Halo 4

It'd be interesting to see the HDR/lighting balance of Halo 3 with the enhancements of Halo 4 (better textures, AO, GI, etc). Halo 3 had amazing HDR but is let down by very simplistic lightmap and ambient map generation that's reminiscent of Halo 1 and 2 than anything resembling modern technologies. Granted, it came out 5 years ago, but Reach also had the same problem to an extent.

Personally I don't have an issue with the bloom, and think Ragnarok (and other maps such as Haven) looks gorgeous. Never noticed an issue with sore eyes but maybe that's due to how my TV is set up.

 

That looks more like light fog to me.

Too much bloom is something like this.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Elephants_Dream_-_Emo_and_Proog.jpg

 

thats OK. Its trying to mimic reality
too much bloom is like that console RPG ~2006/7 where the dudes faces glowed!

yes the above halo shot shows details washed out, rock/ground

 

I agree. I think the lighting so far is fine other than some of the cinematic camera effects, but that can easily be put down to light interaction with the helmet visor.

Otherwise, even at it's brightest outdoors or looking into a light it still pales somewhat in comparison to real light.

Perhaps people should go outdoors on a bright day more often. Or try looking straight into spotlight/halogen security light.

I could see where this could be a problem for people playing in a dark room with a TV calibrated for viewing during the daytime. I can see where that could hurt your eyes. If that is the case, I HIGHLY suggest people calibrate their TV both for daytime viewing and nighttime movie watching/game playing. Most new TV sets should allow someone to easily switch between two different calibration settings.

If I don't do that then the TV is either unwatchable (too dark) in the daytime if set for movie watching in a dark room. Or WAY too bright watching a movie in a dark room if it's set to be watchable during the daytime (this is the setting where I imagine it could hurt your eyes, but then so could movies).

Looks like a typical bright summer/autumn day with a light haze of dust in the air. /shrug.

And this coming from someone who liked the graphics in Reach ever so slightly more. There's things that are obviously better in Halo 4, but I liked the art direction in Reach a bit more.

Still not too far into the game, so can't comment on how the story and campaign hold up to previous Halo games.

Regards,
SB

 

Finished Halo 4 again.

The game feels very short, almost as short as ODST. The AR is still a joy to use. The bloom, post process filters etc still just seem really overdone and at times have all the subtlety of a Havok mine. I couldn't help feeling that someone had watched the Star Trek remake too many times and been influenced by the whole torch->camera visual style of that too.

Also, the new Cortana model is quite sexy. I give her 9 fearsomepirates out of 10.

 

Halo 3 and Reach mp had good gameplay but the majority of the map design was medicore to say the least.With Halo 4, map design is far better than those two games by a wide margin along with controls being more intuitive and tighter as well.Considering these 343i first Halo game, it's a fantastic game and can't wait to see what they do with the series on the next Xbox..

 

Just saw the terminals vid. That helps a ton.

 

LOL! I always liked Cortana's personality, but she really came together as character in Halo 4.

By the way, where the hell is Alstrong? Why hasn't he chimed in yet?

 

Beat it on legendary, this game feels alot easier than prior Halo's. I enjoyed the characters and plot a lot more, but I do have gripes with the crew of the UNSC Infinity.

You don't get to interact with them a whole ton, I wanted more screen time for them. In particular to expand on Del Rio's character. Yea, he's a total ass but c'mon- let's flesh him out a bit better?

Also Palmer said maybe.. Two lines in the entire campaign, in spite of being rather interesting (and pretty). She's the only spartan you've really met, as the chief, since all the II's died or retired. This is a big deal.

He doesn't act surprised or curious at a Spartan (or many Spartans) walking around. He didn't ask any questions. Gamers who were unfamiliar with the books or the Spartan IV program would have also been confused, as there had not existed any other Spartans in the halo games (and the understanding was Chief was the last one) except for Reach.

I'm also disappointed with the anti climactic ending. Its execution was... Poor. I wanted a real fight. I also wanted

Spoiler

Didact

to have more screen time as well, instead of a disembodied voice.

He better not be dead. He's a damn interesting character, very compelling.

 

There's a spoiler thread somewhere here to discuss the ending and stuff.

Infinity wasn't really demonstrated to be as huge as it's supposed to be. Like 5 kilometers long with tens of thousands of people on board and all... But it's probably not going to explode at the end of the Spartan Ops season so there may be some more insight to the ship and the crew.

 

Looks like all my pals are super busy nowadays... so if anyone has yet to complete Spartan Ops, PM me for gamertag. Warning, I'm kinda lame as I haven't played an FPS on consoles for like 2 years. And I'm usually only available from like 8-10PM GMT.

 

He's been around here and there and in the chat channel.

I won't speak for him, but to me Halo 4 was a bit of a disappointment after playing it through twice.

