The First Halo 3 Single Player Screens + Video! Rules=#369
- Thread starter Hardknock
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archangelmorph
Veteran
You REALLY don't like english do you?
I dont remember "they killed an elite". The others fall into the two or threes phrases I admitted.
And I know they spoke english..just I dunno..not so blatantly and frequently and loudly.
Combine that with the Elite's not speaking (coherent)english in part 1, it gave much more of a feel of fighting truly alien beings. In 3, your enemies are throwing constant english at you.
This seems like such a stupid thing, I dunno, it's just a feel thing, I'm not good at expressing myself.
I think it's also an attitude..they used to be so whimsical, and now they're just mean little bastards.
For example, I have a hard time explaining why Halo 2 campaign was so inferior to 1..it just was.
Well, maybe they've learned themselves better english during Halo 1 to Halo 3.
You know, to make socializing with earth girls easier during the war.
You know, to make socializing with earth girls easier during the war.
The only tangible story explanation is in First Strike (just prior to Halo 2) where they gained better translation suites after Cortana had time to mess around with a Covenant AI aboard a covenant cruiser. It's a Star Trek thing.
I'd rather they had a different set of voices that you could toggle (like DVD audio tracks), but... oh well.
I'd rather they had a different set of voices that you could toggle (like DVD audio tracks), but... oh well.
No space, I think? At least, it seems that localised versions exist for instance in Switserland you get the German version, and if I read user comments correctly you don't have an option to select English.
Most likely.
Fu3lFr3nzy
Regular
I just got home and the game is sitting quietly on my desk.
Time to unwrap it and start finishing the fight
(ill post my impressions later)
*runs*
Time to unwrap it and start finishing the fight
(ill post my impressions later)*runs*
You're a lucky boy. Have fun.I just got home and the game is sitting quietly on my desk.
Time to unwrap it and start finishing the fight
*runs*
No game for me until tomorrow. I'm in a hurry people so I'll try to summarize as best as I can.
Free Halo 3 content for XBL Gold members.
For those who want to know right now how many people is playing Halo 3 online and where, here is the link:
http://www.bungie.net/Online/Default.aspx
Arwin, yes, no space most probably. I remember some Xbox games were multilingual -both audio and text- and Halo 2 was kind of multilingual (only the subtitles).
The same arguement applies to 720p versus 1080p. I know the idea isn't popular (lets blame the marketing monkey's who have made resolution some magic bulletpoint) but the fidelity of the individual pixels, to me, is much more important than the resolution. While not linearly analogous, CGI at 480p Widescreen on a 42" display looks better than a 360 or PS3 game at 1080p on a 42" HDTV.
I know John Carmack has floated the idea that he could do substantially more at lower resolutions to justify the cost in resolution. The GPU performance penalty of increasing AA or AF is often less than upping the resolution (and significant factor less than upping resolution to get the same effect of the AA or AF through only resolution bumps) so I think it is a good trade off. I know I would take 1024x600 with AA & AF over 720p without either.
And I know this to be true because I do it all the time... on the PC. I will take fewer prettier pixels over more ugly pixels (within reason) any day of the week.
Oddly enough it seems a number of devs are tiling, and to some success. It is sometimes surprising to see which devs are/aren't. What is often setting games apart graphically, imo has often been less an issue of technology and instead art and the time to give appropriate attention to detail.
I think much more so than last gen that art in general (direction and design, asset quality, detail, and variety) is impacting our impression of games moreso than the technicals. Not so say that you cannot ignore having some good technology under the hood, but as many predicted I am seeing art being a bigger player in what people call "good" or "bad".
Some casual gamers I know at work even scare me because their idea of a "good" looking game... is shocking at times.
Does your GPU support "per pixel" output? I know my 6800GT allows me to display games at lower resolutions and then it just haps it to the screen. Sure there are black boundaries, but it looks very nice (and I have found in some games I even prefer a lower resolution with boundaries). You may also be able to get your GPU to manually scale the image too.
Interesting. The AU review was a 9.5 on Sunday (like the US site). So either they fluffed up their posted review on Sunday and corrected it or changed it.
