Zero Punctuation: Halo: Reach

[Netrigan]

Anyone who says Reach doesn't stand up without the multiplayer clearly either hasn't played the campaign, or is simply biased against it. Simple as that.

I don't care what game it is. I don't care how good you think it is. I don't care how many reviewers think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

There will *always* be people who dislike it. Not because they hate some other aspect of the game. Not because they haven't played it. Not because they're biased against it. Just because it doesn't focus on the things that they personally enjoy about a game.

I gave up on the first game about halfway through (so I will limit my observations to those first four or five levels). It wasn't a bad game, but about one minute into a level, you had pretty much seen said level... and if you had played Unreal, then you had pretty much seen the outdoor levels before you even played Halo.

This doesn't make it a bad game. I've enjoyed plenty of games that were deja vu experiences, but I do consider it a mark against the game. This combined with some often poor level progression cues (such as the opening of the second level puts you in a wide open area and after you exit the escape pod, you need to make a 180 degree turn... or just bumble about the area until you find the direction you need to go) ended up killing most of my enthusiasm for the game.

The combat was suitably intense, although any game with recharging health/shields tends to alternate between being really easy and frustratingly hard depending on how much cover they give you. But when I revisited the demo level, boredom got the upper hand and I quit playing it.

Long story short, I didn't like Halo: Combat Evolved. I don't think I was biased against it, having known very little about it beyond it was an incredibly popular game on X-Box. I was even looking forward to the vehicles and a stream-lined control scheme. I simply didn't think it was a very good game. The more original bits had their thunder stolen by Far Cry (which I think executed vehicles much better), so it didn't even hit me with the novelty value X-Box players received.

And this happens all the time. A game that should be right up your alley just isn't. Yeah, there's some PC (or PS3 or CoD) fanboys that hate the game without giving it a proper shot. And there's some nit-pickers who hate they made this change or that. And those folks are going to be in threads like this more often than people who simply didn't like the game on its own merits... but people who genuinely dislike a game (any game) exist. And there's going to be quite a few of them, too. I loved Half-Life 2 but I can easily see half a dozen reason why a FPS fan would dislike it. I absolutely loved Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, but the same is true. Serious Sam... ditto.

This is actually why I distrust "universal praise". There's always going to be someone who goes and see Toy Story 3 and thinks, "it was alright, but I don't see what all the fuss was about" or thinks it's overly sentimental crap.

 

[kikon9]

Ghost town after a month? You do realize that halo three had at least 20,000 people online at any given time from it's launch until reach came out. Second of all, a game doesn't need to carry itself on single player alone. Multi-player is a lot of fun, and I guarantee you there will be a crapload of people still playing it a month from now. Plus, if he hates multi-player so much, why did he review team fortress 2 when he did the orange box? I bet the only reason Yahtzee hates multi-player so much is because he has a crap connection.

I didn't think that was directed at Halo per se. Multi-player is dependent on having a community that supports it and that won't happen for the vast majority of games.

But we're talking about a game series that sold over 8 million copies. That 20,000 people playing Halo 3 at any given time is one-quarter of one percent of the people who bought it. Obviously that's not the same 20,000 people playing at any given time, but I would doubt seriously that more than half the Halo purchasers have spent significant time on-line with it... which is pretty much Yahtzee's point about being able to ignore it. Most people are ignoring it and playing it solely for the single player campaign.

Really? Because practically everybody I know bought it for the multi-player. Whenever I play online my I will see all my friends playing reach and it says "in matchmaking game" You significantly underestimate the number of people who buy a game on multi-player alone. I guarantee you that in a month's time there will still be a ton of people playing online. Also, you do realize that online is not just random game joining, it also allows you to play with specific friends over x-box live. And given that most gamers keep games they buy, a friend will ask if they want to play reach. As crazy as it sounds, some people actually like playing with friends.

