Zero Punctuation: Halo 4

[mjc0961]

Another example of Yahtzee neither hateing nor liking a game . The result is always a boring review, sorry dude .You should have reviewed Epic Mickey 2 or something.

Yes, he should review a game that at most came out 3 days ago (Wii U) or at least came out 1 day ago (every other system).

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/3540-Hunted-The-Demons-Forge

Watch the first minute, you might learn something.

 

[Alex Baas]

Personaly, I liked playing online when me and 6 other friends went over to my one friend's house and we clocked an all nighter online. The only reason it was fun was because of the local. It got a litte coo-coo bonkers around our midnight griffball matches.

 

[crimson sickle2]

When Yahtzee says sniffing its own farts, does plot sniff through its neck, or are the farts coming from the front end?

 

[Ishal]

"Sticks head out from out behind cover" Is it over? Oh...well that wasn't too bad. I admit I'm tired as Hell as everyone saying that Halo is just for twelve year olds, but Yahtzee's review wasn't too bad, and I kinda knew that he wasn't going to like it. It really seems less like he hates Halo and more like he doesn't care, besides what goes on in the story seems to be more tailored for Halo fans like myself, so it's understandable that he was lost. At least he says that the characterization was improved but...wait a minute, Del Rio is well characterized...uh...no he isn't. Wow, never thought that Yahtzee would praise a part of Halo and I would disagree with him.

Also four years of masturbating...HA!

Yea Del Rio was there to basically be a terrible leader and be a foil to Chief and Cortana, thing is they didn't even do it in a good way. He just came off in a way that didn't even attempt to disguise his purpose as a plot point.

Ur other picture was an ODST helmet right? I think you might be as big of a halo fan as I am. So let me ask you. What did you think of the end "boss battle" qte?

It didn't really bother me, mostly because as it was happening my mind was firmly held in the realm of meta. Having read the books and knowing just who the Didact was (all but confirmed that was the Ur-Didact you kill) and his rank/history of command, to me any other way of doing it wouldn't feel right. Now I am not a huge fan of quick time events but I thought that it didn't detract from the ending too much. The Didact is basically a god. From reading the books and knowing the forerunners for what they are, he of course isn't a god, but nevertheless he is portrayed as being nigh unstoppable with immense power the entire time. From how he descended from his cryptum, has his armor formed around him, simply waved a hand and took control of the prometheans and the covenant at once, continually held the chief in some kind of grip. I just couldn't imagine fighting him like the spartan lazer guilty spark ending. Would have been kinda lame.

I was expecting this reaction from Yahtzee actually. Just kind of indifferent. I knew people would be lost when the whole exposition scene with the Librarian happened. I'm actually still put off by them putting her (or her essence but pfft it might as well be her) in the game. She and the Didact (ur and bornstellar) are basically the only forerunner characters of any significance in the entire story, with maybe the exception of Master Builder Faber. I knew we'd see the Didact eventually but I kind of wished they would have kept the Librarian as sort of an enigma instead of coming right out and showing her.

 

[plainlake]

Did anyone notice how many toy - references there were in this?

 

[FallenMessiah88]

I agree with Yahtzee about the big open environments and the organic gameplay. As long as they keep that, then I'm happy.

Also, spunkgargleweewee is still not a real word.

 

[Vigormortis]

Fair enough review.

Most of Yahtzee's criticisms are quite accurate, I must admit. Many of them I share.

Even so, I'm still, in the very least, a casual fan of the series. I still have fond memories of late-night co-op games of CE. I even load up the occasional play-session of ODST or Wars sometimes.

Still, while I must credit 343 with interjecting a slight touch of better characterization to the series story, they still didn't do anything that "wowed" me with Halo 4.

Maybe I'm biased, though. When they released the "HD" remake of Halo: CE, I wasn't just underwhelmed, I was appalled. How they managed to make CE run worse on the 360 was baffling.

Even so, Halo 4 isn't the "worst thing ever". It's a commendable start. Time will tell if 343 can keep this series alive and, more importantly, fresh.

I'm always bewildered how Cortana gets more unnecessarily sexy and voluptuous each installment.

Does she have like special firmware updates?

I guess you could say they implanted new bits of code.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Anybody else find they get a massive full-screen advert when they try to play this? I can't even SEE the video that I came for.

Seriously guys, I don't even own a bloody X-box. If I want the stuff you're advertising, I'll click on the damn advertisement. Don't advertise a ZP video and give me an unskippable advert for - irony of ironies! - Halo 4. That stops the video I want from even loading.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Anybody else find they get a massive full-screen advert when they try to play this? I can't even SEE the video that I came for.

Seriously guys, I don't even own a bloody X-box. If I want the stuff you're advertising, I'll click on the damn advertisement. Don't advertise a ZP video and give me an unskippable advert for - irony of ironies! - Halo 4. That stops the video I want from even loading.

Well, never mind, I got it in the end. There's something in the top right hand corner of the screen that looks as though it might be one of those "the content will appear after this ad" warnings, if the screen actually rendered enough of it to be able to read it.

Look, I know you guys are paid for by adverts, and I'm appreciative of the content. But these ads - especially putting a Halo ad in front of a Halo review - are just obnoxious.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

I guess a bland mediocre game can only get a bland mediocre review, even when we're talking about Yahtzee.

