I’m totally okay with playing halo 1/2 over again, with prettier graphics, and a different story.
Fine by me.
Wait, sit through the credits? What? What did I miss? Pixar-style outtakes?
Malk, I haven’t had an Apple since I threw over my ][GS so I could play Wing Commander on a 386. So, no, I haven’t seen Marathon. But I know Bungie did a good job with Myth’s narrative. So, yeah, you’re right that they’ve done better in the past. Which makes the nonsense in Halo all the more annoying.
Here’s the chance to show millions of gamers and non-gamers just what the industry is capable of, and they do more of this impossible-to-follow silliness. It’s like watching the Maltese Falcon, but without the good actors, cool black-and-white visuals, and snappy dialogue. And with a dude in green armor who can never be bothered to lift his faceplate, much less speak more than a dozen lines. And Apone from Aliens. And a couple of obligatory curvy heroines, one of whom is like a cross between Tinkerbell and Tron. And Keith David in the role of the Kilrathi who joins the Federation, but not as furry. And none of it even written passably beyond the details of who’s going where to pull what lever.
Seriously, when you guys are playing, keep in mind that everything that’s happening is supposedly happening after the Earth has been occupied, or razed, or conquered, or whatever. Generally fucked up by the Covenant one way or the other. But I only know this because Bungie’s PR dude told me when I was writing a preview for the game. There’s pretty much zero about the Fate of the Planet in the actual game because everyone’s motivation consists of little more than trying to reach a waypoint.
That’s Bungie’s version of storytelling. That’s Halo’s attempt at narrative. Whatever. At least the alien shooting bits are decent.
-TomMan Halo just kind of seems like everyone quit Bungie after Marathon and they just keep making that game over and over again in hopes that it will accidentally get better, and they just keep raising the production values of the same game. I guess that’s what people want though. I’d really like video games to get better though.
When people go rabid about Halo I always have to resist the urge to roll my eyes and lecture them on finer points of FPS. And some of them are cosplay level rabid, and they are every-bloody-where. I read the Time magazine article on Halo 3 and it is obviously written by a fanboy. No amount of reasoning can persuade them that Bungie is selling an old FPS concept in a new shiny bottle. They have to see to believe it but they don’t have a PC!
I feel like Roddy Piper in John Carpenter’s They Live. Except all the aliens are Halo fanboys, and I’m infinitely more good looking than him. His method of persuasion is just about right
Bah, I spit on console shooters.
I haven’t played the third game, so I guess I’m not really entitled to pre-emptively bash it, but the comments here just reinforce my jaded outlook that Halo 3 is shackled by a corporate mandate to “make lots of money, innovation be damned.”
The second game felt obligatory, and it was coupled with a cliffhanger ending that seemed designed from the very start to make people crave the third installment. It’s like those movie trilogies, where the first is a sleeper hit, and the second and third installments are filmed simultaneously in an effort to make audiences pay twice more for content they liked the first time.
- Alan
You could say the same thing about Half-Life 2, though. What the heck is City 17? Why are the vortigaunts helping you out? What’s the Combine? Why are people helping them?
I don’t recall you being as harsh on Valve, though. Not that they would deserve it either. Half-Life and Halo leave this sort of stuff out on purpose, because you are posited to know these kinds of things already, you being part of that world. They instead involve you with the immediate and fit that non-interactive exposition in the background where it belongs, and they do it neatly.
Metal Gear Solid (Snake Eater, specifically) did it very well.
Actually, you’re exactly wrong. You aren’t a part of the world in HL2, you’re returned to it knowing nothing of what occurred since the end of the first game. The backstory is revealed throughout the gameplay through conversations, posters, cutscenes, etc, and you never quite get all of it, and are left wanting more. As far as I can tell with my extremely limited experience playing, Halo just ignores context entirely.
Never thought Halo was meant to be a adventure game. Halo was never supposed to be bioshock tom, that was a horrible review.
Well, in that case: you are in luck!
Here is a complete guide to running them on Windows. There’s a source port (Aleph One) and all three games are now officially freeware.
(Okay, so you’re probably too busy with other games, especially this time of year. But maybe someone will find that link useful.)
What stusser said. Half-Life 2 does a superlative job with its narrative, considering that it wants you to wear the shoes (orange jumpsuit?) of its silent and unwitting protagonist, who’s thrown into events beyond his control.
For instance, Gallant, you bring up the Vortigaunts. Valve manages to put more than enough narrative about those fellas in a single art asset. The Vortigaunts in Half-Life had on collars. The ones in Half-Life 2 didn’t.
That’s the sort of character development – subtle, but unmistakable – that works best in a game. Whereas most games would have front-loaded some clumsy exposition, Half-Life 2 lets players discover it if they care to, and not worry about it if they don’t.
-TomIsn’t City 17 in Eastern Europe somewhere? It never really said anything in the game, but I remember magazine articles stating that. Plus, it looked like Vienna or something. I dunno how all the other Black Mesa faces ended up there. Quite the co-ink-ee-dink.
The vortiguants are helping you because Half-Life 1 was just all a big misunderstanding. The true enemy was the Combine, and humans and vortigaunts join forces to fight them.
The Combine is a giant galactic empire. The Combine you see in Half-Life 2 aren’t actually real Combine, they’re humans that have been turned into Combine soldier, if I recall correctly.
Why are people helping the Combine? I’m not sure which people you mean. Unless you mean the people in the white or blue unifroms - and those are the humans that have been Combined.
None of the characters act like you have a bad case of Don’t Know Shit. So you’re pretty much wrong there.
The backstory is revealed throughout the gameplay through conversations, posters, cutscenes, etc, and you never quite get all of it, and are left wanting more.
Same could be said for Halo. Which is maybe why I did say it in my post. In fact, a bit of a cottage industry has sprung up around the wanting more thing.
As far as I can tell with my extremely limited experience playing, Halo just ignores context entirely.
Well, pay attention next time, I guess.
Firstly, Falcon, it wasn’t a review so much as my musings after finishing the campaign. Halo 3 is very much built for online multiplayer gaming, which I won’t be able to experience until it goes live. I was simply posting comments on the part of the game that I’ve been able to play.
More to the point, however, Halo 3 has been pushed very hard as a narrative, but Bungie and Microsoft. No one’s saying it’s supposed to be BioShock, but as far as telling a story – and you can’t deny that’s a significant part of Bungie’s series – it does a terrible job. As such, I feel it’s a disservice to casual gamers in general, and to those of us who appreciate story-driven games in particular.
-Tom
If the storyline is easy to digest, wouldn’t that be more helpful to Casual gamers?
Just, I mean, if I was a casual gamer, I don’t think I’d want to have to pick my way through a huge and convoluted story if all I wanted to do was slaughter some Brutes.
Good lord you’re dim. What world of terrible books and awful movies do you live in where “engaging narrative that doesn’t leave new fans in the dark” equates “huge and convoluted story?!?”
Ah, so if you didn’t play Half-Life 1 then you would–
Hm.
If you’re a casual gamer, you’re proably not going to buy this anyway, but you’re going to love playing four player multiplayer or two player coop on your friends’ 360s.
Or maybe you will buy it because it’s Halo 3. Depends on just how casual you are really. In high school, I loved video games, but was dirt poor, and had to play GoldenEye multiplayer on my friend’s N64. I love it though. I eventually played through the single player, but it couldn’t compare to my memories of the mutilplayer.
AAAAAAAW SHIT!