Halo 2 Hurting Nintendo

[Fifth]

Halo...
It was a mediocre FPS with a couple of interesting gameplay concepts, decent enemy/team AI, and really repetetive levels.

Halo 2 hasn't really added anything outsanding gameplay-wise. They've got some new weaopns/vehicles/etc. and have added a few new things you can do, but nothing really revolutionary. They've also improved on their level design.

I'd say it was greatly overhyped, but I don't think it's a bad game. I'm not fond of FPS's, but I still had a bunch of fun playing this with my friends.

...

[Bry]

Played it a fair bit myself now as well. Both in campaign, 2 player co-op and splitscreen deathmatch.

The real fun of the game is, as I thought, in multiplayer. Though I thought there might have been more maps.
Microsoft and Bungie were also rather chheky, putting in the "Triad" ie the Triforce for a shoulder patch. Watching the making of dvd, looks like a few members of the development team were using that as their one patch.

Anyway, Halo 2 doesn't really bring anything new to FPS. It just does stuff we're very familiar with well. Dual Weilding, come on, holding 2 weapons at once is hardly a new thing in a first person shooter. Being able to fire them independantly is a nice touch though.

Campaign wise, Penny Arcade summed it up for most of my friends who've finished the game.

Its a great game, but not perfect. They tried to get too much out of the Xbox hardware resulting in some parts as low as 5 frames per second (thankfully only in cutscenes, even if that spoils the mood) and the LOD system, which is very slow to add detail on close in shots. About a second or so during cutscenes. When the camera changes to show a close up of a character, a lower detail model appears first and the nice stuff, specular highlighting, alpha reflections, bump mapping, extra polygons etc plainly grow right infront of you.
That's as it should be for when running around in game shooting, but not for close ups in cutscenes. I'm not talking about something getting more detailed as it approaches the camera, I mean when the camera cuts and you're instantly right up to someones face, you'll still have to watch and wait for the detail to appear.
Really spoils the atmos on cutscenes.

Yes, I'm nitpicking. But when a game was as hyped up as this one, I really didn't expect the LOD code, a GRAPHICS issue, to be on the slow side like that.

Anyway, yeah, multiplayer is where its at, no question. The story is good, but cuts you out in such a way that is really dissapointing. Leaves ya feeling empty.

[Moot]

Fifth said:

Halo...
It was a mediocre FPS with a couple of interesting gameplay concepts, decent enemy/team AI, and really repetetive levels.

I think the Covenant were relying on the UNSC to get bored of going through 3000 corridors that looked exactly the same

[PinkFloydYoshi]

I can give my verdict of it now. I got rudely awaken by a friend of mine shouting at the top of his voice "*loud over done normal voice* Get up you lazy *********! *girly voice* I've got Halo 2! Ahhha ha ha!"

Got up, did my business, stayed playing it for the next 6 and 2 quarter hours, non stop. It's fun, certainly. I've yet to play multiplayer, because I don't have Live yet, but if anyone who's got it want's to get wasted, give me a month or two to get a router and a live account up and running.

BryUK, What Multiplayer modes are you presented with? I'm presuming it's similar to the first one's PC Lan Gametypes (Deathmatch, capture the flag, etc...).

I've been told that there's a possibility that there's a third one, to come out for XBox neXt(It's a codename) which (**Possible spoiler**) could see the Covenant Arbiter and his blokes teaming up with the master cheif. I like the first Covenant game's, I found (**More Spoliers**) cutting the space station away very different for a game, and I liked the (What I call) Covenant Dance music playing in the background the first time you pilot the Banshee as the Arbiter.

Overall verdict, 8/10.
2 marks off because I noticed (And probably you have too - You might have mentioned it somewhere too BryUK) it starts to load some of the scenery as you're looking at it, and it comes up as a large blob, like you're crossing into a new map with a building in front of you, it loads it a little late. The rest is really good. Can't wait to get my own copy of it, and start multiplayer.

**All of the above is my own opinion, please don't have a go at me for having my own opinion of the game - It's happened**

[Bry]

Yup, that's the LOD problem I mentioned.

Multiplayer is a evolution rather than a revolution.
The same game types: Slayer, King of the Hill etc.

An improvement is the addition of the quick options which lets you quickly change options like vehicles and weapons temporarily instead of having to edit and save a whole new game type.
The vehicles are also rebalanced, like the Banshee loses its bomb, the tank is faster etc.
The scorpion is pretty much death now. The rate of fire on the main gun is much faster but still as deadly. The new sights also make it much more accurate.

The new boarding options will probably work great online in large matches, but aren't THAT helpful offline in splitscreen. Its hard to sneak up on people unless they are really distracted and you can only hijack a vehicle if its going slow enough. So its not an answer to being run down.

Blood Gulch and Beaver Creek return in remixed forms. I think Blood Gulch is back not just because of being a great open level, but also in tribute to the RedvsBlue series.

One thing I'm really dissapointed in is that there are no bots. That would have been such a nice touch for the people who don't have Xbox Live.
Perfect Dark managed it, why can't this.
It would have been great to have a team of 4 human players agains however many bots and allowed the teamwork 'buddy' system to really work without having to buy Xbox Live, Router etc.
But I guess if I want to really get the most out of Halo 2, I'll need to set up a LAN of multiple Xboxes and TV's

[blinx]

I have no interest in Halo 2. Blinx 2 is so much cooler!!! I went to the store to get Blinx 2, and one whole rack was covered with Halo 2 Strategy Guides and calendars. Puh-lease!!!