Personally, I think there is a lot of room to bitch about Halo 3. The core gameplay in SP and MP has gone virtually unchanged. One could argue that it is nearly perfect and point out the "cream of the crop" and "if it ain't broken" mentality, but many really, really great games have gone on to improve their gameplay through evolutionary or very innovative changes without destroying the game's core concepts, ideas, or even mechanics. More isn't always better, but Halo's core shooter mechanics are pretty stale imo. Very balanced mind you, and deep (the rebounding shield, choice between insta-nades or dual wield, 2 weapon limit, etc), with legions of fans loving the design. So I can see some love/hate with the core mechanics. But all sides would agree they work. Which in the broader scheme, as much as I am meh on the mechanics, works because of their game design and AI. Pacing is another factor. And when you wrap around the story, audio, and cinematics as a gaming package the game mechanics tend to tilt, imo, from "last gen crap! Very good crap, but still last gen!" to "tried and true to draw out the broader game design". I would love to hate on the game mechanics, I really would. I see what games are doing with cover and squads and other unique ideas to extend the shooter genre while being faithful to the core and find it dissappointing that Halo 3 ignored this route. Instead we got... equipment. Yawn. But I think this criticism, while absolutely fair, is very myopic if at the same time the overall design choices are diminished, even ignored, to focus only on such. Missing the forest for the trees.
On the campaign side I don't think any discussion is complete without discussing COOP. And I don't think it deserves a passing "oh yeah, there is coop". How many shooters have 2 or 4 player coop online? Very, very few. How many do it well? A couple. How many add in meta scoring? None that I know of. Sounds trivial, but as a huge fan of the old Contra style games I remember the immeasurable fun of playing such a game with friends. Truth be told I find VERY little reason to ever replay a SP shooter. Half-Life 2, one of my all-time favorites, only got 1 play through (sans the last level). Great game, but much like movies I rarely do a "take two". I see no need. With movies I can remember the entire thing and find almost all movies, even ones I love, boring the second time through. But I absolutely will play a Campaign a 2nd, 3rd... 10th time through with friends. Part of it is the social element. Part of it is upping the challenging to a point that you could only do so with friends. And with humans you always have the "X-Factor". Cool stuff, stupid and silly stuff, whatever it is with humans you get a degree of variety and unpredictability that cannot be found in single player games. This is one reason I love multiplayer.
On the multiplayer side I think the game mechanic (guns, abilities, and general "how to play") complaints come over and are more more pronounced. Weapons spawning in fields... ZOMGLAME! Developers have done some really cool stuff with team play, classes, and objective oriented multiplayer gaming on a variety of scales (from a few gamers to 64+) that the same ol' 16 player Halo refined MP seems really, really meh. Same deal with vehicles. What Halo did was very cool and was a forerunner in the industry; Halo 3? The industry moved on (and then some) and Halo 3 is a very incrimental improvement over, essentially, 6 year old implimentation. I have seen mods do more! On the surface I am not impressed with Halo 3 multiplayer at all. It is sooo Halo 2 it isn't even a joke. Not that Halo 2 MP is bad--it is great. But for a mega-sequal, come on, we should expect more. But...
That is a surface read. First, the MP options are simply amazing... insane. Halo 3 MP is "tried and true" at the core (I am thinking "best of the Unreal-Quakish" style shooters... or at least up there) but then unleashes an unreasonable amount of options at the gamers. It is freakish in nature. Halo 3 MP isn't just slayer, team slayer, and CTF. The number of modes--and how you can alter them--is freakish. The variety of ways you can alter the game in terms of how it is played and score gives the multiplayer almost infinite replayability. And that isn't an exaggeration. I am prone to bitch about the Halo 3 mechanics -- wow, I can no deploy a shield and ew ew ew yippie a new grenade! -- but the mechanics aren't broken. They are quite good. But put in the context of, "Now lets just totally turn the rules of the game on its head" those mechanics breath totally new life. Its like driving a car: You got a wheel, gas, break, clutch, and stick. Yet how you use them will be quite different on a street coarse versus in the mud offroad.
