More on Halo: Reach

[Brotherofwill]

Really guy?

Ya really.

I just didn't know what the expression "ball and chain" meant, but now I know, and no I do not agree. That's an awesfully pessimistic view, how unusual of Yatzhee...

Ofcourse I've had shitty, unbalanced co-op experiences, but I've also had my share of awesome, 2 guys going berserk ones. Even with a wimp at your side co-op is still more fun than gunning alone. At least more often than not.

 

[Lionsfan]

Oh Yahztee, it appears you have been driven to the floor by these groundbreaking points that keep coming up.

Clearly everyone knows that if you're going to pick up a game and play it, first you have to read the graphic novel, limited series, background material, cut content, concept, fan fiction...

Of course, how could we all have been so stupid as to not spend more than $60 on a fairly mediocre story and a decent multiplayer game?

 

[Abiding Dude]

Well I'm glad you get the expression now. I'm just saying I don't particularly like dragging a friend through a game; but way more importantly, I don't like like being dragged through a game. And for all the good co-op games, halo is really really good at having one person drag the other. That's partially why I used it as an example. Nothing feels more like a failure than being so lost that the game just yanks you from where you are and drops you next to the good player, normally after whatever fight just happened, and normally just before you can get lost trying to regain your bearings and be auto warped to ten seconds after all the fun ended again.

I like playing games with my friends, And I love it when we are on par with each other. I'm just saying that inevitably one of us will play ahead of the rest of us (it's human nature), and suddenly that player has to stop having fun waiting for everyone else to catch up, and no one else has fun because someone has a super leveled character, or knows the boss strategy already or whatever and is basically playing the game for us, dragging us to their point.

I'd go so far as saying the only games I've enjoyed co-op in the recent past were castle crashers and scott pilgrim. And that's mostly because we beat each of those in one sitting so there was no chance to have someone forge ahead.

 

[Kyoh]

Welcome to the site, Kyoh.

If Yahtzee says he doesn't review multi-player aspects of a game

That is not all Yahtzee has said on the subject and this is not what I am commenting on.

why are you continuously complaining?

I never brought it up before.

If you don't like the way he reviews...

Who says I don't? My complaint is more specific.

Reviews are ALL subjective,

Agreed. Which is why I find it so incongruous when Yahtzee turns around and insists games must be judged by their single player experience regardless of multiplayer offerings. Especially when the only justification he offers is he likes one and not the other. It would be just as strange to say games must be judged by their multiplayer experience regardless of singleplayer offerings just because I usually skip the latter.

[EDIT: Just to be clear, I never skip the single player. I'm just making a point.]

This is going much further than merely announcing he doesn't like multiplayer and judging the game on the merits of it's single player portions. He is making a statement about how games ought to be judged, a statement I do not agree with.

First off, I apologize, I didnt mean for that to seem like a personal attack. I was directing the comment at the complainers and moaners in general, you know the ones.

True, Yahtzee has a bit of an extreme view when it comes to how games should be reviewed, not gonna argue that. Not that I totally agree with Yahtzee, but I would like to point out one argument of his that does have merit.

He doesn't just skip the multiplayer review because it doesn't interest him. Multiplayer is a variable, it can change in ways the developers can't help. For one, if someone buys a Call of Duty game but doesnt have an internet connection, well that whole aspect of the game is useless to him.

Also, the online population of players decreases substantially after some time or after a sequel has been released, which can create a problem for some players, especially those in small countries, to find a decent game (and with tolerable lag).

So it's not just personal preference, there are some good points why a game should be able to stand up on it's single player alone. Ideally, aspects of a game shouldn't diminish with time just because it's lost popularity. I can always go back and play my favorite single player games from ages ago, but it doesnt work so well when it comes to multiplayer.

It's like that 1970 Ford Mustang your dad always kept in the garage, polishing it to a mirror shine, only taking it out when he wants to reminisce. Except one day he opens the garage to find the back half of the car turned into a flaming pile of crap.

 

[Stairway4]

I've yet to fully buy into the "a game must stand-up on single player alone" argument. Is having a bad single-player mode a failure? Of course it is. But if the single-player is good (not great), but the mutliplayer is phenomenal, addicting, whatever, then the game is a good game.

