Diablohead
Member
ok who thought adding mechs to that snow map in BTB thought it was the right thing to do? for fecks sake this game! DMR really needs to be adjusted too sick of it now.
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Halo 4 |OT| Spartans Never Die
- Thread starter GhaleonEB
- Start date
Blowing this fucking thing up was so incredibly unsatisfying. You disable the ship from the inside, leap out of it, and it vanishes in a puff of purple smoke and some melon-sized debris.
So many awkward moments like this, eg, when
the Infinity destroys the gravity well
Went through the Spartan Ops last night. I like it as an alternative to Horde mode. Topped them up with a few Slayer matches and unlocked the Airborne armour for my troubles. You level up fast in Halo 4, unlike Reach which took me forever. I really like it overall. I'm going to spend most of the winter there.
Yes, I think so. There was a spot where you had to get from one place to another and the enemies kept coming in waves, I tried to kill them all and had to just run for it.
Fixed.
electricpirate
Member
I seem to have cooled somewhat on this, but I'm still enjoying it.
The single player starts to feel really flat around the 3rd and 4th missions. The conflicts seem well done, the enemies are fun to fight (though, Promethean grenades suck, and that sucks some life out of the fights), but it's not grabbing me. I think it's in large part because the music and sound design are all over the map. A couple of times I felt like I was approaching a large conflict, and in response the music continued as low key exporation sound effects.
Combine this with totally forgettable sounds on the forerunner weapons and I kept feeling kind of underwhelmed. Getting back into the human weapons helped, but it's the music is still off. Also, why are the vehicles paper thin, which leads to situations where the game will give you multiple vehicles to play with. Great, but back tracking for a new ride is just kind of annoying, why not transfer more damage to the player, but make the actual vehicle tougher.
I played Slayer pro last night, and maybe it was because I was just struggling, but I wasn't enjoying it nearly as much. The fact that I couldn't knock someone at long range out of scope, and they had DMR's with 3x scopes made it feel like the first shot won the round, and that the methods of escape were pretty meaningless. Also, the weapon spawning system falls apart without personal ordinance, which in turn made it feel like the maps lost a ton of their strategic significance.
The single player starts to feel really flat around the 3rd and 4th missions. The conflicts seem well done, the enemies are fun to fight (though, Promethean grenades suck, and that sucks some life out of the fights), but it's not grabbing me. I think it's in large part because the music and sound design are all over the map. A couple of times I felt like I was approaching a large conflict, and in response the music continued as low key exporation sound effects.
Combine this with totally forgettable sounds on the forerunner weapons and I kept feeling kind of underwhelmed. Getting back into the human weapons helped, but it's the music is still off. Also, why are the vehicles paper thin, which leads to situations where the game will give you multiple vehicles to play with. Great, but back tracking for a new ride is just kind of annoying, why not transfer more damage to the player, but make the actual vehicle tougher.
I played Slayer pro last night, and maybe it was because I was just struggling, but I wasn't enjoying it nearly as much. The fact that I couldn't knock someone at long range out of scope, and they had DMR's with 3x scopes made it feel like the first shot won the round, and that the methods of escape were pretty meaningless. Also, the weapon spawning system falls apart without personal ordinance, which in turn made it feel like the maps lost a ton of their strategic significance.
It's when the
Didact's weapon turned the people of New Phoenix to ashes. GET IT? HAHA I'm such a punny guy!
Seriously though, I groaned and then laughed when they came out of the Pelican and all that was left were ashes. Good job 343.
Seriously though, I groaned and then laughed when they came out of the Pelican and all that was left were ashes. Good job 343.
Was about to say no, but now that I think about it there was a spot. It's pretty easy to get through with a simple trick in co-op though.
Woops. I always get confused when people ask their story-spoiler questions in the non spoiler threads.
I finished the campaign over the weekend.
I really feel like they missed what made the best Halo missions. The only memorable mission was the Mammoth, and it even had some odd invisible wall moments. The promethians didn't add anything new to the combat, I actually preferred the covenant battles the entire game. The story is a mess, I will say they nailed the relationship of Chief and Cortana though, that was the highlights of the story.
