Halo Remake + other cool stuff

[Kailea]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

as much as I dont like Halo, I will admit that the lore and story (screw reach the game) is good. It is why I have tried every time a new one has come out, to play them, but once I beat the story mode, thats pretty much it, Online play does not interest me in the least.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

Who plays Halo for the lore anyways? All of the characters lack the charisma of the legendary people in StarCraft. There's only so much nonsense made up sci-fi stories one can take.

Halo has had books since the game launched and continued to, comic books and an anime compilation effort that was quite good, actually. Better than the Animatrix, anyway. It was also among the first games to publish its soundtrack commercially in the west.

I haven't played a Halo game since the first game, but I love the soundtrack and can sit down and watch Halo Legends and enjoy that. I'm not the batshit crazy Halo fan, but I can see where the fan appreciation comes from. And at least there was some sense of vision in place when they wanted to expand Halo into other mediums.

When you do that sort of thing after-the-fact, you risk bringing the whole thing down with you. And, again, let's just look at The Matrix for a second. It spread too fast, there was no consistency in direction and most people couldn't be bothered to watch the second and third movies again. Hell, I'll watch Star Wars Episode II again before I go near Reloaded and Revolutions.

Halo and the .hack series at least had a vision and not a bunch of halfassed shit to go with them.

[Malacite]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

.hack was fucking epic really wish I'd finished the games.

Back to halo though, Reach honestly pissed me off beyond words. Not just because the fucked up the canon, but because they did it deliberately. They know damn well that's in the books because they helped write every single one of them. And they're all pretty good too.

John is *such* a better character in "The Fall of Reach" it's not even funny, as opposed to a glorified red shirt role in the games. The Covenant are legitimately interesting as well if you bother read into their back stories and lore. The Scarabs, for example, are actually giant Lekgolo (hunter worms) colonies!

I can't wait for the new Forerunner trilogy to come out. The halo movie-thing was OK, most of the videos were good but a couple of them were just bad/retarded, like the Spartan L337 ... I've never seen a poorer attempt at poking fun of DBZ in my life. God they even mimicked Akira's art style.

Love the music though. Fucking LOVE IT! It makes me sad that 343 Industries won't have Marty on board, because imo, much like FF, the music is huge part of the game's atmosphere. Marty is Halo's Nobuo, and without him it won't be the same.


I'm not a "batshit" Halo fan, but I do really enjoy it and seriously hope that 343 starts fixing things that were done right the first time in CE and then broken in every other game - namely the Assault Rifle & Shotgun. It has pissed me off to no end that ever since Halo 2, the shotgun just will not kill people consistently. Whoever heard of a shotgun that's only effective within a 5~10 foot range?! And even then I'm sick of blasting people dead-center at near point-blank just to see them live and proceed to punch my lights out. Bullshit.

That's the only thing I'm willing to give to CoD, specifically MW2 - the damage and ranges on the guns feels about right. Popping fools in 1-shot with the SPAS-12 from 20 feet away (with stopping power & a grip/Steady aim) was awesome. Halo CE actually took it a bit too far as I remember blasting people and still knocking off like 1/3 of their health from almost 50 feet away (I think it was on hang 'em high) and in Bad Company 2 you can hit people from insanely far away, though it won't do full damage. Shotguns do have a spread but it's not nearly as wide as most gamers think until about the 30~40 foot range. It's actually a fairly tight grouping.


Lastly, my rant over the AR. I still don't think CE's AR is all that great, but at least you could drop someone in 16 bullets (if they didn't pistol your ass) and the damn thing held enough ammo to drop four people without needing to reload. Assuming you didn't miss any shots that is. Compare this to Reach, where it takes 18 bullets and you only have a 32 round magazine. Err, wtf Bungie?

tl;dr Halo is still awesome, haters gonna hate, and 343 will probably do a better job overall (I hope) on the gameplay.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

I'm not a "batshit" Halo fan

I think we have enough evidence to refute you on this and Final Fantasy VII, really.