Some games add classes, others objectives and team-centric designs to build upon the multiplayer shooter concept. Some do these things very, very well (I am quite biased toward Battlefield myself). Bungie, knowing their fanbase of some 7M consumers, decided not to screw with the core game and extended it in a different way: options & modifiers. This sort of addition and improvement is so easy to overlook but is striking when put into context of games in general. As a gamer we tend to form fairly quick opinions (see the review after 2 hours above). If you take two "8" level games, one being "tried and true, but very deep" and the other being "fresh and new, what you see is what you get" the former will most likely grow and extend beyond the fresher/shallower game. I think Halo 3 MP falls into the former by a decided margin. At first glance it really is just Halo 2 MP with a few new weapons and new maps. Great for fans, bad for the non-fans looking for the genre to show, you know, improvement. But Bungie improved the game in a different way--something seen after 50, 100, 200 games online. By doing this they keep the core fans happy without screwing up the core game, but also give it a lot of quality and longevity. The core mechanics, as much as I roll my eyes, are understandible in the broad picture of the design. Bungie didn't add their "version" of cover, squads, etc (whatever their version would have been... voice ops?), they just extended the rules and variety of gameplay variants to an insane level. Still a shooter--just with more options than you will ever play.
I also think, from a multiplayer perspective, Trueskill deserves more credit. While I quite enjoy games where cannon fodder is tossed my way, I know it isn't fun for the fodder. Halo allows a much more enjoyable form of competitive MP by matching people with the right opponents. Very few games do this. Some developers have worked on this--and to my delight--by building game concepts that allow people of various skills and tastes to contribute in DIFFERENT ways. i.e. Winning without shooting. I know some AWESOME pilots who rock in Battlefield but couldn't shoot a rifle in BF if their life depended on it. Likewise, my wife is really good at being a medic or engineer (she, too, couldn't hit the broadside of a barn). So the lack of classes or other mechanics to appeal to "non-shooting shooter" fans is dissappointing. When you suck at shooting, shooters are no fun. Duh. And the gamepad doesn't help the situation. This situation looks up when you can play with people who suck just as bad as you do!
Sure, Trueskill was in Halo 2. But name how many games effectively use this concept?And then there is the dispruptive technologies. Forge is disruptive. Not the best map editor, but a fairly powerful gameplay modifier. The consoles are nearly devoid of such tools (TimeSplitters 2 and FCI had basic map editors) so this is a big move: Biggest game of 2007 expands the scope of shooters on consoles (I swear this is Bungies M.O.... take elements not native to console shooters and then introduce well formed concepts for the console space). The fact you can alter how the game is player is really, really significant. The fact you can play in Forge mode is like sandbox heaven for many gamers, and the fact you can save these modes for MP -- and share/rank them with the entire Halo 3 community is pretty insane. It is like Gary's Mod, only directly supported and portable to actual MP play.
Forge is a disruptive technology.
Likewise, in its own right as well in unison with Forge, is the Theater. Being able to create movies in Halo 3 is a big deal. Machinima has a cult following, and Halo 3 expands that. The popularity of YouTube is a testiment to the voyeristic society we live in. Gamers have been capitolizing on this for a long while, but Bungie has totally embraced it in Halo 3. As Halo covers single player, coop, multiplayer, and "sandbox" modes the Theater feature covers a very wide array of game types to be used in. For MP I can see clans using it to build strategies, dissect past matches, and prepare for new opponents. I also see training guides and tutorials on the horizon. For Machinima we will see a billion Red vs. Blue clones, and eventually a couple cool ideas (the "A Few Good Men" reproduction in HL2 was pretty amazing... creative people will put this to use!) Games like, "The Movies" cannot sustain themselves because they just aren't popular enough. But putting these tools in one of the biggest IPs in the industry is bound to attract amazing creative talent.
Forge and Theater are not new ideas. They are old ideas. But because of their implimentation and, specifically, their inclusion in the biggest game of 2007 they will become defining moments in the console space.
For these, and other reasons, I am finding some of the reviews quite shallow. In particular I find the Ars review a blatant land grab for attention. The shock factor of a "7/10" in links across the net was bound to get people to read it. But it was a gimmick--and a poor one when you review 1 element of a game that objectively has 5 core aspects to the package.
For Halo fans the immediate "here is what you get" in SP & MP is enough to satisfy. Bungie didn't screw with that for obvious reasons. Good core game + very high production quality + insane hype = sales winner. The casuals fill follow the trend. For the more critical gamers, I can see why at first glance Halo 3 is a put off. I have been pretty critical of the MP and think that Bungie took the "safe" route in many ways in campaign as well. But it isn't fair to say it is a Halo 2 mod/extension in HD (or next-gen graphics, whereever you lean... btw, no AA and low AF is totally BS Bungie). They just didn't extend the game in the same ways other people do. Instead of toying with the core MP elements fans love, they just added a billion new modes of play... and will even let you create your own, change the maps, and even make your own uber powerups.
