Halo: Reach

[Devious]

Has anyone finished the game in Legendary with all skulls on? Is it possible?

I beat Reach on Legendary. It took me about 10 straight hours from about 8:30am and ended somewhere around 5pm. And yes, I pretty much did that the entire saturday.. Don't make fun of me!

I've never experience that much frustration in my life! Nightfall was the mission I had the MOST frustration in.

Spoiler

The part with the two shade turrets was hell! Especially since one of the elites had a focus rifle.

And to tell you the truth, I felt that the jackels were the most irritating enemies. There was a situation where I only had an assault rifle and a shotgun. And since none of those weapons go that far in range, I had to try and get close enough to get through the jackels shields.... Which was impossible since one of the elites had dual plasma rifles. Luckily, I found a weapon crate that had a DMR.. Which FINALLY helped me get through that part.

 

[Devious]

Whoops, accidentally pressed "Submit". lol

Anyways... Always try and get a ranged weapon like a sniper or DMR. The brutes are fairly easy to kill since you can just blow off their helmets and get one clean headshot. The elites on the other hand, they take a lot of damage. Its especially harder to kill them when they have a concussion rifle, which kills you pretty much instantly.

I've never tried turning on all the skulls on Legendary. And I certainly wouldn't want do another Legendary playthrough again...... The skulls will only lead me to smash my controller. lol.

 

[NRP]

Yeah, Legendary + (difficulty) skulls is insane.

I actually enabled the Cowbell, Grunt B-day, and trash talking skulls, but none of the diffulty increasing skulls.

 

[BadTB25]

I'm on a Legendary run through now and have just finished the Sabre level. I only got through some levels due to sheer dumb luck. I am dreading some of the levels that are coming up that I had a hard time on a Heroic difficulty.

I'm hoping that my MP skills will improve as a result of going through this solo.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Finally finished it on Normal and started Heroic. Did Normal first just to get used to console FPS again (last console FPS I played was Halo 3 at launch).

Fantastic game. And I still suck at taking out Hunters. They give me the most trouble out of all the enemies. Is there a good way to take them out? Other than using a grenade launcher or rocket launcher?

Regards,
SB

 

[Devious]

Finally finished it on Normal and started Heroic. Did Normal first just to get used to console FPS again (last console FPS I played was Halo 3 at launch).

Fantastic game. And I still suck at taking out Hunters. They give me the most trouble out of all the enemies. Is there a good way to take them out? Other than using a grenade launcher or rocket launcher?

Regards,
SB

For hunters, I usually have the sprint ability. What I do is I sprint towards them and jump over them so I can get a clear shot of their open areas and then blast them with the shotgun. Yes, they will swing their giant shield back so make sure you get out of the way. Once you get out of the way, just do the same thing.. Jump over them, shoot their open areas. Then rinse and repeat till their dead. It worked quite well.

 

[BadTB25]

Finally finished it on Normal and started Heroic. Did Normal first just to get used to console FPS again (last console FPS I played was Halo 3 at launch).

Fantastic game. And I still suck at taking out Hunters. They give me the most trouble out of all the enemies. Is there a good way to take them out? Other than using a grenade launcher or rocket launcher?

Regards,
SB

Try to take out any other enemies first so that it is just you and the hunters and then follow Deviousb33r advice in the post before mine.

Another option and what I am doing in Legendary is to get as far as possible and snipe them in the back or in the face with the Sniper rifle. It takes more rounds, but you can take them out with face shots. It has worked on the 2 Hunter encounters that I've had so far.

 

[(((interference)))]

Finished the game on Heroic, have to go back and finish Nightfall on Heroic because I completed that one on normal. Game was frustrating at times, mainly I think because you have very little health and even grunts can quickly take down all your shields (unlike every other Halo game).

The plasma pistol is surprisingly good, much better than the AR - it's great as an all purpose weapon to take down mostly everything ( I keep a DMR/NR or power weapon in reserve). I'm quite surprised at how quickly it'll take down Elites and Brutes if you spam the trigger, plus it only uses up 1 battery point for about 3-4 shots so if you have a fully charged pistol it'll last near forever. Plust it can take out shields of high ranked enemies leaving them vulnerable to a headshot (MUCH quicker than any other method - on the last mission an Elite general took 3! spartan laser shots to die) and can disable stuff like Wraiths and turrets.

