Continuity
Member
Ok, so I played the campaign up until I get a
and dived into some multiplayer. Here are my first impressions.
Campaign: Starts out strong, the opening cutscene finally deals with the Spartans' origins as explained in the novels, and they finally address some of the problems with genetically enhanced super-soldiers. I like the idea that Master Chief along with all the Spartans are at their core broken and lack the humanity to survive in a peaceful time. But then again this is Halo so let's quickly move on to some explosions, dead covenants, and Cortana's ass. The whole thing with
is creepy as fuck though, implications implications...
One thing that really bugs me, the Covenants don't speak English anymore, I miss hearing Grunts freak out and call Chief the Demon, or when they yell "Purifying flame" when they throw a grenade. They just feel a lot more generic now. Chief also knew the humans and covenant had a truce, but this was never explained and simply ignored by saying "a lot has changed in 5 years", that doesn't explain shit, yes I do need a reason to kill generic Covenants. And even after reuniting with humans, the Chief doesn't even bother to ask what has happened during these years, but I can understand that because it's in his character to just follow orders and complete tasks. But personally I need to know what went down during the 5 years.
The prometheans are pretty fun to fight against, those shield drones that the knights poop out really change the pacing of the skirmishes because they're just too dangerous to leave alive. I'm playing on Heroic and as always scoped rifles are king, headshotting grunts and jackals from range is still the safest and most efficient way to get through a fight.
Overall, well designed, exactly what you expect from a Halo game, the new enemies are actually well thought-out, but the series is slowly losing the cartoonish charm that I loved from the first game.
Multiplayer: Mixed reactions, I played several games of Slayer, back in Reach I play almost exclusively on SWAT so I'm not all that good with a grenade. Melee seems slightly buffed from Reach, which helps all 4 of those Assault Rifle users I guess. Battle Rifle is back and amazing, I'm having a hard time choosing between BR and DMR, but right now BR seems much more flexible.
You no longer exit scope mode when you get hit, a gigantic buff to scoped weapons, making BR and DMR even more powerful.
The motion sensor reveals the relative height of the enemy as well, this is huge because if the player knows the map well enough he can now pin-point exactly where the enemy is from his sensor. But then again you can always just use Promethean Vision, since when has wall-hacks in an FPS not been broken? Seriously, I've played 10 games, I've seen one guy with the shield, 2 guys with the camouflage and everyone else with nothing(which pretty much means Promethean Vision).
Not a fan of ordnance drop, during my games 80% of my deaths were by the power weapons, and I feel like cheating when I maul people down with SAW as well.
From my experience, it's rather difficult to get multi-kills in this game with standard weapons because aiming is so easy and you movement options is lacking, in a lot of cases you'll take one guy down but there's literally nothing you can do when the second guy comes up and head-shots you because you ran out of shield, so I tend to always win my one-on-one and then die because a second guy just ran up with a SAW or something, unlike in SWAT where everyone is one shot away from death all the time.
Overall I still had a lot fun, the game feels a lot more fast paced, BR fights are really intense, all the strafing practice I got from Gears of War and all the aiming practice I got from SWAT are finally paying off. Slayer definitely doesn't encourage Ramboing because 2 on 1 is an extremely hard fight with shields, but encouraging team work is a good thing. Ordnance drop is bullshit. And I still need to play more to get better with the game.
jetpack
Campaign: Starts out strong, the opening cutscene finally deals with the Spartans' origins as explained in the novels, and they finally address some of the problems with genetically enhanced super-soldiers. I like the idea that Master Chief along with all the Spartans are at their core broken and lack the humanity to survive in a peaceful time. But then again this is Halo so let's quickly move on to some explosions, dead covenants, and Cortana's ass. The whole thing with
Cortana being made from Dr Halsey's tissue
One thing that really bugs me, the Covenants don't speak English anymore, I miss hearing Grunts freak out and call Chief the Demon, or when they yell "Purifying flame" when they throw a grenade. They just feel a lot more generic now. Chief also knew the humans and covenant had a truce, but this was never explained and simply ignored by saying "a lot has changed in 5 years", that doesn't explain shit, yes I do need a reason to kill generic Covenants. And even after reuniting with humans, the Chief doesn't even bother to ask what has happened during these years, but I can understand that because it's in his character to just follow orders and complete tasks. But personally I need to know what went down during the 5 years.
The prometheans are pretty fun to fight against, those shield drones that the knights poop out really change the pacing of the skirmishes because they're just too dangerous to leave alive. I'm playing on Heroic and as always scoped rifles are king, headshotting grunts and jackals from range is still the safest and most efficient way to get through a fight.
Overall, well designed, exactly what you expect from a Halo game, the new enemies are actually well thought-out, but the series is slowly losing the cartoonish charm that I loved from the first game.
Multiplayer: Mixed reactions, I played several games of Slayer, back in Reach I play almost exclusively on SWAT so I'm not all that good with a grenade. Melee seems slightly buffed from Reach, which helps all 4 of those Assault Rifle users I guess. Battle Rifle is back and amazing, I'm having a hard time choosing between BR and DMR, but right now BR seems much more flexible.
You no longer exit scope mode when you get hit, a gigantic buff to scoped weapons, making BR and DMR even more powerful.
The motion sensor reveals the relative height of the enemy as well, this is huge because if the player knows the map well enough he can now pin-point exactly where the enemy is from his sensor. But then again you can always just use Promethean Vision, since when has wall-hacks in an FPS not been broken? Seriously, I've played 10 games, I've seen one guy with the shield, 2 guys with the camouflage and everyone else with nothing(which pretty much means Promethean Vision).
Not a fan of ordnance drop, during my games 80% of my deaths were by the power weapons, and I feel like cheating when I maul people down with SAW as well.
From my experience, it's rather difficult to get multi-kills in this game with standard weapons because aiming is so easy and you movement options is lacking, in a lot of cases you'll take one guy down but there's literally nothing you can do when the second guy comes up and head-shots you because you ran out of shield, so I tend to always win my one-on-one and then die because a second guy just ran up with a SAW or something, unlike in SWAT where everyone is one shot away from death all the time.
Overall I still had a lot fun, the game feels a lot more fast paced, BR fights are really intense, all the strafing practice I got from Gears of War and all the aiming practice I got from SWAT are finally paying off. Slayer definitely doesn't encourage Ramboing because 2 on 1 is an extremely hard fight with shields, but encouraging team work is a good thing. Ordnance drop is bullshit. And I still need to play more to get better with the game.
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