Halo 3 Beta.. Wow. Just.. wow.

I apologize for my less than stellar writing in this new blog post, but after playing Halo 3 for over two hours now, my heads still buzzing.

To start off.. let me just say this is by far the most fun I have had on my 360 in the past, oh, I don't know -- EVER. Bungie, I heart you. The little time I had to wait after the Crackdown debacle greatly outweighs just how awesome this thing is. I'm not going to write up a huge post, being that I don't feel I've spent that much time with the game to come to any real conclusions. So, I'll just highlight a few things.
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Likes:

-- The MA5C assault rifle. Seriously. It's not an overpowered spawn weapon, but it can really hold its own in a fight. Although to this date I haven't really taken Frankie's advice and fired short controlled bursts...

-- Equipment. Nearly all are useful and at the same time a joy to use. Using the Grav Lift on High Ground, for example, to toss grenades up on two bridge-campers and watching them go flying is awesome. At the same time, tossing down a Bubble Shield to save you or your friend's life can be rewarding down the line. Same for tossing a Power Drainer right before you die :).

-- Dual Wielding! For once, I actually want to dual wield now. Brute Spikers are my favorite; I even tend to trade them off for an Assault Rifle. But please note that SMGs can really hold their own now. I actually got a double kill with a pair of them against two enemies -- with the same clip(s). One had an Assault Rifle and the other a Battle Rifle. Neither survived.

-- Melee! Like many, I was taken aback after trying to whack a guy after my magazine ran out, only to find I didn't immediately jump five feet toward him. Melee lunge = gone!

-- Turrets. Both the actual mini-gun turret and Missle Pod "turret" are a joy to use. I've gotten a few kills with the Missle Pod on Valhalla, and at least a killing spree using the mini-gun on High Ground. Great stuff.


Dislikes:

-- Spartan Laser. Meh, it's more of a personal problem. Just can't seem to get any kills with the thing really. A little more practice might help, but it seems that whenever I get it, someone snipes me from across the map. Facing a Laser sniper from a ways away is also quite frustrating.

-- Snowbound. Design wise, it's a great map. But I haven't had one match I really liked on it.

-- Needler. Maybe it's the same with the Laser, but I can't seem to do anything with it. The design of the actual weapon is somewhat... weak, but I do respect the faster rate of fire. I've only gotten to handle the weapon a couple times, and died after pumping a clip into a guy to no effect. Guess I just plain suck with the thing.


Favorite Moments:

-- The aforementioned killing of two enemies with a pair of SMGs. Great to have the things be useful this time around.

-- Multiple killing sprees with dual Spikers on High Ground. Just fun to see those spikes tear through a bad guy's shields.

-- Getting not one, but two kills with the revamped Brute Shot on High Ground. Firing three shots, I killed one near the Laser nest (more specifically, the ledge out to the right of it; appears people don't notice you there often). Then, checking my radar, jumped down to nail another with three more shots.

-- My first game, actually sticking someone. Not with a Plasma. Oh no. A Spike Grenade. Needless to say I have never before actually stuck someone.. with anything before. Great moment on High Ground.

-- On Valhalla, I blind threw a plasma grenade as I jumped off of the rocks near the middle of the map, toward the river. Not really thinking I would even damage the guy, lo and behold it turned out I not only damaged him, but stuck him. Needless to say, I saved that film :).

-- Once on Valhalla I "rallied the team" together toward the area the Man Cannon sends you. We were red, and all four of us were at various locations near the ending location of the MC. I had two Spikers and an AR, with one plasma, two spike, and two frag grenades. On top of that, I had the mine, which I promptly placed near the end point of the MC (a little off though..). Enemy after enemy kept coming, whom I would promptly tear to shreds with my Spikers with my team mates sniping a few with the Laser and providing support. I only died twice, and actually got the last kill of the game with a sneaky tactic. Hard to fully describe, but really an amazing moment.

All I can think of for now. Hopefully I'll have more over the next week or so. Until then, post your greatest moments/likes/dislikes in the comments!

Here's to more Beta goodness!