 

[Myles Bradley]

... SO ITS GOOD IN OTHER WORDS! XD

 

[Myles Bradley]

hehehe Yatzee you hate everyone and everything. I can tell when you find something better then something else because you bring up small matters and less complaints

 

[Painful illusion]

Nice and true review. Still enjoyed the game and review though.

 

[mega48man]

speaking of noble deaths, please tell me you laughed your ass off when kat got sniped out of nowhere. that was too funny.

also, jun didn't die i don't think, he just flies off with dr. halsey or something.

 

[Kermi]

Anyone who says Reach doesn't stand up without the multiplayer clearly either hasn't played the campaign, or is simply biased against it. Simple as that.

I don't care what game it is. I don't care how good you think it is. I don't care how many reviewers think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

There will *always* be people who dislike it. Not because they hate some other aspect of the game. Not because they haven't played it. Not because they're biased against it. Just because it doesn't focus on the things that they personally enjoy about a game.

I gave up on the first game about halfway through (so I will limit my observations to those first four or five levels). It wasn't a bad game, but about one minute into a level, you had pretty much seen said level... and if you had played Unreal, then you had pretty much seen the outdoor levels before you even played Halo.

This doesn't make it a bad game. I've enjoyed plenty of games that were deja vu experiences, but I do consider it a mark against the game. This combined with some often poor level progression cues (such as the opening of the second level puts you in a wide open area and after you exit the escape pod, you need to make a 180 degree turn... or just bumble about the area until you find the direction you need to go) ended up killing most of my enthusiasm for the game.

The combat was suitably intense, although any game with recharging health/shields tends to alternate between being really easy and frustratingly hard depending on how much cover they give you. But when I revisited the demo level, boredom got the upper hand and I quit playing it.

Long story short, I didn't like Halo: Combat Evolved. I don't think I was biased against it, having known very little about it beyond it was an incredibly popular game on X-Box. I was even looking forward to the vehicles and a stream-lined control scheme. I simply didn't think it was a very good game. The more original bits had their thunder stolen by Far Cry (which I think executed vehicles much better), so it didn't even hit me with the novelty value X-Box players received.

And this happens all the time. A game that should be right up your alley just isn't. Yeah, there's some PC (or PS3 or CoD) fanboys that hate the game without giving it a proper shot. And there's some nit-pickers who hate they made this change or that. And those folks are going to be in threads like this more often than people who simply didn't like the game on its own merits... but people who genuinely dislike a game (any game) exist. And there's going to be quite a few of them, too. I loved Half-Life 2 but I can easily see half a dozen reason why a FPS fan would dislike it. I absolutely loved Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, but the same is true. Serious Sam... ditto.

This is actually why I distrust "universal praise". There's always going to be someone who goes and see Toy Story 3 and thinks, "it was alright, but I don't see what all the fuss was about" or thinks it's overly sentimental crap.

I'm certainly not going to disagree with what you said here, because for the most part it's true. There are going to be people who genuinely don't like a game for whatever reason.

My point is that the people who actually think Reach is a poor campaign, and that it was only tacked on in order to sell the multiplayer, is wrong or a liar. It's a quality campaign. Can it be knocked over in 6 hours? Yes, if you play on Normal difficulty, where dying takes an entire field full of elites shooting at you for two minutes while you stand in the open because you've gone to take a piss without pausing. But some people need a game to be that accessible.
Bungie openly states Heroic is the correct difficulty to play on. Legendary is designed to punish you, and it does.
So length of campaign is not always the best indicator - I only state this because I know there are people out there who beat it on normal diffiulty, said it was too easy, and tossed it aside. These people are idiots.

I understand what you're saying about Halo: CE. It suffered from some terrible level design. Being disoriented at the beginning of the second level happened to me too. You say you quit after four levels, which I imagine means you quit around when you got the Library, which is the most ill-concieved, repetitive, zigzagging gauntlet of bullshit ever.

Reach, for the most part, does not suffer from the same issues. Bungie have put a lot of the last ten years of experience into practice and it shows. The story is not so much about the people, but a single event that serves as a backdrop to their struggle. The people seem insignificant because they are.
The reason people love the Lone Wolf ending so much? Because it's the first time when your character - or ANY character - is the single most important thing, without having a greater objective to live up to, without someone else puppeteering them towards some obfuscated objective.

