More on Halo: Reach

[Jim37F]

OK, I'm gonna go off on a different tangent and gripe about an aspect of Yahtzee's gripe about Halo that I haven't seen yet: His rant about the open doors on the future helicopters. Why do games show that? Because thats what happens in real life! I'm an Active Duty US Army Soldier who's been to Afghanistan and Iraq and when we fly around in helicopters, the doors are often times open, and there is almost always somebody stationed on the edge of the ramp (99% of the time they're behind a nice large machine gun).

This is done for a couple of different reasons, first when the chopper is getting ready to land to either let the troops off or on, having the doors open makes it a lot faster and easier, thus reducing the time the chopper is hovering right above the ground (and thus hideously vulnerable to small arms fire).

Second is the aforementioned door gunner. Kinda hard to shoot back when all the doors/ramps are closed.

And finally helicopters, just like cars, do occasionally break down. Unlike your car that can just coast to a stop on the shoulder, or even a regular plane that's aerodynamic and can glide down somewhat safely, a helicopter is just a big rock that uses its rotors to beat the air into submission, and when the engine powering those rotors quits... well I don't think I have to describe what happens next. The open doors/ramps means that when everything is done crashing and if your actually still alive at this point, you have someplace to exit instead of being trapped inside.


Whew...OK, I'll get off my soap box now, and let you guys return this topic to its subject, a video game that can show helicopters however it damn well pleases because its a fictional game.

 

[Omniroth]

Jim37F - I just wanted to say that you sir are awesome. That is all.

 

[PaulDubyaDubya]

Yahtzee, hon. I think we need a new metaphor besides "wallpaper paste" to describe something bland.

Unless, of course, you're trying to be ironic in the concept by using the same metaphor for something that's bland and samey, in which case I'll need a cricket bat to properly discipline you.

He could use "porridge" as a metaphor for bland... or just say bland!

 

[jara1018]

WHAT A SURPRISE! Yahtzee didn't like Halo: Reach, it was predictable just like all his opinions/rants/reviews/critics. If video games get you worked up so much why play. He is a rather strange guy, and no one defend him because he hates you too and your not cool for letting him manipulate your opinion because he talks fast and has an accent.I stopped watching his videos for what he had to say along time ago. I only watch his videos because i like the animations against the yellow background its the only reason I'm still here. Just making a prediction "He won't like Gears of War 3 he is gonna reuse the chest-high walls joke, and dirt-brown color pallet jab. Maybe cry how the market is flooded with shooters, games have to stand only on single player bullshit blah blah blah."

 

[PaulDubyaDubya]

I think if I was playing Halo: Reach as an entry point into the franchise (I hate the word but I do have to use it) I would be quite happy not to know what went on in the original Halo Triolgy. I'd like to, depending on if I liked Reach, play the rest of the series to see what happens. I think Halo Reach quite easily stands up on it's own two feet as a single work.

My point is not knowing what has went before (or after) in the series shouldn't really have to come into it if you are reviewing this game. I loved Reach along with Halo: Combat Evolved but I don't really care for 2 and 3 as I agree that games should be all about the campaign, story, whatever drives the single player as i'm not a fan of multiplayer games and most of the annoying spawn that I find on XBOX Live either.

 

[TornadoADV]

..and why an AI is on a bit of glowy pipe rather than, say, a USB stick.

Yahtzee, I love you.
This too baffled me. If we could probably fit her on a (albeit very large storage-space wise) USB Stick NOW, like, 500 years before the events of Reach, surely they could fit her in something... I don't know, thinner than paper, in 2552.

But it's negligible to me really, Halo was never known for it's realism. I guess it was just for effect, having a glowy blue pipe to signify Six was carrying something pretty damn important.


Anyway, I completely understand Yahtzee's view on Halo, I just disagree with it. Love the entire series [small](call me a fanboy..)[/small], but respect the fact that Yahtzee doesn't.
At least he gives good reasons why.

She is already on a wetware chip, SPARTAN-IIIs do not have the necessary architecture in their suits to support an AI, nor a way to interface with said AI. Hence the reason why if you actually bother to play the first 3 HALO games or the Limited/Legendary HALO : Reach, you will know that SPARTAN-IIs just had their mjolnir suits upgraded to support warship class AI during the Reach engagment.