~Major Silva

Noteable Blog Cancellations

Well, I've made some "claims" and started some "series" on here within the past few months. Now, one of those never came to fruition, and the other, well.. you'll see.
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"My Halo Humpday Challenge"

Status: Cancelled

A while ago on the forum, I bragged about (and posted an excerpt of) an epic Halo 2 LAN party I had attended. And totally owned at. Well, after two months now of not finishing, let alone posting, the final product I've decided to just cancel it altogether. Written in the style of the Bungie Humpday Challenges, mine described the tale of me and friends, and me owning friends. Needless to say, writing it up was more of an impulse action. And as time went on, the impulse to finish the thing just faded away. So, it will forever be unfinished.

What Will Come of It: I'll likely be writing up a LOT of Humpdays similar to what I started to do with this one come May. You already know what I'm talking about, so I won't even say the word :).
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"Halo 3: What Are You Doing, Bungie?!"

Status: Possibly Cancelled

A little longer ago, I made a post talking about how I thought Bungie was doing a horrible, and in some cases juvenile job with Halo 3. Man Cannons, changing the HUD, and introducing a slew of items deemed "unnecessary" were all targets of mine that I attributed to Bungie's lack of focus and what not. Well, here I stand before you (virtually), and admit that I... like.. Halo 3. The Beta, Weekly Updates with juicy information, the latest Vidoc -- all are factors that have come together to at least stunt my doubt and criticism toward Halo 3. I still have a few doubts, like the Bubble Shield-deploying, trip mine-dropping, deployable grav lift-deploying almighty "X" button, but other than that everything looks great to me. Especially the replay feature, which we have no seen and will experience ourselves in a little over three short weeks.

What can I say, Bungie. You've won me over. For now.


What Will Become of It: There's no saying really. Perhaps after the game, or Beta, is released I'll have my rants about it. But as for now, it's lookin' pretty cancelled to me. Good job Bungie!


~Major Silva

My "Wow Moments"

Half-Life 2. To many Halo fans in 2004, it was the enemy. Critics hailed it as the best game of that year in many categories including storytelling, graphics, and countless other fields. Online polls across the net were pitting it and the console's biggest game of the year, Halo 2 up against eachother, and we saw on many Halo sites forums numerous "Vote f0r Halo 2!!!1!" threads pop up.

Now, two years later much of that is all forgotten among fans of both games. Truth be told, Half-Life 2, quality wise, is my favorite game of all time. The simple fact that it makes you feel when you're entwined within the confines of the spooky Ravenholm. Or when you are gazing upon abandoned rebel outposts on Highway 17, this game truly immerses you into its world -- something game designers are still striving to do (and not necessarily succeeding) to this day.

Enter Halo 2, which offers up hundreds of hours worth of fun times with friends in multiplayer, on top of the dozen or so hours (close to thirty if you're an easter egg guy) within its campaign mode. It never offered me the same feelings as playing Half-Life 2 on the Xbox did, but it always kept me entertained, which is what games are here to do. Right?

But as someone who is planning on getting into this industry someday, I can't help but be concerned about the generic quality that games seem to be striving toward. If you take away the fact that Halo 2 is part of multi-million dollar hit game, and strip it of everything that associates itself with the original Halo, including characters and names, it isn't above any other first person shooter to come out within the last few years. What I'm saying here, is most modern games focus more on dazzling you with special effects and pretty graphics, and let up on instituing these amazing moments that make you say, "Ok, what I'm playing is more than just a game." And yes, followers of the HBO forum will recognize the term I'm about to use here, I call these "wow moments".

I define "wow moments" as any event taking place during the confines of gameplay that make you feel what's happening onscreen, and take you aback. Any little event or scene of gameplay that's more movie-like than something you'd normally think would be a part of a game. These are little scenes scattered throughout the game that truly immerse you, the player, in the universe, and make you believe you're there in that universe, and not sitting staring at a computer screen or a TV. You may get it from a Strider lancing a fellow rebel soldier in Half-Life 2, or from the first scenes of Prey when you're abducted and taken on the ship. But any way you slice it, interactable or not, these little in-game events are what makes gaming great for me, and I hope, for you.

The original Halo provided me with quite a few of these moments, including scenes like your flight into, and the exploration of, the 343 Guilty Spark swamp. The swamp just had this eeriness and total mystery about it that put you through a loop if you weren't expecting what was about to happen ahead. That was one of the many instances that got me immersed into the Halo universe, though truth be told I had read Halo: The Flood long before actually playing the game. Yeah, strange.