Here's my quick off the top of my head complaints in no particular order:
1) Nothing memorable about the campaign battles.
2) Why do weapons disappear so damn quick? It makes it annoying trying to carry weapons forward into the next section.
3) Why do vehicles disappear so damn quick? I was driving a wraith forward on the Mammoth level and it just f'n disappeared out from under me while I was driving it. It was on safe ground and nowhere near the deadly water.
4) Several times now, 4 times Sunday and 3 times Monday, I've been in an Oddball lobby with 8 players total (min is 8 and max is 10) and it formed up teams as 5 vs 3. WTF 343, did you not even play test this mode?
5) The lag is hilarious to watch as it plays out, rewinding/warping players all the way back their last known locations. I've seen Mantis, Ghosts, and Warthogs rewind on various maps at different times.
6) Hitting "X" every 5 minutes or so to progress forward.
7) The wraith aiming is seriously mental in comparison to previous games
8) Vehicle driving feels messy/mushy/soft.
9) Only 1 funny IWHBYD line throughout the entire campaign.
10) Enemy AI just going all Forrest Gump on you running straight into the wall, be it on foot or if they're flying banshees.
11) Silly checkpoint system not happening similarly to previous games.
12) The story is overly complex for no reason at all.
13) The announcer is just horrible.
14) The sound track reminds me of the 80s trance/electric TRON-style at times and at other times it's a pure ripoff of Star Wars.

 

Definitely! She came across as by far the most human character in the game, which is really cool considering she's the AI.

Yeah.

I guess the answer to both of these is that graphics come before gameplay and and the feeling of continuity you get from things persisting in the game world isn't as important as how good a screenshot looks. Bungie understood and allocated resources accordingly. Maybe 343's testing showed that the console mass market doesn't care though.

These things bugged me too btw. Sometimes in SO weapons disappeared as soon as I dropped them, even when I just wanted to temporarily switch and hadn't moved more than a few feet away for a couple of seconds. It really makes the game feel cheap when it happens - and it happens a lot.

Yeah. Aiming at things in the distance require you to move the camera right up so what you're aiming at disappears off the bottom of the screen.

Yeah, the humour's mostly gone. NPCs have a lot less personality.

Some of the banshee fails are amazing. I saw one fly straight into a wall, slide slowly down the wall as it continued trying to fly forwards, then just clip through the floor and disappear. Forever. The smaller scale of the combat areas doesn't help the drunk banshee pilots avoid trouble either.

 

"Insert Cortana, push that button, kill more enemies, insert Cortana again, retrieve Cortana, kill more enemies". That's pretty much what went on throughout the entire campaign. Finished 4 player Co-op on Legendary. It's Halo. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

@BRiT,
I mostly agree with all your points. The lag in MP is just ridiculous at times. I hope it's just the game building a host record for each player and it will get better over time.

I'm mostly ok with the SP campaign and story. Most annoying to me is the lack of attention to small details. For example, I don't know how many times I've gotten stuck in mid air on those damn covie grav platforms (usually while I'm getting my ass shot off).

What mildly annoys me is how some people lavish praise on 343 and casually disrespect Bungie. 343 clearly went out and got the best talent money could buy, but it seems to me that the Halo franchise is first and foremost a commodity to them, and that really came through in the product they delivered.

 

That is a really simple minded way to describe something, and it can be done with any game, some of my favorite games for example:

Uncharted: You only shoot some guys and climb stuff.

Forza: You only drive and buy cars.

Shadow of the Colossus: You only ride a horse and kill some monsters.

For me what has differentiated Halo all this time is the sandbox experience, the game has several sections where you are open to experiment, the awesome AI that the game has, when you compare it to the non existing one on most AAA shooters, the story. I have played all of the COD games until know and event though I find it really fun, I cannot remember the story on any of them. So the Halo series including Halo 4 does offers something different and fun to a lot of people, it's OK if you don't like it, but please try better next time and describe why.

 

When creating custom games you could allow for team switching. Are you sure that wasn't the case?

Anyway I encountered something really weird after playing a Regicide match. My Gungnirs armor kept on disappearing from the available options list so I had to redownload it twice...strange.

 

I wasn't creating any custom games. I was playing the built in game type 'Oddball' straight from the games built in playlist, so I'm certain that wasn't the case unless 343 is stupid enough to not allow team switching by default in their own playlists. It's relatively simple to balance the teams out before it starts.

It also happened today on Infinity Big Team Slayer twice in two different lobby groups. The lobby was filled with 13 players and it split it out 8 vs 5. Neither side had multiple people in a party or on the same console that would force people to be on the same team.

 

You don't need to be the one creating a custom game. Anybody can create a custom game and when you go to "Find game" it puts you into any game it finds that is open..custom or not.

 

Hmm, I think I was just getting a little cranky when I was on the Legendary playthrough. I'll try and play the campaign again by myself with a fresher mind. Wasn't really feeling it.