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Halo |OT13|

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Merguson

Banned
Campaign:
Halo 3
Halo Combat Evolved
Halo: Reach
Halo 4
Halo 3: ODST
Halo 2

Multiplayer:
Halo 3
Halo 2
Halo Combat Evolved
Halo 4
Halo: Reach
 

Holiday

Banned
1. Dylan
2. Dylan
3. Dylan
4. Dylan
5. Dylan

Harvest is sort of fun. The availability of plasmas in loadouts makes using a warthog a bad time, though.
 
SP:
Halo 1
Halo 4 / Halo 3
ODST
Reach
Halo 2

MP:
Halo 1
Halo 2 (good maps are good)
Halo 4 (largely on the strength of the gunplay, they have GOT to do something about those gametypes and the shitty map design)
Halo 3
Reach
 
Campaign: H3,H2,ODST, CEA, Reach, H4
MP: 2, Reach, 4, 3
Theater + File Sharing: H3, Reach, H4
Playlist Management: H2, Reach, H3, H4
UI: Reach, H2, H3, H4
Firefight: ODST, Reach
Spec Ops: MW2, H4
Maps: H2, H3, Reach, H4
 

Omni

Member
yes on all except the motion blur (grain filter optional, don't care about that either way)

Reach also had: best particle effects, best animations, best textures, best AA (well, on par with 4), best skyboxes, best textures

Most of the graphics stuff except for lighting and water peaked in reach (possibly polycount is higher as well in halo 4?)
The AA in Reach was a monstrosity. All that blur/ghosting you see during the game? A result of temporal anti-aliasing.

Not sure what you're basing particle effects on. Same goes for animations; both games are motioncapped.
 

Karl2177

Member
Reading and recording, actually.

If you're keeping track, then I'll chime in. I've broken it into MP, Story, and PvE(Campaign/Firefight/SpOps) encounters

MP: 1T. Halo 3 - It hooked me in the most. There was a good design around all of the weapons except Laser. Equipment and the netcode bugged me
1T. Halo 2 - Glitches made it good, glitches made it bad. SMG was junk. Maps were top-tier. The sandbox was too heavily focused around duals.
3T. Halo 4 - Take out all of the crap that 343 put on it, and it's pretty good. Weapon sandbox design is the best it has been, but the overall sandbox is heavily muddled with AAs, perks, and spawning with doom guns.
3T. CE - Fun, but in most of my experiences, it came down to just Pistol, Sniper, and Rockets. I'm sure I would have a better time with it in cases where the pistols were pickups.
5. Reach - Butt

Story: 1. Halo 2 - Looking back, the Arbiter storyline was one of the greatest additions to the Halo world.
2. CE - It captured the feeling of not knowing where you are, but an unexplainable sense of exploration. Top tier.
3. ODST - Nice side story presented in an interesting way. I'm a bit disappointed we couldn't find out more about the city though.
4. Halo 3 - The overarching story was nonexistent, but the encounter to encounter story was great. It's too bad that's far to subtle to drive the game forward.
5. Reach - Characters were uninteresting or killed off before they could develop. The premise behind it is great, just very flawed in execution.
6. Halo 4 - I had no idea what was going on, and I've read the books.
Why was the Didact against the humans? Master Chief being good means nothing, since it was all a plan from the Librarian. Why are Forerunners vampires?
I had to go to the terminals to find out the answer to the first question, something that should have been in game.

PvE encounters: 1. Halo 3 - Sierra 117 through The Covenant were all great encounters that can be replayed in a multitude of ways. It's a shame that Cortana is the worst campaign level in the mainline Halo games.
2T. CE - fun to shoot aliens with such simplicity.
2T. ODST - Exploring the city was and is a great experience. Try it without using either the ViSR database or ViSR itself.
4. Reach - The feedback on enemies is great, but their AI ruins it for me. There's not a good gradient for when they go from weak to cheating bastards.
5. Halo 2 - It's more fun when you break out of the missions. Actually playing them is a series of uninteresting combat.
6. Halo 4 - I've voiced my feedback on Spartan Ops. I've voiced my feedback on artificial barriers to the player like OHK Knights. The SP is severely lacking fun.
 

IHaveIce

Banned
OT but Black Ops 2's campaign is pretty baller. I'm very pleasantly surprised.

damn ... I think I have to get it, another 60 € down the river ..