I kept getting bored and losing focus through this particular review, I guess partly because I've never given two shits about Halo since they refuse to release a half-decent PC port, and partly because Yahtzee sounds more bored than mathematically possible

Cmon Yahtzee, you and everyone else are BORED of powered-armor-space-marine-cover-based-shooters, yes Halo 4 is one of those. (On that note, can we please give a proper name to that?)
Review something else like ZombieU, an Indy title, or some Kinect game! Or a JRPG!

 

[Nazulu]

That's two games in a row you've called boring now. Did Halo 4 just have bland samey challenges? Because it looks pretty quick.

I agree with the guns and their crappy sounds, they all sound so weak. I really enjoyed Counter Strike because how powerful most of the popular guns sounded, especially the AWP.

 

[LiMaSaRe]

"and there were no boss fights to" something something
Yahtzee. Stop trying to turn every shooter into Painkiller. You can not necessarily improve all games by making them more similar to the select few youve decided to approve of.
I am not a fan of boss fights and think they are particularly unsuited for the fps genre.

 

[Waaghpowa]

My only gripe is difficulty. I choose legendary difficulty and it isn't even difficult, just inconsistent. As Yahtzee pointed out, you kinda just die from random bullshit.

That should not have been a problem, you just test out the enemy guns and see what they do. Maybe the lack of a proper health bar is throwing you off?

I'll admit that the lack of a proper health bar does make it difficult to gauge things, but it still feels inconsistent. There are times where I'll run around with no shields against a half dozen enemies and survive for an extended period of time with the incessant beeping, while other times I get killed almost instantly against the same enemy composition before my shield can beep once or twice.

I'm not new to Halo either, but I always preferred the classic shield and health bar system from Combat Evolved and ODST.
At least then you have a way to quantitatively measure how injured you are.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

It is true that reading the books before playing this is Warhammer 40K level of mandatory.

No, not really. I've read the first 3 books, and while it helped a little bit, it's not like you're going to miss a lot if you haven't read them. Everything is explained in some form or another in the game, even if it is just a passing mention.

 

[Tony2077]

i still feel the humor on these seems to have given way to just tearing the games a new asshole

 

[daxterx2005]

"Gay African Mammoths" Oh wow, I wish they were in the game.

 

[Carlos Storm]

At least Halo isn't trying to be the next CoD knockoff!

That's something about Halo that's always perplexed me, the alien weapons. They all look so ridiculously like toys. When you envision alien weapons, do you think nerf guns with glow sticks on them? I don't. Also, why is it in every Halo game, human weapons always seem to be the best guns, or is that just me?

I've found on the hardest difficulty human guns aren't worth carrying around for longer than it takes to find their alien equivalent. A nice contrast to the BR being the best gun around on easy...

I beg to differ. I can remember from Halo 2 that the fuel rod gun sucks HARD compared to the human equivalent: A dual-barreled rocket launcher with set-and-forget lock-on and target tracking plus it does more damage when it hits.

Oh I was really refering to the practical weapons you have to constantly carry around/deal with like the storm/assault rifle etc, but yeah the rocket launcher was really the only exception.

 

[Netrigan]

Not sure how you feel bored though, the game moves at a pretty brisk pace.

If you're not at all interested in what's happening, action can be really, really dull. I felt that way while playing various games (most recently Halo: Reach, my attempt to give the Halo franchise another go). Wading through hordes of baddies becomes tedious when your reward is a cutscene you find boring.

Setting the Wayback Machine, I had a weird experience with Unreal and its add-on campaign, "Return To Na Pali". I was thoroughly bored by Unreal which had very little story, save for what you found in journals all over the place. Lots of tough battles, but I just didn't care and I eventually god-moded my way through the game because I couldn't be bothered to put forth the effort to defeat enemies even on the lowest difficulty setting.

But I ended up enjoying the add-on because it had just enough of a story to get me interested and the same battles that bored me to tears in the original game were suddenly worthwhile.

 

[Netrigan]

Then again, he's rarely interested in the multiplayer aspects of any game which whilst understandable when multiplayer has been poorly tacked on as a way to tick a box, when it's as integral to the overall game and as large an aspect of it like it is in Halo, then its clear Yahtzee doesn't care too much for 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' approach and philosophy. So as entertaining as Yahtzee is and as valid and justified as many of his criticisms are, at a fundamental level, I disagree with his reviewing approach and prefer a review that deals with the whole thing, not just one aspect of it.

I've had friends drag me into multi-player for various games I didn't enjoy playing single player... and I've yet to have it work out, especially for a shooter where the enjoyment of using weapons is a big thing. If I don't enjoy shooting a shotgun in single player, then there's fuck-all chance of me enjoying shooting the same shotgun in multi-player.

There's a lot of elements that cross over between the two modes. If you don't like how the weapons look/feel, and you don't like how the character moves, and you're not impressed by the basic look of the game (all of these are basic criticisms from Yahtzee), then what do you think are the odds that he's suddenly going to be impressed by all this when playing against live opponents?

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Halo 4 is a Gay African Mammoth
-Yahtzee Croshaw

Whenever anyone asks me about the quality of Halo 4, I will repeat that.

Great review as always and I get the complaints, but I'll never stop loving this family of Gay African Mammoths.

They may represent an evolutionary dead end, but I'll be damned if it isn't a [i/][b/]fabulous[/b][/i] evolutionary dead end.