I have seen a lot of reviews (most of which giving very, very high scores) really overlooking what the changes and additions to Halo do for the franchise, and in a few cases, the market in general. I find this dissappointing. When you get one liners like, "Halo 3 multiplayer is very similar to Halo 2. It is good, but nothing revolutionary" and then skip over all the variants, or pointing out again the value of Trueskill Matchmaking, I find it superficial.
Then again most of these places got 2 days to review the game and are going by their first impressions.
Anyhow, I think COOP over Live and Forge/Theater will have Halo 3 being played for years. As many faults Halo 2 had -- quite a few -- the fact people are still playing it in droves is amazing. And underlines the "tilt/fun factor" elements of games that transcend reviews. I know one of my favorite games (Battlefield 1942) is very flawed, yet in the grand scope of things I played it a very long time (longer than more highly rated and polished games) because the core mechanics were spot on and the dynamics of the game were so compelling. A review only gives an initial impression of a games value and quality.
How fun a game is and how long it is played is really determined by user experience and taste. You really cannot qualify these factors with a score.
Disruptive how?
Maybe it will get people to stop buying games for awhile? That kind of disruptive?
How long would MS want people to play this game before moving on to other games? What makes them more money, for people to subscribe to Gold longer than they otherwise would for this game or to buy more X360 games?
As for the idea of watching clips of other people playing games, a bit geeky. I can see some value in scouting a Madden league opponent by seeing his previous games. But in a shooter? Is there some analogue to seeing the kind of plays he runs in the football game?
Maybe it will get people to stop buying games for awhile? That kind of disruptive?
How long would MS want people to play this game before moving on to other games? What makes them more money, for people to subscribe to Gold longer than they otherwise would for this game or to buy more X360 games?
As for the idea of watching clips of other people playing games, a bit geeky. I can see some value in scouting a Madden league opponent by seeing his previous games. But in a shooter? Is there some analogue to seeing the kind of plays he runs in the football game?
Mintmaster
Veteran
Well said Joshua.
About the pretty pixels vs. more pixels argument, it should be noted that it's not an automatic win for the former. If you recall the Geforce 3, 4xMSAA had a 70% perf hit and was ordered grid. AF also had a huge perf hit. So there you are sacrificing a lot of pixels to make them prettier if you wanted to reach the same framerate.
However, today the GPUs make pixels a lot prettier at the cost of just a little resolution. It's a no brainer to me. It's as if some devs are deciding beforehand that they don't want to do tiling and don't even bother comparing the resolution vs. AA/AF tradeoff.
About the pretty pixels vs. more pixels argument, it should be noted that it's not an automatic win for the former. If you recall the Geforce 3, 4xMSAA had a 70% perf hit and was ordered grid. AF also had a huge perf hit. So there you are sacrificing a lot of pixels to make them prettier if you wanted to reach the same framerate.
However, today the GPUs make pixels a lot prettier at the cost of just a little resolution. It's a no brainer to me. It's as if some devs are deciding beforehand that they don't want to do tiling and don't even bother comparing the resolution vs. AA/AF tradeoff.
It really is interesting that games we don't usually consider to be technology showcases have good AA and AF, whereas a flagship title like Halo3 fails to get either. And you can't even say that Bungie didn't have the time, the console is almost 2 years old by now.
when you have a flagship title that is a must play experience for the majority of players (not all) and you have an online presence of gamers in that game for YEARS... you can sell more systems for years based on that guarantee of fun.
there will be this game, online, ultimately re-playable with tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of others until the end of this generation. Those new system owners will in turn buy other games.
It's brilliant.
Hm... Yes, I was thinking mainly like the English<->original language option that was included in Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. You can choose to have the enemies speak in English or in their native languages. Just for immersion factor, I prefer the latter. I guess it would depend on how many clips they recorded for the Elites (or even Brutes). I would be happy if they just translated even 1/10th of what they said in English (still make the Elites/Brutes speak exclusively in alien) if space was really that much of a problem.
As for the other species... they seem to be following on what they did in the past. The Grunts might seem to speak English more noticeably, but maybe it's just the frequency and number of lines they've recorded. It was either yelping or screaming and then English in the first game really.
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