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Halo 5 Review Thread
- Thread starter Twin Tails
- Start date
These dark days must not come to pass.
Newtype-001
Member
That a cozy corner youve backed yourself up in.
PerezDeCorcho
Member
but the last of us is a playstation game!! he must be biased!
yes.
Vire
Member
What's the difference between an 87 and an 85 though? Seriously?
I appreciate the defense, but it's not even worth responding to.
Uno Venova
Banned
Is it even comparable?
You spend more than half the game fighting the Covenant, and it never explains why. It never explains the functional purpose of Requiem. It never explains how Master Chief ended up at Requiem. It does attempt to explain the Didact and his motivations in the form of a poorly animated info dump which retcons the entire franchise, turning John into the Librarian's starchild of destiny or some fucking nonsense.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Crazy that 85 is a "mixed reception" lol
The Baron Count
Member
I really wonder how many people who place such importance on metacritic have posts somewhere about not caring about metacritic.
It's a bit annoying how even I find myself looking at metacritic scores like they mean something instinctually even though I know better. It's a pox on this industry I swear.
90 is more chemically pure.
The Librarian info dump was lost on me and all my friends playing together. Can confirm we were not asleep. The Didact was massively underdeveloped and one dimensional in game. No idea what his problem was.
PetulantChild
Banned
Me neither, it could be worse, it could be sales.
I played through the campaign with a friend and every other time he opened his mouth was to ask what the hell was going on. 4s campaign was just an overall trainwreck once all the forerunner stuff got introduced.
bananafactory
Banned
It's funny because everyone claims they don't care about reviews, until a major release review thread shows up
Dreams-Visions
Member
Walter White would not accept 90%.
The point is that it can take only a handful of reviews to drop a metascore depending on how many people weighed in.
And for quite a few reviews I bet the lack of split screen coop and the
80/20 team play ratio Osiris/Blue
Latvian Hitman
Member
Especially for a game that is all about multiplayer for a huge slice of the community, the quality of which can't be reliably gauged by reviewers. The "85" is basically the meta score for the campaign.
Hockeymac18
Member
It's not just this forum, it's everywhere in gaming.
It's the only entertainment medium that has such an issue with scores. Most other industries work on a more basic kind of recommendation system (usually something like "liked/didn't like" or "buy/rent/skip") - which I wish more game reviewers would go after.
This issue tends to blow up most when a new exclusive game comes out when the biggest fans (...and fanboys) are out.
Bornstellar
Member
Frankie ever address his claim that Chief was still the main character in the game?
Calling a 95+ Metacritic average. Definitely gonna be the highest reviewed Xbox One/PS4 game to date. (Excluding GTA V, not sure if that counts. Since it's a late port of an incredible Xbox 360/PS3 game)
343 did the fanbase good. Incredible scores so far.
EDIT: I believed too hard.
lol
ForsakenLotus
Member
When people that have played all of the mainline Halo games multiple times are still confused about things in the game, only 343i is to blame. They leaned very heavily on Extended Universe stuff and did a very poor job of explaining it.
You know the saying, don't hate the player...
eastx
Member
I don't think revives make a big impact on the difficulty. It's the difference between respawning right where you are or like 100 feet back at the last checkpoint. You can't always count on revives either, because the AI has to get to you in time and they are kind of dumb, plus even the AI teammates get downed and bleed out.
I believe that reviving teammates is a solid co-op mechanic, and I'm in favor of having those mechanics that actually involve players directly helping each other.
But those are details? Can you still follow what happened?
1. They say the Covenant aren't wearing the standard military grade gear, this is a hint of things.
2. Considering other Forerunners are dead and he's not and the big 'weapon' of the Halo franchise. It's really easy to assume it blocks the Halo effect.
3. They drifted towards it? Do you really need an explanation of that?
4. I'll give you that they could have done more to explain the Didact. Also there is no retcons. People need to stop thinking there was. Explaining what isn't there isn't a retcon, otherwise any additional media ever is a retcon.
5. The Librarian literally tells you that you will be immune to the composure if you become further 'evolved.' There's nothing more to it.
But even with all of that, can you tell me what happened in Halo 4 and tell me how one event lead to the next? Then grats, you followed the story.
Also with the Librarian cutscene she explained...
1. That ancient humanity fought the Forerunners trying to escape the Flood.
2. The Forerunners tried to make them selves digitalize but it wouldn't work. This was an attempt to get away from the Flood as
the flood could only assimilate living tissue.
3. The Librarian then says how the morality of what the Didact was doing faded from him.
4. Chief then mentions how the Prometheans are Humans, this should clue you into what the Didact's goal is.
5. The Librarian also says how it will help him get his revenge.
I really don't get how this is hard to understand. Unless your someone who can't piece info together when it's being told to you.
