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Halo 4 |OT| Spartans Never Die

Agreed the game just keeps getting better visually, its kinda crazy. So many locales I really want to see in the MP.

Why didn't you just leave.

Not a fan of quitting, plus I really wanted to kill the guy and turn it around. Ah well.

ugh, valhalla is just awful with the Mantis + Banshee. At the very least the Mantis needs to go, if not both.

I like the Mantis, and I like it on Ragnarok, but man I want a version of it that is not a vehicle fest. Its weird to make a near pixel perfect remake and then throw a dramatically different vehicle that dominates onto it. Maybe if they took the Banshee off, or something.

I kinda feel the Mantis could work on Complex TBH. Just, maybe as a neutral spawn that takes forever to come up. Maybe.
 
Hey, that's my color scheme.

ubLET.png
 
Man, this is some straight up Star Wars stuff

Navigating the death star

the best track from the soundtrack is on that level too :D

I'd assume so, but it's still a shame.

I find myself missing skirmishers, always had fun fighting them in Reach. And flanking behaviors for pretty much the entire enemy spectrum... in H4 they comfortably stay at a distance, practically begging for you to pop out and shoot them in the face. I miss some of the combat animations too, like the elites' kick in Reach. If they still do that, I haven't noticed. Everything seems so much stiffer here, where in Reach it was all organic and fluid.

One thing that impresses me is how well done the shading is on different materials. Metal looks like metal, rock looks like rock, dirt looks like dirt, skin looks like skin. They act properly in different situations, unlike many other games, which even this far into the console's lifespan have a very plastic sheen over everything. Few games really nail that material quality of objects, and it goes a long way.

I know it's been said many times, but the art and visuals team here really outdid themselves... there are times when I just want to stop fighting and look around. I've almost been killed a few times because I am inspecting a new detail or gazing into the distance. I am occasionally awestruck by what they managed to pull off on this hardware, and the illusion only falls apart up close... and even then, the broad picture is so overwhelmingly good it's tough to pick out faults.
I don't think it was a limitation on hardware, problem is disk space. Imagine if this was on a Bluray disk, holy shit nothing would be compromised.

i wish it was more metroid-y because like you said, some parts just make you want to look around and explore. the world is very well designed and i cant wait to get my hands on the art book. mission 3 was also a great combo of rocks and futuristic architecture and 343 did a great job making the terrain look lush and colorful, but still rocky at the same time. total eyecandy.

that being said, next gen needs to come now. i cant wait to see what this team does with better hardware and more disk space.
 

TheOddOne

Member
I actually like it in-game. Looks better than 90% of the other helmets.

I'd wear Mark VI, but a lot of people are wearing it already, and I've only seen one other person rocking Scanner. :lol
Speaking of stuff that looks better in-game, the specialization armors look pretty awesome.
 

Grisby

Member
omfg the graphics - THE GRAPHICS

how is this even possible on the 360?
What's almost as impressive to me is the loading. It feels like mere seconds when you load up the campaign from the menu or load a movie from MP.

It was never a huge deal in the other games but it feels alot faster here.
 

OrangeOak

Member
They took halo reach, took out all the stuff the engine was doing that didn't really help visuals (Reach wasted tons of resources in alpha layers, high res textures where you wouldn't see them etc) , replaced stuff in the distance with skydomes instead of actual geometry, removed motion blur, many dynamic light sources, your games don't get recorded, areas are smaller and a little more linear and I have a feeling AI took a step back.

That,and to be fair some real talent in modeling and great art style.
Also, time and money. Lots.

But why did they make all those tradeoffs (outside of dynamic lights - that one is not true) ? Only to improve the art ?
I think the biggest problem is that we really don't have any detailed information on what's going on under the hood because 343i didn't share any info on that.
Even DF article was pretty sparse on technical details and IMO it was exactly due to this fact.
Now we have people pointing out obvious and noticable things that are missing like SSAO and motion blur or less complex skyboxes without any reasonable explanation to what we have in exchange.
I don't believe that all this along with faster dissappearing weapons and some other things was sacrificed only to bumb up resolution and introduce better AA solution.
I don't want to pick on you but your post seems like a really weird explanation to why this game looks amazing . It suggests that things have been cut for no reason and it looks as good as it does only because of art and budget.
 

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
i want that locus helmet :(

but in the meantime, pretty happy with EVA. really loving multiplayer now. its different, its fast, its chaotic, but its oh so fucking fun and satisfying. weirdly, i'm killing it with sniper rifles - wasnt everyone saying they were more difficult to use then reach at all the pre-release events? maybe they tweaked them...
Supposedly you can get it according to this:
Locus : Pre-order from Future Shop / Mighty Ape or Play Mountain Dew King of the Hill iPhone app game
 
Do the stickies seem to anyone else, I dunno... less sticky?