In my opinion, Reach still has the best campaign of the series. It just nailed everything that made CE so good and diversified it. I'm going to replay it and see if I still feel the same.
I really feel like they missed what made the best Halo missions. The only memorable mission was the Mammoth, and it even had some odd invisible wall moments. The promethians didn't add anything new to the combat, I actually preferred the covenant battles the entire game. The story is a mess, I will say they nailed the relationship of Chief and Cortana though, that was the highlights of the story.
In my opinion, Reach still has the best campaign of the series. It just nailed everything that made CE so good and diversified it. I'm going to replay it and see if I still feel the same.
Dear Stinkles,
I have the best idea ever, and its NOT about +5 Headshot or whatever so hear me out!
I need you to add to the Support section of Loadouts an ability that makes you visible to your enemies all the time, a 'PermaNemesis', if you will.
That's the only thing it does; show your location. To everybody. All the time.
Do this, and you will be the envy of all Temer... NeoGAF. Also it's the best idea ever so agree with me.
Sincerely,
That guy that sits behind you at certain times of the week...
I have the best idea ever, and its NOT about +5 Headshot or whatever so hear me out!
I need you to add to the Support section of Loadouts an ability that makes you visible to your enemies all the time, a 'PermaNemesis', if you will.
That's the only thing it does; show your location. To everybody. All the time.
Do this, and you will be the envy of all Temer... NeoGAF. Also it's the best idea ever so agree with me.
Sincerely,
That guy that sits behind you at certain times of the week...
I do. Awesome design and I thought it'd be the next evolution of the Carbine to stay.
Blue Ninja
Member
Still need to get used to Sprint not being on RB anymore. Tried sprinting into a group while weilding a sword, pressed Jetpack instead.
It's also pretty amazing how I can go from kicking ass on a small map (like Haven) to being slaughtered on a big one (like Complex).
It's also pretty amazing how I can go from kicking ass on a small map (like Haven) to being slaughtered on a big one (like Complex).
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
It felt so satisfying to get the supercombine explosion. Would also prefer the Carbine to be scrapped instead of it.
I find Cortana very attractive in Halo 4.
She reminds me of someone I know.
She looks like my most recent ex :/
Amazing thighs though
I know, right? I can't believe how common this shit is on XBOX360. It happens far too often.
Strummerjones
Member
Joining in the chorus of disappointment. Completed the single player game on heroic last night and was extremely underwhelmed. This was by far the weakest campaign of any of the Halo games, and was pretty poor on every level save aesthetically. The biggest draw of previous entries was the superb AI, but that's almost entirely absent here. I'm not sure exactly if it's just the newly neutered AI or the combat encounters are poorly designed or a combination of the two, but where once you'd be constantly kept on your toes from flanking enemies, here the battles are largely static with enemies just listlessly standing around firing at you. In all situations it's far too easy to just run away a bit and recharge your shields which enemies are more than happy to let you do, politely twiddling their thumbs until you come back.
Then there are the new enemies. The bulk of the game is spent fighting endless waves of bullet sponge Knights whose entire attack strategy is to mince about a small area shooting at you. The new Prometheans are completely devoid of any personality or redeeming features, and worst of all they don't even fight you in interesting ways, save punshing you for trying to melee them and teleporting away in an aggravating manner just as you're about to kill them (which makes each yawn inducing firefight drag on twice as long as it should do). The flying enemies would be interesting if it wasn't for the fact their entire reason to exist is to make the already boring beyond belief fights with the knights take even longer to resolve. Then you've got the bizarre despawning of weapons meaning you're often unable to pour enough ammo into the bullet sponges in the first place, in which case you've just got to hope there's a weapons crate nearby. Don't worry though, the enemies will happily let you run right past them and won't do anything until you get back. They're nice like that.