Really, you get really worked up about the game not following the story of the Reach to the letter when it has no effect on the main trilogy either way. Of course they didn't follow it on purpose, because you would be complaining that there was nothing new added to the story if they did follow the book. Plus its not like it suddenly doesn't feasably connect to the other games. Everyone in this story is fucked from the start. No survivors, no one lives to tell the tale. You can take the book of the game and either is valid, really.

Book nerds always ruin the fun of movies. And games.

Ya think I really got worked up over The Green Mile?

They left out pretty much all of the present-day storyline with Paul Edgecomb and the jerk orderlies in his nursing home. And they really didn't really bother with the gory details of Paul's urinary infection back when he a younger man. It really hurts when he pees, I get it. I don't need the extra paragraphs detailing the experience. All that's important is John Coffey (like the drink only spelled different) fixes it somehow.

Sometimes books and games make things out to be a little too important. Why spend all this time developing a character if he's going to die well before the game or movie ends. Hudson is a prick in Aliens, what more do I need to know? The prick is going to die at some point.

They never build up Johnson in Halo. He will show up, play drill sergeant and get picked off at some point. He's like Kenny in South Park.

[Icemage]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

And I could argue the same was true for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII.

Just because something doesn't do something new or innovative doesn't mean it can't be a great game. If we only ever banked on new and innovative concepts to be popular and memorable, we'd wouldn't have a gaming industry to speak of.

So we're praising mediocrity? :/

LoZ:OoT had pretty good game design. It was clever, and you could see there was a lot of attention to detail. I don't think I'm comfortable lumping it in with the likes of a vanilla game like Halo.

FF7 is also overrated; the gameplay's pretty good (aside from the wtfwhyisthistakingacentury summons that everyone seemed to go ga-ga for). Story-wise? Eh.

The only thing I was honestly pleasantly surprised in Halo 1 to see was "my god allies who will man a turret on my vehicle and actually SHOOT things without missing?!" Other than that, the gameplay is pretty vanilla. Mostly boring weaponry. Mostly boring enemies. It doesn't do much wrong (other than that dreadful Library section, as mentioned previously), but in light of modern gaming, it's pretty unexceptional.

I can point to ten games I played in the last twelve months that I found more enjoyable than Halo 1.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

I think we have enough evidence to refute you on this and Final Fantasy VII, really.

We have different definitions then. I define the batshit fans the same way I label fanboys = idiots who blindly follow & death something to death even when it goes sour because in their eyes the creators can do no wrong and everyone else is full of shit.

I love the Halo universe as a whole, and hate to see any story just arbitrarily fucked with on the level that bungie did. They could have still made it an original story without having to contradict the book as much as they did, but they pretty much just re-wrote the whole fucking thing and even fucked with the other canon. That's just not cool. And it's funny you should even mention FF7 because Reach was basically Halo's version of Crisis Core - New (old) hero who was apparently the "real" star valiantly fights a losing battle and eventually dies passing the torch to the lesser, undeserving character. Yeah, real fucking great story crafting there.

Again, I didn't mind the idea of a unique story - but it was so poorly done that even ignoring the canon for a moment, the game doesn't even stand up on it's own merits. It was like a watered-down Halo 3. At several points in various missions you can spot massive conflicts going on in the background, but never get to participate in them. The game just left such a bad taste in my mouth when I finished it I'm just disgusted with Bungie. If I didn't enjoy the MP I would trade it in. Bungie is however, for all intents & purposes dead to me. Such a classless, half-assed way to bow out.


As someone who loves to write from time to time as a hobby, I take offense to Halo Reach on multiple levels. And 7 is over-rated. It was good, but really feels like FF6 with a smaller cast. They shouldn't even have bothered making Dirge or Advent Children ugh...

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

We have different definitions then. I define the batshit fans the same way I label fanboys = idiots who blindly follow & death something to death even when it goes sour because in their eyes the creators can do no wrong and everyone else is full of shit.