But anywho, it stayed with me until summer 2004 when I first watched the first, and only, campaign demonstration of Halo 2. To get my full feelings on that demo, visit this thread on HBO, but back to the topic at hand. While watching the demo and seeing all of the little immersive events onscreen like the Longsword bombing run, the Marine giving you his SMG, the conversation between the pinned down Marine and Perez, before the Marine's cover is blown away after a humerous exchange. All of these instances clearly fit into my explanation of "wow moments". These were things you would see in a real battlefield (if not somewhat stripped of realism seeing as how you're a 7 foot tall cyborg). From beginning to end, the demo gave me a very strong emotional impact that left me wanting to see it again and again. Truth be told, I still watch it to this day, even if it's more for research for my future career rather than "taking me back to the old days".

Then, Halo 2 shipped. And in comparison with the demo, it was absolutely nothing like it. The design of the "hive city", as I like to call it, was totally stripped down to a rather boring skyline, with generic buldings and "skyscrapers" (if you could call them that) that just made you think this all could have happened closer to sixty years in the future, rather than five-hundred and fifty. The Mombasa levels, and the rest of the game, were filled with absolutely none of my "wow moments". Not once was I taken aback and found myself saying, "This is art." No bombs dropping, no A.I. controlled Warthogs squishing a Jackal formation, and certainly no sense of true conflict with bleeding Marines and medics on the battlefield tending them. That being said, the experience was fun throughout, and the art design was great as always with the Halo games.

So with the Halo series so far, we've gone from a really immersive gaming experience, to nothing really above that of its competition? The sad truth these days within the industry is that developers again seem to be looking more toward cool effects (humm.. think "pretty water" and interactable foliage) and jaw dropping graphics, rather than envoking feeling into their work. Not that awesome effects and amazing graphics are bad, it's just that Half-Life 2 has proved you can have those and a stunning campaign that really makes you think and feel. Gears of War, sadly, is yet another example of this. Awesome game, great graphics, but practically no story and no "wow moments" within.

I know I can't personally do anything to change what Bungie does with, say, Halo 3 to give it the same feeling that playing the original Halo did, but I can promise that if and when I do make it into the videogame industry, I'll do my best to institute my little moments into any projects I work on.

Until that happens, I'll leave you with this question that you can leave your answer to in the Comments. What do you prefer? A game with absolutely amazing moments scattered througout an immersive and fun campaign, or a more "mindless" (kind of harsh word there..) gameplay experience of slaughtering aliens and watching cutscenes?

So, "wow moments" or no, for you?

~Major Silva

Halo 3: What are you doing Bungie? PT. 1 -- HUD

2006. For many Halo fans, it was a joyous year. Announcements flew from all parts of the Halo universe. The Halo Movie was put off indefinitely (and possibly canned), Halo Wars and a Peter Jacksonian non-game, non-film Halo adaptation for the 360 was announced. Almost all of these are being handled by other companies in the industry. Except, of course, the biggest of them all, made by Bungie themselves - Halo 3.

Fans were mesmerized, yet not as suprised as you may think, at Halo 3's announcement at the very last Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. In the Chinese Grauman's theatre, Microsoft heads Peter Moore and partyman Bill Gates himself were prepped to show off the first ever trailer for the game. At the words of, "before we walk off stage, let's show these people a little in-game footage of a game they've hopefully heard about" from Gates, the room shook violently, the ground split, and out of the cracks rose a giant Mister Chief, carrying with him his "special" smile and a glint in his eye. Because he was just about to drop the bombshell that was the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer.

The Holy Grail -- The Shiny "3" Sign From the Announcement.

Well, ok. That part wasn't true. But then again.. you weren't there, so how could you tell the difference then? The point is, Halo 3 was announced to stunned audiences in LA and across the world hours later when people saw the video online through providers like YouTube, or on their TVs, on stations like G4. Overall, the announcement was a huge success, garnering massive amounts of attention from everybody from industry insiders and competitors to your average Halo fan.

Fast forward months later to October 2006, and what I'd like to call the "Humm.." month for Halo 3. Why do I call it that? One word - "leak". You know you've seen them, perhaps as far back as the month I'm referring to those foreign magazine scans and translations you scoured for online. Grainy images showing unpolished graphics and somewhat sketchy translations of the European magazine story led to some to squeal in pleasure and envy for the editors who had the chance to play Halo 3's multiplayer, while others moaned in discomfort at a few things disclosed within the magazine.