Let's take a film for an example. Michael Mann's "Collateral" is an action movie, with elements of a character study film. Do I declare that an action movie must stand by its action alone? No, of course not. A movie is, in essence, a sum of its parts. "Collateral" would not be a good movie if it took out its action parts, and it wouldn't be a good movie if it removed its introspective bits.

Just because you don't play multiplayer doesn't mean it doesnt exist; it is still as legitimate a piece of the game puzzle as the single player. Ignoring it completely is just like closing your eyes during the parts in "Collateral" when people aren't getting shot. If a reviewer is saying "I refuse to play multiplayer", fine, that's his choice. But do not declare the game bad or mediocre or invalid simply because you only tasted a piece of what the game as a whole has to offer.

 

[SnakeCL]

Now, I'm no Yahtzee, but I feel his problems are more of a deal of personal preference (which is ok, this is a subjective medium in games reviewing). But its not like the camera is universally bad or the controls are unresponsive. We're not talking about something universally regarded as bad.
For instance...

As I said in the review, all the members of Noble Team have all become engaged in a "Who Can Die The Noblest Death" competition, but none of them show the slightest emotional connection to anyone or anything (one of them has a mum, but their interactions are so cold and loveless she might as well have been his driving instructor), so the sheer regularity with which they knock themselves off is closer to comedy than tragedy. I guess the only reason Master Chief was the last Spartan was because he was out sick while everyone else was at Kamikaze school.

Carter gets hit pretty hard with the 2nd death in the team. Listen to his voice before, and then after the incident, and its pretty evident that he's just trying to stay together.

Or Jorge, ya know, trying to comfort the researcher's daughter.

There are other instances during the game when various characters will speak out of desperation in a firefight. Its not like we have mindless killing machines here, and it wraps into an experience where you feel like you're an unstoppable armored badass.

The other thing is that if you're making a first person game, you need to make a decision - are you going to characterize your lead, cutting away from the first person perspective for cutscenes and zooming into the back of their head when gameplay resumes, or will you take the Half-Life/Bioshock route, stay in first person permanently and let the player project their personality (don't say that sentence out loud 'cos you'll get saliva all over your computer screen). Halo: Reach's habit of switching between first-person and third-person cutscenes feels undirected. There were moments when I felt staying in first-person would have made a scene much more effective. Particularly the bit when your mate throws you off a space station as part of his Noble Death competition entry and you fall through space watching the ship drift off into the distance before silently exploding. It felt immersion-breaking to keep cutting away to reveal that, yes, you're still falling through space, and have you noticed this skybox we made? Nice, isn't it?

This is something I will happily rip Half-Life for. The whole "silent protagonist, projecting your personality to the main character" is pretty much a copout. If we're going to be using that as one of the golden standards for immersion, its existed since Wolfenstein 3d, and even before.

When I play a silent protagonist in an FPS, I do not feel immersed. I feel like I'm controlling a floating camera. This is especially problematic in something like Half-Life 2, where you can look down, and you have no body. Halo: Reach, being my first Halo game on 360 (I'm probably the furthest you can get from a fanboy) I greatly enjoyed looking down to see the rest of my character model. It was... immersive.

On the flip side, Yahtzee argues that bouncing between different cutscenes feels undirected. I felt that it was simply the usage of the first-person perspective as another tool. This is another problem I have with the "first person perspective and ONLY THAT" school of game design, namely, I'd much rather watch a more cinematic cutscene, from a third perspective, then sit there watching two heads yammer on and on as in HL2. This usually leads to the player growing bored, and indignant, and running around said room in which talking heads have their discussion, mutilating things and whacking everything with a crowbar.

There are other examples, but I don't think I need to expound on them.

It should also be noted, that until recently, I absolutely HATED Halo. Blind fanboy hatred of the series. Thought it was overrated, generic, terrible terrible stuff. Then I got just a little bit interested in Reach, and bought a 360 bundle (something that, myself being a self proclaimed PS3 fanboy, nobody EVER thought I'd do), and I thoroughly enjoyed the game. I realized something else in the process as well, namely, If you're going to be calling Halo games generic, you're going to have to be doing it to just about every shooter under the sun. There just isn't enough variety in the genre to go about proclaiming one game Legendary and place it on a pedestal, and others as generic fecal matter.