Off topic but I just turned my PS3 on the first time since .. I don't know .. a couple of months, now I have to get system updates to watch blue rays? :( I'm sitting here waiting to watch Dark Knight Rises again but have to wait for these updates urgh :(
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
yes on all except the motion blur (grain filter optional, don't care about that either way)

Reach also had: best particle effects, best animations, best textures, best AA (well, on par with 4), best skyboxes, best textures

Most of the graphics stuff except for lighting and water peaked in reach (possibly polycount is higher as well in halo 4?)
Holy moly, how could you be so wrong on so much.
 

JB1981

Member
The AA in Reach was a monstrosity. All that blur/ghosting you see during the game? A result of temporal anti-aliasing.

Not sure what you're basing particle effects on. Same goes for animations; both games are motioncapped.

Yes image quality is much better in Halo 4. I think scar is right though. Reach had better alpha effects, particle effects, texture work in places. I preferred the look of the Spartan models in MP. I think animations are a wash. Art direction more appealing in Halo 4, color palette more pleasing. Both games suffer from significant slowdown in places.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
Never played this or the first Black Ops. Are they both good?

I don't really like the first Black Ops' campaign, but its multiplayer is pretty good. Still populated as well. Blops 1>2 in terms of multiplayer, but not by much. 2 has a handful of connection issues that are pretty bothersome. However, League Play is absolutely fantastic, and the suite of content is impressive as well.
 
I want to use Luke's quote about Halo: "Two men enter, the better man leaves. The lesser man is respawning and that's Halo." Now two men are entering, the one with the ability counter leaves. The other one is respawning and that's new Halo.

Funny I remember Luke saying this in a Reach ViDoc, not trying to target you specifically lately mate but your points are askew when the comment was about default Reach (including AA's and everything).

X3rmP.png

Also can we now remove the silly GAF statements about population bombing. Clearly COD is popular and #1, clearly Halo 4 has remained as #2 and clearly the peak population chart GAF kept posting is NOT the correct statistic.

Shit Halo 4 has beaten out ACIII, FIFA13, Skyrim, FarCry 3, Borderlands 2 & Reach of course. All that while holding #2 against the COD juggernaut. Halo 4 is doing great and sales have been excellent with a huge cash pile for 343i/MS.

We would just like some unique players per day charts to replace the HaloCharts efforts and we can all see some exact numbers instead of XBL charts.

My initial reflexive response when discussing the new ordnance systems is "Nuke them from orbit," as I really don't think they work in Halo at all. I kind of have to struggle to be more construcive.

I like the global ordnance being seen dropping in, perhaps add an early indicator/timer. I think IS has its place with personal ordnance, I think personal drops can be removed from big team and I'm glad to see modes like CTF without personal drops etc. Some tweaks here and there and I think ordnance of both varieties can stay. If they want them in for MLG or hardcore they just need to tweak so customs/playlist remove the randomness to weapon drops and they are set choices or set tiered choices based on game progress.
 

Akai__

Member
Is wreckage the only place you can get the melee achievement? I don't seem to see any other options.

The achievements are a little bit buggy. You don't need to be in a mancannon for example. It will trigger the achievement, if you are jumping down the cliff and meeleing someone (not backsmacking), for example.

To answer your question, they are pretty much doable on any Crimson map, except the Mantis/Warthog ones.
 
Also can we know remove the silly GAF statements about population bombing. Clearly COD is popular and #1, clearly Halo 4 has remained as #2 and clearly the peak population chart GAF kept posting is NOT the correct statistic.

Not really. Heres my reason though. The population is bombing. If you look at the PEAK which isn't high thats the amount of users players are going to see in their game at a time, that doesn't mean they are even really playing it means they were active and playing at a point. It means that population is split up in the playlists. That is trying to give players games based on connection and skill. So the lower it goes the less thats going to happen correctly and give people a good experience (I've seen like 3 competitive games in H4 so far out of 70/80? Forgot)

That peak population is correct, its taken right from the API. The game and peak population both match whenever I checked...

Look at the HOURLY population though, its less than the peak, a lot less, you really can only play while America plays at night or else the MM system is going to be working even less optimally.

Now these charts are based on Unique Users...that means Halo is having a lot of people signing on to hit that #2 spot. Yet it has a low ~100k ish peak and averages even lower on the other hours.

Why if its got so many Unique Users signing on (#2 on Live) is it not having a higher peak and hourly population? The answer is its probably not retaining any amount of them for a seriously solid amount of time. I feel a ton of people are hopping on playing a few and getting bored and signing off, or rage quitting... probably because of the bugs/glitches/miserable online experience.

