The HALO Universe

[VegaLA]

Halo Reach begins it's Beta for those of you with Halo ODST, is anyone still playing any of the Halo games or have an interest in any of the Media?

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/22453/New-Halo-Reach-ViDoc-Carnage-Carnivale/

http://haloreachinfo.com/

I remember a bunch of us here getting excited about Halo 2 since it was the first Halo game with MP and we had a some sort of Clan on  the go way back in 2004.
With Halo 3 four of us were able to to play the Campaign in online co-op. SimonG, Terminally Relaxed, Huzzie and myself played through the bulk of it together, hard to believe that was three years ago now.

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,14272.msg671306.html#msg671306

May 3rd for the Beta kick-off. Looking forwards to some CaB action, check out more info here:

http://www.bungie.net/

and for general Halo stuff, as well as the Legends media:

http://halo.xbox.com/en-us/halowaypoint

http://warnervideo.com/halolegendsdvd/

Vega...

[Slaaaaabs]

Reach looks a lot better than I expected for the "last" Bungie Halo game.

Great video with a shit-talking Luke Smith here... http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/halo-reach/videos/g-2009060110582402047/v-20100423115236876054

My current 360 is banned from Live so I'll probably pick up a new one around the release of Reach (a 360 slim if the rumours are to be believed)

[bennett]

I was and still am a massive fan of the first 3 halos.  Unfortunately I came to the online side of things late and grew bored pretty quickly of repeatedly being killed by 12 year old Americans who took offence at my swearing. 

So is ODST worth getting?  I haven't played it yet but would be quite tempted (not right now though, I'm only a few hours into Fallout3).

[VegaLA]

I only got ODST the other week and so far i'm loving it, however I do love my Halo stuff, which is why I started this thread in the first place. It has 4 player campaign Co-op which is always fun between friends, and me and some of the Whores had a blast playing Halo 3 campaign together.

You may want to wait for Reach, but then again that does not get released till November and ODST does have some amazing looking maps, Avalanche being my personal favourite. I'm itching for a game of Sniper on that one with some of you whores.

As a side, never understood the complaints about MP, as there are enough of us here to warrant some decent MP games, just hit the Xbox Live thread and send out an invite with Date and Time.
Also, change settings on your 360 so that only Friends can use Live chat.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

My brother got ODST the day it came out, and as we have done with all the previous Halo games, we played through the campaign coop. We weren't impressed the first play through - it felt like Halo 3 with all the fun taken out - but on repeated plays we got out of the habit of playing as Spartans and it revealed itself to be pretty good, although the "hub" style structure doesn't really work and just means lots of wandering around. And you do get the extra multiplayer maps. It's definitely worth getting if you like the Halo series.

[bennett]

alright.  I'll try and ort out some kind of multiplayer action at some point.  I was going to complain that I often only have spare time at odd times, like 8am to 4pm occasional weekdays, but then the majority of whores seem to keep very strange hours so there'll probably still be someone out there.   

[VegaLA]

I'll probably be on ODST this W/E. Around 10AM your time so if you post soemthign in the XBL thread you may get enough Whores in time for a decent 3X3 session. I know SimonG/Sinbad is always up for giggles.

Spoiler alert

LEAVE IT!

[close]

[bennett]

I'll probably be on ODST this W/E. Around 10AM your time so if you post soemthign in the XBL thread you may get enough Whores in time for a decent 3X3 session. I know SimonG/Sinbad is always up for giggles.

Spoiler alert

LEAVE IT!

[close]

unfortunately I'm working quite a lot of this weekend - and at 10am I will be on my way somewhere in the car on saturday and on sunday I will be absolutely horrible. 2 hour countdown to the biggest game of the season so far.

However I will try and sort out something soon.  Is anyone up for going through and of the first 3 again on the 360 in heroic or legendary?  My online user is stupidly not the one I've completed them all with because I got confused.

[VegaLA]

Did anyone Download the Reach Beta today?
Or did XBL come to a grinding halt?

First impressions....anyone...anyone... Bueller, Bueller...

[Big Jack McBastard]

Not done this business yet but will, and shall, and will gladly have a shooty.

How long does it run for?

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

It runs for two weeks, iirc.

Had a quick play when I visited my brother a few days ago, a bit slow to get a game started but not too bad. The armour abilities are ace, especially the flying one. New BR kicks arse, as does the Magnum (finally, a decent human pistol makes a comeback to Halo!) Not played enough to rate the maps yet.