 

[MadMajk]

Great read! Yahtzee is always fun to read and watch. Again, big thanks for the EVE video review.

 

[JJAB91]

Well what some of you don't seem to realize is this is his OPINION sure he doesn't like mutiplayer etc. but its just not his thing, each to his own. If he doesn't like a game doesn't mean its a bad game its just not his thing. It's like this with every review. I am a big fan of the Halo series, I love its gameplay, single player, multiplayer the customization and yes even the story. I LOVE Halo's story but am I mad Yathzee didn't like it? No. Its all opinion.

 

[Cat Cloud]

I'm just glad I'm not the only person who deosn't care about multiplayer. Great article.

There are lots of games that i don't care for, that's why I don't play them. I don't force myself to play them and then go on line bitching about them........that would be retarded.

What point are you trying to make? I just said I don't care for multiplayer, not that I don't like Halo. I don't care if other people like multiplayer or not, but it is nice to know, as I've said, that I'm not the only one who thinks games don't have to have multiplayer to be good. I thought the article was good because it brought up valid points and amused me. I think Halo is a fine series, but it's not my favorite. I'm not trying to ***** about anything.

 

[kael013]

Yahtzee did you actually READ that "ancillary media", because it also explains away the floaty movement feel and the first half of the book makes the whole "mum" thing completely false. Next time make use of all the facts there, just taking the ones that support your argument shows narrow-mindedness.

No one should have to read a novel to understand the plot of a video game...or a movie or whatever. Singular works of fiction should stand on their own, otherwise it all just becomes a closed, fanboy-centric loop.

That wasn't the point I was trying to make. I was pointing out the idiocy of using one fact from a source to back up your argument, when another fact a couple chapters later blows your argument out of the water.

As for your point, I agree with you. But how do you slip power armor specs into a "save the galaxy' story, especially when the PC starts the game in the power armor? The fact that he's in it already kind of says that he knows how it works.

I'm just going to go ahead and jump on the bandwagon here and suggest that you should go and give MassEffect a try.
It has this little thing called a Codex built right into the Game where it explains all the obscure facts and references which relate to the game's universe, thus foregoing any need for phonebook-sized manuals or explanatory literature, which you actually piece-together as you play the game adding a fun yet optional dynamic to it.

I'm guessing Halo: Reach could have easily ripped-off on that, but then that would have put a serious dent in their Merchandise revenue

Own it and while that Codex feature is pretty nice to help you understand why things work the way they do in the game, it isn't necessary to the plot, so I don't look at it too often. I did look at it a couple of times and learned some things, but that knowledge didn't help me progress through the game. Though it does answer the types of questions that Yahtzee pulled up here without resorting to becoming a "fanboy". I guess it just comes down to different strategies to getting the backstory out. Bioware wanted to pass up the extra cash from ancillary media and put all the game's backstory and explanations of the tech in the game (they did the same thing with Dragon Age, seems to be a recurring thing for them), while Bungie decided to put the info out as books.

And Fronzel, I don't think I wrote my thoughts down very well earlier. Yahtzee used a fact from a Halo book (that the SPARTAN's armor weighs a ton) to question parts of the game, even though ANOTHER fact (that the armor's shielding system reduces traction, meaning that the armor and user are in an invisible bubble and can "glide" as they walk or "manipulate" the armor's weight) answers the questions that Yahtzee asks. I was pointing out how narrow-minded Yahtzee was being by just using the fact that supported his argument and completely disregarding the rest.

