whoever takes them seriously is a dumbass, they get paid to plug games so that idiots will buy them. I don't even take yahtzee seriously sometimes because he gets paid to shit on games in the most creative and random way possible, not saying its not entertaining . I wouldn't buy halo even if i had an xbox which might explain why I dont have one...
personally, i watch noobtoob if none of my friends have played a game, so i dont have to deal with the hypocritical bullshit that websites like ign and metacritic serve up

 

[Miles Tormani]

I guess it might be that the number 10 is just so awe inspiringly awesome that it automatically wipes people's brains of all common sense, but that paints a horrible picture of the human race. I guess I have to agree with you, though.

Using the number 10 is like distracting an animal with a particularly shiny object, except humans have a tendency to stupidly over-analyze the wrong thing and ignore everything else, which makes it considerably more difficult to control people by guiding them with shiny objects. They're more prone to smack you in the face with a hammer and piss on their own shoes than follow the pretty lights to the candy. *sigh* We're awful creatures, aren't we?

I stopped having faith in the human race years ago. Seeing wild animals have better teamwork than humans helped with that loss of faith in my own kind. Makes you wonder why it wasn't the other species that evolved into the "master race" of the planet.

(Wow, that comment made me sound like a hardcore furry. )

Seriously though. How often do you see a top 10 as opposed to a top 5? How frequently is a set of ten statements taken more seriously than a set of five? One set of ten particularly sticks out in my mind, but bringing that up now would turn things into a religious debate, and frankly I'm not willing to derail a thread with such a touchy subject.

(If you really need to know what it is, though, figure out what my reference was in the previous post and you'll be on the right track.)

 

[Evil_Weevil]

...the argument I was putting forward is entirely to do with writing in games, and from there its spiralled into an argument about scoring in reviews.

...and that's all well and good, but you have to acknowledge that even before getting into the actual point of your original post, you hit the reader with the 10/10 score right off the bat, and also utilized the "perfect 10" argument yourself, so you had already set up the "scoring in reviews" framework. But I'll play along.

It seems like it's really popular these days to say that writing in games needs to be deep, rich, challenging material (yes, I love Extra Credits, too), and that anything less should be unacceptable...and I'll agree that it's true in some cases, but not all. While I love games with deep stories and rich worlds to explore, there are days that I just want to shoot aliens in the head, or roll up colorful objects into an ever-expanding ball...it's the same way with movies, as there are times when I want to watch a deep, sharply-written drama, and other times where I just want to watch some absolute cheese where Schwarzenegger blows things up and spouts one-liners. Should every story be deep and involving? Maybe. Do they have to be? No.

It's the same as it is with any art form. Things can be extremely enjoyable while still having flaws, but if you want to say that having flaws can never make anything "perfect", well...you're getting into those issues of scoring again.

-K, i admitted on page 2 (i think) that it was a horrible idea to lead with the score thing and for that I apologise because it diverted attention from what I intended

-The focus recently on writing in games is probably due to the perceived maturity of the form in terms of years, and the way in which it has failed to keep up in the areas I've mentioned previously.

-No, not every game needs to be challenging and deep, but, back to films, there is a difference between "so-bad-it's-good" and a film that might be, for example, an action film that has solid internal logic, good characters and some elements of emotional response beyond "YEEEEHAAAAAWWWW!" If you look at films you consider to be great (or even good), chances are they will all have these factors to a greater degree than those you deem less 'good'. Why can't the same be true of games?

-Good writing doesn't have to be a good plot either. Why can't writers be more subtle? It shouldn't all be exposition from cutscenes, or heaven forbid, Datapads, it should be incidental details and interactions that make you believe in the humanity(or inhumanity) of the characters and colour your responses to your character's actions accordingly.

 

[Deleted]

cut for length

What IGN is saying is that a 10/10 game shouldn't mean a game that has everything in it. Playing halo for the story is like playing Fighting games for the Story, its just not a focused part of the game. IF you want everything in every game to be great then your standards are too high.