[VegaLA]

Two bloody weeks? Is that all? Not sure about that but...bloody hell.
So far there have been only two maps available, 'Sword station' and 'Some other one'. Both pretty cool and sword station has some rather nice Death star looking interiors that make me smile.
Got to play Crazy king which was a joy and Stockpile which, for once, everyone was playing properly resulting in a lose for me.

The Interface is proper nice, and once you are matched up you have the choice of voting for one of three matches.
Hope to get some more action in this weekend.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

Two bloody weeks? Is that all? Not sure about that but...bloody hell.

I might be a bit out but it's definitely not for very long. I don't know how long a game would normally be in beta testing, anyone?

The Interface is proper nice, and once you are matched up you have the choice of voting for one of three matches.

Ooh yes, this is much better than the veto!

[VegaLA]

Halo Reach just around the corner.

Forge looks greatly improved. Do we have any architects in the house? I'd love to design my own map but I just don't have the time. A caB layout would be fun.

Anyone getting this title? Seen the hype vids yet? As usual Sinbad and myself will be playing the campaign online should anyone want to join the 4 player co-op session.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Chalk me up.

I've a big raft of downloads going at the moment so I'm tying up our net connection night and day with them but it's coming to a close in the next week or so, so I'm well placed for a bit of a shooty.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I enjoyed Halo 3, much more than the slightly duff Halo 2 campaign which hopped about too much and had some less than enjoyable levels. But even Halo 3, enjoyable though it was, doesn't match up to the original. They've come on leaps and bounds on the multiplayer, but everything that's happened since the original has just felt unnecessary and some features even retrogressive.

Halo 3 has 2 or 3 really badass levels that are a good few hours of solid fun, but they don't quite match up in terms of the overall story or the crafting of the levels. The original Halo feels at all times like a work of art. Even though it's from a first person perspective, it always feels cinematic. Even the interior levels feel like that. The sequels often don't. Halo 3 feels ugly and messy (though not as much as Halo 2 does) in comparison, though it does have its moments.

I've always felt that Halo 2 conned the audience by promising a story that was about Master Chief protecting the Earth, only to go planet-hopping and even character-hopping. The stuff with the arbiter was cool but it felt like you'd rather it was a story you unlocked by playing the Master Chief campaign first. I'd certainly rather it was that way.

I've only had a quick go on ODST, and it reminded me of Halo 2 a little bit. Halo Reach looks as if it will be more like Halo 3 which is fine by me.

People still assert that Halo isn't as good as (other) people make out, but the comparative ordinaryness of the sequels confirm that it was an extra-special combination of all those things that go into making a game something more than the rest. It still looks perfectly fine too, even though I wasn't bowled over even at the time by the graphics, like Half-Life, they have a robustness that has stood the test of time. And they don't have that bump mapping glitch on all the cut scenes that ruined Halo 2.

[Mister Six]

Halo 3 has 2 or 3 really badass levels that are a good few hours of solid fun, but they don't quite match up in terms of the overall story or the crafting of the levels. The original Halo feels at all times like a work of art. Even though it's from a first person perspective, it always feels cinematic. Even the interior levels feel like that. The sequels often don't. Halo 3 feels ugly and messy (though not as much as Halo 2 does) in comparison, though it does have its moments.

Yes, absolutely agree with this. Looking up on that first level and seeing the ring looping up from the horizon and over your head was a genuinely breathtaking experience. The gameplay was more satisfying, too - the weapons were better balanced and the AI more convincing than in later games, where genuinely wily enemies were replaced by chumps with impossibly good aim. Using grenades to force warriors into the open so you could blast them was fun; being gunned down the moment you rounded a corner by some x-ray-visioned arsehole was not. They swapped 'challenging' for 'difficult', which is never a good thing.

I never really understood the love for the Halo franchise. That first game is a corker, yes, and has some excellent ideas - I won't deny that. But the repetition (it's the flood again! They're going to set off the ring again!) in the later games really shows that they don't have much else to add to that world, and the fact that ODST and Reach both take place within the timeline of the original Halo series suggests a paucity of imagination and ambition.

If it had continued adding crazy big ideas and expanding its universe, Halo could've been doing what the Bioshock series is now doing, but 10 years earlier. It couldn't cost that much to get Iain M Banks onboard to do some consultancy, could it?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

My housemate picked up a second hand copy of Halo 3 the other day. It succumbed to a rather bad scratch just after the second level, so it's possibly too early for me to make a fair judgement, but I was left questioning what all the fuss is about. Presumably a lot of the fans are interested in the storyline, which is understandable as that's the same reason I'm looking forward to Half-Life Episode 3 (if it ever bloody well turns up) but having never played Halo 2, or even finished the first one, that's no good to me. Even having said that, I didn't pay much attention to the plots of Modern Warfare 2 or the Gears of War games either, but they still seemed much more satisfying to play.