Hence Cortana gets to ride inside an armored capsule rather then inside Noble Six's noggin.

 

[ultrachicken]

I still don't understand why Yahtzee won't speak about multiplayer. Sure, after a while the multiplayer will have so few people that you can't get a match, but at least review what's there and then knock it down a few notches if being able to play reach 3 years from now is that important to you. And if anyone pulls the "whiny 12 year old" argument, then I've just lost all respect for you. There's a mute button.

The rest is all opinion. And I would give the Halo series some credit if Master Chief was homosexual.

 

[Captain Pirate]

She is already on a wetware chip, SPARTAN-IIIs do not have the necessary architecture in their suits to support an AI, nor a way to interface with said AI. Hence the reason why if you actually bother to play the first 3 HALO games or the Limited/Legendary HALO : Reach, you will know that SPARTAN-IIs just had their mjolnir suits upgraded to support warship class AI during the Reach engagment.

Hence Cortana gets to ride inside an armored capsule rather then inside Noble Six's noggin.

Well, see, thing is, I've played all the games but Halo 2, and I remember nothing about being told that Spartan II's armour gets upgraded to carry such an AI. I know they can, obviously, but there was certainly no explanation at all as to why.
And maybe I wanted the Limited Edition of Reach, but didn't have the money.
Don't make assumptions that I can't be fucked to play Halo just because I don't understand why Cortana is in a fat metal pipe.

I never asked why she can't plug into Six's helmet, just why she was stored in something so big.
But if it's an armoured capsule, that makes a lot of sense, thanks.

 

[TornadoADV]

She is already on a wetware chip, SPARTAN-IIIs do not have the necessary architecture in their suits to support an AI, nor a way to interface with said AI. Hence the reason why if you actually bother to play the first 3 HALO games or the Limited/Legendary HALO : Reach, you will know that SPARTAN-IIs just had their mjolnir suits upgraded to support warship class AI during the Reach engagment.

Hence Cortana gets to ride inside an armored capsule rather then inside Noble Six's noggin.

Well, see, thing is, I've played all the games but Halo 2, and I remember nothing about being told that Spartan II's armour gets upgraded to carry such an AI. I know they can, obviously, but there was certainly no explanation at all as to why.
And maybe I wanted the Limited Edition of Reach, but didn't have the money.
Don't make assumptions that I can't be fucked to play Halo just because I don't understand why Cortana is in a fat metal pipe.

I never asked why she can't plug into Six's helmet, just why she was stored in something so big.
But if it's an armoured capsule, that makes a lot of sense, thanks.

Yeah, if you look closely right as she jumps from the computer, to the container, you'll see the wetware chip inside. Since Bungie can't assume that the player has Noble Six equipped with a Hardcase or Softcase on their thigh, she has to ride in the tube.

 

[Deg]

How can you review multiplayer? Online games are only as good as the people you play them with, and you can't review that, nor should you; it's the game that's being examined here, not its players. In the absence of that, what can you do but just mention what kind of online game modes are available? That doesn't give you much to discuss.

I'm not sure I agree with this. There is plenty to discuss concerning multiplayer modes. After all, quite a bit of work has to go into designing and creating them beyond just "take single player and have more people shooting at one another". You could discuss things like:

- How well does the game and its multiplayer modes handle competitive play? How competitive do you think the game could get? (ex, Starcraft Broodwar is usually seen being better set up for competitive play than say Halo Wars)
- Are maps balanced? Are weapons balanced? How many maps/weapons are present in multiplayer compared with single player?
- How much control do players get over customizing each individual multiplayer match?
- What kind of player avatar customizations are available? Do these customizations count as upgrades or purely cosmetic?
- How does the game handle online play in general? A lobby system, auto matching, or perhaps both? How long does it take to find a game? Is it easy to just log on and play within 2 minutes?

See? Loads of stuff.