Mario doesn't have much of a story, yet it got 10/10, do you agree with that?

 

[Mikeyfell]

I'd give Halo Reach a perfect 10
out of 100....if 9.99999999999999999999999999999 of those points didn't count
Red Vs. Blue is the only good thing about Halo so it's basically a michinima game

 

[suubersnake]

So I personally don't give a rat's colon about the Halo franchise. It's just not my thing, I respect it for it's success and I feel that IGN, gamespot and pretty much any other site that says that a complex opinion can be turned into numbers, is suffering from degree of brain damage. Other than a 10/10 being perfect and a 0/10 not being playable, what does every other number mean? If a game gets 9/10 does that mean that it's 90% good? But in the end the quality of games/movies/music/turdage is all subjective, just as much as I don't understand why my friends can't get enough of Halo, my friends can't understand why I think that Planescape: Torment is one of the greatest overall RPGs ever made.

And yet, despite not being particularly original and having mostly stock characters, the story is at least engaging and provides reason enough to want to progress other than "these guys are bad." I think it's the best story (or at least, the best-told story) in the series.

It doesn't get in the way of the game, it's functional, the characters are likable, and there are some definite "oh shi--" moments. By FPS standards, it's fantastic. Why should it be marked down thusly?

Not to sound pretentious or like a dick, but since when does being an FPS make an fairly cliche story with stock characters any more acceptable than a well thought-out skillfully written story? If you are trying to look at it critically it shouldn't be any more acceptable having a Halo story be less well written than a Mass Effect story, or even a bungie written Halo story be less than one written by Hiroyuki Kawasaki (for those who didn't watch Halo: Legends that was the writer of Homecoming.)

Why should Bungie be any more exempt from creating something well written than Bioware. God knows if Mass Effect 3 came out with a story that was pulled right out of cliches with stock characters who were uninteresting people would be marking them down heavily for that, and they would be noting it. While yes, Mass Effect holds an emphasis on conversations and is heavily story driven, but that doesn't mean that the story is any less important in the Halo Universe. It honestly has a ton of potential, I was completely pulled in when I skeptically watched Halo: Legends, well, at least during Homecoming, to the point where I actually wanted to play a scenario built around that universe. Why couldn't they have done that for me in the actual games?

Just what is it that makes First Person Shooters so special that a story is considered fantastic when it is either average or slightly above average?

In other words, why shouldn't Halo: Reach be be marked down thusly?

[/rant]

Again, I'm sorry if I came across as a dick.

 

[Xanadu84]

First off, rounding. They gave it a 96 or so, losing a few points to the storyline, so its close to 10/10 then 9/10.

Secondly, storytelling is important to video games in the way that Comedy (Or similar genre) is important to Movies. It is a part of movies that is great, and can lead to some amazing moments. However, it is also only ONE way that amazing moments can be had. It is certainly important, but if some entrees into the field skip over utilizing that particular aspect of the medium, that's not a weakness. It's just their approach. It's also fine to mix it up, and rely only a tiny bit on "Comedy". A few little examples of it here and there might make for some great variety, and if if it's not as, "Funny" as other, purely comedic movies, well the loss is negligible. Maybe even a blessing in disguise, because it means the "Comedy" isn't stealing any thunder from the main attraction.

Or to put it another way, if an absolutely gorgeous model happens to be a member of PETA, I'm not going to not give her a perfect 10 because of her failing. Because her failing, though interesting to know, really doesn't matter at this point.

 

[Miles Tormani]

Snip

A story being well-told can make up for a lot of clichés in the story itself.

For example, Tales of Symphonia's story is as cliché as it can get, but I consider it to be one of my favorite JRPGs ever. This is partially because, in my opinion, the story is so damn well told I don't care about the fact that I've seen its main plot points a million times.

EDIT: My guess is that John Funk feels the same way about Reach's story.