The only moments of gameplay I actually remember are fleeting bouts of frustration such as the oft-discussed banshee and ghost bit, the quite good Mammoth bit (which is unfortunately still only Halo by numbers with little real thought or challenge put into it), and the pointless Mantis bits which are little more than can't-fail spectacle (has anyone died on this bit, ever?). People have already mentioned the lack of any effective large scale battles on par with even the weakest ones of previous Halo games, but seeing as this gets even the basic small skirmishes completely wrong, that's not surprising.
What the hell was up with the storyline? It's embarrassingly transparent that there's nowhere left to go with the plot and characters, and the Prometheans/Forerunners are an incredibly generic and dull substitute for the Covenant. The big bad Didact man is completely uninteresting with the most generic trying-to-blow-up-the-world plotline imaginable. His constant moustache twirling taunting of the Master Chief throughout was saturday morning cartoons level stuff. Speaking of which, the dialogue was pretty bad in general. It's hardly that previous Halo games were shakespearean masterpieces, but they posessed just the right amount of self awareness of how silly they could be at times, and Cortana in particular was well used to puncture some of the pomposity of it all. In Halo 4 however her characterisation is terrible. Yes I get that she's dying etc, but she's completely unlikeable and her usually excellent actress is let down by a script full of endless awful exposition and having to shrilly shout "CHIEF! HURRY! BLOW UP ANOTHER 3 DOOHICKIES NOOOOW!" (another bit of lazy game design that constantly creeps up) every five minutes. Impressively they even managed to make the Master Chief an even less interesting character, which is some feat. The end result is the few "tender" scenes are completely risible
.
It's sad that whatever Faustian pact 343 entered in to deliver the first Halo that actually looks state of the art has seemingly resulted in it being the absolute worst one to actually play. At least the multiplayer is meant to be really good.
Then there are the new enemies. The bulk of the game is spent fighting endless waves of bullet sponge Knights whose entire attack strategy is to mince about a small area shooting at you. The new Prometheans are completely devoid of any personality or redeeming features, and worst of all they don't even fight you in interesting ways, save punshing you for trying to melee them and teleporting away in an aggravating manner just as you're about to kill them (which makes each yawn inducing firefight drag on twice as long as it should do). The flying enemies would be interesting if it wasn't for the fact their entire reason to exist is to make the already boring beyond belief fights with the knights take even longer to resolve. Then you've got the bizarre despawning of weapons meaning you're often unable to pour enough ammo into the bullet sponges in the first place, in which case you've just got to hope there's a weapons crate nearby. Don't worry though, the enemies will happily let you run right past them and won't do anything until you get back. They're nice like that.
The only moments of gameplay I actually remember are fleeting bouts of frustration such as the oft-discussed banshee and ghost bit, the quite good Mammoth bit (which is unfortunately still only Halo by numbers with little real thought or challenge put into it), and the pointless Mantis bits which are little more than can't-fail spectacle (has anyone died on this bit, ever?). People have already mentioned the lack of any effective large scale battles on par with even the weakest ones of previous Halo games, but seeing as this gets even the basic small skirmishes completely wrong, that's not surprising.
What the hell was up with the storyline? It's embarrassingly transparent that there's nowhere left to go with the plot and characters, and the Prometheans/Forerunners are an incredibly generic and dull substitute for the Covenant. The big bad Didact man is completely uninteresting with the most generic trying-to-blow-up-the-world plotline imaginable. His constant moustache twirling taunting of the Master Chief throughout was saturday morning cartoons level stuff. Speaking of which, the dialogue was pretty bad in general. It's hardly that previous Halo games were shakespearean masterpieces, but they posessed just the right amount of self awareness of how silly they could be at times, and Cortana in particular was well used to puncture some of the pomposity of it all. In Halo 4 however her characterisation is terrible. Yes I get that she's dying etc, but she's completely unlikeable and her usually excellent actress is let down by a script full of endless awful exposition and having to shrilly shout "CHIEF! HURRY! BLOW UP ANOTHER 3 DOOHICKIES NOOOOW!" (another bit of lazy game design that constantly creeps up) every five minutes. Impressively they even managed to make the Master Chief an even less interesting character, which is some feat. The end result is the few "tender" scenes are completely risible
(and Cortana's "death" is so obviously going to be overturned five minutes into the next game as to make that whole sequence pointless and devoid of any emotional impact)
It's sad that whatever Faustian pact 343 entered in to deliver the first Halo that actually looks state of the art has seemingly resulted in it being the absolute worst one to actually play. At least the multiplayer is meant to be really good.