Spoiler

what's up with Cortana being the package retrieved from the Forerunner structure? She isn't a Forerunner AI, she was created by modelling Halsey's brain (which is why she looks and talks like her). Did I miss something? Because that is a major retcon right there.

 

[Rotmm]

Ok, so I finished last night on Normal and I have to say, great game. My earlier comment about "one of my best games evar" didn't quite feel true by the time I finished it, not because the game got worse in any way, but that the scale and scope of Reach that had me so wowed became the 'norm' and therefore didn't continue to wow me so much.

But definately one of my fave console fps's so far.

I don't think I could finish the game on Heroic, let alone Legendary. I'm just not that good at shooters anymore.... I think I peaked with the original Unreal Tournament Sadly, this is the reason I will keep well away from the online modes, as is the case with most games these days. Being cannon fodder can only be fun for so long

As some before have noticed, I did notice some slowdown in the framerate. It didn't happen too often, but when it did (like on the last level) it made aiming harder to pull off.

Anyway, I'm wondering if this could be because of the Theater stuff? Admittedly, I'm something of a Halo noob, but after finishing the main game I started playing around in the menu and took a look into Theatre. Now, I knew about it cos the replays was a big thing about the original Halo 3 hype, but I didn't until now understand the scope of it. Every moment, every nano-second of my Reach playthrough is there to watch again. I assumed it would save the last 30 seconds playtime or something, but no. More impressively, every physical object in the world is saved. A dropped gun is in the exact same position as it was in real time, the pieces of a destroyed platform is exactly in the same place, etc. And yet even more impressively, that platform falls in exactly the same way with watching the replay, every grenade has the same trajectory, bounces the same way and causes the exact same destructive result with the body and/or scenery behaving the same way.

Am I right to be impressed? I know racers have replay modes, but there are many times less objects to interact with and therefore store for replays. GTA4 has a replay mode on PC where it stores the last 30 seconds of action for replay... but that's only 30 seconds. Also, it's one of the things I turned off to get a significant performance boost.

So is what Reach (and I assume Halo 3 and ODST) doing very impressive, with on the fly storing of data of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of physical objects every 30th of a second? At the same time as streaming in fairly huge sandbox-type levels, running the AI of 50 or so characters, running the interaction of hundreds of physical objects, plus lighing, rendering and everything else related to what is happening on (and off) screen?

I honestly don't know. And I'm probably getting excited by something that any normal Halo fan knew about when Halo 3 came out

 

[BRiT]

If you're having trouble with the hunter encounters, here's a tip to make the first encounter at the base easier.

Spend some time working the Warthog with Gauss Canon up and over the garage barricades. It takes a bit of creative driving and maybe a grenade boost, but when you achieve it, it feels very rewarding. You quickly make minced meat out of everything with that unfair advantage.

This is how xxarthna and I did it on Legendary.

 

[RobertR1]

One of the more impressive things I've seen in gaming recently was the performance during firefight. Alstrong was helping me get the firefight achievements and we used this custom setup that brings out gold elites continously and you're basically invincible with a fuel rod cannon in your hand.

We played on the level called "Corvette." In the bonus rounds of firefight, you are generally overwhelmed with enemies. So here with had a screen full of gold elites spamming all sorts of weapons while Alstrong and I were rapid firing our Fuel Rod cannon with unlimited ammo. The amount of stuff onscreen was simply not believeable and at no point did the game become unplayable.

In a way, that might have been the most impressive tech demo I've seen this generation.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Spoiler

what's up with Cortana being the package retrieved from the Forerunner structure? She isn't a Forerunner AI, she was created by modelling Halsey's brain (which is why she looks and talks like her). Did I miss something? Because that is a major retcon right there.

Spoiler

Cortana isn't any different from past Halos here. She just happens to be carrying the information gleaned from the Forerunner tech. One of which is most likely the location of the ringworld that we first visited in the first game. Implications being that the blind jump wasn't so blind. Cortana has after all been holding a lot of information to herself throughout the first 3 Halo's.

So after playing through Reach, it's very likely that Cortana charted the jump to the ringworld. Having it remain a blind jump in the minds of the crew of the Pillar of Autumn makes it easier for her to keep her real mission a secret.