 

[Why do I care]

... and? Look how many places gave Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain and Starcraft 2 10/10.
Shitty sites are unwilling to piss off big name companies so just go along with the hype.

FFXIII: HATED IT, Heavy Rain: ...COULD be better, and SC2: ...Woah.

YOU JUST CANT GIVE A GOOD GAME A 10/10 BY SAYING IT'S GOOD, BUT THE STORY IS NOT THERE! IT DOESN'T WORK! THIS GUY SAID IT BEST!

You can't simultaneously call a game perfect and say it has a bad story. THAT IS NOT LOGICAL!

 

[Naheal]

Perhaps it's that the gameplay isn't mediocre.

Good gameplay alone does not warrant a 10. If you hand out a 10 to a game, it must earn it in story, character development, setting, and gameplay.

While I will agree that the gameplay isn't mediocre (I enjoyed what little I got to play during the beta) I wouldn't say that it was the best damn thing I've ever seen. In the end, it's still Halo.

 

[John Funk]

So I personally don't give a rat's colon about the Halo franchise. It's just not my thing, I respect it for it's success and I feel that IGN, gamespot and pretty much any other site that says that a complex opinion can be turned into numbers, is suffering from degree of brain damage. Other than a 10/10 being perfect and a 0/10 not being playable, what does every other number mean? If a game gets 9/10 does that mean that it's 90% good? But in the end the quality of games/movies/music/turdage is all subjective, just as much as I don't understand why my friends can't get enough of Halo, my friends can't understand why I think that Planescape: Torment is one of the greatest overall RPGs ever made.

And yet, despite not being particularly original and having mostly stock characters, the story is at least engaging and provides reason enough to want to progress other than "these guys are bad." I think it's the best story (or at least, the best-told story) in the series.

It doesn't get in the way of the game, it's functional, the characters are likable, and there are some definite "oh shi--" moments. By FPS standards, it's fantastic. Why should it be marked down thusly?

Not to sound pretentious or like a dick, but since when does being an FPS make an fairly cliche story with stock characters any more acceptable than a well thought-out skillfully written story? If you are trying to look at it critically it shouldn't be any more acceptable having a Halo story be less well written than a Mass Effect story, or even a bungie written Halo story be less than one written by Hiroyuki Kawasaki (for those who didn't watch Halo: Legends that was the writer of Homecoming.)

Why should Bungie be any more exempt from creating something well written than Bioware. God knows if Mass Effect 3 came out with a story that was pulled right out of cliches with stock characters who were uninteresting people would be marking them down heavily for that, and they would be noting it. While yes, Mass Effect holds an emphasis on conversations and is heavily story driven, but that doesn't mean that the story is any less important in the Halo Universe. It honestly has a ton of potential, I was completely pulled in when I skeptically watched Halo: Legends, well, at least during Homecoming, to the point where I actually wanted to play a scenario built around that universe. Why couldn't they have done that for me in the actual games?

Just what is it that makes First Person Shooters so special that a story is considered fantastic when it is either average or slightly above average?

In other words, why shouldn't Halo: Reach be be marked down thusly?

[/rant]

Again, I'm sorry if I came across as a dick.

With games like Mass Effect, the story is part of the core gameplay experience. Dialogues, character interactions, etc. The gameplay is almost always mediocre; you play it for the story. Consequently, the story needs to be well written.

With Halo and most other FPS, the focus is almost always on the gunplay. It's why the multiplayer is such a core part of the game, since people play that for hundreds of hours without any sort of story whatsoever. The game carries the story, rather than the inverse for games like KotOR or Dragon Age.

And a story being well-told can make even a cliche'd story attractive.

 

[webby]

Snip

But... Wait, I never said that it's alright for a game to have a story that doesn't say anything. Halo 2-5 have fun stories that move the campaign along and give your actions reason, but they aren't really that deep if you aren't looking for depth. They don't spell everything out. There's an insane amount of depth if you look for it, but it isn't required to enjoy the story. That's what I was saying.