As for storyline, yes, a singular work should be able to support itself. Halo does that. It doesn't mandate that you have to read any of the books first; it supplies background info that is unnessecary to the plot of the game as quick one-liners (similar strategy to the original Star Wars trilogy talking about the Clone War), but it explains eveything you need to understand to know what is going on in the game.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

snip.

im glad im not the only one who noticed this, it seemed more like personal problems rather than actual universal problems with the game itself. while its good and all to have your opinion and i can respect that, yahtzee, i have yet to see examples of games that you want to compare to that are so much better than halo reach in the areas that you are calling it mediocre (you called the whole game mediocre but im assuming you meant more parts than others)

oh and idk if you knew it or not...but jorge did NOT say "mum", he said "ma'am", that was not his mom, hell she kidnapped him, but i wouldn't expect you to know that since you dont know the background story, just saying that they were not related at all, only that she is the one who brought him into the program.

i also agree with the above poster i quoted, i personally preferred having NOT a cutout bland "stick your head here!" character, i liked that my character had reactions and was part of the cutscenes and actually had shit happen inbetween them, plus i could actually see my body when i looked down?!?!?! holy shit! didn't realize i could do that.../sarcasm

also, i liked how they switched between first and third person on the cutscenes, personally i think they did hte first person scenes very effectively, like after you save the professors daughter, but then the third person view is where its at for cutscenes, a picture is worth a thousand words so seeing my character interact with the world/the plot of the moment was much more satisfactory than seeing bobbling heads talk to him while i can't say anything.

once again, this is all personal opinion, i just think it came across in the article a bit...more than that.

 

[MorphingDragon]

some angry words

The fact is that Yahtzee shouldn't need to know about the established Halo universe, Reach is a PREQUEL. Nothing has happened, its BEFORE the ORIGINAL Halo trilogy. Giving Yahtzee crap for not knowing the subtext for a PREQUEL is pretty bad logic (Story writing tip, a prequel should establish subtext, not rely on subtext otherwise it defeats the point of a prequel). A proper PREQUEL shouldn't ASSUME anything. An 8 year old should be able to pick up Reach without playing any other Halo game and understand the story without any subtext.

Also MassEffect 2 is a SEQUEL, it happens AFTER the events of the first one, so its perfectly good story writing to assume that the reader should already know things. I don't expect a reader of the last LOTR book to understand whats going on if they haven't read the rest of the series.

(Capped words are important, improve your comprehension)

Wow, massive presumption on what a prequel should be. A prequel is a sequel, just set before the events of the original work.

Thats still not an excuse for bad story writing.

 

[AceAngel]

Yahtzee, I just think I need to mention this to you:

The reason most developers go to the Mutltiplayer side of the games, is because it's much easier to create, as opposed to a single player game, that's why games like Halo, have no indulgence to create a solid varied SP game, since MP is much more standardized and easier to manage in a small team (ironic choice of words, since the Bungie is pretty big as far as teams go).

i totally agree you can make an intelligent game like fallout 3 that will take one of the most dedicated game studios years to make or you can make a 30 minute long *cough*modern warfare 2*cough* campaign and then spend your time on 10 multiplayer maps and then you can go to outsell every form of entertainment of all time. which sounds more appealing?

Sadly, the latter my friend. Me and a couple of colleges are picking up UDK, but as much as people like to call it 'easy' to use, have to say, it's still hard to do thing correctly.

For example, did you know that you need to create a 8 base Node system, with 8 "Yes/No" Commands inorder to get a simple button working, to say, make a door invisible?

 

[gamerguyal]

Yahtzee should have played with subtitles on. I know Jorge pronounces it "mom" but that's just his accent - he's saying "ma'am."

Anyhoo, I guess Reach can join Half-Life 2 at the Mediocrity Table, eh?

I thought he was saying "mom" and to me it made sense because he's a Spartan II and in a way Dr. Halsey was the mother figure for the Spartan IIs.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

I'm just going to say this one more time. There is a market for people who only play games for multiplayer. Thus a 'game' is not an automatic failure if it has a crappy single player. Anyone who says so is claiming that their aesthetic values are objective.

THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE VALUES: NEITHER ETHICAL OR AESTHETIC. READ SOME NIETZSCHE PEOPLE!

THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT PASS JUDGMENTS ON WHO IS GOOD OR EVIL, NOR ON WHAT IS A GOOD GAME OR A BAD GAME.