It seems the only time I'm able to successfully stick a dude is when I'm right up against him, so it seems most useful as a "if I did so do you motherfucker" grenade. Most of the time even when I manage to aim and time it correctly it goes right through the guy :/
 

Ken

Member
My dude, lookin' fly:

ALSO HERE ARE SOME DEWXP CODES OMG GOGOGO:


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mp6phwrvhc
awn79r6pry
pzrnmapflk
rrbyhpnlsf
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bysnnhnwbw
pbhx6evpcz

I want to claim those but I can't be bothered to make a Mountain Dew account or whatever it is.

Am I just blind or is there no way to select which difficulty level you are thrown in when finding random Spartan Ops games?

I think someone here said it defaults to legendary.
 

lantus

Member
Me and my brother just got this yesterday, I'd say we almost finished the game already on Heroic. It's an absolute blast to play! That said, I'm kind of disappointed in the storytelling. While the cutscenes are fantastic, I think the story and delivery isn't as good. I would say it's about on par with other Halo games with how it tells story, which is good as I've always enjoyed Halo, but I've played games now that I think present and deliver their stories better. I don't know if it's really asking too much of them, but I hope 343 can step it up even more next time on new hardware and break the mold.
 

vatstep

This poster pulses with an appeal so broad the typical restraints of our societies fall by the wayside.
Am I just blind or is there no way to select which difficulty level you are thrown in when finding random Spartan Ops games?
It defaults to Heroic, which was the case with Firefight matchmaking in Reach as well. I think it's reasonable — the population for Spartan Ops matchmaking is already low out of the gate, so partitioning it out between four difficulty levels would compound that even more.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
Might as well cross-post it here.





Things that are Dumb As Fuck™ in Halo 4 Multiplayer Infinity:

  • Personal ordnance - People pull Snipers, Binary Rifles and all kinds of other extremely powerful weapons out of their asses after which they proceed to kill enemy players who could've never seen it coming.
  • Global ordnance - Random weapons in random locations, go figure.
  • Flinch - Can we please get the descoping mechanic back? The flinching mechanic is annoying enough in CoD where everyone dies in one hit, it's incredibly obnoxious in Halo where it takes 5 shots to do so. Long range battles become very tedious because of it.
  • Big Team Battle - Because of the flinch mechanic BTB isn't everything but enjoyable. The fact that it turns into who can shoot each other the fastest while sitting behind a rock half a kilometer away doesn't help much either. Valhalla is especially atrocious, it's nothing but long range battles. And good luck using vehicles because they'll get EMPed, stuck and shot to shreds with precision weapons in no time.
  • Promethean Vision - You can see people across the goddamn map. Don't think that needs more explanation, right 343?
  • Camo - It's already annoying anyway as an AA, but hey now you can even be invisible on the radar if you stand still. Screw the camo power-up that promotes movement and isn't Dumb As Fuck™, no let's let everyone spawn with camo and encourage them to hide in corners.
  • Jetpack - Screw your map-layout, screw you cover, screw everyone, I've got a motherfucking jetpack.
  • Regeneration Field - It's practically impossible to win a battle against someone who is in one and right to some cover. You miss one shot and he gets his shield partly back instantly. Fun, fun, fun.
  • Thrust - No, I'm just kidding. It's pretty worthless and I don't mind it.
  • Hardlight Shield - "Just throw a grenade," people said. Well, what if the guy who's using it is across the goddamn map? What if I'm out of grenades? Gotta give people their out-of-jail-free card, right?
  • Boltshot - It's a shotgun that you get at spawn. I like using it but damn if it isn't lame.
  • Capture the Flag - A 35 seconds reset time with no ability to return it yourself. Hey 343, please stop asking Bungie for advice on how to set up gametypes. These settings could work in BTB, but they have no place on small maps. It's impossible to reset the flag 9 out of 10 times. Change it to 15 seconds reset time and 5 second return time. While you're at it turn off the auto pick-up and let us juggle the flag, thanks in advance.
  • Matchmaking times - There's a 100.000 people playing BTB, why is it taking >5 minutes for us to find amatch?
  • Servers - Stop using the EA servers, we can't go into matchmaking half the time.
  • UI - It's a mess. Active Roster and the lobby menu have taken a huge step back. Who gives a fuck about player cards? Just show a list of horizantal names of players in the lobby and use the rest of the space you freed up to give players information about the gametype or something, don't fill it with huge buttons. Also make it so Active Roster is not a button press away, I want to see who's online and what they're doing all the time.
  • Framerate - Why am I getting framedrops while looking at a wall of a cave?
  • Killcams sitrecs - It's a feature that doesn't even work properly and was probably put into the game about a week before launch. I'm used to CoD killcams not being entirely accurate but the ones in Halo 4 simply don't work half the time. If you end up fixing them, make sure to add a final killcam to every gametype.
  • Filesharing - Why can't you do it on Waypoint yet? We seriously have to wait a month after launch for basic features to be available?
  • Theater - It's not there for campaign and spec ops which is sad, and it doesn't even work properly when you record clips.
  • Medals - They all look the same and disappear within half a second. You barely see them, let alone differentiate them from each other.
  • Steitzer - He's saying so much stuff that I've learned to tune out his voice. Now I can't really keep track of half the things that happens during objective games. He should only say stuff when it's important, not when I get a headshot.
  • Complex - Jetpack abuse to hell and back. All people do is go in or on top of one of the many buildings and take pot-shots at the enemy.
  • Longbow - The most one-dimensional map in the game. You take the middle structure and you shoot the enemy team spawning one either side of said base.
  • Meltdown - Has the longest tunnels known to man-kind.
  • Adrift - Hallways, crates, and more hallways.
  • Vortex - Half the map is meant for Dominion is isn't used outside of that gametype.
  • Weapons despawning - A 12 second despawn time? Really? Hey Kevin, if you don't want too many power weapons on the map don't reward to everyone who even does as much as fart in the general direction of the enemy.
  • Forge - No precision forging, objects are worse than in Reach, category object limit still exists, the Forge maps aren't good to Forge on, lighting makes all enclosed maps look bland as fuck, all that kind of stuff.
  • Instant respawns - I've had several occasions where I could finish off my own kills after dying and respawning immediately. RIP Halo
  • Loadouts - Rock, Paper, Scissors all day, every day. Along with ordnance it makes the game unpredictable in a bad way.
  • Sprint - Just give me a faster movement speed so I can shoot while moving around faster and so I don't slow down with I'm shot.
  • Oddball - Throwing the Oddball into the hands of an enemy player who's just coming around the corner is fun the first time, sure. But it's annoying more than anything when it happens to you. There should not be an auto pick-up for the ball.
  • Dominion - It's over within a minute half the time.
  • Audio - I can't hear my surroundings as well as I could in Reach. Not sure what it is, but something's messed up.
  • Options - Why can't I turn off Assassinations? Why can't I change my audio settings? Why can't I adjust my vertical sensitivity? It's 2012, people!
  • Hitdetection - Not sure on this one, but I feel like headshots aren't registering correctly half the time. I've seen myself hit people in the head several times only for them to just shrugs it off and run around the corner. Was a lot more consistent in (0% bloom) Reach.
  • Join-in-Progress - I don't want to join a game when it's nearly finished and the other team is ahead by a million points. Why can't I turn this shit off?
  • Post-game lobby - It lasts so short that by the time that you're done seeing how many credits you got you're already in the voting screen for the next game unable to back out. What happened to the 30-second post-game screen that existed in previous Halos?
  • Flood - The gametype has less flexibility than the old Infection gametype just so you guys could add a Flood skin that looks like it's ripped straight out of doom for the infected players? It's sad to see where your priorities lie, 343.
  • Lack of classic settings - Following up on what I said about the Flood gametype; Why are the customization options for some gametypes so limited?? 343 has actively ripped out customization options for CTF, Infection and Grifball and we can't even play Assault at all anymore.
  • King of the Hill - I don't have too much issues with it but the inconsistent respawn timer can be annoying at times. Sometimes it's instant , others it's 3 seconds. Also, don't put KotH on a map as segmented as Adrift.
  • Regicide - Rewards players who aren't in the lead and promotes not doing well until right towards the end. Another problem is that the King can get a kingtacular - resulting in an overshield - in the middle of a fight. That's just fucked up.
  • Killtimes - The game can be very slow in when you're in 1v1 situations. I honestly wouldn't mind 4-shot weapons.
  • Spec Ops - Wasted resources.
  • Death waypoints - What happened to the red Xs that appeared when people died? Those were extremely useful to get a good idea of where your teammates died and where the enemy is.
  • Shield recharge rate - Seems to be around as slow as it is in Reach. I don't want to spend 6 seconds behind cover waiting for my shields to recharge.

Things that are good in Halo 4 Infinity:

  • Core gameplay - It's better than vanilla Reach.

This game is becoming increasingly frustrating every day I play it. I have the feeling like the game screws me over regularly which is something that has stopped me from playing CoD completely. I have never been so agitated by a Halo game this early after launch and I really don't see Title Updates fixing the problems that I have with the game.
 
omfg the graphics - THE GRAPHICS

how is this even possible on the 360?

Here's how it's possible- they replaced the geometrical skyboxes with compressed jpegs, cut Campaign and Spartan Ops theater, and lowered the complexity of a bunch of other stuff to devote more power to the graphics engine.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
I can't even access my Halo 4 stat page to see my Spartan.
Edit: Oh, you can do it via the frontpage:

j312APjmIJ5kd.jpg


For some reason my armor looks yellow even though it's orange/gold in the game.
 

FyreWulff

Member
:lol sorry but that looks hilariously bad ^

edit: if it means anything, I think 95% of the Halo 4 MP armor looks repulsive

For some reason 343 renders their Waypoint models at a lower detail level than Bungie did.. even though it's just a layered static image


ErotD.gif


The Halo 4 Waypoint spartans are missing engine effects that were included on the Reach B.net spartans
 
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