The planet has fallen and parts of it are already glassed - what hasn't been glassed is swarming with Covenant. Your team is dead. The package has been delivered. You've evacuated everyone there is left to evacuate. There's a bunch of pissed of aliens coming towards you.
Your objective: take as many of them with you as you can.

 

[Star Pancakes Muthaf]

I Bought Halo Reach Just so I could get good at it for all the lan parties my mates insist on having

 

[Kermi]

@Kermi.

I was talking about the Falcon part, in particular. You fly the same Falcon around and shoot at shit for almost a bloody HOUR. Most boring part of the game, by far.

At least the combat is varied with different locations and encounters, not just FLY HERE SHOOT BANSHEES. I like Halo, and I love reach (especially Forge), but you have to admit that the campaign was pretty damn boring overall.

I have to admit no such thing. Although New Alexandria was a frustrating mission at first it has certainly grown on me after repeated playthroughs. Yes, there was a fair amount of shooting down banshees, but if you got bored with it I suspect you found it too easy. Bump it up to Legendary. I'm sure the Hunters in the nightclub will keep you amused, as will the drones in the Sinoviet building. You won't move through the level so fast and might notice the touches that help the game really come alive - tumbling skyscrapers, a large section of land being glassed in the distance, etc.

That mission in particular is actually quite dynamic - yes, you're hopscotching from objective to objective so you do a lot of flying. The three primary objectives stay the same and only pop up in different order. However there are multiple side-objectives which are selected randomly, which keeps it fresh.

 

[Netrigan]

I understand what you're saying about Halo: CE. It suffered from some terrible level design. Being disoriented at the beginning of the second level happened to me too. You say you quit after four levels, which I imagine means you quit around when you got the Library, which is the most ill-concieved, repetitive, zigzagging gauntlet of bullshit ever.

I gave up on the demo level, which is the first major assault against the Covenant, starting on the beach then going down into the Forebringer base. If I finished it (and I'm not sure that I ever did), it was when the demo was released. The vehicles were fun, but ended up running people over instead of relying on the standard-issue crap AI of my teammates (I much prefer Far Cry for letting you drive and shoot at the same time). But it was inside the base that wore me down. CE's levels just didn't have a great flow to them (I recently attempted to play Marathon 2 on XBL and ran into the same problem... just wandering around in circles trying to find the next passage way).

I figure at some point I'll pick up Reach, once the price comes down and I work my way through my sizable game queue (I've got about a dozen games, many of them sandbox games, I need to finish before even thinking about taking a chance on a game). I never much cared for the post-Doom 2 id games and I bought the lot of them... mostly because they were such a touchstone of PC gaming that not playing them made me feel like I was missing something.

 

[Netrigan]

Really? Because practically everybody I know bought it for the multi-player. Whenever I play online my I will see all my friends playing reach and it says "in matchmaking game" You significantly underestimate the number of people who buy a game on multi-player alone. I guarantee you that in a month's time there will still be a ton of people playing online. Also, you do realize that online is not just random game joining, it also allows you to play with specific friends over x-box live. And given that most gamers keep games they buy, a friend will ask if they want to play reach. As crazy as it sounds, some people actually like playing with friends.

Oddly enough, I keep running into people who bought it for the multiplayer, but aren't really fans of it. They picked it up because all their friends had it, but much prefer other games. Usually Modern Warfare.

But I really think you over-estimate how many people go on-line with games. It's a decent chunk of people, but MW2 sold something like 15 million copies (not sure of the breakdown for the 360) and the total number of people playing XBL the day of its release was 2 million, which is supposed to be a record for XBL.

Xbox 360 sales are about 42 million worldwide... total X-Box Live accounts passed the 23 million in February. And I'm pretty sure that's both Silver and Gold accounts.