I find it the same with Terminator. There's actually quite a bit of story and detail (not really character development, but story development for the resistance and SkyNet) if you're looking for it and there are a lot of details that add to the overall lore. It's not as well done as the Halo games and it isn't quite as well woven into the background, but it's there. It was just an example. If you still don't understand what I'm saying, then there's nothing I can do to make it clear to you. Try playing through Halo 3 again, except this time think about everything that happens, listen to all the dialogue, explore the environments, read the terminals, put some effort into uncovering the finer points of its story. If you don't care about putting that kind of thought into it, then Halo just isn't for you.

My (probably overlong) rant earlier was never about the Halo series, the Halo series is just what was being discussed when you made statements I personally disagreed with. Those being:

Their stories exist as fun ways to drive the single-player campaigns for the everyone who isn't a huge Halo fan. For everyone who IS a Halo fan, they provide lots of insight into the Halo universe as a whole.

When I think of something that is "driving the plot" I think of an uninteresting story element that is put in place simply to give the protagonist a reason to go forth and wreck peoples shit. Mario is saving a princess, the dude from Shoot 'em Up is protecting a kid, it's filler between set pieces. I don't want filler but I don't expect to have to be a fan of the series to enjoy the story. This game is a new chance to make me a fan of the story, but it won't do that by giving me a filler plot that is only interesting if I'm already a fan.

You can play them without getting invested in the story. If you want to actually get into the story instead of just playing the campaign, you are expected to delve more deeply into the expanded universe by way of books, comics, short stories, short films, etc... I don't understand why you're expecting the stories of the Halo games to stand by themselves as deep character driven sci-fi masterpieces when they aren't intended to.

Here's the crux of my complaint. You say yourself that you are expected to fill in your knowledge of the universe away from the game. This isn't just "go and play Halo 1 or 2 if you want to understand the story" it is "invest hours of your spare time so this shooter has a good story". At least that's how I read it. Even having to go back to previous titles is poor though, I played HL2 after HL1 without any issues and felt involved in the universe. This statement seems to imply that the majority of the story is outside the games. Star Wars has probably more additional storylines and tie ins than any franchise going but you don't need to know anything about them to enjoy the movies. Expecting players to learn the story from other mediums is unacceptable. It's fine for little "in jokes" or similar things, but any games story should stand on it's own 2 feet.

Again, I'm not criticising the Halo story in the above comments. Halo is just what you made the statement that I disagree with about. My basic points are simple though, all games, whether its a sequel, a prequel, a new beginning, about a film, about a book, about a TV show or whatever, every game should give you the story in the game. You shouldn't have to read characters back stories, motivation or favourite food in a separate novel. Once more, I'm not saying that Halo does this (although it might, I'm not entirely sure), what I'm saying is that your earlier comments seemed to condone games that did have a filler plot as long as they had storylines elsewhere to back it up.

Damnit, I always run long in these things:
TL;DR (again)?? - I wasn't criticising Halo, some of your comments made it sound like you thought games with a filler plot were fine as long as they had interesting stories in some other form of medium, I disagree with that and think every game should be able to stand up by itself and say "I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it!" (or something else, whatever)

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Perhaps it's that the gameplay isn't mediocre.

Good gameplay alone does not warrant a 10. If you hand out a 10 to a game, it must earn it in story, character development, setting, and gameplay.

While I will agree that the gameplay isn't mediocre (I enjoyed what little I got to play during the beta) I wouldn't say that it was the best damn thing I've ever seen. In the end, it's still Halo.

I'm not saying that it does warrant a perfect score. It's just that there seemed to be an implication that the game was completely mediocre strictly because of its story, regardless of the gameplay quality.

 

[dillirgaf]

most likely they just played halo 1, 2 or 3 and just got confused and though it was Reach

 

[eezaak]

I stopped reading after IGN and perfect score.