Despite never finishing the first one (I got stuck at an autosave with no health or ammo and exploding Flood gits everywhere, with the previous save being a couple of hours before that point. Plus, it was the last year of university, among other distractions) I did enjoy it a lot at the time. It felt like a refreshing change from they typical FPS's of the time, but 3 doesn't seem to have progressed beyond that. Even the graphics - which in a flagship title are the one thing you'd expect to be all state of the art - look a bit last generation. It's not bad, it just seems kind of average.

[VegaLA]

So, does Reach get released there today then?

Sinbad managed to get his copy early, Saturday morning delivery courtesy of Amazon, jammy git, and I should be picking up my copy come tomorrow.

Anyone get this today?

[pk1yen]

Comes out tomorrow I think -- but my parents are withholding my copy until I go home for my birthday on the 24th. These next ten days are going to be horrible - I've got the last three games the day they came out. As an additional kick, I couldn't afford the £100 legendary edition complete with Action-figure model set  :(

[VegaLA]

Guardian review sounds promising.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/sep/12/halo-reach-xbox-360-game-review

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I'm not sure that the 'slightly washed out colour pallette' is a feature of the Halo universe, more a feature of the Xbox 360 perhaps. For recent first person shooters it's actually rather colourful. The 360 over time will most likely bring to mind shooting baddies in a selection of grey muddy apocalyptic wastelands. Halo is a bit more sort of lush and verdant for the most part.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Picked mine up today will be on this evening from about 6ish I think.

Edit: Might be a fib, think I'll have a goosey at the campaign first, get myself reacquainted.

[VegaLA]

I got hold of it yesterday and it was good to see at least four of you Whores getting involved. Waspy and Terminallyrelaxed to name two.

I jumped straight into FUCKING HELL LADS Campaign, Sinbad compared it to the original Halo. It does look better than the last game, ODST and a great deal better than 3.

Had a quick shot on MP, played a Big Team battle on a map that looks like a remake of the favourite, (I forget the name, the one with all the grass and the two bases at each end of the map) which was fun.
I tried a go on Forge World,  but I don't have the patience to design my own map but it woul be good to have a CaB map to play on. I'll check out what some of the more dedicated players have created later this week. There may well be some great designs out there.

Update to ask: "FUCKING HELL LADS " does this appear when you mistype 'The'?

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

My brother has this so we played some coop and deathmatch last night. The campaign is significantly harder than any Halo, so far at least - and it's great to be fighting Elites again! Online is sweet, the new maps are work well and it's nice to see a few old favourites back again,  including Halo 2's Ascension.

So far, so living up to expectations...

[waste of chops]

Update to ask: "FUCKING HELL LADS " does this appear when you mistype 'The'?

Aw, I was hoping "FUCKING HELL LADS Campaign" was the new name for playing it on Legendary.

[wasp_f15ting]

So...

I am on mission 10 of Halo Reach on Legendary alone, I am the second bit of the courtyard leading into the entrance of the Pillar.. is this the hardest bit or are there more to come? I have played the campaign for 31hrs  :(

I would not recommend completing this game on Legendary straight from the outset, as the great story just kind of gets lost in the background. I have never been so frustrated by a games hard AI as much as this... anyhoo hopefully I can finish it this week.

[Zetetic]

I remember a bunch of us here getting excited about Halo 2 since it was the first Halo game with MP and we had a some sort of Clan on  the go way back in 2004.

Well, aside from Halo, yes.

[VegaLA]

I am on mission 10 of Halo Reach on Legendary alone, I am the second bit of the courtyard leading into the entrance of the Pillar.. is this the hardest bit or are there more to come? I have played the campaign for 31hrs  :(

Fuck me Waspy I played this just last night on Heroic and I had to pull in some co-op help. I thought some of the Missions were pretty easy on Heroic compared to ODST but that one stage has upset everything!

[wasp_f15ting]

After 1 day and 11hrs... I have finished it on Legendary Solo. I thought I was going to eject the disk and break it at certain points..

The game mechanic is sooo tight, it is engineered in way to make every DMR bullet count.. I might complete it on easy just to get a better feel for the story as I ignored the cut scenes when they came up. Lovely lovely game though.. I wish there were more fps games like this, I know for sure when Black Ops comes out I will not be playing on anything but veteran. I have got so much more out of the game on the highest difficulty.