Last time I played the MM times were super high between a bunch of the games. I don't think this would be happening and would be a lot smoother if Halo had CoD #'s but it doesnt.

I also think its entirely possible its going to lose that #2 spot soon, the game is continually declining, we're not positive its hit its base population that it will average.

Besides whats going to COMPETE with Halo 4 right now besides Blops 2? Those are the two newest biggest games, and Halo is the second place game.
 
The achievements are a little bit buggy. You don't need to be in a mancannon for example. It will trigger the achievement, if you are jumping down the cliff and meeleing someone (not backsmacking), for example.

To answer your question, they are pretty much doable on any Crimson map, except the Mantis/Warthog ones.

Hm I will have to try that. I only have the mantis, melee and warthog ones to get. The melee and warthog seem the toughest, mantis is just going to be time consuming.
 

CyReN

Member
OT but Black Ops 2's campaign is pretty baller. I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Something about Black Ops stories have been complete shit to me, I just can't like them. Love MW 1/2/3 though. It's very weird.

-----
Also for those that like streaming, HUGE Michigan EAST vs WEST Halo 4 LAN this Saturday ft. Walshy, Lethul, Mikwen, etc to name a few. I'll be there, it will be streamed on Walshy channel.
 

Enfinit

Member
Thanks for all the tier lists, guys. If you haven't already, feel free to post your own so it can be compiled into a GAF statistical report.

Also, Karl's posts never cease to amaze me at the level of detail and thought put into his words. Such a pleasure to read - regardless of if it's positive or negative.
 
Not really. Heres my reason though. The population is bombing. If you look at the PEAK which isn't high thats the amount of users players are going to see in their game at a time, that doesn't mean they are even really playing it means they were active and playing at a point. It means that population is split up in the playlists. That is trying to give players games based on connection and skill. So the lower it goes the less thats going to happen correctly and give people a good experience (I've seen like 3 competitive games in H4 so far out of 70/80? Forgot)

That peak population is correct, its taken right from the API. The game and peak population both match whenever I checked...

Look at the HOURLY population though, its less than the peak, a lot less, you really can only play while America plays at night or else the MM system is going to be working even less optimally.

Now these charts are based on Unique Users...that means Halo is having a lot of people signing on to hit that #2 spot. Yet it has a low ~100k ish peak and averages even lower on the other hours.

Why if its got so many Unique Users signing on (#2 on Live) is it not having a higher peak and hourly population? The answer is its probably not retaining any amount of them for a seriously solid amount of time. I feel a ton of people are hopping on playing a few and getting bored and signing off, or rage quitting... probably because of the bugs/glitches/miserable online experience.

Last time I played the MM times were super high between a bunch of the games. I don't think this would be happening and would be a lot smoother if Halo had CoD #'s but it doesnt.

I also think its entirely possible its going to lose that #2 spot soon, the game is continually declining, we're not positive its hit its base population that it will average.
Boo! I play a lot when i can.
suckling that tasty food nipple of MS
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
Something about Black Ops stories have been complete shit to me, I just can't like them. Love MW 1/2/3 though. It's very weird.

-----
Also for those that like streaming, HUGE Michigan EAST vs WEST Halo 4 LAN this Saturday ft. Walshy, Lethul, Mikwen, etc to name a few. I'll be there, it will be streamed on Walshy channel.

Oh no, I agree. I'm enjoying the pacing and variety, not the story. Like in multiplayer, you can tell that they wanted to do something different, and it's pretty fun.
 
Something about Black Ops stories have been complete shit to me, I just can't like them. Love MW 1/2/3 though. It's very weird.
It's because they try even harder than MW games to be ludicrous in the story dept. I thought BLOPS1 story was too predictable and overall poorly written.
 
Just as I thought, Halo CE the most overrated game in years

And Halo 2 the most clouded by nostalgia goggles game in a decade. I loved Halo 2 and poured insane amounts of time into it. It was more the freshness of XBL combined with base gameplay and high quality maps plus objective games. CTF was massive back then and it was glorious.

Throughout Halo 2 I hated the cheater ridden buggy ass piece of shit that game was. Ranks meant absolutely zero in that game of modders, cheaters and host manipulation.

Still a great game, hmmm. I guess the same could be said for Halo 4 to an extent :)
 
The achievements are a little bit buggy. You don't need to be in a mancannon for example. It will trigger the achievement, if you are jumping down the cliff and meeleing someone (not backsmacking), for example.