 

[Krunkcity3000]

I totally agree with Yahtzee about the huge contrast between what Bungie claims is this deep universe and what actually shows up in the game. Spartans are supposed to be super heavy, super strong and can be super fast. All of this without picking up modular armor augmentations. However, in Halo you wade around through levels like your stuck in oatmeal. Also, If it takes 1-2 punches from by fist to down an enemies shields and kill him, and it takes an entire clip from one gun to drop the shields then a few rounds from another to kill the enemy, why can't i just throw rocks with my super strength? Seems that it would be more effective than the shitty submachine gun piece of shit you always start out with. My final complaint is that after so much time Reach still had these graphical errors and shortcuts. Like the obviously painted backgrounds. They were a lot better than the shitty ones in Halo 3 but they are still noticeable. Seems like instead of being on some alien world fighting for humanity, I'm on the set of the original Star Trek with plastic boulders and painted landscapes.

 

[AUSPAIN]

You made a good point about the MMO having single player aspects and also in saying a game should be able to stand up to criticism the single player alone. However, a games multiplayer has just as much right to be a part of the criteria for a good game as the singleplayer. Not including multiplayer, in halo's case multiplayer and forge, in the critera is a bias way to judge a game as it does not cover everything, especially since games like cod4 and 6 rely on multiplayer for replay value.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Yahtzee is just so tired and predictable. I'm sick of hearing him blather on about how multiplayer doesn't matter. It sure as hell seems to matter to a lot of other people.

Yeah, but so does Justin Bieber, Twilight and 3D!~

 

[AVATAR_RAGE]

I'm not wearing a shirt...

or are you

But yeah I noticed some of the points made there while playing through. Though one point I would like to make is the the 3rd person scenes (well some of em) are from the point of view of the second player (at least it is in split screen)

 

[LordVikingofFire]

I think that Master Chief is in fact bisexual.

 

[CharlesA]

I'm a big fan of coop campaings, and Reach's was probably the dullest I've played in a long while:

1. No direction. Most of the time we just stood there like dumbasses trying to figure out where to go untill something lit up somewhere and showed us what the hell the objective was.

2. Horrible, skippable, cutscenes mean that in order to prevent one's sanity we just skipped everything, and realized that without them, the game had absolutely no story on it's own. I mean, the gameplay failed on every level to tell the player anything but "stay with yellow dots, kill red dots, go to the blue floaty square with a number under it". I mean, in the first three halos, even if you skipped the cutscenes, you knew what was going on. The flood is there, get the fsck out, soldier.

3. No flood. I don't care about continuity, no flood means no third act, no turning point, just plain routine. It also means that when the credit started to roll, we just shouted "wait, that's it?"

4. No real use of the new features. Reach's multiplayer is indeed brilliant, however with all the new tools (freaking jetpacks!) you barely get to do anything that requires their use, what about a mission where you must use the armor lockup at intervals to pass some security system or something, I mean, you could go through the whole campaign without touching the LB button once, it would have added quite a lot of variety. There was one level that for something like ten seconds required you to use the jetpacks, and that's it.

5. No mood changes, whatever you do, whoever you meet, they're gonna be there for a few seconds, then you get away and kill some more stuff, you never feel like you are in an actual city, civilians are cattle and other military types are there to give you their battle riffle before getting blasted by a stick grenade.

6. Frustrating vehicles segments. Space war sucked (lock on target, shoot missile, drift aimlessly until you figure out where the enemy are in the bloom filled sky, lock on, shoot missile, etc.) and that goddamn level with the chopper in the city was complete shit, directionless, pointless and not even really challenging.

7. Skippable last level? When the credits finished rolling I saw the animation of the spartans picking up his gun, with the skip button lit. We didn't want to go through another horrible cutscene, so we skipped to get right into the fight, and it just ended the game. I mean, what the hell?

8. The covenant is not a menace. By this time, after five single player Halo campaigns, we all know how to deal with every single enemy they throw at us. Big badass with shields and rocket luncher? Just get behind him and press b three times. Evil hidden sword guy? Shoot the bastard, then stick him and he's done. I mean, can we at least get a few new bad guys, something unnexpected somewhere or were they too lazy to create some new models?

9. Yay! Grenade luncher! Hey! Where is the ammo? Hey? Come on! Oh well, back to needler.

10. Okay, the hologram was damn cool.

 

[stikku]

what shirt?