Even after Halo 3, I don't think we know the full extent of what Dr. Halsey wants/wanted her to do. And now that the Halo IP is in the hands of 343 Industries, it'll be interesting to see where they decide to go with it. More side stories? Or pick up with Master Chief again?

Regards,
SB

 

[NRP]

I was thinking the same thing as what Silent_Bhudda just said about Cortana.

Regarding Firefight performance, I was just as amazed as Robert. Brit, xxarthna, and I did that same Corvette map. I was jetpacking while spamming rockets, and there were so many enemies, explosions, plasma effects, etc that I could hardly see! I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it myself.

 

[AlNom]

In the novel, it's mentioned that Cortana deciphers some forerunner artifact from a different planet; she realizes it's a set of spatial coordinates, so she uses that in order to chart an escape destination.

 

[NRP]

Al,
Read Halsey's journal if you haven't already. Very interesting stuff.

 

[dragonelite]

Al,
Read Halsey's journal if you haven't already. Very interesting stuff.

Spoiler

It will tell that it isn't cortana your moving in the campaign but a clone/copy that holds a lot of data surrounding the forerunner database.

Feels kinda dirty playing gruntpocalypse and barely surviving wtf was bungie thinking giving grunt fuel rod guns but the pay is good average 2k cr per 7 min match.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Al,
Read Halsey's journal if you haven't already. Very interesting stuff.

Also proves one of the most important space opera rules:

Spoiler

everyone's related to each other, in this case Miranda Keyes was Halsey's daughter.

343 really is in an interesting but quite challenging position here, by the way. Their timing suggests development on the 360 - they've probably gone into full scale production during the summer, which should put the release date within the next 2 years or maybe even closer. However, I'd say Reach is the most perfect execution of Bungie's Halo "formula" and it can't really become any better on the current consoles.

So they basically have to reinvent the wheel here... Or, do something completely unexpected. TPS? Another try at an MMO? Or are they really going to try another Halo FPS? Oh well, I'm getting offtopic here though.

 

[AlNom]

Feels kinda dirty playing gruntpocalypse and barely surviving wtf was bungie thinking giving grunt fuel rod guns but the pay is good average 2k cr per 7 min match.

It's all about headshots.

 

[dragonelite]

Also proves one of the most important space opera rules:

Spoiler

everyone's related to each other, in this case Miranda Keyes was Halsey's daughter.

343 really is in an interesting but quite challenging position here, by the way. Their timing suggests development on the 360 - they've probably gone into full scale production during the summer, which should put the release date within the next 2 years or maybe even closer. However, I'd say Reach is the most perfect execution of Bungie's Halo "formula" and it can't really become any better on the current consoles.

So they basically have to reinvent the wheel here... Or, do something completely unexpected. TPS? Another try at an MMO? Or are they really going to try another Halo FPS? Oh well, I'm getting offtopic here though.

That spoiler was a big twist i hadn't really dare to predict.
Ooh man i would love to have a more stealthy third person halo.
In the books the spartan are a lot in covert ops mission behind enemy lines infiltrating covenant bases. Heard there are some big epic battles in Ghost of onyx too.

My thoughts on a halo mmo i dont want it. And the canon already changed a bit in Halo:Reach i think a mmo would shit all over the canon.
Gonna get Halo wars soon it only 10 euro. If i like it i hope they release a more depth rts experience for the sequel rumor has it Robot Entertainment(in my head )is making it. Because the rts experience was kinda shallow for a lot of rts fans but i did enjoy the demo.

 

[scently]

That spoiler was a big twist i hadn't really dare to predict.
Ooh man i would love to have a more stealthy third person halo.
In the books the spartan are a lot in covert ops mission behind enemy lines infiltrating covenant bases. Heard there are some big epic battles in Ghost of onyx too.

My thoughts on a halo mmo i dont want it. And the canon already changed a bit in Halo:Reach i think a mmo would shit all over the canon.
Gonna get Halo wars soon it only 10 euro. If i like it i hope they release a more depth rts experience for the sequel rumor has it Robot Entertainment(in my head )is making it. Because the rts experience was kinda shallow for a lot of rts fans but i did enjoy the demo.

Ghost of Onyx is fantastic. Its the best Halo novel IMO.