To answer your question, they are pretty much doable on any Crimson map, except the Mantis/Warthog ones.

One thousand thanks kind sir. I've tried countless times on wreckage for that melee achievement. Just nailed it in one match on harvest using a jetpack and dropping in. Awesome.

Only two to go.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
COD stories are a joke. Period.

I loathe Halo 4's story, but it's still not as bad as COD's.

COD4's story is pretty decent. Hardly Oscar worthy, but it's fairly engaging.

Even MW3's story is okay by gaming standards. The slow downfall of Captain Price's sanity is interesting.
 
Not really. Heres my reason though. The population is bombing. If you look at the PEAK which isn't high thats the amount of users players are going to see in their game at a time, that doesn't mean they are even really playing it means they were active and playing at a point. It means that population is split up in the playlists. That is trying to give players games based on connection and skill. So the lower it goes the less thats going to happen correctly and give people a good experience (I've seen like 3 competitive games in H4 so far out of 70/80? Forgot)

That peak population is correct, its taken right from the API. The game and peak population both match whenever I checked...

Look at the HOURLY population though, its less than the peak, a lot less, you really can only play while America plays at night or else the MM system is going to be working even less optimally.

Now these charts are based on Unique Users...that means Halo is having a lot of people signing on to hit that #2 spot. Yet it has a low ~100k ish peak and averages even lower on the other hours.

Why if its got so many Unique Users signing on (#2 on Live) is it not having a higher peak and hourly population? The answer is its probably not retaining any amount of them for a seriously solid amount of time. I feel a ton of people are hopping on playing a few and getting bored and signing off, or rage quitting... probably because of the bugs/glitches/miserable online experience.

Last time I played the MM times were super high between a bunch of the games. I don't think this would be happening and would be a lot smoother if Halo had CoD #'s but it doesnt.

I also think its entirely possible its going to lose that #2 spot soon, the game is continually declining, we're not positive its hit its base population that it will average.

Besides whats going to COMPETE with Halo 4 right now besides Blops 2? Those are the two newest biggest games, and Halo is the second place game.

1. I don't see anything for Spartan Ops statistics

2. I don't see anything for Campaign statistics

3. I don't see anything for customs statistics

4. If you look at All Time Hourly there is a trend but things look pretty stable if you ask me.

5. Multiplayer only peaks do not equal the totals per day across all of Halo 4 online.

6. There is no official API support, again I don't even trust the 343i statistics yet let alone trust the 100% accuracy of the data mining/exchange to Halo Charts either.

7. I totally agree smaller populations hurt the performance and results of matchmaking, of course we all want more population pools.

8. Granted Halo 4 & BOPS II are the newest and both will have peaks for the first couple of weeks and then settle to a lower median.

9. Both #1 & #2 will experience fluctuations over XMAS, gift giving and players having more time off over holidays to play games.

10. Halo has always been able to attract players back over months and I don't think Halo 4 will be any different next year.

News flash!

Most narratives in games are mediocre at best, including Halo and COD.

I never played Mario or Tetris or Zelda or Daytona in the arcade or Street Fighter in the arcade for the narratives. Gaming has always been about the experience, gameplay and competition.

As for Community Polls on the games why not use a free service like KwikSurveys?
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
COD stories are a joke. Period.

I loathe Halo 4's story, but it's still not as bad as COD's.
I don't believe anyone takes CoD stories seriously anymore, they're purely fuel for level design at this point. They became a parody of themselves as early as MW2 hit. It's the kind of thing you walk into and know EXACTLY what your going to get.
 

Brolic Gaoler

formerly Alienshogun
COD stories are a joke. Period.

I loathe Halo 4's, but it's still not as bad as COD's.

Black Ops 2's story/campaign was better than Halo 4's.

Real talk.

COD4's story is pretty decent. Hardly Oscar worthy, but it's fairly engaging.

Even MW3's story is okay by gaming standards. The slow downfall of Captain Price's sanity is interesting.

Plus the "sub mission" was the coolest thing in gaming.

shoutout to anne hathaway

Dat frontbutt.
 
Black Ops 2's story/campaign was better than Halo 4's.

Real talk.

I've only watched Far Cry 3's trailers and cutscenes on YouTube but I thought the whole design package about the islands, tattoos, crafting, choose your own ending and all that combined to be a very creative and innovative way to present the game and modes cohesively.

Now that I have a new PC rig not so work oriented I think I'll pick up Far Cary 3 and give it some well deserved time, guess I'm back to PC gaming again. Now where's Diablo III...
 
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