 

[Harvey_Danger]

To paraphrase his video and part of the article:

"I'm tired of realistic games."

"Halo ruins immersion because it's not realistic enough."

And:

"I don't review multiplayer because other players are annoying and the community always disappears."

(Everyone knows Halo fans are diehard; if he took the time to look around anywhere in the game, he'd know there's a function to mute everyone.)

"I don't see the point in playing competitive multiplayer. I play games by myself."

(Based off of past texts this is apparently because you're antisocial and your ego is too fragile to deal with sucking at a multiplayer game without practice.)

Don't critique major releases that have had significant resources put into multiplayer if you're just going to ignore it, because it's not FAIR to the rest of the game or anyone reading/watching your reviews. Obviously the singleplayer is going to be lackluster compared to a game designed for singleplayer only. That's like attending a class at a major public university and complaining that you're not getting enough individual attention when the school's goal is to educate as many people as possible. If you want individual attention then you go to a private school with a goal to provide as such.

Singleplayer in multiplayer-centric games exists to familiarize players with a game's mechanics and to briefly entertain them while doing so, to "give them their money's worth." It's a sad fact of modern gaming but it's a fact nonetheless. Do I think it should change? Of course, but in the meantime I'm not going to shred a game's singleplayer campaign when all anyone is really intending to play is multiplayer. You played WoW by yourself for the majority of the time? Well congratulations, you've actually managed to play the game wrong.a



Yahtzee, there's a reason you are only credible as a humorist and not as an actual game reviewer. You're not good at critiquing games in a serious context. I understand that gamers tend to get all defensive and their penises shrink whenever Roger Ebert is mentioned, but if you intend to make a legitimate career out of what you do instead of just being a nerd that got lucky, you may want to take notes on his articles and learn what critiquing is instead of what you do, which is use the same, tired points over and over in your reviews to rationalize what in reality is just poorly thought-out writing.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

This single-player vs. multiplayer debate needs to end.

Yahtzee belongs to the 'artsy' school of game reviewers. He critiques a game's plot, gameplay (within the story mode), and the overall effect of the experience. He isn't concerned with multiplayer.

Is he right for doing this?

No. But he isn't wrong either.

Multiplayer is a huge selling point for a lot of gamers, including myself. I have no problem spending $60 on a game if I'm going to get hundreds or thousands of hours out of it online. But I don't watch Yahtzee's videos for multiplayer critique. I watch them for the sheer entertainment of Yahtzee bashing on nonsensical plots and flaws in the game design. (Since this is a polished Halo game he was restricted to the former.)

To once more counter the claims of aesthetic objectivity that some people make about games failing if their single player fails: False. There is a whole market of people who only care about multiplayer. You can try to enforce your values on them, but your arguments will fall on deaf ears because they look for completely different things in a game.

The difference is this. People like Yahtzee see games kind of like interactive movies. They are plot driven stories that the player takes part in.

People who play games for the multiplayer view games as sport. There isn't any real reason why you are trying to kill the other team, it's just the objective of the game.

Both people derive different kinds of entertainment out of games. Neither is objectively 'correct' in their interpretation of what games should be. It would be like arguing that we should get rid of sports so we could spend more money developing movies, or visa-versa. SO STOP ARGUING PAST EACH OTHER, YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO CONVINCE EACH OTHER OF ANYTHING.

Honestly, no one who is going to buy Halo Reach for its multiplayer is going to give a crap about what Yahtzee says anyway.

I enjoy both of the above aspects of games. I can tell you right now, I've played every Halo game, and if you are thinking about buying Reach for the story, SAVE YOUR MONEY. It was terrible. I understood what was going on because I've played the previous games, but even so the writing was so terrible, the characters so underdeveloped, and the plot so seemingly arbitrary that the whole experience was completely lackluster. I couldn't care in the slightest when the main characters died. By contrast I was very upset when Sgt. Johnson died at the end of Halo Three. It didn't suck because it was a Halo game. It sucked because they didn't even bother to write a decent story.

The campaign was fun, but not because of its story. Firefight is fun. The multiplayer is fun. But if you only care about story, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

 

[Megamonmon]

sooooooooooooooo ur point is....?