There's some impressive numbers and Microsoft is making a lot of money off those Gold accounts... but I still doubt that more than 50% of Halo 3 buyers spent a significant amount of time on-line. Such as I went into one Gears Of War match prior to letting my trial Gold membership lapse, making up my mind that this wasn't for me and prefer to pick up more games for single player.

There's a significant audience for MP and developers are definitely keen on developing MP content to counter their games being hugely popular... as a used game. But I know lots of folks who rarely if ever go on-line and just looking at the numbers I can find, I think they're in the majority.

 

[Netrigan]

but if you got bored with it I suspect you found it too easy. Bump it up to Legendary.

Perhaps you're right, but pet-peave time.

Years back, I mentioned on a message board that I didn't much care for Doom 3, finding it boring and way too easy on the Hard difficulty, there not being a single section where I died more than once.

Someone shot back that I should play it on Nightmare (the difficulty that only became available after completing the game) as if this was the only possible reason I could have been bored with the game. Because it couldn't be that I was bored because of the brown levels filled brown enemies attacking in the most predictable way and only one section being the slightest bit visually interesting.

Thing is if I'm bored with a game, it's rarely because I think it's too easy. And dying more often will only make me more bored, since I'd get stuck playing the same boring level for a much longer period of time. I think I played CE on Heroic and I probably would have given up a level sooner if I had tried it on Legendary. Last thing I would want is to get stuck on that boring Covenant ship for *longer*.

For me, pumping up the difficulty on a game that's boring me would make me bored *and* frustrated. I'm much more likely to drop the difficulty down to easy (or turn on god mode) to get less bored.

 

[Chrinik]

you have a point there, but as someone who has a lot of friends and siblings, buying games that have multiplayer is kind of required, and i think since MOST people have siblings (and not more than one console) it makes sense to buy games with some sort of multiplayer so that they don't keep bugging me every five seconds with "when do i get to play?!!!"

it WOULD be better if i were an only child instead of all games having multiplayer tacked on

I sense sarcasm.
I also have a brother, but maybe it is because we both are way out of puberty or something that we don´t annoy each other for games.
I recently played Reach with a friend Co-op and borrowed it from him, it is fun.

And I totally forgot that coop is also counted into multiplayer...I was thinking of Online MP.
But anyway. The only games I delibretly buy for multiplayer is Coop based games like Army of Two or Kane and Lynch, to play with my brother, offline.

 

[Chrinik]

Well, they TURNED into multiplayer games BECAUSE the multiplayer proofed to sell better then a compelling single player experience.
Like the Call of Duty or Medal of Honor franchises...

The only single-player-only mode in the entire series is the campaign from Halo Wars. Even back in combat evolved, you could chose to play the campaign either single-player or co-op. They are multiplayer games with a story, and that is not a bad thing.

Edit: And I guess the books were only meant for one user as well

This also was a gimmick, as seen by the fact that they just copied your character model for the second player...
They then build onto that, having the second player be the Arbiter in 2 and the Arbiter and 2 Elites for the three others in 3, making coop more logical. (BTW 4 Player Legendary is fun) But Halo CE was not meant to be a multiplayer game, per se.
Back in 2001, I think offline Coop was just an extra you put in while the online Multiplayer started to grow.
Now it seems mandatory, if a game doesn´t have Multiplayer, it is looked upon weird at first, especially if it is a shooter. Sometimes it even gets a worse score just because of that.
"Pro: Epic Storytelling never before seen in Videogames, Contra: No Multiplayer"

 

[Kermi]

but if you got bored with it I suspect you found it too easy. Bump it up to Legendary.

Perhaps you're right, but pet-peave time.

Years back, I mentioned on a message board that I didn't much care for Doom 3, finding it boring and way too easy on the Hard difficulty, there not being a single section where I died more than once.

Someone shot back that I should play it on Nightmare (the difficulty that only became available after completing the game) as if this was the only possible reason I could have been bored with the game. Because it couldn't be that I was bored because of the brown levels filled brown enemies attacking in the most predictable way and only one section being the slightest bit visually interesting.