You define someone as a "fanboy" when something goes sour for you and other people continue to enjoy it (I don't know, maybe because its good?). When someone likes something and you don't you say they're dickriding, which is about as infantile as you can get.

Yet you jump into the same old shit over and over when Halo Reach pops out of your lips. Always about how the story wasn't like the book right down to the letter or if not that, then its that a clip has two more bullets in one game and not the other. This is the kind of shit no one cares about.

It doesn't do much wrong (other than that dreadful Library section, as mentioned previously), but in light of modern gaming, it's pretty unexceptional.

Sorry, but it doesn't work like this. You compare Halo, you compare it in context to the time it came out, not now. Shooters have evolved since then, true, and do we have better shooters now? I'd actually argue the genre has gotten pretty damn stupid, not better. I'd hope it had gotten better, but after visiting the genre recently I'd say CoD has pretty much removed any dignity it had.

But if we're grading Halo for what it is, then we're grading it against the other games near its time, not the shooters of today. Half-Life, Counterstrike, Quake II, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Red Faction and let's throw in Timesplitters for good measure. There's Halo's fair competition.

So against these, how is Halo "unremarkable?" Some of them had cut-and-paste, too. Others were rather shallow and riding on gimmicks.

[Malacite]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

Yet you jump into the same old shit over and over when Halo Reach pops out of your lips. Always about how the story wasn't like the book right down to the letter or if not that, then its that a clip has two more bullets in one game and not the other. This is the kind of shit no one cares about.

Just doing the book would have been dull actually, because the battle of Reach was barely 1 day. At no point have I said it had to be the book, you're just jumping to conclusions and further more proves you never read it. There was a massive ground effort that went on, that the book only mentions in like, 2-3 sentences comprising of a broken transmission.

Even with their stupid re-write though, anything would have been better than that melodramatic, mediocre piece of shit for a story & cast. You probably didn't even play it, so don' fucking patronize me with your holier than thou bullshit. Reach was just plain bad all around, canon or no canon. Fuck even ODST was better, and that was pretty weak too.

[Icemage]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

Sorry, but it doesn't work like this. You compare Halo, you compare it in context to the time it came out, not now. Shooters have evolved since then, true, and do we have better shooters now? I'd actually argue the genre has gotten pretty damn stupid, not better. I'd hope it had gotten better, but after visiting the genre recently I'd say CoD has pretty much removed any dignity it had.

But if we're grading Halo for what it is, then we're grading it against the other games near its time, not the shooters of today. Half-Life, Counterstrike, Quake II, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Red Faction and let's throw in Timesplitters for good measure. There's Halo's fair competition.

So against these, how is Halo "unremarkable?" Some of them had cut-and-paste, too. Others were rather shallow and riding on gimmicks.

Excuse me? We're talking about a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved and in that context, it is completely fair to rate it against modern shooters.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

Excuse me? We're talking about a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved and in that context, it is completely fair to rate it against modern shooters.

Cuz you jumped nine months into the future and played it, right?

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes and Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories disagree.

There's a risk that comes with remakes - poke it and change it too much and you break the balance of the original experience. All the trimmings from MGS2 broke the experience of MGS in Twin Snakes. Some slights in the GBA version of KH:CoM took something from balanced to unbalanced in the shift from 2D to 3D. The gameplay seemed the same on paper, but I was able to exploit slights in 3D that weren't nearly as powerful in 2D and then I could just hoard away premium cards, which was an intended change from the original.

But unlike those games, Halo is built with the intention of multiplayer and that means the risk of breaking the original's balance is even bigger if you don't make appropriate changes to the level and gameplay design of the multiplayer component, to say nothing of the online co-op element being added.

A remake of Goldeneye on the Wii would have been an utter bore if it was 1:1 with the N64 game. It retained the feel, the spy theme and the initial dam level, but that aside, it was a fairly different game and making it a different game was a smart move. Eurocom updated it to reflect FPS in 2010. But even with Classic difficulty added to try and add the original experience, the experience was changed because that difficulty didn't remove the checkpoints that gamers come to expect today.