The English Conquistador
Member
Just came here to echo the same thing. The CG is pretty good, but the quality of it all is absolutely atrocious. I honestly thought something was wrong with my disc when episode 2's cutscene played out.
Low quality, shitty black levels...why?
I am sorry to tell you that it's Halo 2 that was the worst one to play, this one at least delivered on story and multiplayer.
IOnEI Falcon
Member
Yeah, me too. Hopefully next week. The middle mission helping the marines this week was fun but the other seemed like I was replaying last weeks.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
I would have rather gotten the needle rifle than the carbine in Halo 4. The carbine is butt.
It's just heavily compressed as per usual with consoles. The high quality beginning and ending CG scenes were very surprising to me. I don't know about the busted black levels, though.
Naked Lunch
Member
Is it even possible to lose in Spartan Ops? What is even the point? Just shoot shit with no fear of failure whatsoever. Why not limit the lives or something?
Zeouterlimits
Member
Apparently so they can send high amounts of Elites with Fuel Rod Guns and insta-kill melees at you.
Some heavy incentives to stay alive such as double XP multipliers or bonuses would be preferable. I don't mind infinite lives, but they need to give us reasons not to mindlessly charge in to get the job done. At least more than, "I don't want to die in videogames."
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
I'd definitely be okay with either a mild penalty for death, or increased incentives for staying alive. As it stands, neither exist, making Spartan Ops pretty mindless.
I was very excited for SpOps when they first started talking about it, but the way they've implemented it, I think I would have rather had Firefight with objectives. I would have liked if weekly additions to Firefight added new objectives to existing maps, or new conditions as part of daily events (eg. weapons restrictions, tuned gravity, etc etc)
eso76
Member
Still halfway through, and i think the series finally needs a change.
I'd like to see it steer into a more 'adventurous' scenario, or some open world-ish rpgfps.
As it is, i can't see it moving forward. I don't think 343 really brought much to the table: the stuff they introduced doesn't really push the series forward.
Prometheans and their weapons look good, but don't really enhance gameplay and the best elements of Halo 4 are the exact same things that made Halo CE great 11 years ago.
Actually, i'm not even sure they're working as well as they did there.
Halo has been rearranging the same elements for too long and i don't think 343 can do much about it. Microsoft can't do much. Money can only do so much.
In this era i'm afraid we're never seeing a game in the series that will amaze us like CE did.
It's still a solid game, but i feel it is thanks to Bungie for most part.
And it is indeed very pretty, which is entirely on 343 talent.
I'd like to see it steer into a more 'adventurous' scenario, or some open world-ish rpgfps.
As it is, i can't see it moving forward. I don't think 343 really brought much to the table: the stuff they introduced doesn't really push the series forward.
Prometheans and their weapons look good, but don't really enhance gameplay and the best elements of Halo 4 are the exact same things that made Halo CE great 11 years ago.
Actually, i'm not even sure they're working as well as they did there.
Halo has been rearranging the same elements for too long and i don't think 343 can do much about it. Microsoft can't do much. Money can only do so much.
In this era i'm afraid we're never seeing a game in the series that will amaze us like CE did.
It's still a solid game, but i feel it is thanks to Bungie for most part.
And it is indeed very pretty, which is entirely on 343 talent.
They really need to implement skulls and some sort of scoring to Spartan Ops. I think they'll leverage challenges like "complete without dying" which will help a bit.
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
I keep forgetting this game even has kill cams. I usually know exactly what killed me, so I tend to respawn asap.