Thing is if I'm bored with a game, it's rarely because I think it's too easy. And dying more often will only make me more bored, since I'd get stuck playing the same boring level for a much longer period of time. I think I played CE on Heroic and I probably would have given up a level sooner if I had tried it on Legendary. Last thing I would want is to get stuck on that boring Covenant ship for *longer*.

For me, pumping up the difficulty on a game that's boring me would make me bored *and* frustrated. I'm much more likely to drop the difficulty down to easy (or turn on god mode) to get less bored.

And this is fine logic to apply. However, the way Bungie approaches their game combat has always been the "thirty seconds of fun". Short, fast-paced battles. You move from encounter to encounter - now I've already admitted in this thread that Halo CE suffered from some atrociously dull and frustrating level design. Reach's battles, and I think expecially in a level like New Alexandria, apply this rule well, but if you aren't challenged for those 30 seconds before moving onto the next encounter you're just going to focus on the mechanics of what you're doing instead of the experience.

New Alexandria is either a level where you hop from platform to platform to trigger some seemingly arbitrary objective and kill the stuff that's in your way, or;
New Alexandria is a level where you navigate around tumbling skyscrapers while sections of the planet all around you are bombarded by Covenant supercarriers, fighting off swarms of Banshees as you come in for a landing among hostile forces and fight your way to the jammers. Along the way your increasingly fragile aircraft is prevailled upon to aid in rescue efforts as panicked civilians are ushered to safety by straggling ODST and Marine units.

I wouldn't recommend bumping up the difficulty if it hadn't worked for me. I first played this co-op with a friend who wanted to do it in a hurry so we only played it on Normal despite having previously finished Halo 3 on Legendary. It felt like grinding low-level mobs in a MUD. We blazed through everything and suddenly it was over. I was underwhelmed.

I went back and played it co-op with my wife on Heroic and I was stunned by how much I had missed the first time around. Now playing it through solo on Legendary (not counting the various missions I've replayed for challenge purposes) and again my estimations have been raised.

Making a game harder isn't always an instant alleviation for boredom if the game itself is boring, but there's always the chance a good game just didn't get a chance to impress you.

 

[Netrigan]

I've still not completely warmed to recharging health/shields in FPS. So much of my enjoyment of the genre is because of the death of a thousand cuts. There are few encounters that will kill you outright, but when you string together four or five tough encounters, you often find you health getting lower and lower after each health kit. It's beyond nerve-wracking to be cruising around a Serious Sam level with 10 health, so you hold off quick saving, hoping that you find health before a dozen serious baddies spawn in to finish you off.

The recharging games I've played. I'm either finding it too easy or waaaaay too hard, which is fine in a sandbox game (since I can wander off and do something else), but drives me a bit nuts in a linear FPS. Only the Call Of Duty series has avoided this for reasons I'm not entirely clear about.

 

[Still Life]

Repetitive gameplay? Are you kidding? Every headshot, every twitch kill is a completely new and different experience from the last. Like in the degrees you turn. And who you're killing. And stuff.

That has to be the most fanboyish thing I have ever heard. Yahtzee is right, the gameplay is somewhat repetative but the vehicle sections break it up quite nicely.
You were most likely blinded by expectation that you failed to see the games repetativeness, each mission contains at least one "defend this" type objective which did get somewhat annoying.

Also surprised Yahtzee didnt mention the forge, would have thought Yahtzee would have enjoyed building a giant metal penis or a giant version of one of his Imps. Ah well.

I think that was sarcasm in the previous post.

 

[King Toasty]

I keep out of these flame-wars by not owning an X-Box. And also not having any money.

 

[DeathPenalty]

LOl.
It's a good game.

It's the only good classic shooter out.
I hate "realistic" shooters and thats all thats been coming out. CoD, MoH, and BF: BC all FAIL!

At least Halo is legit. x]

 

[Gotham Soul]

I want that giant panda plushy.