If I died anywhere on a mission in Goldeneye or Perfect Dark on Perfect Agent, I started over from the start. So I die and start over with the amount of armor and health I had left based on the last checkpoint. in the N64 versions, there were no checkpoints, you died and you started over. That threat added a sort of edge the Wii version couldn't claim.

And if that changed Goldeneye, there's a lot that's happened since Halo. I'll grant you much of that is likely to come from Halo 3, ODST and Reach, but there might be a couple more things that get added in. I say we shouldn't jump to any conclusions about it being a straight remake.

I'd wager Zelda:OOT and Starfox 64 will be the remakes that are 1:1 this year, but not many others.

[Icemage]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

^ To that I would say that the Wii remake (and I use that term very loosely here) of Goldeneye was a perfect example of what can go wrong when you take a game with strong pedigree and try to remake it. The level design in the new version just doesn't hold up, and frankly the graphics made me want to claw my eyes out. The controls felt good, but that was the only thing that went right with that game. That's not to say they didn't try, but they missed the mark.

I'm criticizing the game design of the original Halo game. Even compared against its contemporaries, it wasn't anything special aside from splitscreen co-op and unusually good AI. Trying to re-release that game into the modern environment where you can't spit without hitting a FPS in your local GameStop is a tough sell.


Icemage

[DakAttack]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

That's the only thing I'm willing to give to CoD, specifically MW2 - the damage and ranges on the guns feels about right. Popping fools in 1-shot with the SPAS-12 from 20 feet away (with stopping power & a grip/Steady aim) was awesome. Halo CE actually took it a bit too far as I remember blasting people and still knocking off like 1/3 of their health from almost 50 feet away (I think it was on hang 'em high) and in Bad Company 2 you can hit people from insanely far away, though it won't do full damage. Shotguns do have a spread but it's not nearly as wide as most gamers think until about the 30~40 foot range. It's actually a fairly tight grouping.

In BC2 I would snipe people with shotgun and slug combination. Coolest thing ever.

The original Halo was the only one worth playing. The rest were sell-outs. I hope this remake will do the original justice.

[Absentia]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

I had some fun with Halo doing an Xbox LAN party, and had lots of fun playing Halo 3 MP for a couple months, but nothing really stood out as amazing. After playing games like CoD4, Half-Life 2, Tribes:AA, Left4Dead2, etc.. it was hard to go back to Halo.

The gameplay just felt so slow and lifeless to me. MOON JUMP

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

To that I would say that the Wii remake (and I use that term very loosely here) of Goldeneye was a perfect example of what can go wrong when you take a game with strong pedigree and try to remake it. The level design in the new version just doesn't hold up, and frankly the graphics made me want to claw my eyes out.

Uh... the level design of the N64 version wouldn't hold up today, hence why they revisioned the levels. Goldeneye didn't have a strong pedigree, it had strong nostalgia. Big difference. Perfect Dark stomped Goldeneye flat in every respect and never got any love because of that nostalgia and particularly the name-branding Goldeneye had.

Hell, PD XBLA has the levels from Goldeneye multiplayer in it, too. They're just reskinned to look like something from PD, but no one cares because its not Goldeneye.

Also, I don't see what's bad about the graphics, they were pretty high end stuff for the Wii. Maybe not as good as what Nintendo would do themselves, but its far from "tear my eyes out" bad as Wii games go. Hell compared to Black Ops on Wii, it seemed like Activision was actually trying for once.

[Aeni]

Re: Halo Remake + other cool stuff

Am I the only one who thought the level design in Halo 1 wasn't really all that clever? It was a capable but largely unremarkable shooter; it's claim to fame was being the first serious console FPS with marketing behind it.

That was my initial impression of the game when it was first released. Nothing that hasn't already been done on the PC but made from the ground up for consoles (instead of those cheap floozy ports that existed previously)