[Bry]

Weeell, at the end of the day Blinx was a bit of a flop (ie it didn't sell very well. That has nothing to do with the quality of a game) and Halo wasn't, so its hardly a surprise Halo 2 is going to get just a little more coverage. Alot of people who bought Blinx were expecting a platformer and they got more of a puzzle game. Halo and especially its sequel has always been Microsofts Xbox trumpcard.

As an aside, I've had Half-Life 2 since Tuesday. I haven't played very far (waiting for a new mouse) but I can say the game engine is truly stunning. Its just amazing all the little things you can do. Pick up just about any piece of scenery. Crates, bottles, boots, bikes, boxes, tins... amazing stuff. The most impressive thing I've seen so far is when I pushed a swing in the part a bit unevenly. The physics when it bounced off the swings frame, then into the other swing seat was just... real. Perfectly natural. Everything interacts with everything.
We are going to say some truley amazing things done with this game engine.

Halo 2 was exactly as I expected. Great graphics.
Half-Life 2 actually amazed me to the point of my jaw almost hitting the floor.

[Toshi]

I know Bry, i saw clips of Half-Life 2 over the internet, and all i have to say about that is OMG!!!!!

Halo 2 has some tremendous graphics too, played it with my friend in Gamestation, and i was pretty amazed by it!

Aint graphics getting better, but gotta say this, graphics dont really make a good game...

[Bry]

Its not the graphics that are just good (to be honest, Doom 3 is probably better looking, so the graphics themselves didn't really blow me away), its the -engine-.
The way the game works. Being able to interact with just about anything isn't down to just graphics. It's the physics of the objects within the game world that make Half-Life 2 really stand out. And since the entire game is just one huge level, it can really suck you in.

Graphics can't make a bad game good, but they can make a great game excellent.

[Toshi]

BryUK said:

Graphics can't make a bad game good, but they can make a great game excellent.

Good point, i mean look at Gran Turismo 3 (4 if you are REALLY interested). That looks absolutely amazing and its one of my all time favourites!!!

Then you look at...erm...Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex (a game i wish i never had...) that was appalling!

[Moot]

BryUK said:

Halo 2 was exactly as I expected. Great graphics.
Half-Life 2 actually amazed me to the point of my jaw almost hitting the floor.

Same here, that game is awesome... and it runs pretty slick on my comp too, which I didn't expect with all the physics being thrown about

What cool though, is how its all worked into the game, rather than just some gimmick they tacked on.

Other than that, I had lots of fun throwing breezeblocks at the combine in the opening prologue and dropping stuff on them from the rooftops

[Bry]

Yeah, when you had to move the crate to get out the window, I thought that was pretty cool.
But the interaction with the guard right after that when he knocks the can onto the ground, then orders you to pick it up and put it in the trash can, that just made me smile and I thought. "Yep, We've got something special here"

[PinkFloydYoshi]

Another game which i've yet to play. The first was awesome though. Valve Software have always been rather good at making games. The original Half Life was no exception. I remember one of my favourite parts being the blast pit. That was overly fun.

A friend was telling me about a part where you have to throw the tv out the window to get this blokes attention. I thought that was funny.

I hear stories of how good the game license authentication system (or Steam game delivery system) is. That's always good to hear because other pc games companies can follow suit until that's cracked, then a really good one is made straight after to defeat the pirates chances at pirating it.

Shame the same can't be done for console games.

[Bry]

Well, I have to admit that Valve might actually be getting shot in the foot there. To put it in perspective, 3 of my friends were all interested in the game, but none of them have internet access at the moment. One of them just doesn't have it, and the other two have recently moved into new places for university and have more important things to worry about like food and bills.
So out of 4 people I'm the only one who can actually install it. We like to assume everyone these days has internet access, but you can't exactly authenticate your game at the library or work and only play it there or something.
I guess we'll see how the net requirement will affect sales.

Truth be told, even I didn't like have to wait the half an hour for Steam to authenticate everything. Ontop of that, I'm not sure I like the idea that they could, at almost any time, just disable my game through some mistake. With them being on the other side of the atlantic, that would be easy to get sorted out either.

Oh well.

As far as I know, the GCN still hasn't really been cracked to pirating. There were videos around, but they were shown to be fake. Then I think people just stopped trying or that it wasn't worth the effort.
If it can be done, it must have been kept really low key.
Though for that matter, I think a fair bit of the Playstations success was how easy it was to chip and play copies that only cost a couple of quid.

[PinkFloydYoshi]

Shamefully, it has, but theres a catch. I won't say how it's done here because I have an inkling that it's against ProBoards ToS to explain how to pirate games/circumvent copy prevention.

You need to know how to network a pc, to put it a simple way.

And yeah, I do see your point about users requiring internet to use Half Life 2. I didn't think of that at first.

[Bry]

Well, even if the cube has been cracked, its nowhere near as widespread as the PS2 or Xbox.
Though some people who modded their Xbox might be having trouble now with Halo 2 online, lol.

[Moot]

I know the main reason people I know bought playstations is so they could be chipped

[Lazo]

Of course.

My neighbor has 50 playstation games. Two are real.

[Soul]

The entire source code for Half Life 2 was stolen in October. It was then compiled and released underground-style.

www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1661629,00.asp

This is what happens when you hire people that know nothing about computer security.