Digital Limit
Member
Yeah, unlike Call of Duty where you're often not even privy to the presence of the thing that kills you, Halo does a good job letting you stick around to watch yourself get killed, and even if not, sniper trails, explosions or your enemy hopping around with an obvious weapon all relay the events that just occurred.
That said, on occasion I enjoy reliving the moment of my death. And I love the Sitrec for final kills, BUT OF COURSE THAT'S BROKEN.
There's really a lot of this game that needs patching. I am a little disappointed, but excited because they promise to be making changes early.
I'd recommend watching them on the waypoint website, but I have yet to get any videos on there to load.
I think if they just got the AI and encounter design right you would feel it's much better.
JohnOfMars
Banned
After two episodes, here are my thoughts on what I'd like to see in future Spartan Ops episodes:
Gameplay:
Story:
Gameplay:
- Scoring - The whole first episode is about competing with another team (Crimson vs. Gypsy), but we can't actually compete with them in any meaningful way. Give us scores so we can compete between our team. The game is already tracking this anyway. Put it on the HUD!
- Finite Lives - Let our antics have a cost.
- Failure MUST be an option - If it's not possible to fail, then I don't think you can truly succeed. Right now, dying is a great choice because you respawn with more ammo.
- Wave Defense - Make it matter that we just took a structure. There are waves now, but no down time. Give us a breather (which works great in campaign) and then have the waves hit even harder.
- Skulls - Let us customize the experience. Also, it's damn weird to not hear Grunt Birthday Party when I pop one of those guys in the face.
- Harder Options - Right now, even on legendary, my friends just plow through the chapters. It's not hard enough.
- Personal Ordnance - Have less ammo just laying on the field and make us earn our power weapons. This works great in Infinity Slayer, and could add a lot of replayability to Spartan Ops. Example: "Last time when I got a drop, I went FRG, but next time I should definitely go binary rifle."
Story:
- Better involvement - right now, since I have infnite lives and can't fail, and Sarah Palmer has said my only job is to shoot things and push buttons, I don't care about the story. How could I? My mission commander is telling me not to care.
- Some measure of choice - Let us make some decisions. Spartans aren't grunts. We're elite soldiers, so act like it and let us have a voice in the story. Let us decide between saving the scientists or capturing the artifact. And let that decision matter in later episodes. Let us decide if we want to sneak past a camp of Covenant and or attack and risk them discovering our plans. If you want "watercooler discussion", choice is the best way to do it. Just look how many people are talking about The Walking Dead adventure game!
- Scenarios that rely on the fact that you're a team. Multiple simultaneous encounters? Ground assault team and an air one? Dual hostage situations? Four bombs about to go off and only time to disable them if we all split up? Make it more than just a single player game without thought to the fact that you're supposed to have four players.
- Less chatter - Let my friends and I be the ones who talk and call things out. I don't need Miller saying "Watch out! Watchers!" or "Phantoms Incoming." By having everything called out, it's another way that we can't fail. Let my team figure things out. Make my team have to keep our eyes open for new phantom drops or drop pods. The game shouldn't call those things out unless I'm failing or taking too long.
IOnEI Falcon
Member
Love all your suggestions! Just add some new locations and this all would be perfect.
TrAcEr_x90
Member
how do you guys think halo 4 will hold up with call of duty coming out? I bought the halo 4 bundle last week with friends I haven't played with in a long time. 1 week and they have to go get call of duty midnight launch. I still have about 2 people to play with, but how do people have time for two games in two weeks?
bobs...onGaf
Member
I'm struggling with this aswell - I might get black ops 2 depending on friends opinions and then basically try halo 4 out again when the first map pack releases - hopefully by then 343 will have fixed a few issues with the game.
Black ops 2 doesn't look very appealing though - so may just ignore call of duty.
As you said - balancing two games at once is just shitty when you have less time to play anyway.
As for populations of course Blops2 will take the majority of the player base - but I doubt it will affect the game itself at all.