Yeah, I'm talking about another quite possibly the strangest name of anything to ever (grace?) videogames. And this one's a little embarrassing to utter -- yes, we're talkin' the "Man Cannon". At first, many believed the "Man Cannon" was simply a bad translation, and Bungie wouldn't be insane enough to name anything in the Halo universe something so... childish. But alas, in a post on Bungie.net, one of the staff at the company unfortunately confirmed that, at this time, the "Man Cannon" is set to make it into the game, name included. For a company aparently striving for realism in this fictional, future sci-fi universe, it seems strange that Bungie would go and name one of their new, big "weapons" of the game something that will surely be mocked and/or be the subject of Man Cannon jokes years after the game is released. I can see it now: "Dude, I just pwned you using my Man Cannon!!!11!one! LOL!"

Badly named features aside, a couple of other things were leaked in the wake of the magazine's release, and various internet stories on Halo 3. Namely, the new HUD.

Here it is. Notice the "curved" look, which had been described online previously.

You'll notice a few things about the above image. First and foremost, the overall "curve" of the HUD. No, it's not a picture taken on a curved box TV, it's on an HD Samsung. So the only logical explanation for the curving is that it's in-game, for whatever reason. This change has been described online before, but many dismissed it; not wanting to believe Halo had taken a step more toward Metroid and other sci-fi games of the like. Another note about the new "Metroid" vibe going on is the fact that it is rumored when you die and respawn, a bright wash fills the HUD as it flickers online. It will be interesting to see how this actually looks when the game ships, but right now it's sounding more like a strange, out of place little feature.

Another noticeable difference is the shield bar. Unlike it's Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 counterparts, the shield bar in Halo 3 is now located at the top center of the heads up display, also akin to Metroid Prime. An exact reason why is not yet given, seeing as how Bungie has not talked about the HUD or even actual gameplay for that matter at the time of this article. The shield bar being moved could be attributed to many things, though. For one, the curved shield bar in Halo 2, located down on top of the motion tracker was somewhat hard to actually track how much shield energy was being depleted. A few plasma pistol shots wouldn't even lower the thing on Halo 2 easy, but somehow a single energy sword swipe from an Elite Ultra could easily kill you. But I'm getting off track here. Another possible answer for moving the shield bar is to free up a small amount of space down in that area. For what, who knows. Gameplay wise, I don't see that particular area as being dangerously obscured by the old H2 shield bar (in fact, I'd think where the shield for Halo 3 is would see more action), but perhaps another bar of some sort will show up there. Bubble shield recharge bar anyone?

The final thought for this part of the 3-part (perhaps 4 -- we'll see) series analysis on the design of Halo 3 is a question I have to ask. Why would Bungie make all of these changes to the HUD, control scheme, weapons, and enemies? Is it simply because they have somewhat forgotten what Halo was about? Many gamers were left with a feeling totally different when they finished Halo 2 than when they finished Halo 1. Whether Halo 3 will continue this with changing Halo's old formula again is left to see -- but all signs are pointing to yes. In the end, does something like the Man Cannon give you the feeling you got when you first encountered the Flood on 343 Guilty Spark? And will a Spike Grenade give you the same "freakin' sweet!" moment as when you stuck a Grunt, just to watch them explode and fly 30 feet into the air? Or will these new changes and new weapons just seem like out-of-place, tacked on features to the last of a once-great franchise?

To answer those questions, it's likely we'll just have to wait and see. Until then, keep an eye out for more entries into this Analysis within the coming weeks!

*This article was written between the dates of January 13th and January 21st, and also posted on the 21st. So ignore the "January 13th" post date.

~Major Silva

Gears of War Easter Egg

Yeah, so it's totally non-Halo related, but that's what this Blog is supposed to be, isn't it? In the video below, our very own Unr3alChi3f discovers a pretty funny easter egg in Gears of War for the Xbox 360. If you own a 360 and Gears, here's a description on how to find it, provided by him:

"To get to it, get to act 5, chapter 2 and wait until the berserker comes and smashes through the 2 boxes in the back, from there you can either take care of the berserker by making him run off the train or if you are not patient, you can just run to the back and look at the cereal boxes named Gears Crunch!"



Well, there you have it. Pretty pointless easter egg in that it doesn't effect gameplay, and that you have a limited time to look at the actual various boxes and stuff seeing as how you undoubtedly have a Berserker charging at you, but fun nonetheless. Good find UC!

~Major Silva