REALLY. IT'S THAT SIMPLE. YOU GUYS ARE ARGUING PAST EACH OTHER, THERE'S NO WAY OF DETERMINING WHO IS RIGHT OR WHO IS WRONG, BECAUSE THERE IS NO FACT OF THE MATTER.

So... if there is a market for people who don't care about single player, then companies will produce games marketed to those people. Stop trying to burn each other in effigy. This isn't the dark ages. Yet.

Oh. And those of you who are arguing about the Halo back-story... REALLY? REALLY PEOPLE? FOR HALO OF ALL THINGS? YOU'RE TELLING ME THERE ARE HALO NERDS? I've played all the Halo games (except ODST which I only rented briefly because my friends insisted I play firefight) yes this includes Halo Wars, which is awesome on the principle of being a good console RTS, disregarding it's namesake. The story was never designed to be coherent. It was made so after the fact by multiple authors, so there's probably going to be all sorts of inconsistencies. And frankly this is all assuming that the makers of the game bothered to look any of this up. They probably just made up whatever suited them.

 

[PsiMatrix]

Extra Punctuation: More on Halo: Reach

If you thought Yahtzee liked Halo: Reach, you're wrong.

Read Full Article

My only question is: why bother reviewing it when you're such a 'master of pattern recognition'? And I realised either this is one you've been told to OR because it's there.

 

[Redd]

Everyone except those who don't have gaming consoles. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people who own a console and play games regularly can afford those other things. If you look at my post above, you'll see that I only rent games for their story, but I buy titles like halo because they are a lasting investment. Games have been moving away from being story based because it's economics. Just look at the numbers, all the best selling games are the games people play for the multiplayer. The numbers suggest the actual facts, developers have relegated single player to secondary importance. You suggest this large market of people who will pay 60 bucks for ten hours of story. I don't know anyone like that, story games are 'renters'. Your economic presuppositions are all wrong. WoW, Starcraft, Halo, Call of Duty. All multiplayer centered games, all dominate the market.

Economy? Sir, Cigarettes make huge bathing swathes of money every year - does that make Cigarettes a good thing? Just because something makes more money than God doesn't mean that it's any better. Pyschonauts has No multiplayer to speak of whatsoever, and I rate it as one of my top 3 games I've ever player.

However, your Console based arguement is somewhat subverted when you use Starcraft and WoW as an example. I don't use Consoles myself, neither do many of my friends - all avid gamers I might add, who enjoy very much playing Single Player games moreso than multiplayer.

I don't disagree that such games make Huge amounts of money - but that's because they charge HUGE chunks of money for the privelage. Starcraft? Around a hundred Australian dollars. Psychonauts? 10-20 off Steam. And I love Both games, but never play Starcraft online multiplayer because I'm in it for the campaign.

Not every gamer is an online adrenaline junkie who wants to verbally tea-bag people of all nations and creeds - there are plenty of gamers who want to have a game that they can enjoy on their own, or possibly with one or two good buddies. The reason Multiplayer games make such a Huge chunk of money is because they generally tend to be hideously expensive by comparison to account for the online support. You pay less for Single-Player games because they're only that: single player. (Console games excluded because they'd be expensive even if you were buying Farmville, god forbid.)

Everyone is different - and I know for a fact that things like this new Knights of the Old Republic game coming out I'm going to sadly miss out on because as far as I can tell, it's an MMO - and no doubt they'll be charging monthly for it. I Loved KOTOR and KOTOR2 because of their story, they were delicious victory wrapped in a lovely buffet of single player character extravagance. And now what - they're bringing out the so called 'third' game, and making it Entirely multiplayer based?

I assume by your comments that you own Halo Reach, (and if you don't something similar). If one day a new Halo sequel was released and they suddenly decided to change the entire format to Single Player ONLY - you'd be a bit miffed... but not as miffed as the gent who finds his beloved sequel focuses on the Multiplayer, something he can't play.

I seem to have gone on a bit of a rant here - but the point is, Multiplayer is not everyone's cup of tea. The only Multiplayer online games I play with regularity are TF2 and L4D (1&2), and of the two of them, only TF2 is exclusively Multiplayer.