So okay, you got the Didact who was composing Humans and wants to compose more Humans to get his revenge? Why revenge? Well go back to 1, the Forerunners fought Ancient Humanity. It's easy to assume he wants revenge for that.
It's funny and weird that he/she decided to get personal, yet obviously didn't bother to check your post history though.
Vire
Member
Why shouldn't the lack of splitscreen affect reviews? It's a hallmark for the series and because of it, I won't be able to play co-op with my brother. That sucks and I would totally dock points too.
The other story point is more a personal/subjective thing, so that's up to the person reviewing in question. It's going to be sad when the Quarter to Three review comes in and ruins all of 343's bonus checks though.
tattooed_dwarf
Member
But it seems Halo 5 is "very good" according to the reviews.
In a review thread? Doesn't seem that odd.
It's harder for warriors to wave their e-peens in the faces of the enemy when it's less than 90% stiff.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
warz
bananafactory
Banned
You're clearly a civilian and not a soldier
Or we aren't as invested in Halo lore, that has become an inpenatrable mess of pompous terms like Rampancy, the Arbiter, the whateverthehell. I was allready lost after a few lines of dialogue in Halo 5 with al those words that have close to zero meaning to someone who just finished the campaigns and forgot most of the (forgetable) stories afterwards. At times halo reads like bad scifi, masking its faults behind an abundance of words and concepts.
I love the gameplay, but the story was lost on me after combat evolved. That said, Halo 5's story is pretty straightforward and easy to follow, even without a Halo wiki next to you.
GametimeUK
Member
IGN'S Reviews can not catch a break at all. If they bring their review out first people complain that they didn't play it long enough. If they wait to play it long enough people complain that they are waiting to see what other sites score it before scoring it themselves. I'm no IGN fanboy, but they're better than people give them credit for.
ThatsMytrunks
Member
How else will I know that game X is better than game Y?
Dreams-Visions
Member
note to self: play on "hard" mode.
Oof.
How the hell was the minimum in testing 8 hours? Just how big was their sample, and who did they pick to play it?
ForsakenLotus
Member
Because all that matters in a story is the literal timeline of events? It doesn't matter if there is no context, contradictions in themes or events, poor editing and pacing, etc. Being able to say, well this happened - don't know why - but I know it happened, is a really piss poor way to excuse bad writing.
Maintenance
Member
Fixed.
They didn't say 8 was the minimum, they proposed 8-12 as the expected range for average players.
tattooed_dwarf
Member
Well if that happens, I would be afraid to open that review thread.
Vire
Member
A few questions, is there a specific reason you chose normal? Typically Bungie and or 343 have always stated that Heroic is the way "it's meant to be played". However prententious that may seem.
Also, did you stop and look for collectibles at all or just follow the main path? Just curious because these things can affect playtime.
Was that minimum on Normal?
User 73706
Banned
Jesus Christ Marie, they're reviews
Uno Venova
Banned
A score middling in the 80s will always be disappointing for the big tier exclusives. Been like that for years.
BossDarkseid
Member
That does suck but...compared to the claims about it being super MC focused it's not a big deal because 343 said it wouldn't be in etc. I guess as a hallmark of the series then sure, but shouldn't a game be critiqued on what it has and was promised?
I mean people critiqued MGSV's story and structure etc for not only retconning large parts of the canon, or at least introducing another twist where there was no need, but beyond that I think it's kinda preferential. Eh, maybe i'm thinking of them as more statement of fact sorta things. I guess it'd be harder to knock Halo 6 for no splitscreen considering H5 probably starts a new trend.
Although really as fantastic as 60fps seems to be for the game, that Digital Foundry article about the IQ is kinda...yeesh. If they're not going to bring back splitscreen for Halo 6 I guess i'd like them to go after improving the IQ etc and refine other elements.
An expectation is not a range, it's a number.
The proper estimator for the lower bound and higher bound of a range is the minimum and the maximum respectively.
The Baron Count
Member
Shouldn't be. There needs to be a reset on the perception of this stuff.
Resident_UA
Member
To be fair review scores do make a difference sometimes. I think AC Unity and Until Dawn review scores were very important, but as far as I'm concerned 85 to 95 metacritic is pretty much the same score these days.
I'm not going to address all of these points. It is a fact that a great number of people walked away from Halo 4 having not understood what the hell happened or why it did. You simply cannot hand wave fundamental story beats like "WHY AM I FIGHTING COVENANT" and "WHY AM I HERE", or "WHAT EVEN IS THIS PLACE". Terrible storytelling.
And by the way, there is an explanation for Chief ending up at Requiem. It's locked away in a terminal in Halo fucking 3. Never addressed in Halo 4. And the retcon I'm talking about has to do with the Librarian laying seeds or whatever that led to Master Chief and his inevitable encounter with the Librarian. That recontextualizes all of the previous games, so yes, it is a retcon.