Like many others, I purchase games because they have charm, character - or an appealing storyline. TF2 I paid for the art-style and the engrossing characters, and I've never once regretted my decision.

You praise Call of Duty for its multiplayer, but the only reason I bought COD4 was because I'd heard the single-player had an epic story - Single Player.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that Multiplayer is popular - it really is. But by focusing on Multiplayer at the expense of the Single Player, you're cutting out a Huge quantity of potential buyers.

After all, the Half Life series hasn't got a multiplayer (aside from Deathmatch, an entirely different game), and MANY agree that it's one of the best - if not The best - series of FPS games ever released.

Anyway - this block of text has gone on for a bit, I'm going to go for a walk and buy me a sandwich.

That was, unbelievably brilliant. And that's really all I have to say in this matter.

 

[RexoftheFord]

Ok, call me a fanboy, because I probably am, but he's already stated that he hasn't followed the series and this is a fan game. Bungie would've been happy not having to do another Halo if people had shut up about it. The Spartans aren't meant to be relatable, and they were trained to die if need be to give a significant advantage to their team members, all of which is covered in those wonderful little books that I'm sure Yahtzee refuses to read. I'm not saying Halo Reach was perfect, it's far from, but I think Yahtzee is letting his own personal experience(or lack thereof) and feelings get in his review. I thought Halo 3 was the pinnacle of the series and has since gone downhill. It would've been a lot better if they'd gone with ODST's or Marines, because most people I've talked with are tired of playing as Spartans. They've been predictable since before Halo 3 when the first book series came out. I hope this isn't the last in the franchise since I'd like to see something done outside the Spartan story arcs, and maybe it'll be fresher since it won't be Bungie's child anymore. Maybe something along the lines of playing a Marine from his first deployment out of boot and taking us through a career we can choose depending on what our preferred play style is.

So instead of being a steroid pumped super soldier, you would rather play as a Marine. A man, who without all the steroid pumped super soldiers running around, would be dead ten seconds after stepping onto the battlefield? Why not just play Call of Duty then?

Personally, I can't relate to anyone who regenerates health by walking over a health pack, or anyone that only jumps 10 feet in the air as opposed to the 40 feet Spartans seem to manage. If you change it to a marine, it would just feel like ODST where your Stamina's basically your shields and your health is your health. You're still taking about 20 shots before you die, so you're still a steroid pumped super soldier.

Oh, nice use of one of Shamus's "You have to know every detail from every form of media even remotely related to the game before you can review it" thing from his Fanboy Guide.

Lemme guess, you're a Cod fan that views Halo as the root of all evil. Allow me to explain my position a bit better. If I wanted to play in a sand pit and shoot at terrorists in a realistic setting down to the grain of the round, I'd enlist in the military. But since I want to play a sci-fi game where instead of being an unstoppable military juggernaught, you play as the underdog that's slowly but surely loosing the fight. I'm merely trying to say how the franchise can be improved instead of whining that there's another game out to compete with CoD. Realism isn't the most important thing to a game, I regard Bioshock higher than I do Halo, and the original Dark Forces, an old game you probably don't remember, was what first got me into the genre. MW2 was a very good game, but it wasn't perfect, particularly because I like huge battles to take part in, not get suckered into a half-assed stealth bit.

Well, actually, I'm a fan of both games. CoD has its good points. Halo does too. Why would you want to play a Halo game that is more like CoD though? Realism in gaming does suck at a certain point in gaming, but wouldn't making you a marine, one of a million, just make Halo more about realism with just a hint of scifi added to it? I did play Dark Forces, I played Jedi Knight, and Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. They were all good games. Instead of wanting to play Halo as a marine, why not just go play Doom? It's got scifi setting and you're just a lowly marine. Would satisfy your desire. Halo won't improve beyond where it's at until people stop buying it up everytime they release the same fuckin' game, slightly different story repeatedly. But whatever. By the way, Bioshock was pretty badass. I agree with you there.

 

[Oliver Pink]

Snip

That was, unbelievably brilliant. And that's really all I have to say in this matter.

Why thank you sir =D - I appreciate that.

 

[beema]

hehehe delicious!